Politeness still becomes a major concern in English language teaching. It is considered as one way to maintain effective classroom interaction. Therefore, as one of the important actors in the class, teachers, and students need to practice politeness as a way to create effective classroom interaction. This study aims to explore the politeness strategies of English students at one of the universities in Makassar. The researcher applied a descriptive qualitative research method to explore the politeness phenomena in EFL classroom interaction. The participants of this research were two classes of English literature program consisting of 50 students. The primary sources of data were the individual student presentations which had been recorded. There were fifty transcriptions of the recording which lasted for five to seven minutes for each presentation. The transcriptions were analyzed and discussed based on the theory of politeness of Brown and Levinson (1987). The findings from this study revealed that English students used different kinds of expressions to encode their politeness in the class. Those expressions were in the forms of greetings, thanking, addressing terms, apologizing, and fillers. There were also some terms derived from students’ vernacular language which were used as a softening mechanism for their presentation. These expressions were categorized as positive and negative politeness. The findings of this study might be used as an input for teachers and students in an effort to create effective classroom interaction.

The focus of this paper is to explore the students' problems in answering the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). TOEFL is a type of language testing to reveal the students' English proficiency. This is a descriptive study based on in-depth semi-structured interview and classroom observation. The subject of this research was the students of Graduate Program at one state university in Makassar, Indonesia. This study took three classes as sample, namely one from English education department, one from Social Science, and one from Natural Science. To gain data, the three classes were observed and twelve (12) representatives of the three classes were interviewed. Findings showed that the main problems of the students in answering the TOEFL test were due to several conflicting reasons, such as fewer basic skills, less practice, less motivation, and students' individual differences such as age and social status.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the learning strategies of male and female students and to discuss those strategies in relation to gender differences. This research was conducted in one senior high school in Makassar, Indonesia. The number of respondents was 71 students taken randomly by using Slovin formula among 250 students. The study used quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were collected by using a questionnaire of SILL whereas the qualitative data were taken by using interview. The learning strategies were discussed based on Oxford's learning strategies (1990) whereas the notion of gender differences in relation to learning strategies was discussed in the framework of gender differences in communication proposed by Lakoff (1975, 1976) and (Tannen, 1990, 1994). Findings from the questionnaire show that female students use cognitive, compensation, and affective strategy more often compared to male students while male students use memory, metacognitive, and social strategy more often compared to female students. Findings from the interview show that female and male students chose different learning strategies. In addition, those learning strategies were influenced by the notion of gender differences in communication. These findings significantly give beneficial inputs to the process of English language teaching in order to create effective teaching and classroom interaction. It also provides significant contribution to the study on language and gender in communication in a setting of education and language teaching.

his paper highlights the impact ofgender differences in English Language Teaching. It explores students’ learning styles as affected by the notions about men and women differences in communication. The data collected in 2008 from 20 males and 20 females’ English students of the State University of Makassar. It is to reveal their attitudes towards speaking to different sex, strategy to express opinion, group work preferences, activeness/passiveness, and their perception to increase English skills dealing with sex difference. It is revealed that female than male students were reluctant to speak to different sex; females preferred the direct way to express opinions (writing), work with the same sex, and tended to be passive in class. In addition, females saw the high possibility to increase their English skills by working with the same sex but the reverse is true for males. These differentstyles of female and male students in learning English were affected by the notions of women’s language.

Communication has a crucial function in English language teaching because failure in communication will result in unsuccessful process. Therefore, it is important to investigate the styles of communication used in the classroom, especially by students. The focus of this paper is to explore the expressions used by a group of students to communicate in the classroom. This paper is based on a study conducted in 2015 at the State University of Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. This study focused on two English classes which employed classroom presentations as the learning strategy. To collect data, the researcher recorded the classroom presentations of the two classes. Twelve recordings from twelve groups of students were obtained, transcribed, and analyzed by using discourse analysis approach. The communicative styles used by the students were discussed based on the communication strategies of Dörnyei and Scott (1997) and the students' talk was analyzed based on Brown's FLINT system (2000). Findings show that students employed various styles to communicate in the classroom presentations. Their communicative styles can be in the form of speech acts, discourse markers, language choices, address terms, and the inclusion of regional terms derived from the Bugis-Makassar language such as the pronounko and softeners -mi and -ji. Findings of this study are relevant in the development of English language teaching, particularly in effort to create effective classroom interaction.