In the domain of education, great teachers are those who facilitate students’ learning effectively in an inspiring learning environment. Therefore, they should continuously develop and empower their professional and pedagogical competencies. In fact, there emerge abundant ways to empower themselves, and one of which is through the so-called ‘reflective training’. As empirical evidence, English teachers in specific primary schools have not reached the expected level of CEFR criteria for creative writing (B1 at the minimum). For this reason, this study adopted action research via the implementation of reflective training to enhance the subjects’ creative writing skills in one cycle incorporating planning, taking action(s), observing, and reflecting. Three instruments were employed, i.e., writing tasks, observation sheets, and questionnaires. Creative writing rubrics were taken from CEFR and Mozaffari to evaluate teachers’ writing. The training made the teachers engaged in producing a piece of creating writing as output and allow them to reflect and improve it with the elements of creative writing aspects namely image, characterization, voice, and story. Teachers have successfully completed their writings with theories and skills in their writing products to reach the B2 CEFR level in creative writing.  Keywords: primary school teachers, creative writing skills, reflective training, CEFR

The use of technology in language learning has improved the development of educational products. Related to reading, it makes reading materials is not limited to printed-text only. The Mobile-assisted Language Learning (MALL) makes smartphones have big impact on education since it can be used as a device to access variety of technology-based learning materials. In such a way, the development of learning materials that can be accessed from a smartphone is highly needed. Thus, the need for accessible learning materials from a smartphone is crucial to students, especially during the situation where online learning must be carried out. Since students must do distance learning with teachers, smartphone application can be an additional material that can accommodate students to learn independently. The current study is conducted to develop a smartphone application prototype to support the benefit of technology to the practice of English Language Teaching in Indonesia. The R&D model of Borg & Gall (2003) was used to develop this digital supplementary reading material in the form of a smartphone application prototype. The first final product of this study is a smartphone application named ‘Seeds’ that has implemented the three-phase reading technique. Besides, it consists of three different titles of descriptive text added with different forms of reading activities. The product is also supported with additional features like pop-up glossary, re-reading, show-score, and share-score. The second product is the e-manual book in the form of .pdf where it is written in English and Indonesian. Keywords: Mobile-assisted Language Learning (MALL), supplementary reading materials, Research & Development Abstrak: Penerapan teknologi pada pembelajaran bahasa telah menciptakan perubahan pada pengembangan bahan ajar. Berkaitan dengan kemampuan membaca, hal tersebut membuat bahan bacaan tidak terbatas pada teks dalam bentuk fisik saja. Mobile-assisted Language Learning (MALL) menjadikan smartphone memiliki pengaruh yang besar pada pendidikan karena kemampuannya dalam mengakses berbagai macam bahan ajar berbasis teknologi. Hal tersebut menyebabkan pengembangan materi pembelajaran yang dapat diakses menggunakan gawai menjadi sangat dibutuhkan. Oleh karena itu, kebutuhan akan materi pembelajaran yang dapat diakses menggunakan gawai menjadi sangat penting bagi siswa. Terutama selama pembelajaran online sedang diberlakukan. Semenjak siswa diharuskan untuk melakukan pembelajaran jarak jauh, aplikasi gawai dapat dijadikan sebagai materi tambahan yang dapat memfasilitasi siswa untuk belajar secara independen. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mengembangkan suatu prototype aplikasi gawai untuk mendukung manfaat teknologi pada kegiatan pengajaran Bahasa Inggris di Indonesia. Model penelitian R&D oleh Borg & Gall (2003) diterapkan dalam pengembangan materi tambahan membaca dalam bentuk prototype aplikasi gawai. Produk hasil penelitian yang pertama adalah aplikasi gawai bernama 'Seeds' yang telah menerapkan teknik membaca tiga fase. Selain itu, aplikasi yang dikembangkan berisi tiga judul teks deskriptif dengan berbagai bentuk kegiatan membaca. Produk tersebut juga didukung dengan fitur tambahan seperti pop-up glosarium, re-reading, show-score, dan share-score. Produk kedua adalah e-manual book dalam bentuk .pdf yang ditulis dalam Bahasa Inggris dan Bahasa Indonesia. Kata Kunci: Mobile-assisted Language Learning (MALL), materi tambahan membaca, Research & Development

-Writing and speaking serve similar purposes in terms of communicating our needs, establishing and maintaining social relationships. Both skills need to be generated by the learners, yet the medium used to convey the message is different. Bailey (2006) refers the medium used to convey the message to modality in which speaking is the productive oral skill meanwhile writing is the productive written skill. Although, both employ different medium, it is possible to integrate writing modes into speaking tasks as what we have applied in our Speaking Classes. Teaching Speaking for Academic Purposes subject to the fourth semester students encourages us to let them make use of what they have learned in Writing courses from their previous semesters. Speaking for Academic Purposes is the advanced level Speaking course because the students need to employ important language functions in presenting current issues, panel discussion and debates (Department of English Catalogue, 2016). To achieve the objective of the course, the activities designed in our classes are to equip the students with abilities to express their opinions, give persuasion and suggestions, compare and contrast ideas, state and justify opinion. Therefore, this paper is to describe the result of integrating writing modes into speaking tasks by adhering to writing organization such as example, problem-solution, persuasive and argumentative modes. The description is managed into two folds: (1) the description of the activities conducted in Speaking classes; and (2) the students' responses on the activities designed in the classroom. This paper concludes that it is possible to align what the students have learned in Writing classes into Speaking Classes.

The purpose of this study is to describe the students’ opinion 1) about writing in general, 2) the type of writing tools application used by the students in writing, 3) the most preferable writing tools application.  The research uses a cross-section design. In this design, quantitative data collection and analysis are followed by qualitative data collection and analysis before the results are interpreted.  The subject of this research was 32 fourth-semester students in English Education Study Program, Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology of the University of PGRI Wiranegara, Pasuruan. The instruments used in this study were a questionnaire, interview, and documentation. The result reveals that half of the participants feel writing is difficult, while the other half feel writing is easy. Almost half of the students (47%) state that language/grammar is the most difficult element in writing. The types of writing tool applications used by the students are Grammarly (55%), U_Dictionary (24%), and Goggle Translate (21%). These writing tools help the students to solve the writing problems, such as in language, vocabulary, idea development, and drafting. The students think that writing tools application is practical and timesaving (74%). The students also believe that the writing tools application is beneficial and helpful to improve the quality of their essay. Interestingly, the students confess that they are uncertain if they can write well without writing tools application. Some of them feel that they cannot write well without the help of the application. The implication of the finding is discussed.

Critical thinking in writing skill has a very good potential to become the access for the students to build their own characters. It is because critical thinking in writing skill leads the students to express their various ideas about the characters that they want to build to form good attitudes. The study was aimed at invesigating about the acts of building elementary students’ characters through critical thinking in writing. The study used a quantitative approach within the survey design. There were 50 students of Laboratory Elementary School of Universitas Negeri Malang, East Java, Indonesia who participated being the subjects of the study. The results revealed that all students were highly enthusiastic in building their own characters. This could be seen from various types of characters they wanted to build. However, among the various types of characters existing, loving homeland was mostly wanted character type chosen. Hence, it is recommended that the teachers are expected to apply critical thinking actions in writing as one of the best alternative ways to build the students’ characters