Final Task of Topics in Applied Linguistics

Rega Detapratiwi

2201409057

405-406

Final Task of Topics in Applied Linguistics

A STUDY ON THE READING SKILLS OF EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Flora Debora Floris

Marsha Divina

Petra Christian University, Indonesia

A.    SUMMARY

EFL students who read a lot seem to acquire English better than those who do not. Realizing the importance of reading for EFL students, it is very crucial for EFL students to have good reading proficiency. Having good reading proficiency means the reader has abilities to understand written statements or any type of written texts accurately and efficiently. Reading proficiency is determined by reading skills. According to Nuttall (1996, pp. 44-124) there are three major categories of reading skills and each is divided into sub-skills as follows:

1.       Efficient reading skills: identifying the reason for reading, choosing the right material, using the text effectively, making use of all the resources in the text, and improving reading speed.

2.       Word attack skill: the interpretation of structural clues, inference from context, and the use of the dictionary.

3.       Text attack skill: understanding syntax, recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices, interpreting discourse makers, recognizing functional value, recognizing text organization, recognizing implications and making inferences, and prediction.

Considering the importance of mastering reading skills, the writers were interested in doing further investigation about the reading skills of EFL students. The study was guided by the following research questions:

1.       What are the types of reading skills that EFL students have difficulty with?

2.       What is the most difficult type of reading skills for EFL students?

Method

In doing the data collection, the writers used some steps:

1.       Analyzing the kinds of reading skills. The writers decided to focus on seventeen reading skills which are already taught namely: scanning, skimming, improving reading speed, structural clues: morphology (word part), structural clues: morphology (compound words), inference from context, using a dictionary, interpreting pro-forms, interpreting elliptical expression, interpreting lexical cohesion, recognizing text organization, recognizing presupposition underlying the text, recognizing implications and making inference, prediction, distinguishing between fact and opinion, paraphrasing, and summarizing.

2.       Developing two reading tests. In developing the tests, the writers used the following steps: adopted two reading texts and developed test items based on those reading texts.

3.       Piloting the two reading tests. The piloting was aimed to help the writers to see whether the two reading tests had clear and good instructions and items.

4.       Distributing the reading tests to ten students of English Department Batch 2003 students who had already passed all reading classes.

5.       Checking and counting the results of both reading tests.

Findings

The research found the students’ difficulty in reading skills (seventeen reading skills) in percentage.

Discussion

The most difficult reading skills 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. The second most difficult reading skill for these students was paraphrasing (65%). It could be because they had not fully understood the ideas of the original passage or sentence. It was found that vocabulary skill was the third, most difficult reading skill for these respondents (57.5%). Inference from context skill was one of important word attack skill which was needed by the respondents to deal with new or difficult vocabularies. It was found out that there were only three wrong answers (7.5%) from the total respondents’ answer toward scanning skill’s items. It could be assumed that students did not have much difficulty with this skill. The other reading skills which had low difficulty level were improving reading speed (10%) and recognizing presupposition underlying the text (10%)). This finding indicated that the respondents were good readers because they were able to read fast and in meaningful chunks.

Conclusion and suggestion

The findings from the small scale discussed in this study showed that each reading skill had different level of difficulty for the respondents. Larger number of respondents could also be used to produce wider results which could be used to make generalization.

B.    COMMENT

In my opinion, the study which was done by Flora Debora Floris and Marsha Divina has advantage to show the difficulties that face by students in EFL class in reading skills. The writers used some steps to search students’ difficulties in seventeen reading skills, and it can be used to find some ways to solve the students’ problems. From the result, teacher will know how to improve students’ certain reading skills which is low and develop the skill which is high or students have low difficulty on it. In short, by using the results of this study I think that teacher can help students in EFL class to find a way to improve their low skill and develop their high skill in reading, one of four language skills which must mastered by them.

C.    HOW IS THE RESULT OF THE STUDY USEFUL FOR TEACHERS

The result of the study shows that students in EFL class have difficulty in some reading skills, so it has some advantages for teachers:

1.       Teachers will find a way or method to teach their EFL students in reading, a certain method which is appropriate to improve students’ reading skills.

2.       Teachers can give more exercises to increase students’ reading skills, since students in EFL classroom still have difficulties in reading skills.

3.       Teacher will pay more attention to the most difficult reading skills faced by students, so the students’ difficulties can be reduced.

Assignment 7: Sex, Politeness, and Stereotypes

Rega Detapratiwi

2201409057

405-406

Sex, Politeness, and Stereotypes

Robin Lakoff, an American linguist argued that women were using language which reinforced their subordinate status, they were ‘colluding in their own subordination’ by the way they spoke. She suggested that women’s subordinate social status in America society is reflected in the language women use, as well as in the language used about them. She identified a number of linguistic features used by women that expressed uncertainty and lack of confidence.

Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characterized by these linguistic features: lexical hedges or filters, tag questions, raising intonation on declaratives, ‘empty’ adjectives, precise color terms, intensifiers, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar, ‘superpolite’ forms, and avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress. All the forms identified were means of expressing uncertainty or tentativeness. The internal coherence of the features can be illustrated by dividing them into two: linguistic devices which may be used for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance (explicitly signal lack of confidence) and features that may boost or intensify a proposition’s force (reflect the speaker’s anticipation that the addressee may remain unconvinced and supply extra reassurance).

Lakoff’s linguistic features as politeness devices

As a syntactic device listed by Lakoff which may express uncertainty, tag questions may also express affective meaning functions as facilitative or positive politeness devices, providing an addressee with an easy entrée into a conversation, soften a directive or a criticism, used as confrontational and coercive devices. In that case, women put more emphasis on tag questions than men.

Many linguistic forms have complex functions such as ‘hedges’ used differently in different contexts. They mean different things according to their pronunciation, their position in the utterance, what kind of speech act they are modifying, and who is using them to whom in what context.

Analyses which take account of the function of features of women’s speech often reveal women as facilitative and supportive conversationalists. This also suggests that explanations of differences between women’s and men’s speech behavior which refer only to the status or power dimension. Many of the features which characterize women’s language are positive politeness devices expressing solidarity.

There are many features of interaction which differentiate the talk of women and men. The two of them are interrupting behavior and conversational feedback.

-          Interruptions

In same-sex interactions, interruptions were evenly distributed between speakers. In cross-sex interactions almost all the interruptions were from males.

-          Feedback

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

Explanations

Women’s cooperative conversational strategies may be explained better by looking at the influence of context and patterns of socialization. The norms for women’s talk may be the norms for small group interaction in private contexts, where the goals of the interaction are solidarity stressing-maintaining social good relations. The differences between women and men in ways of interacting may be the result of different socialization and acculturation patterns.

Gossip describes the kind of relaxed in-group talk that goes on between people in informal contexts. It is defined as ‘idle talk’ in Western society and considered particularly characteristic of women’s interaction. Its overall function for them is to affirm solidarity and maintain the social relationship between the women involved. Women’s gossip is characterized by a number of the linguistic features of women’s language. Propositions which express feelings are often attenuated and qualified or intensified. Facilitative tags are frequent. Women complete each other’s utterances and provide supportive feedback. Meanwhile, the male’s gossip is difficult to identify. In parallel situations the topics men discuss tend to focus on things and activities rather than personal experiences and feelings.

Sexist language is one example of the way a culture or society conveys its value from one group to another and from one generation to the next. Language conveys attitudes. Sexist attitudes stereotype a person according to gender rather than judging on individual merits. Sexist language encodes stereotyped attitudes to women and men.

Feminists have claimed that English is a sexist language. Sexism involves behavior which maintains social inequalities between women and men. There are a number of ways in which it has been suggested that the English language discriminates against women. Some of the ways can provide insights about a community’s perceptions and stereotypes. The relative status of the sexes in a society may be reflected not only in the ways in which women and men use language but also in the language used about women and men.

Assignment 6: Code Switching

Rega Detapratiwi

2201409057

405-406

Code Switching

A.      Definition

1.      Code switching is defined as the practice of selecting or altering linguistic elements so as to contextualize talk in interaction. (Chad Nilep)

2.      Code-switching is perhaps not a linguistic phenomenon, but rather a psychological one and its causes are obviously extra linguistic, but bilingualism is of great interest to the linguist because it is the condition of what has been called interference between languages. [Vogt 1954:368]

3.      Code-switching (CS) 5 is but one of a number of the linguistic manifestations of language contact and mixing, which variously include borrowing on the lexical and syntactic levels, language transfer, linguistic convergence, interference, language attrition, language death, pidginization and creolization, among others. (Shana Poplack: 2004)

4.      Code-switching is the alternation between two codes (languages and/or dialects), between people who share those particular codes. Choices about how code-switching manifests itself are determined by a number of social and linguistic factors.

B.      Types

Code-switching can be either intersentential or intrasentential. In intersentential code-switching, 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. The speaker is usually unaware of the switch, until after the fact, and is seen mostly in the Hispanic communities of the United States (Lipski, 1985, p. 5).

The first type of language switching is known as mechanical switching. It occurs unconsciously, and fills in unknown or unavailable terms in one language. This type of code-switching is also known as code-mixing. Codemixing occurs when a speaker is momentarily unable to remember a term, but is able to recall it in a different language.

Another type of code switching, known as 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).

C.      Function

Communicative functions:

Gumperz (1982) when discussing communicative functions, mentions the discourse function of codeswitching, also called the personalization function of language. A speaker plays upon the connotation of the we-code to create a conversational effect. Thus, code switching is seen as fulfilling the relational and referential function of language that amounts to effective communication and interlingual unity.

Halliday (1975) on the other hand, views code switching as fulfilling the interpersonal function of communication. Here the mixed language spoken plays the role of a mediator. In other words, it is the use of language to act as a mediator between self and participants in the communicative event.

Such communicative functions of code switching can also be listed according to the functions that they try to accomplish. Among these, the following ten functions have been described in the professional literature (Malik, 1994):

1.       Lack of Facility

2.       Lack of Register

3.       Mood of the Speaker

4.       To emphasize a point

5.       Habitual Experience

6.       Semantic significance

7.       To show identity with a group

8.       To address a different audience

9.       Pragmatic reasons

10.   To attract attention.

Sources:

Daemen.edu

Nhlrc.ucla.edu

Originalresearch.blog.uns.ac.id

Sociolinguistics.uottawa.ca

Assignment 5: Systemic Functional Linguistics

Rega Detapratiwi

2201409057

405-406

Summary of Systemic Functional Linguistics

Systemic, or Systemic-Functional, theory has its origins in the main intellectual tradition of European linguistics that developed following the work of Saussure. It is functional and semantic rather than formal and syntactic in orientation, and its immediate source is as a development of scale-&-category grammar. In systemic theory the system takes priority; the most abstract representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms. Syntagmatic organization is interpreted as the realization of paradigmatic features.

Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language centered around the notion of language function. SFL starts at social context, and looks at how language both acts upon, and is constrained by, this social context. A central notion is 'stratification', such that language is analysed in terms of four strata: Context, Semantics, Lexico-Grammar and Phonology-Graphology. Systemic semantics includes what is usually called 'pragmatics'. Semantics is divided into three components:

•          Ideational Semantics (the propositional content);

•          Interpersonal Semantics (concerned with speech-function, exchange structure, expression of attitude, etc.);

•          Textual Semantics (how the text is structured as a message, e.g., theme-structure, given/new, rhetorical structure etc.

SFL grew out of the work of JR Firth, a British linguist of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but was mainly developed by his student MAK Halliday. Australian Systemics is especially influential in areas of language education. Some of Halliday's early work involved the study of his son's developing language abilities. This study in fact has had a substantial influence on the present systemic model of adult language, particularly in regard to the metafunctions. SFL has been prominent in computational linguistics, especially in Natural Language Generation.

SFL treats language and social context as complementary levels of semiosis, related by the concept of realization. The interpretation of social context then includes two communication planes:

·         Genre (context of culture)

The context of culture can be thought of as deriving from a vast complex network of all of the genres which make up a particular culture. Genres are staged, goal oriented social processes in which people engage as members of the culture.

·         Register (context of situation)

The genres occur in particular situation types and it is the characteristics of this situation type that influence the forms of language that realize the genre. So the context of situation (register) is the second aspect of social context that influences the linguistic realization of the genre.

(Martin, 1992:495)

The context of situation of a text has been theorized by Halliday (Halliday and Hasan, 1985:12) in terms of the contextual variables of:

·         Field: refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place: what is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component?

·         Tenor

·         Mode

Language bridges from the cultural meanings of social context (the social hierarchies and role relationships, the institutional activities, and the related distribution of language use within these) to sound or writing. It does this by moving from higher orders of abstraction to lower ones. These orders of abstraction are organized into three levels or strata:

·         Semantics is the interface between language and context of situation (register). Semantics is therefore concerned with the meanings that are involved with the three situational variables Field, Tenor and Mode.

·         Lexicogrammar is a resource for wording meanings, for example realizing them as configurations of lexical and grammatical items.

·         Phonology (or graphology)

Ideational (experiential and logical) meanings construing Field are realized lexicogrammatically by the system of Transitivity. This system interprets and represents our experience of phenomena in the world and in our consciousness by modeling experiential meanings in terms of participants, processes and circumstances.

Interpersonal meanings are realized lexicogrammatically by systems of Mood and Modality and by the selection of attitudinal lexis. The Mood system is the central resource establishing and maintaining an ongoing exchange between interactants by assuming and assigning speech roles such as giving or demanding goods and services or information. Modality is the resource concerned with the domain of the negotiation of the proposition or proposal between the categorical extremes of positive or negative. The negotiation may be in terms of probability, usuality, obligation or inclination.

Textual meanings are concerned with the ongoing orchestration of interpersonal and ideational information as text in context.

Lexicogrammatically textual meanings are realized by systems of Theme and Information.

Assignment 4: Discourse Analysis

Rega Detapratiwi

2201409057 

405-406

Summary of Discourse Analysis

According to m Stubbs (1983:1), discourse analysis is defined as concerned with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence/utterance, the interrelationships between language and society and the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication.

The differences between text analysis and discourse analysis are:

Text Analysis

Discourse Analysis

1.       Needs linguistic analysis 2.       Interpretation is based on linguistic evidence 3.       Text analysts need the right ‘knife’ to cut the right ‘bread’ 4.       Different ‘knives’ for different ‘bread’ 5.       The study of formal linguistic devices that distinguish a text from random sentences. (Nunan:1993)

1.       How texts relate to contexts of situation and context of culture 2.       How texts are produced as a social practice 3.       What texts tell us about happenings, what people think, believe etc. 4.       How texts represent ideology (power struggle etc.) 5.       Study these text-forming devices which has goal to show how the linguistic elements enable language users to communicate. (Nunan:1993)

The definition of Discourse analysis is the study of how stretches of language used in communication assume meaning, purpose and unity for their users: the quality of coherence. The coherence itself derives from an interaction of text with given participants (context: participants’ knowledge and perception of paralanguage, other texts, the situation, the culture, the world in general and the role, intentions and relationships of participants).

Several approaches in Discourse Analysis are:

1.       Speech Act Theory (Austin 1955, Searle 1969)

It is a logico-philosophic perspective on conversational organization. Focus on interpretation rather than the production of utterances in discourse. Every utterance can be analyzed as the realization of the speaker’s intent (illocutionary force) to achieve a particular purpose. Principal problems: the lack of a one-to-one matchup between discourse function (IF) and the grammatical form.

2.       Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982, Goffman 1959-1981)

It is centrally concerned with the importance of context in the production and interpretation of discourse which analyze grammatical and prosodic features in interactions unit.

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

3.       Ethnography of Communication (Dell Hymes (1972b, 1974)

It is concerned with understanding the social context of linguistic interactions: ‘who says what to whom, when, where. Why, and how’. The unit of analysis is speech event which comprises components. Analysis of these components of a speech event is central to what became known as ethnography of communication or ethnography of speaking, with the ethnographer’s aim being to discover rules of appropriateness in speech events.

4.       Pragmatics (Grice 1975, Leech 1983, Levinson 1983)

It is formulates conversational behavior 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 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.

5.       Conversational Analysis (Harold Garfinkel 1960s-1970s)

It is used to understand how social members make sense of everyday life. There are two grossly apparent facts: a) only one person speaks at a time, and b) speakers change recurs. Thus conversation is a ‘turn taking’ activity. Models conversation as infinitely generative turn-taking machine, where interactants try to avoid lapse: the possibility that no one is speaking. The contribution of CA is the identification of ‘adjacency pairs’ (fisrt and second pair parts): conversational relatedness operating between adjacent utterances.

6.       Variation Analysis (Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967

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.

7.       SFA (Structural-Functional Approaches)

Discourse analysis can turn out into a more general and broader analysis of language functions. Or it will fail to make a special place for the analysis of relationships between utterances. It refers to two major approaches to discourse analysis which have relevance to the analysis of casual conversation (the Birmingham School and Systemic Functional Linguistics).