The objective of the study was to find out the effect of Group Investigation method on students’ writing achievement on narrative text. The study was conducted by using experimental research design. The population of this study was eight classes of the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 1 Kotapinang. The samples were taken by using clustering technique and two of the eight classes which was consisted of 60 students used as the samples, one class as experimental group and the other class as control group. In the treatment, the experimental group was taught by using Group Investigation method, the control group was taught without using Group Investigation method. Writing narrative text test was used as the instrument for collecting the data. Therefore, after analyzing the data, it was found that the value of  was 3.02 with the degree of freedom (df) = 58 at that level of significance (α=0.05) = 2.00. It means that  was considerably higher than  (3.02 > 2.00). The result of this study shows Group Investigation method has a significant effect on students’ achievement in writing report text. Key words : Group Investigation, Narrative text, Writing achievement

The study aims to investigate the adversities and challenges on students' listening and speaking learning. Thirty college students were involved in this study by distributing a questionnaire consisting of ten questions relating to their adversity and challenges in listening and speaking learning. Findings from this study indicate that the students confront some adversities. Being afraid to make mistakes and lacking vocabulary when speaking and listening are the most suggested to be the adversities. Building selfconfidence is the best strategy to develop listening and speaking skills. INTRODUCTIONUniversities are paying more attention to writing, reading, and vocabulary rather than listening and speaking, whereas listening is one of the essential skills in English language learning. Hamouda (2013) said that listening skill is crucial in acquiring comprehensible input. Education does not occur if there is not any input. Furthermore, Ur (1996) considered that among four skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing, speaking skill is the most significant one.The statements about the importance of listening and speaking convince us that EFL learners may have some adversities and challenges during the learning process, either it is from themselves, subjects, lecturers and other factors.Researchers conducted the study to find out which aspect that the college students encountered the most, and what college students should do or implement to overcome their adversities or difficulties in listening and speaking.The previous studies have also studied and examined the adversities and Journal of English Language StudiesJournal Homepage: http://jurnal.untirta.ac.id/index.php/JELS

This study aims to discuss the views and the problems faced by the pre-service teachers on the 2013 curriculum. The implementation of the 2013 curriculum is very different from the previous curriculum. Many obstacles significantly affect learning outcomes. In terms of the media used the assessment of the 2013 curriculum is more complicated than the previous curriculum. Then the methods used to convey the learning material has not been effective or not even following the learning material to communicate. This study used a qualitative descriptive method by giving two questions related to the 2013 curriculum. The participants were two pre-service teachers who had the best GPA. In this study, the researchers found that the 2013 curriculum was a new curriculum that followed the current technological era and also under the demands of the students' needs. Teacher candidates do not only learn how to understand teaching materials, but also how to apply these teaching materials in the teaching and learning process. In this study, researchers found that prospective teacher students faced obstacles in their application, for example in terms of classroom management and teaching preparation. Based on these findings, the pre-service teachers should be given the consecutive training on the 2013 curriculum implication.

This study aims to develop reading materials needed for students at SMKN 8 Medan.The research was conducted by Research and Development (R & D) develop through six phases; gathering information and data, analyzing data, develop new materials, validating by experts, revising and final product. It was conducted at SMKN 8 Medan, especially grade XI. The data were gathered by administering interview to English teacher and distributing questionnaire to 27 students’ needs. The interview and questionnaire results prove that the students need English reading materials which contain the appropriate knowledge or topic with the Kemendikbud (Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan), syllabus and students’ need. Thus, developing materials are narrative text, the narrative texts expose the texts about fashion which are adjacent with students’ need. The products have been validated by experts. The average scores are 4.6 or 92 % from English Lecturer and 4.75 or 95% or from English Teacher. It means the developing materials categorized as relevant or appropriate for students at SMN 8 Medan grade XI Keywords: Research and Development (R & D), Reading Materials, Vocational School, Fashion Design Program