This study investigates the teaching of pragmatics for workplace readiness, focusing on politeness strategies among tourism students preparing for hotel internships. The purpose of the research is to examine how explicit instruction in pragmatics, supported by authentic multimedia, can enhance students’ communicative competence for hospitality contexts. A case study design was employed with 20 fifth-semester Hotel Management Department students from Surakarta Tourism Academy enrolled in the Professional English course. The instructional intervention used authentic Front Office duty videos from VECTOR (Virtual Education Creative Tutorial Room), developed by IPB International as a leading Indonesian tourism institution. The VECTOR materials are standardized and freely accessible, covering six essential front office tasks: handling reservations, bellboy services, telephone inquiries, guest check-in, guest check-out, and managing guest complaints. Data were collected through classroom observations, students’ reflective journals, and performance assessments during simulated hotel encounters. The findings revealed that students improved their ability to apply appropriate politeness strategies in workplace communication and gained greater confidence in handling cross-cultural challenges. This study demonstrates that integrating pragmatic instruction with authentic video models contributes significantly to students’ workplace readiness and supports the development of pragmatic competence in English for Specific Purposes education.
This study explores the use of an acronym-based storytelling strategy in teaching English at the junior high school level. Using a qualitative case study approach, four students were purposively selected due to their active participation and higher oral English proficiency. The implementation consisted of four sessions focusing on how acronyms could assist learners in structuring, remembering, and performing English stories. Data were collected through classroom observation, students’ storytelling performances, and researcher notes. The findings indicate that the acronym-based strategy effectively supported students in organizing narrative ideas, enhancing fluency, and improving confidence during storytelling performances. The use of familiar and meaningful acronyms served as a mnemonic device that enabled students to recall story elements and construct coherent narratives. Moreover, the strategy increased learners’ engagement and creativity, making storytelling activities more enjoyable and purposeful. Overall, the acronym-based storytelling approach demonstrates significant potential as an innovative and practical method for enhancing students’ English storytelling competence in EFL classrooms.
This study investigates the implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) as a strategy for reducing speaking anxiety and improving students' oral performance. The research adopts a Classroom Action Research design conducted through two cycles, each focusing on distinct topics: Social Injustice (Cycle 1) and Artificial Intelligence (Cycle 2). Findings indicate that students demonstrated significantly higher anxiety levels when addressing social injustice, attributable to its abstract nature and emotional complexity. Conversely, the AI topic in Cycle 2 resulted in marked improvements in fluency, confidence, and engagement. As digital natives, students exhibited greater familiarity with and interest in AI-related content, enabling them to structure arguments more effectively and speak with increased ease. Observational data revealed measurable progress in eye contact, verbal fluency, vocal volume, and body language between the two cycles. Notably, exposure to AI-generated responses in Cycle 1 appeared to exacerbate student anxiety, as participants reported feeling pressured to emulate the coherence and fluency of artificial intelligence outputs. The study concludes with practical recommendations for educators to optimize topic selection and cultivate supportive learning environments that address speaking anxiety while fostering communicative competence.
This book review assesses AI literacy in K–16 classrooms by Ng et al., emphasizing the book’s contribution to current discussions regarding AI integration in education and its conceptualization of AI literacy as a crucial 21st-century skill. The review highlights the book’s strength in providing a developmental K–16 framework that emphasizes critical literacy, ethical awareness, and professional autonomy while placing teachers at the center of AI-supported pedagogy. Additionally, it places the text within more general scholarly discussions about global perspectives on educational technology, translingual pedagogies, and teacher-centered AI integration. However, the review also points out the book’s shortcomings, such as its mostly conceptual approach, its scant attention to sociocultural and ethical issues, and its lack of focus on the structural obstacles that prevent AI adoption in educational institutions. Overall, the review makes the case that AI Literacy in K–16 Classrooms is a useful and timely place for educators’ curriculum, designers, and legislators to start. It also calls for more thorough ethical and contextual analyses as well as future empirical research to further AI literacy initiatives in a variety of educational contexts.
This study examined 200 English-language children’s story books as to two variables: (1) the presence or absence of anthropomorphism, i.e., nonhuman agents acting and speaking like humans; and (2) ecocentrism, i.e., giving value to all beings, or anthropocentrism, i.e., valuing humans much more than other species. Some scholars have speculated that the presence of anthropomorphized animals in children’s books might predispose children to develop more ecocentric outlooks. The fiction books were found at a Singapore public library and an internet library. They were categorized into five groups according to the intended age of the readers: (1) Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten, (2) Grade 1, (3) Grade 2, (4) Grade 3, and (5) Grade 4). The researchers found an expected, statistically significant trend toward more anthropomorphism in books for younger readers and more ecocentrism in books containing anthropomorphism.
@WMNLyfe Instagram account uses specific register to communicate with their followers where the targeted audience is Indonesian women from adolescence to adulthood. This study aims to analyze and describe the register used by @WMNLyfe Instagram account. The data for this study are the words and phrases taken from the caption on @WMNLyfe Instagram account discussing women’s empowerment in March 2024, as International Women’s Day is celebrated that month. The study is descriptive qualitative, applying a sociolinguistic approach in discussing language and gender. The data were collected and classified based on their form. Of the 64 instances of register found, it is written in Indonesian and English. The analysis found that there are variations in register in the form of monomorphemic, polymorphemic, abbreviations, and compound words from the classes of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Each has its own meaning depending on the context of use. The function of the register was to greet and build a relationship with the followers, to discuss women’s topics, to follow the trends, to build an identity, to share information, to create an aesthetics and convenience language, as well as to express feelings
