The implementation of Sharia law in Aceh in 2001 has ignited various reactions from both national and international communities. Some argued that this Sharia law could have a detrimental effect on human rights issues. Others claimed that as a province populated by the Muslim majority, Aceh should be given an opportunity to legalise its own legal product, ensuring that Sharia law is part of Acehnese religious values. This paper is primarily concerned with analysing the texts taken from The Jakarta Post newspaper’s article regarding the formal implementation of the local Sharia law in Aceh. The article is examined by means of various tools in Discourse Analysis method, including social identity, speech acts and implicature, genres and register. The findings elucidate that the speech and discourse of the participants and their interpretation are highly influenced by identity and community ideology of the speakers.

This study examined the English for Foreign Language (EFL) learners' difficult topics in the structure and written expression section of the TOEFL Prediction Test, and reasons why they consider that these topics were difficult. The mixed-method research design was used in this study. Fifteen participants were selected through purposive sampling mechanism from the seventh-semester students of Department of English Language Education, Universitas Islam Negeri Ar-Raniry who have participated in the TOEFL Prediction Test to identify the difficult topics they encountered. Then, the semi-structured interviews were conducted to six underachieving student's participants with the most recorded errors made in the test to know the reasons behind their difficulties. Findings indicated that students encountered difficulties mostly when dealing with determiners, conjunctions, adjective clauses, apposition phrases, and reduced clauses in the structure section. Meanwhile, adverb connectors, subject-verb agreement, and clause of concession, relative clause, and quantifier are the difficulties they encountered in the written expression section of the test. Thus, the findings also revealed several factors identified as the reasons behind those difficulties, namely lack of practice, grammar incompetence, vocabulary shortage, time management, and low self-confidence. Given the significant impact of this study, we suggested that the lectures and English departments should address these difficulties. It is crucial that the focus of the courses related to grammar and EFL proficiency tests be incorporated into the syllabus.

This descriptive qualitative study was aimed at discovering English language teachers’ challenges in teaching TOEFL preparation for senior high school students. The data were collected by using an in-depth interview with six experienced and qualified English language teachers teaching TOEFL in the three-state and private senior high schools in Aceh province, Indonesia. Open, axial, and selective coding techniques were used to analyze the data from in-depth interviews. The results show that teachers faced some challenges during teaching TOEFL preparation for senior high school students including students’ different language proficiency, their lack of vocabulary mastery, their fatigue, their passive attitude, class size, and time limitation. The findings recommend the further idea to organize a more organized preparation TOEFL program for high school students that can be integrated into the existing curriculum, and thus it will no longer be viewed merely as an extracurricular program.

This article investigates students’ reading materials, reasons for reading journal articles, and strategies in handling its difficulties. The data was collected by the use of qualitative method with structured interview. A number of eight students were purposely selected as the participants of this study, each representing eight different units studying in the seventh semester at a university in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. In analyzing the data, this research employed the qualitative descriptive analysis of data organization, data examination and data explanation. The findings showed that the favorite reading materials for students are website articles and social media captions, followed by non-fiction readings and newspapers. It is also found that preparing assignment is the utmost popular reason for reading journal articles for the students. Students also said that looking up in dictionary, internet surfing, consulting friends and lecturers, more practices, predicting the meaning of the words, and partial reading were some strategies they used to tackle the problems of reading journal articles. The implication of this study can be of actual practice to the academic reading course and curriculum and material development, especially for future improvement on students’ reading performance and proficiency.

Integrated Skills Approach (henceforth ISA) is valuably considered to practice all language skills simultaneously with wide and various activities offered to expose learners to the real communicative purpose. This research aims to find out teachers’ perceptions of challenges and coping strategies in implementing ISA at their respective schools. The research participants were chosen by using purposive sampling, in which the information towards six English teachers from different Senior High School in Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar by using unstructured interviews. The findings revealed that generally, most teachers had positive perceptions towards ISA. Only one teacher’s face constrains in applying ISA. Furthermore, the teachers also faced challenges in applying integrated skills approach in the classroom, those are; students’ lack of vocabulary, school environment and facilities, and teachers’ difficulties in designing activity/material. Nevertheless, the teachers have their strategies to cope with those challenges such as; enriching vocabulary through flashcards, grouping students randomly, preparing their own material and equipment, motivating them by giving interesting short movies and games and expanding their knowledge more about integrated skills approach.