Emi Emilia's research while affiliated with Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia and other places

Although the notion of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been widely promoted in language classrooms, few empirical studies report how social media, such as Instagram, could be used as a virtual learning platform to engage students in learning how to communicate interculturally. Framed within the global Englishes (GE) concept as the result of English spreading as a global language, the present classroom-based study proposes an instructional design blueprint for intercultural learning mediated by Instagram as the virtual platform. The findings of this study contribute to a promising alternative to teaching intercultural communication in the global Englishes era.

Writing is not a stand-alone mental activity; it is inextricably linked to other forms of creative design, such as drawing and music composition. Writing is a highly sought-after skill in today's digital world. Creative writing is defined as the fluent exchange of concepts in an original manner through the construction of logical connections between them in written form based on the individual's schema. This article discusses a study that examined factors affecting student engagement as a lens through which to examine students' perceptions of their creative writing class participation. These interactions emphasize the complexities of student engagement and promote the accuracy of the instruments and metrics used to study it. Cognitive engagement is concerned with a student's internal investment in the learning process, which includes inner psychological characteristics or nonvisible characteristics that encourage effort in acquiring, comprehending, and mastering the knowledge or skills required for academic work. As a result, English lessons were held for 12 students from Flores' private junior high school. They completed a questionnaire that included quantitative and qualitative questions. Descriptive statistics are used to examine qualitative data conceptually and statistically. The participants' experiences reflected various aspects of the students' participation. According to the findings, creative writing activities can help students learn about behavior, emotion, and cognition in a poetry class. However, in a poetry class, emotional involvement prevailed and was followed by behavioral engagement. Nonetheless, pupils maintained a low level of cognitive engagement.

This paper reports on a teaching program for the Functional Grammar (FG) unit at an English Education Study Program of a state university in West Java Indonesia in 2020-2022. Three cohorts of pre-service teachers in semester six were involved in the program (38 students in 2020, 26 in 2021, and 36 in 2022). The teaching program was conducted online due to the Covid 19 pandemic. The report focuses on exploring students’ understanding of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) – FG in particular, and their ability to use SFL in text analysis. The study also addresses students’ opinions on learning SFL through FG unit. The study used a qualitative case study design and the data were obtained from participant observations, a questionnaire distributed at the end of the teaching program, and analysis of students’ essays on text analyses. In the interest of space, the paper will only present and discuss data from the questionnaire and three samples of student essays. The questionnaire data were analysed qualitatively using a thematic analysis of different aspects of the unit and SFL, and students’ essays were analysed using SFL, especially theme, transitivity, and mood systems in lexicogrammar stratum. The data from the questionnaire indicate that all the students in all cohorts responded positively to the teaching program. Many students in each cohort said that learning FG is fun, enjoyable, interesting, and useful for both daily and academic life. They displayed a good understanding of SFL, including its basic principles, notions, and values ­ – especially concerning their reading and writing improvement. The data from students’ essays also reveal their ability to show how and why the text means what it does and to evaluate why the text is or is not effective for its own purposes. On this basis, it is recommended that SFL be introduced to Indonesian university students to enhance their literacy capacity and to Indonesian teachers to improve their teaching skills and their ways to develop assessment that is linguistically informed.

This case study reports on the analysis of the national curriculum known as curriculum 2013, and its relevance to a modern Islamic boarding school goals. This study involved one Islamic senior high school in West Java, Indonesia. The qualitative data were derived from curriculum 2013 and the curriculum complementary documents designed by the curriculum development department of the school. This document analysis relied on four fundamental elements of curriculum introduced by Tyler (1949), those are educational goals, learning experiences, learning organizations, and learning evaluations. The results showed that four fundamental aspects of the curriculum 2013 were in line with the Tyler curriculum principles. A minimum TOEFL score is one of the objectives, but the programs are inadequate to prepare the students to achieve it. Likewise, the final evaluation for the objective is still inconsistent due to the test cost issue. However, the curriculum 2013 supported by some complementary programs has demonstrated its relevance to the goals of the modern Islamic boarding school.

Program evaluation (henceforth PE) is a phase of curriculum development in the ELT context and is precious for improving curriculum reform. However, more research needs to be undertaken to investigate PE as a part of the English curriculum development for young learners’ context in Indonesian elementary schools. This case study research aims to scrutinize the teachers’ voices on PE centered on the challenges, perceptions, and expectations of the English to young learners (EYL) curriculum development. A semi-structured interview with three English teachers chosen by purposive sampling in Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia, was employed to gather the data, and the collected data were examined thematically. The results showed that EYL teachers believe PE is vital to conduct since it can encourage curriculum development. They deal with challenges in designing and developing the curriculum related to lesson planning, materials development, instructional methods, and assessment practices. Teachers expected the EYL program to be adjusted with a suitable curriculum, such as contextualized, character-based, and school-based curricula. The study suggests that PE should be performed regularly to gain insightful reforms for the EYL curriculum, so teachers, schools, and stakeholders can advance the quality of the English program at Indonesian elementary schools.

This study aimed at evaluating a PISA-like reading test developed by teachers participating in the teacher training for teaching PISA-like reading. To serve this purpose, an experimental test was administered to 107 students aged 15-16 using a set of text and questions constructed according to the criteria of the PISA Reading test Level 1. Item analysis was performed following the sampling using Rasch Measurement, deemed essential for determining the ideal index of test items relative to students' ability in making the correct response. The component of the calculation comprises reliability, separation, dan standard error. The Rasch model was constructed manually using Microsoft Excel to obtain the result of the calculation, and a Wright Map was also made manually to illustrate the result of the calculation. The results of the item analysis indicate that the test and the items the teachers constructed have met good criteria. The results revealed an even distribution of test item difficulty at the targeted level. The samples' ability to make correct answers, however, was decentralized towards the test items of moderate level of difficulty. Only a limited number of students showed good ability in their response to test items of higher difficulty. These findings have the practical implication of advancing PISA-like reading test teaching and writing models by providing more information on teachers' ability to write PISA-like reading test items and the levels of difficulty of the items written by the teachers, as indicated by the students' responses to the test items.

This paper presents partial results of a research project aiming to develop a training program for teachers to teach PISA-like reading texts with 24 participating teachers (10 Indonesian language teachers and 14 English language teachers) conducted in 2021. The result of the study has also been reported in Emilia, Sujatna, and Kurniasih (2022). This study centers around the early stage of training, focusing on the teachers’ initial ability in teaching reading practice prior to the training. The data were collected from peer teaching and lesson plans made by the teachers prior to the sessions on teaching PISA-like reading texts. The data were then analyzed based on the theory of PISA Reading (OECD, 2019), reading as a social process (Wallace, 1992; Gibbons, 2014), and teaching reading through the use of text-based instructions (Emilia, 2011; Rose & Martin, 2012; Rose, 2020). The result of the study shows that some teachers had bridged the students’ access to text by activating their prior knowledge to help them understand the text. Nevertheless, some teachers had not provided guidance for the students when they read. This result suggests that the teachers still need guidance to teach reading, especially in teaching PISA-like reading texts. Hence, the data confirm the need for training teachers to teach PISA-like reading texts. AbstrakJurnal ini menyajikan sebagian hasil dari proyek penelitian yang bertujuan untuk mengembangkan program pelatihan bagi guru untuk mengajar teks membaca setara PISA dengan 24 guru peserta (10 guru bahasa Indonesia dan 14 guru bahasa Inggris) yang dilakukan pada tahun 2021. Bagian lain dari proyek penelitian ini juga telah telah dilaporkan dalam Emilia, Sujatna, dan Kurniasih (2022). Studi ini berpusat pada tahap awal pelatihan, yang berfokus pada kemampuan awal guru dalam mengajarkan membaca sebelum diberikan input pelatihan. Data penelitian diperoleh dari sesi peer teaching dan RPP yang dibuat oleh guru sebelum diberikan sesi input pengajaran teks bacaan mirip PISA. Data penelitian kemudian dianalisis berdasarkan teori PISA Reading (OECD, 2019), membaca sebagai proses sosial (Wallace, 1992; Gibbons, 2014), dan pengajaran bahasa berbasis teks (Emilia, 2011; Rose & Martin, 2012; Mawar, 2020). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa beberapa guru terlihat mampu untuk menjembatani akses siswa untuk membaca teks dengan mengaktifkan pengetahuan awal mereka yang dapat membantu mereka memahami teks. Namun demikian, beberapa guru terlihat masih belum memberikan bimbingan kepada siswa ketika mereka membaca. Hasil ini menunjukkan bahwa guru masih membutuhkan bimbingan untuk mengajar membaca, terutama dalam mengajar teks bacaan mirip PISA. Oleh karena itu, data mengkonfirmasi perlunya pelatihan guru untuk mengajar teks bacaan seperti PISA.

This article discusses the text readability of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)-like reading texts written by Indonesian-English-teachers who are teaching in high schools in Jawa Barat province, Indonesia. The aims of the research are to describe the lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and lexical variation indexes of the PISA-like reading texts compared to PISA reading texts 2018 released field trial new reading items. The method applied is a qualitative with descriptive quantification. The qualitative method is employed to identify and describe both lexical and grammatical words, in addition to specifying the lemmas and ranking clauses in the PISA-like reading texts. Quantifying the indexes of lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and lexical variation are implemented. All analyses utilized are based on the systemic functional linguistic approach. It is reported that, firstly, the texts of PISA reading texts 2018 are lexically denser than the PISA-like reading texts. Secondly, the texts of PISA reading texts 2018 are grammatically more intricate than the PISA-like reading texts. Lastly, PISA-like reading texts have similar index with PISA reading texts 2018.

This study is a part of a joint study, aiming to develop a teacher professional development program on training teachers to teach PISA-like reading. The bigger program focuses on a pedagogical intervention that incorporates PISA reading into English and Indonesian subjects based on Systemic Functional Linguistics Genre-Based Approach (SFL GBA) and has been reported in Emilia et al. (2022). Meanwhile, this study centred around the observation of English teachers’ ability to develop PISA-like reading tasks. The intervention is framed within PISA reading (OECD, 2019a,b), and SFL GBA (Halliday Matthiesen, 2014; Derewianka Jones, 2016; Emilia, 2011). The study employed a case study design. The findings show that teachers were able to develop PISA-like reading tasks, evidenced from the collected reading items that follow PISA 2018 cognitive processes and response format (OECD, 2019 a, b). Moreover, teachers’ responses from interviews were likewise positive, indicating their increased awareness of PISA and their ability to design similar reading tasks. It is recommended that the training be conducted in a variety of settings with a larger number of teachers for them to eventually assist Indonesian students in improving their reading literacy as suggested by PISA.

This case study aimed to find out the implementation of a genre pedagogy under systemic functional linguistics (SFL) framework or under Sydney School to teach the English language to young English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners of English Village of Parit Baru, Kubu Raya, West Kalimantan. Fifty-two young EFL learners were involved in this study. The data collection used two instruments, namely participant observations and documentation. The data analysis reveals that genre pedagogy elements could help the young EFL learners in constructing and communicating their texts independently. Also, the learners’ texts are following the schematic structures and linguistic features of the spoken genres the learners learned. To help the learners to cope with the teaching activities, songs and games activities were used to build their interest in the English language, new vocabulary, and practices to communicate their texts. This means that a genre pedagogy under the SFL framework could be integrated with joyful activities that not only provide guidance but also promote enjoyable learning in building the English language capacities of the young EFL learners in a non-formal educational context.