FINAL TEST OF TOPIC IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A Study on the Reading Skills of EFL University Students

Fitri Olifia

2201409092

Thursday, 403-404

A Study on the Reading Skills of EFL University Students

1. SUMMARY

This study is conducted based on some finding of some studies that reading a lot is very important for EFL students without getting much exposure to reading materials in class, EFL students cannot make much progress. Realizing the importance of reading for EFL students, it is very crucial for EFL students to have good reading proficiency, and reading proficiency is determined by reading skills.

Considering the importance of mastering reading skills, the writers then conducted a research to get further investigation about what types of reading skills that the EFL students have difficulty and from those types, which one is the most difficult.

1.      Method

This writer focused on the investigation of the reading skills of ten batch-2003-students studying at an English Department of a private university in Surabaya. In doing the data collection, the writers used some steps.

The first step was to analyze the kinds of reading skills which were taught in the department. There are seventeen reading skills which were taught there: (1) scanning, (2) skimming, (3) improving reading speed,(4) structural clues: morphology (word part), (5) structural clues: morphology (compound words), (6) inference from context, (7) using a dictionary, (8) interpreting pro-forms, (9) interpreting pro-forms, (10) interpreting lexical cohesion, (11) recognizing text organization, (12) recognizing presupposition underlying the text, (13) recognizing implications making inference, (14) prediction, (15) distinguishing between fact and opinion, (16) paraphrasing, and (17) summarizing.

The second step of the data collection was to develop two reading tests. Each test consists of two reading texts. The researchers then developed test items based on those reading texts. The test items covered seventeen kinds of reading skills mentioned above. Each reading test consisted of thirty four items as the representatives of seventeen kinds of reading skills.

The third step was piloting the two reading tests. He piloting was aimed to help the writers to see whether the two reading tests had clear and good instructions and items. After piloting the two reading tests, the writers did some minor revisions concerning typographical errors and unclear instructions.

The next step of the data collection was to distribute the reading tests to ten students of English Department Batch 2003 students who had already passed all reading classes.

The last step of the data collection was to check and count the result of both reading tests. In doing this, the writers used answer keys. If the respondents’ answers were correct or in accordance with the answer keys more than 75%, the respondents got full mark. On the other hand, if the respondents’ answers were just in accordance with the answer keys less than 75%, the respondents got zero.

The first step of data analysis was to analyze the results of each reading test. The results were put in two separated tables. Each table was divided into four columns.

The next step of the data analysis was to list seventeen kinds of reading skills which were listed in the reading tests. Then the percentage of incorrect answer for each reading skill was calculated. The higher of the percentage meant the more difficult that particular reading skill for the respondents. If the percentage was low, it was assumed that the skill was easier for the respondents.

2.      Findings

The findings of the two tests were presented in a hierarchy from the reading skill which had the highest difficulty level to the skill which had the lowest difficulty level. The findings were:

No.	Kinds of Reading Skills	The Difficulty Level (Percentage)
1.	Recognizing Text Organization	72.5 %
2.	Paraphrasing	65 %
3.	Inference from Context	57.5 %
4.	Summarizing	47.5 %
5.	Skimming	42.5 %
6.	Structural Clues: Morphology (Compound Words)	40 %
7.	Prediction	40 %
8.	Interpreting Pro-forms	37.5 %
9.	Interpreting Elliptical Expression	37.5 %
10.	Structural Clues: Morphology (word Parts)	35 %
11.	Using a Dictionary	30 %
12.	Interpreting Lexical Cohesion	27.5 %
13.	Recognizing Implications and Making Inferences	22.5 %
14.	Distinguishing between Fact and Opinion	17.5 %
15.	Improving Reading Speed	10 %
16.	Recognizing Presupposition Underlying the Text	10 %
17.	Scanning	7.5 %

3.      Discussion

The most difficult reading skill for these students was recognizing text organization (72.5 %). Perhaps it was because many Indonesian students were not trained to activate recognizing text organization after they read a passage. However, there were only three wrong answers (7.5 %) from the total respondents’ answers toward scanning skill’s items. Therefore, it could be assumed that students did not have much difficulty with this skill. It might because they had already been trained to use this skill in all reading classes. As a result, they could use this skill effectively.

4.      Conclusion and Suggestion

The findings discussed in this research showed that each reading skill had different level of difficulty for the respondent. Further research could be conducted on a larger scale to produce wider results which could be used to make generalization.

2. My Comment

After reading this journal, I understand about the various reading skills. I didn’t expect that there are seventeen reading skills. Before I read this article, I just know three of them. They are scanning, skimming and summarizing. I also understand that reading is not as simple as I know before, that it will be very powerful if we can master those various reading skills.

From this journal, we can get any information to improve our ability in reading skill. So, we can master the reading skill easily.

3. The Benefits of the Study for the Teacher

As a teacher, we can get any knowledge about various reading skills and various degree of difficulty they bring to EFL students. We can also understanding about the difficulty our students may face in reading activity. After we know it, we can implement our knowledge we get from this research to our beloved students. We can use it as our references when we want to make a research or case study in our class.

This journal is so beneficial for us since as teacher. We also conduct some studies to solve our confusion about our teaching, method, students, etc. We can use this research report as guidance in teaching and learning the reading skill in the classroom.

Sex, Politeness, and Stereotypes

We are examining styles and registers, the way language is used, and linguistic attitudes, the issue of ‘women’s language’ is one which illustrates all these concepts in this chapter. There are four important issues that would be discussed.

A.      WOMEN’S LANGUAGE AND CONFIDENCE

According to Robin Lakoff, she argued that women were using language which reinforced their subordinate status, they were “colluding in their own subordination” by the way they spoke.

Features of women’s language

Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistic features such as the following:

·         Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see.

·         Tag questions, e.g. she is very nice, isn’t she?

·         Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good.

·         ‘Empty’ adjectives, e.g. divine, charming, cute.

·         Precise color teams, e.g. magenta, aquamarine.

·         Intensifiers such as just and so, e.g. I like him so much.

·         ‘Hypercorrect’ grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.

·         ‘Superpolite’ forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms.

·         Avoidance of strong swears words, e.g. fudge, my goodness.

·         Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a brilliant performance.

The internal coherence of the features Lakof identified can be illustrated by dividing them into two groups. First, there are linguistic devices which may be used for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance. Secondly, there are features which may boost or intensify a proposition’s force. She claimed women use hedging devices to express uncertainty, and they use intensifying devices to persuade their addressee to take them seriously. According to her, both hedges and boosters reflect women’s lack of confidence.

B.      INTERACTION

There are many futures of interaction which differentiate the talk of women and men: interrupting behavior and conversational feedback.

·         Interruption

Interruptions were distributed between speakers in the same sex-interactions. In cross-sex interactions almost all the interruptions were from male. It has been found that men interrupt others more than women do. Men interrupt more, challenge, dispute, and ignore more, try to control what topics are discussed, and are inclined to make categorical statements. Women are evidently socialized from early childhood to expect to be interrupted. Consequently, they generally give up the floor with little or no protest.

·         Feedback

Another aspect of the picture of women as cooperative conversationalists is the evidence that women provide more encouraging feedback to their conversational partner than men do. Research on conversational interaction reveals women as cooperative conversationalists, whereas men tend to be more competitive and less supportive of others.

C.      GOSSIP

Gossip is a kind of talks between two or more people (mostly women) about someone else’s information in informal context. It has function to affirm solidarity and mantain the social relationship between the women involved.

Women do gossips mostly to criticize other’s behaviour, but they are discomfort to speak directly in front of person they are talking. In gossiping, women mostly supporting or agreeing each other. On the other hand, men are not. They often mocking, contrasting or disagreeing each other, but those express solidarity and maintain social relationship among them. That’s why sometimes there are miscommunication between man and woman.

D.     SEXIST LANGUAGE

It is concerned with the way language expresses both negative and positive stereotypes of both women and men. However, in reality, it is more concerned with language conveys negative attitudes to women. Feminists have claimed that English is a sexist language. At first sight it may seem odd to suggest that a language rather than its speakers are sexist. Sexism involves behavior which maintains social inequalities between women and men.

According to the author, based on linguistic data supports the view that women are often assigned subordinate status by virtue of their gender alone and treated linguistically as subordinate, regardless of their actual power or social status in a particular context.

Code-Switching

FITRI OLIFIA

2201409092

THURSDAY, 403-404

DEFINITION OF CODE-SWITCHING

Code is a verbal component that can be as small as a morpheme or as comprehensive and complex as the entire system of language.

Bokamba (1989) defines: “Code-switching is the mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two distinct grammatical (sub)systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech event… code-mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes (bound morphemes), words (unbound morphemes), phrases and clauses from a cooperative activity where the participants, in order to in infer what is intended, must reconcile what they hear with what they understand.”

TYPES OF CODE-SWITCHING

There are many kinds of code-switching. They are:

ð  Intersentential code-switching is the type of code switching when the language switch is done at sentence boundaries. This is seen most often between fluent bilingual speakers. In intrasentential code-switching, the shift is done in the middle of a sentence, with no interruptions, hesitations, or pauses indicating a shift. It often happens within one sentence or even a one phrase. The speaker is usually unaware of the switch, until after the fact, and for example, you have to find a kalo pedi (good guy) and marry him. (English-Greek)

ð  Code-changing, is characterized by fluent intrasentential shifts, transferring focus from one language to another. It is motivated by situational and stylistic factors, and the conscious nature of the switch between two languages is emphasized (Lipski, 1985, p. 12).

ð  Tag- switching involves the insertion of a tag in one language into an utterance that is otherwise entirely in the other language.

FUNCTION OF CODE SWITCHING

ü  In bilingual community settings will briefly be explained by giving a sample authentic conversation which will help the reader deduce ideas about its possible applications in educational contexts.

ü  In teachers’ classroom discourse will be introduced with its aspects as: topic switch, affective functions, and repetitive functions.

ü  Code switching will shift to students’ code switching by introducing some basic functional perspectives as: equivalence, floor holding, reiteration, and conflict control.

ü  Weak and strong sides of code switching in foreign language classrooms will be discussed with a critical approach.

http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/92496/code-switching-and-code-mixing

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Sert-CodeSwitching.html

Approaches to Discourse

There are six dominant approaches to discourse analysis such as speech act theory, pragmatics, ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, and variation theory.

Speech Act Theory is a logico-philosophic perspective on conversational organization focusing on interpretation rather than the production of utterances in discourse. From the basic belief that language is used to perform actions. Every utterance can be analyzed as the realization of the speaker’s intent (illocutionary force) to achieve a particular purpose. Neither Austin nor Searle were concerned with the analysis of continuous discourse. (Austin 1955, Searle 1969)

Principal problems: the lack of a one-to-one match up between discourse function (IF) and the grammatical form. Systemic name : speech function (SF) – central issue in discourse structure.

Interactional Sociolinguistis grows out of the work of anthropologists. Centrally concerned with the importance of context in the production and interpretation of discourse. Units of analysis: grammatical and prosodic features in interactions. Gumperz demonstrated that interactants from different socio-cultural backgrounds may “hear” and understand discourse differently according to their interpretation contextualisation cues in discourse. E.g. intonation contours, ‘speaking for another’, alignment, gender. (Gumperz 1982, Goffman 1959-1981)

Schiffrin (1987): focused on quantitative interactive sociolinguistic analysis, esp. discourse markers (defined as ‘sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk). Schiffrin’s unit of analysis: turn.

Ethnography of Communication concerned with understanding the social context of linguistic interactions: ‘who says what to whom, when, where. Why, and how’. Prime unit of analysis: speech event. Definition: ‘The speech event is to what analysis of verbal interaction what the sentence is to grammar … It represents an extension in the size of the basic analytical unit from the single utterance to stretches of utterances, as well as a shift in focus from … text to … interaction’. (Dell Hymes (1972b, 1974)

Problem: Lack of explicitness in Hymes’ account on the relationship between genre and other components of the speaking grid and their expression in language. The ethnographic framework has led to broader notions of communicative competence.

Pragmatics formulates conversational behaviour in terms of general “principles” rather than rules. At the base of pragmatic approach is to conversation analysis is  Gricean’s co-operative principle (CP). This principle seeks to account for not only how participants decide what to DO next in conversation, but also how interlocutors go about interpreting what the previous speaker has just done. This principle is the broken down into specific maxims: Quantity (say only as much as necessary), Quality (try to make your contribution one that is true), Relation (be relevant), and manner (be brief and avoid ambiguity). (Grice 1975, Leech 1983, Levinson 1983)

Significant problem: it implies that conversations occur co-operatively, between equals where power is equally distributed etc.

Conversation Analysis (CA), Garfinkel (sociologist) concern: to understand how social members make sense of everyday life. Sack, Schegloff, Jefferson (1973)tried to explain how conversation can happen at all. CA is a branch of ethnomethodology. Two grossly apparent facts: a) only one person speaks at a time, and b) speakers change recurs. Thus conversation is a ‘turn taking’ activity. Speakers recognize points of potential speekar change – turn constructional unit (TCU). (Harold Garfinkel 1960s-1970s)

Major problems: a) lack of systematicity- thus quantitative analysis is impossible; 2) limited I its ability to deal comprehensively with complete, sustained interactions; 3) though offers a powerful interpretation of conversation as dynamic interactive achievement, it is unable to say just what kind of achievement it is.

Variation Analysis, L & W argue that fundamental narrative structures are evident in spoken narratives of personal experience. The overall structure of fully formed narrative of personal experience involves six stages: 1) Abstract, 2) Orientation, 3) Complication, 4) Evaluation, 5) Resolution, 6) Coda where 1) and 6) are optional. Strength: its clarity and applicability. (Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967)

Problems: data was obtained from interviews. Variationists’ approach to discourse stems from quantitative of linguistic change and variation. Although typically focused on social and linguistic constraints on semantically equivalent variants, the approach has also been extended to texts.

Discourse Analysis

WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?

Discourse analysis is a qualitative method that has been adopted and developed by social constructionists. Although discourse analysis can and is used by a handful of cognitive psychologists, it is based on a view that is largely anti-scientific, though not anti-research. Discourse analysis is a way of understanding social interactions. The researcher acknowledges their own bias and position on the issue, known as reflexivity. The aims of research vary: The aim of one investigator might be to understand power relationships in society in order to bring about change; another may be interested in appearance and how it can shape identify; and another investigator may be interested in an interaction or conversation simply for its own sake (in terms of not knowing what the study might uncover).

THE APPLICATION OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

1. Application of discourse analysis to teaching grammar

There are a number of questions posed by discourse analysts with reference to grammar and grammar teaching. In particular, they are interested in its significance for producing comprehensible communicative products, realization of grammar items in different languages, their frequency of occurrence in speech and writing which is to enable teaching more natural usage of the target language, as well as learners' native tongue (McCarthy 1991:47).

2. Application of discourse analysis to teaching vocabulary

From studies conducted by discourse analysts emerged an important idea of lexical chains present in all consistent texts. Such a chain is thought to be a series of related words which, referring to the same thing, contribute to the unity of a communicative product and make its perception relatively easy. Additionally, they provide a semantic context which is useful for understanding, or inferring the meaning of words, notions and sentences. Links of a chain are not usually limited to one sentence, as they may connect pairs of words that are next to one another, as well as stretch to several sentences or a whole text. The relation of words in a given sequence might be that of reiteration or collocation, however, analyst are reluctant to denote collocation as a fully reliable element of lexical cohesion as it refers only to the likelihood of occurrence of some lexical items. Nevertheless, it is undeniably helpful to know collocations as they might assist in understanding of communicative products and producing native-like discourse (McCarthy 1991:65).

One other significant contribution made by discourse analysts for the use of vocabulary is noticing the omnipresence and miscellaneous manners of expressing modality. Contrary to popular belief that it is conveyed mainly by use of modal verbs it has been proved that in natural discourse it is even more frequently communicated by words and phrases which may not be included in the category of modal verbs, yet, carry modal meaning. Lexical items of modality inform the participant of discourse not only about the attitude of the author to the subject matter in question (phrases such as I believe, think, assume), but they also give information about commitment, assertion, tentativeness (McCarthy 1991:85).

Discourse analysts maintain that knowledge of vocabulary-connected discourse devices supports language learning in diverse manners. Firstly, it ought to bring students to organize new items of vocabulary into groups with common context of use to make them realize how the meaning of a certain word might change with circumstances of its use or co-text. Moreover, it should also improve learners' abilities to choose the appropriate synonym, collocation or hyponym (McCarthy 1991:71).

3. Application of discourse analysis to teaching text interpretation

Interpretation of a written text in discourse studies might be defined as the act of grasping the meaning that the communicative product is to convey. It is important to emphasize that clear understanding of writing is reliant on not only what the author put in it, but also on what a reader brings to this process. McCarthy (1991) points out that reading is an exacting action which involves recipient's knowledge of the world, experience, ability to infer possible aims of discourse and evaluate the reception of the text.

Communicative Competence

           In the past decade much research related to communicative competence and communicative language use has emerged in various fields, research which now allows us to develop a model with more detailed content specifications than was possible in the early 1980s. The need for an updated and explicit description of language teaching areas generated with reference to a detailed model of communicative competence. Celce-Murcia and Zoltan Dornyei describe two existing models of communicative competence (the model proposed by Canale & Swain model and the Bachman & Palmer model) and then propose their own pedagogically motivated construct which includes five components: discourse competence, linguistic competence, actional competence, sociocultural competence, and strategic competence.

           Discourse competence is explained the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, sentences and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written text. Linguistic competence comprises the basic elements of communication: the sentence patterns and types, the constituent structure, the morphological inflections, and the lexical resources, as well as the phonological and orthographic systems needed to realize communication as speech or writing. Actional competence is defined as competence in conveying and understanding communicative intent, that is, matching actional intent with linguistic form based on the knowledge of an inventory of verbal schemata that carry illocutionary force. Sociocultural competence refers to the speaker's knowledge of how to express messages appropriately within the overall social and cultural context of communication, in accordance with the pragmatic factors related to variation in language use. Strategic competence examined as knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them.

         It is motivated by practical considerations reflecting the interests in language teaching, language analysis, and teacher training. The goal therefore has been to organize the knowledge available about language use in a way that is consumable for classroom practice. The purposes of any model of this sort is to serve as an elaborated "checklist" that practitioners can refer to and to draw together a wide range of issues in an attempt to synthesize them and form a basis for further research. However this model also has inconsistencies and limitations that raise several questions.  Many questions concern where lexis is to be placed in a model of communicative competence and how important the role of formulaic language is and even though the summary of communication strategies in this model is broader than some previous taxonomies, the restricting of strategic competence to communication strategies only is likely to be considered too narrow an interpretation of strategic competence. On the other way, the current conceptualization of sociocultural competence might still be too broad and the past tendency to redefine some of the sub-components of sociolinguistic or sociocultural competence as independent competencies in their own right may well continue.

          Moreover, the sub-components of the five competencies will need to be further elaborated and the extent of their teach ability assessed in order to make them optimally relevant to language pedagogy. The components contain a mixture of categories in their present form such as knowledge, rules, skills, abilities, conditions, conventions, maxims, strategies, lexical items, etc. These will have to be more systematically specified, based on a psycholinguistic model of language processing. The application of any theoretical model of communicative competence is relative rather than absolute. Nonetheless, the problems encountered and the modifications that had to make, the communicative competence framework provided an integrated and principled basis for designing a language program.