TOEFL has been used as a requirement for non-native English students to pursue further study overseas, to get an appropriate job and to graduate from university. Students often encounter difficulties completing TOEFL reading test. This quantitative study investigates the undergraduate students' difficulties and their strategies in completing TOEFL reading comprehension test. The data was obtained by collecting students' worksheets of the TOEFL test and distributing questionnaires related to test taking strategies used by the students. Thirty students of English Education Department of Syiah Kuala University were involved as participants. The results indicate five difficult reading aspects encountered by the students. In addition, their strategies to complete the reading comprehension section of the TOEFL test are also found. These findings are further discussed in this paper.

Drawing on a multimodality theory, this study attempted to investigate the various semiotic resources utilized by a giant Indonesian cigarette company, Sampoerna, and explore how these resources communicate meanings or messages in its billboard advertisements to persuade its potential customers to buy the product. The data were analyzed using Halliday’s systemic functional grammar focusing on ideational meta-function or also known as a representational function in multimodal discourse analysis. The findings revealed that the billboard advertisements were designed to persuade the audience to buy the advertised products implicitly through representational functions attained using narrative and conceptual processes. Whereas the former was realized by employing its typical sub-processes, actional and reactional processes, the latter employed its sub-processes such as classificational, analytical, and symbolic processes. Implicationally, this study has illuminated the possible application of systemic functional grammar within multimodal discourse analysis domain to investigate implicit message(s) conveyed by an advertisement.

Abstract:This study intends to explore students' difficulties in using critical thinking skills in reading. The subject of this study was second year undergraduate students of Ar-Raniry State Islamic University, Banda Aceh. This qualitative study analysed students' difficulties in using critical thinking skills in term of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. A personal interview was conducted to find the data from the students. The result indicates that students' lack of practicing let them difficult in using critical thinking skills in reading. The other difficulties found were lack of language mastery, implied meaning, background knowledge, repetition and lack of vocabulary. Among six problems discovered above, lack of practicing, background knowledge and language mastery had made the students felt that critical thinking was difficult to be applied.

In a writing activity students are required to transfer their knowledge to express their ideas on both what to say and how to say it. The difficulties in applying this knowledge have become obstacles for learners in constructing good writing. Consequently, these obstacles may cause the students to make errors. By adopting the notions of Error Analysis (EA) and the Surface Strategy Taxonomy as the theoretical frameworks, this study investigates the types of linguistic errors produced by the students. Along the way the sources behind the errors were also analyzed. This study employed the qualitative method design in which the case study approach was utilized. Ellis’ five-step procedure of EA was adopted to analyze the data of essays comprising of 150-300 words written by 23 EFL students of the fourth-semester at English Department at a state university. They were purposively selected as the participants of this study. It was found that omission was the most frequent errors identified in the students’ writings. Overall, 122 (63%) cases out of 195 cases were categorized under this type of errors. The number marker, verb-tense, article, preposition, subject-verb agreement, and pronoun were the categories of frequent errors made by the students, respectively. These were followed by addition (18%), misformation (15%), and misordering (5%). Significance to the source of errors, intralingual transfer turned out to be the main reason that provoked the blunder in the students’ writings. It was apparent that some of the interlinguistic contrast was the reason behind the errors. It appeared that the diverse systematical concept between the Indonesian language and English in terms of verb conjugation factor, inflectional morpheme, and auxiliary-verb abandonment were the strong contenders of the error sources. Additionally, interlingual transfer and context of learning also took part for the reason behind the errors.

For decades, newspapers have become a daily need for people across the globe to update information. There is a tendency of the people to believe in the news published in newspapers, for media is considered neutral. In Indonesia, 212 rallies are the events that were widely reported as headlines for weeks by national and international newspapers. This study showcases the brief portrait of The Jakarta Post representations on the 212 rallies by its use of linguistic properties, to see whether The Jakarta Post is impartial in delivering the news. This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) strategies and applies the analytical tools drawn from Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The data were taken from sixteen 212 rallies related news, including seven headlines, collected from The Jakarta Post archives. The result of this study reveals that by using transitivity and conceptual metaphor, The Jakarta Post tends to stand on the side of the one being protested, and oppose the rallies. This finding suggests newspaper readers to read the information in newspapers more critically, to understand the use of lexicon as well as the structure of sentences to conclude the right interpretation of the news and to realize the representation. By doing so, newspaper readers will not simply accept the news they read.