This study is aimed at discovering the benefits of the Reciprocal TeachingMethod (RTM)

Laughter is an easily reachable way that can be used to erase barriers of communication for educational purposes. The purpose of this paper is to seek out students’ perception of humor added in teaching English and how that humor influenced students’ engagement in English classroom activity. This study employs research instrument of questionnaire and observation concepts through qualitative design. There are 78 students of multi-background: gender, level of intelligence and social background as research participants. These backgroundsareintended to obtain objective perception of the students. The findings revealed that the majority of students believed the teacher’s humor could prevent them from feeling stress of learning English, develop a better relationship between teacher and students, help them remember and understand the lesson, encourage them to be more active in the classroom and ease them in learning English. However there are some obstacles to overcome during humor application that apparently the English teachers need to build a good relationship and mutual trust with students and understand students’ interests, likes and dislikes prior to applying humor, so that the humor would be more likely to be welcomed and it would not cause emotional and psychological impact such as bullying and etc for the students.

The implementation of Curriculum 2013 has inserted the authentic assessment as the measurement method to evaluate students’ learning objectives and achievements in the classroom. In this curriculum, the application of authentic assessment requires teachers to evaluate students’ in three competencies: attitude, knowledge, and skill. Most teachers claim that speaking is the most difficult skill to be assessed by using the authentic assessment, considering the complex features of the assessment. This research was aimed at describing the application of authentic assessment in a speaking classroom which relates to the types of the assessment and the scoring rubric. The subjects of the study were an English teacher and 28 students of a class at one of the junior high schools in Banda Aceh. Under the descriptive qualitative approach umbrella, the data in this study was obtained from observation and document analysis. The results of the study revealed that the teacher used several types of activities to assess students’ speaking skills: (1) attitude assessment (teacher observation), (2) knowledge assessment (teacher interview/short answer question), and (3) skill assessment (narrating sequences). The result of this study indicates that authentic assessment is a feasible way to assess students’ speaking skill and it should be employed in assessing other skills as well for learning languages.

The research aimed to assess the readability of reading material in two different English textbooks published by different publishers. Many pieces of research have been conducted to examine the reading materials in English textbooks, and it had been discovered that the reading materials were insufficiently adequate for the levels of students. The research applied a descriptive content analysis method to analyze, interpret, and describe the data. The Flesch Reading Ease formula was as an instrument. The research’s data were derived from the English textbook “Pathway to English” by Erlangga grade X and the English textbook “Bahasa Inggris” by The Ministry of Education and Culture grade X. Based on the findings of the research, five reading texts out of 15 match with students’ level (fairly difficult level) of grade X in the first textbook, while three texts out of 13 equal with students’ level (fairly difficult level) of grade X in the second textbook. Furthermore, the first textbook’s average readability score indicates that the texts are ‘standard’, whereas the second textbook indicates that the texts are ‘fairly difficult’. Based on the study findings, some recommendations for teachers are to use the readability formulas to provide appropriate reading material for students, as well as for other researchers to conduct a larger context about readability.

This simple book was written in order to elaborate some theories and concepts about English Curriculum, especially English Curriculum In Indonesia and how to design the instructional plans. This book introduces some of the main areas that students of English Education, to be more specific, students at English Study Program of Education and Teaching Faculty (FKIP), University of Syiah Kuala who take the course “English Curriculum and Instructional Plans (EED 309).The book covers some topics about the things to be considered in designing the lesson plans. The book also provides practical guides and procedures in designing the lesson plans.