This study investigates the realizations of interpersonal meaning in newsletters offering online courses by general and Islamic educational institutions, and whether or not the realization of this strand of meaning by the two groups of institutions is similar. Twelve newsletters from six educational institutions (three general and three Islamic) offering online courses were used as the data. Using Halliday and Matthiessen's (2004) grammar of interaction, the study found some similarities and differences in the realization of interpersonal meanings in the two groups of newsletters. Regarding the mood types, both institutions mostly use declaratives realizing the speech function of statement. Following this is imperative that is frequently employed to make offer and, in fewer frequency, command. The study also found that modalities and modulation are only used sparingly by both institutions. The dominant use of declaratives suggests that most of the writers of these newsletters provide information without creating an imagined dialogue with their readers. The relatively high use of offer in the data is hardly surprising due to the nature of the genres of newsletters. In addition, the small number of modality used in the newsletters demonstrates that the text producers prefer to present their propositions and proposals as facts.

One criterion of a good analytical exposition lies in the writers’ ability to present a clear position and show their voice in their writing. Such quality can be achieved through skillful use of Engagement resources which allow writers to state their voice by aligning or disaligning it with those of others in presenting their case. Involving nine analytical exposition texts written by university students of different proficiency levels, this study explores how the writers’ voice (Hyland, 2008) is constructed through Engagement resources. Drawing on Martin and White’s Engagement system (Martin & White, 2005), the study reveals that, while all of the students are capable of presenting a clear position, students of different proficiency levels indicate different engagement strategies in their writing. Students who are more proficient in English are able to more successfully exploit the resources necessary for constructing a well-argued text and show a stronger sense of authorship. This study is expected to give insights into the use of Engagement resources in developing the writer’s voice in texts written by EFL writer learners in the Indonesian context.

This study aims to reveal politeness strategies used by Sundanese students when sending text messages to their lecturers via WhatsApp chat application. For the data, this qualitative study used 57 text messages from six students majoring in Sundanese language at a university in Bandung. Drawing on Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies, the study revealed that the students used all of the four politeness strategies with negative as the most frequently used strategy and bald on-record the least frequent one. These findings suggest that the students are aware of asymmetrical power relation with the lecturers. It is expected that this study would give insight into politeness strategies in mediated communication particularly between Sundanese students and their lecturers.

This article reports a study on English writing skill of Indonesian tertiary students. The purpose of the study is to examine students' initial ability in writing English compositions. The subjects of the study are 22 university students in their first year at English Language and Literature study program at one university in Bandung. The data are taken from students' descriptive essays written in the classroom. The texts are then analyzed based on writing rubrics developed by Lane and Lange (1999) to see the recurrent global and local errors, supported by analytic writing rubrics proposed by Jacobs et al. (1981) to see the students' writing ability in general. The results of the study show that the recurrent errors made in twenty-two English descriptive essays are singular/plural nouns for local errors and sentence structure for global errors. In terms of analytic view, errors in language use are the most frequent errors made by the students. The findings provide useful information for constructing teaching materials for English writing in this study program. Keywords: writing skill, descriptive text, composition scoring technique, analytic scoring technique, global and local errors. AbstrakArtikel ini melaporkan hasil kajian mengenai keterampilan menulis bahasa Inggris mahasiswa. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk memotret kemampuan awal menulis mahasiswa dalam bahasa Inggris. Adapun subjek penelitian adalah 22 orang mahasiswa tingkat I di Program Studi Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris, di sebuah universitas di Bandung yang dipilih untuk mengetahui kemampuan awal mereka. Data diperoleh melalui karangan deskriptif yang ditulis di kelas.Teks dianalisis dengan menggunakan rubrik penilaian yang dikembangkan oleh Lane and Lange (1999) untuk tataran global dan lokal (global and local errors); dan rubrik penilaian analitik yang dikembangkan oleh Jacobs (1981) untuk melihat keterampilan menulis mahasiswa secara umum. Analisis data menunjukkan bahwa kesalahan yang paling banyak dilakukan mahasiswa pada tataran lokal terkait pemarka nomina tunggal dan jamak (singular/plural nouns), sedangkan pada tataran global, kesalahan pada struktur kalimat (sentence structure) merupakan kesalahan yang paling sering dilakukan oleh mahasiswa. Dari sisi analitik, kesalahan pada penggunaan bahasa merupakan kesalahan yang paling sering ditemukan dalam kebanyakan tulisan mahasiswa.Hasil temuan ini diharapkan dapat memberikan masukan bagi penyusunan bahan ajar matakuliah menulis di lingkungan program studi.Kata kunci: keterampilan menulis, teks deskriptif, teknik penilaian tulisan, teknik penilaian analitik, kesalahan global dan local.

Strategi ikepuasan ikonsumen imenyebabkan ipara ipesaing iharus iberusaha ikeras idan imelakukan ibiaya iyang itinggi idalam iusaha imerebut ikonsumen isuatu iperusahaan. IDampakikepuasan ikonsumen iterhadap iloyalitas ikonsumen idan ipembelian iulang iberbeda-beda isetiap iperusahaan. IKarena ikonsumen ipuas ibelum iberarti imereka ipuas, iakan itetapi ikonsumen iyang ipuas iakan icenderung imenjadi ikonsumen iyang iloyal. Penelitian iini ibertujuan iuntuk imengetahui iterkait istrategi ipeningkatan iminat idan ikepuasan ikonsumen iterhadap iproduk isepatu. Metode iyang idigunakan ipada ipenelitian iini iadalah ianalisis ideskriptif ikualitatif, isedangkan iteknik ipengumpulan idata idilakukan imelalui iwawancara, idan iobservasi. iHasil penelitian imenunjukkan ibahwa iuntuk imeningkatkan iminat idan ikepuasan ikonsumen iyaitu idengan icara iyakni imemiliki iattitude iyang ibaik iseperti ijujur idan iAmanah, iMeningkatkan ikualitas iproduk, imemiliki ikomunikasi idua iarah idengan ikonsumen, iaktif imeminta ikritik idan isaran, imenggunakan istrategi imarketing iyang iunik idan imenarik. iJika seseorang ibekerja isesuai idengan ikemampuannya imaka iakan imelahirkan ihal-hal iyang ioptimal. iMelayani idengan isepenuh ihati, itidak imengabaikan iperintah iserta iaturan-aturan iyang itelah iditetapkan iAllah iSWT imerupakan ipelayanan iyang iIslami.