Background: This research uses conversation analysis (CA) to explore interactional meaning-making in Islamic education classrooms, defining learning as an interactional and social achievement rather than knowledge transmission. This study identifies sequential discourse organization, examines IRF sequences during conceptual difficulties, investigates repair practices, and analyzes student participation. Methodology: This qualitative CA study analyzed four audio-recorded classroom sessions at a state Islamic junior secondary school in Manado, Indonesia, involving three teachers across Fiqh, Qur’an–Hadith, and Aqidah Akhlak. The transcribed corpus comprised approximately 80 minutes of interaction across Grade IX and X, conducted primarily in Bahasa Indonesia, including question–answer sequences, discussions, and student presentations. Findings: Classroom discourse was generally organized through Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequences functioning as a consistent participation framework. Sequences extended through requests for clarification, reformulation, and contrastive questions when students hesitated or showed partial understanding. Repair practices, initiated by teachers or performed independently by students, served as a key mechanism for minimizing misunderstanding and aligning epistemic perspectives. Student contributions expanded locally following teacher prompts without implying general development of interactional competence. Conclusion: These findings support meaning-making as an interactional accomplishment mediated through Bahasa Indonesia in subject-matter classrooms, with implications for interactional competence and academic oral literacy-focused discourse-based pedagogy. Originality: Few Conversation Analysis studies have examined subject-matter classrooms in Islamic education, where religious content is negotiated in a turn-by-turn manner. Specifically, how third-turn design calibrates doctrinal precision, how repair trajectories unfold when the trouble source is doctrinal rather than linguistic, and how textual authority (Qur’an, Hadith) warrants expanded participation remain unaddressed. This study addresses that this gap by showing how IRF, repair, and participation operate when the object of talk is religious rather than general curricular knowledge.
Background: Many EFL students at junior high schools continue to experience speaking anxiety and low self-confidence, including when performing basic monologue speaking. While multimodal AI has increasingly been incorporated into EFL speaking instruction, its use in monologue practice is underexplored. In this context, employing AI Avatar Lip-sync tools may provide an engaging and comfortable speaking experience. Therefore, this study investigated learners’ affective, engagement, and technological experiences during the learning process. Methodology: This convergent mixed-methods study involved 28 eighth-grade students. They were instructed to create AI-generated avatars and record monologues, which were automatically transformed into lip-synchronized animation videos using Pippit AI. Data on their detailed experiences were collected through classroom observations and a questionnaire, then analyzed using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics. Both datasets were then integrated by examining areas of convergence, complementarity, and divergence, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of students’ learning experiences. Findings: Quantitative findings revealed high levels of affective (M = 3.95), engagement (M = 4.09), and technological (M = 3.79) experiences. Qualitative findings showed that students enjoyed creating their avatars and voluntarily repeated speaking practice. Additionally, they reported that speaking through avatars made them more relaxed because their faces were not exposed. Despite several technical challenges, students remained enthusiastic throughout the activity and expressed high satisfaction with the final videos. Conclusion: The findings suggest that monolog speaking practice using AI avatar lip-sync has the potential to provide a positive experience across affective, engagement, and technological dimensions. Students reported high enjoyment and self-monitoring through repeated practice, while feeling more relaxed and comfortable when speaking without face exposure. Despite several technical challenges, students expressed high satisfaction with the outcome videos. These findings highlight the potential of AI avatar lip-sync automation in supporting EFL speaking practices. Originality: Most existing studies on AI-assisted speaking predominantly focus on real-time, interactive communication skills, while the combination of recorded monologue practice and AI lip-sync avatar production in EFL junior high school contexts was underexplored. Accordingly, this study addressed the gap by examining students’ experiences with AI lip-sync avatar production for recorded monologue practice.
Background: This study investigates the ideological refraction of Kartini’s epistolary identity across two seminal translations: Symmers’ English Letters of a Javanese Princess and Balai Pustaka’s Malay Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang. Methodology: Employing Martin and White’s Appraisal Framework, comparative analysis of textual divergences across three narrative phases between the two translations reveals contrasting characterological constructions. The Dutch source is acknowledged as context but not used as a fidelity benchmark, making this a comparison of target-text constructions rather than a source-target shift analysis. Findings: Symmers’ translation textually constructs a figure legible as a tragic victim to be pitied, privileging Appreciation over Affect and encoding Kartini as patient. Balai Pustaka’s translation textually constructs a legible figure as a foundational martyr to be emulated, migrating from Appreciation to Affect and reconfiguring suffering as active labor. These constructions invite divergent readings that align with colonial and nationalist interpretive traditions respectively, though Balai Pustaka’s status as a colonial-government publishing institution complicates any simple attribution of nationalist intention to the translators themselves. Conclusion: Translation thus constitutes not secondary representation but a site of discursive production: the English and Malay translations offer divergent textual resources for remembering Kartini, shaping how she is positioned within competing cultural imaginaries. Originality: By deliberately bracketing the question of fidelity to the Dutch original, this research pivots towards refraction as its governing optic thus advancing the claim that translation is the primary mechanism through which Kartini’s historical identity has been fissured and canonized into two discrete figures conscripted to serve opposing cultural and political imaginaries.
Abstract English as a foreign language (EFL) learners from Indonesian Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) still face problems in developing their skills to read critically in TOEFL Reading comprehension. This paper reports on the application and efficiency of Gamified TOEFL Reading Training, which is the use of gamification principles into the teaching process by awarding scores, badges, leaderboards, and challenges related to reading. The aim was to improve the critical reading ability of santri (students who attend the pesantren). A one-group pretest-posttest research design with a sample size of 35 santri from a pesantren in East Java, Indonesia, was used to collect data with TOEFL Reading test, critical reading test, motivation questionnaire, and classroom observation. Analysis showed that there were significant increases in TOEFL Reading scores (mean difference = 12.4 points; p < 0.001; Cohen's d = 0.87) and critical reading skills, along with highly motivated students during learning. In addition, qualitative data showed that gamification techniques had successfully helped students reduce their anxiety when reading and work collaboratively to analyze the text. This study shows that gamification could be used as a valuable pedagogical tool to develop reading abilities in EFL students in pesantren settings and demonstrates its consistency with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education).
Background: The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in translation technologies is transforming translation pedagogy and creating new opportunities and challenges for translation pedagogy and creating new opportunities and challenges for translator education. As AI-assisted tools become increasingly integrated into professional translation practices, understanding lecturers’ readiness to incorporate AI into teaching becomes essential for effective and responsible implementation. Methodology: This study employed a qualitative descriptive design involving six university lecturers as purposive sampling who can teach translation courses in Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically using Maxqda 2024. Findings: The findings revealed four interconnected dimensions of lecturers’ readiness for AI integration: pedagogical perception, ethical-professional awareness, and institutional ecosystem support. Participants generally demonstrated positive attitudes toward AI and moderate to high technological confidence. However, concerns regarding translation accuracy, overreliance on AI-generated outputs, academic integrity, and ethical responsibility remained evident. Conclusion: Lecturers’ readiness for AI integration extends beyond technological competence and involves pedagogical adaptation, ethical literacy, and institutional support. Effective implementation requires balanced integration that promotes critical engagement with AI while preserving core translation competencies. Originality: This study proposes an AI Readiness Framework for Translation Pedagogy that conceptualizes readiness as a multidimensional interaction among pedagogical, technological, ethical, and institutional factors. The framework contributes to the growing literature on AI-assisted translation education by foregrounding lecturers’ perspectives.
