Mainstream children generally experience typical stages throughout the milestones of their language development, from crying, cooing, babbling, until mature speech. Nevertheless, children with special condition usually have difficulties in getting through each phase of the development, such as those having expressive language disorder. These children usually encounter problems in communicating their needs and ideas verbally or non-verbally. This study attempts to present a story of the first five-year journey of Zaid’s language development, a child with expressive language disorder. Through interview, observation, and documentation, the study informs that Zaid was a late talker and experience difficulties in structuring well-ordered sentences.

In the process of teaching listening, anxiety is believed as a negative factor contributing to the students’ poor listening comprehension and quite possibly the affective factor that the most persistently hinders the learning process. Thus, investigating its existence and delving its factors become salient in order to help the students overcome their listening learning barriers. This present study attempts to depict the condition of the students’ listening anxiety in an Academic Listening (AL) class in an Indonesian tertiary context. 20-items of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety’s (hereafter, FLLA) questionnaire were administered to 97 students taking that course. Having finished analyzing the levels of students’ listening anxiety, in-depth interviews were conducted to four students who were considered having high listening anxiety to disclose the underlying factors. The research result revealed three pivotal issues; a) 54.6% of the students had a relatively high level of listening anxiety, 18.5% had moderate listening anxiety, and 26.8% had a low level of listening anxiety; b), 75% of the chosen measured items showed an extreme level of the students’ listening anxiety, and c) the major factor contributing the listening anxiety was inadequate listening proficiency involving the inability to deal with the rapid speech rate and range of lexical choices.

The sudden shift of learning from traditional to online learning is worth noting once again. Students' learning engagement has always been a complicated thing to research but is worth mentioning and important for the educational department, especially in EFL countries. Students' learning engagement in online learning itself is an indicator in which students have in learning to achieve their goals. Empirically, there have been various studies of learning English listening and speaking and/or student engagement, however inadequate investigative attempts have concentrated on student engagement in academic listening and speaking skills, notably in the Indonesian higher education context and also in online learning. For this reason, the current study strives to delineate how students engage in the online learning of the Academic Listening and Speaking course. Besides, it also focuses on the factors affecting students' engagement in such an online course. With using thematic analysis, this qualitative study concluded that the students do engage in this online course as (1) cognitively engaged by understanding teaching materials and activities in the online ALS course, (2) emotionally engaged by enjoying classroom learning activities, and (3) behaviourally engaged by participating in a discussion, developing problem-solving skills, and applying online learning norms in the classroom. In addition, there are factors affecting students' engagement, including (1) social engagement of student and teacher rapport, (2) collaborative engagement of peer support, and (3) learning passions for Academic Listening and Speaking course.

This paper aims to analyze the application of instructional leadership in elementary schools. Instructional leadership analysis uses Stronge et al. [1]; Philip Hallinger [2]; Leithwood and Seashore-Louis [3] theoretical framework, which refers to four key dimensions, namely: 1) The meaning of the school's mission which is oriented to the learning program in the classroom; 2) Principal decision-making based on data and distributive leadership practices; 3) The role and commitment of the principal in the management of learning programs, and 4) The role and commitment of the principal in building a positive work climate. This study uses explanatory analysis with a qualitative approach to analyze instructional leadership in elementary schools. Data were collected using a Focus Group Discussion involving principals (N=8) and teachers (N=5) of elementary schools from Medan and Deli Serdang, Indonesia. Data analysis techniques use through stages, namely data reduction, data presentation, and concluding. The results revealed that the principal in the subject school had a policy direction aimed at learning effectiveness. However, several aspects need to be optimized, especially from organizational systems, quality control regulations, and research-based decision-making. This study recommends principals to be able to maintain their leadership orientation in learning programs, maintain good communication with teachers, be committed to developing teacher professionalism, build an effective organizational system and control system, conduct research as a basis for decision making, create a conducive organizational climate, and collaborate with stakeholders to generate competitive advantage.