Faisal Mustafa | Universitas Syiah Kuala Banda Aceh (original) (raw)

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Papers by Faisal Mustafa

Students of social and natural sciences are expected to achieve different learning outcomes becau... more Students of social and natural sciences are expected to achieve different learning outcomes because they employ different language learning strategies and are exposed to different vocabulary. This research was aimed at finding evidence from empirical data to determine whether the differences in learning outcomes are statistically significant. The data for this research were collected by administering the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to 179 students from four state universities in Aceh, the northernmost province of Indonesia. The results of the test were analysed based on the components in each subtest. There are three parts in the listening comprehension section, 14 aspects in the structure and written expression section, and six skills in the reading comprehension section. The results show that significant differences were only found in part A (the short talk section) of the listening comprehension part and in the main idea skill section in the reading comprehension part. Students of natural sciences performed better when listening to a short academic talk, while social science students had a better general comprehension of non-discipline specific academic texts.

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 2018

Paper-based TOEFL scores have been used to determine the level of English proficiency for EFL lea... more Paper-based TOEFL scores have been used to determine the level of English proficiency for EFL learners for various purposes. However, in repeat tests some lower scores fluctuate despite no additional classroom learning, thus they cannot be used to judge the English level of those taking the test. There is limited research into the lowest score that does not fluctuate outside the Standard Error of Measurement, which the Educational Testing Service (ETS) set at 13 points. Therefore, this research was aimed at determining the lowest score which can be used for distinguishing the students' learning progress or proficiency. Scores of 1,180 test takers who took paper-based TOEFL a minimum of three times over three days to two weeks were analyzed statistically. The analysis revealed that the scores stopped fluctuating outside the Standard Error of Measurement when test takers reached the score of 417. Therefore, not until a test taker obtains the minimum paper-based TOEFL score of 417 can their English level be determined by the TOEFL score. This research has significant implications for employers, universities and high schools that currently use a TOEFL score lower than 417 as the minimum entrance or graduation requirement.

Students from non-English speaking countries learn English as a foreign language in school. There... more Students from non-English speaking countries learn English as a foreign language in school. Therefore, schools should play the most important role in improving students' English proficiency. This study aimed at describing high school alumni's perception on whether schools have successfully played that role. To obtain the data for this research, a questionnaire was sent to all second-semester students at Syiah Kuala University. The questionnaire asked their opinion on whether the teaching and learning process at schools improved their English proficiency. Out of 1,500 students, 500 students responded to the questionnaire. The results showed that most students (76 percent) agreed that their current level of English was only partially due to the teaching and learning process at school. The percentage of students who believed that their current level of English was because of the school was 15 percent. Only 9 percent of the students considered that the teaching and learning process at school did not contribute to improving their English proficiency. Therefore, the teaching and learning process at schools has to be adjusted. Because most students did not have time for autonomous learning, schools must upgrade teachers' competence and invest in school facilities to improve the English proficiency of its students. 49

Vocabulary is among the difficult component for EFL students to master in learning English langua... more Vocabulary is among the difficult component for EFL students to master in learning English language. Based on a preliminary observation at a junior high school in Banda Aceh, it was found that the teachers seldom used specific strategy in teaching vocabulary. Thus, this research was aimed at finding out whether the use of Spelling Bee game can improve students' vocabulary at the school under study, with a focus on vocabulary related to nouns. The sample of this research was the seventh grade students for the one group pre-test and post-test design. To obtain data, vocabulary test items were used for the pre-test and post-test before and after the treatment was implemented. The results showed that the average post-test score is higher (88.76) than the pre-test score (62.52), so the difference between the scores of both tests is 26.24. Moreover, t-test also showed that t-score > t-table or 10.826 > 1.71 at the level of significance 0.05 with the degree of freedom (df) 24. Consequently, it can be concluded that the alternative hypothesis is accepted and the null hypotheses is rejected, which suggests that Spelling Bee game can improve students' vocabulary. And so, Spelling Bee game is recommended as

Errors made by students in skills such as speaking and writing have been treated as important inf... more Errors made by students in skills such as speaking and writing have been treated as important information to help teachers direct the foci of their teaching. Teachers need to pay attention to the most serious errors before addressing other errors. Hence, this research was aimed at finding the most serious errors produced by students at one of the junior high schools in Indonesia, i.e. State Junior High School No 7 in Banda Aceh. The errors were categorized into surface strategy taxonomy and linguistic category taxonomy errors. The data were collected from recount texts produced by 19 students who were known to make errors in writing. The data was analyzed by calculating the percentage of errors based on the total cumulative errors for surface strategy taxonomy, but based on the number of attempts in the same grammatical elements for linguistic category taxonomy. The results of data analysis showed that the dominant errors for surface strategy taxonomy were selection (72%) followed by omission (14.4%), and addition (10.6%). In the linguistic category taxonomy, the most dominant types were word forms (48.4%), followed by articles (35%), nonfinite verbs (34.9%), verb tenses (34.3%), plurals (33.3%), and prepositions (30%). It is suggested that teachers pay more serious attention to the most serious problems because solving these problems will hasten the students' progress in learning.

This study examines the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) technique for impro... more This study examines the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) technique for improving students’ English writing skills, specifically in content and organization when focused on writing recount texts. This experimental research used random sampling and random assignment to determine the control group (CG) and the experimental group (EG). Pre- tests, treatment or teaching and post-tests were done to both groups. The study was conducted with 60 second year students from a junior high school in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Students’ mean scores for the pre-test in the CG were 40.76 and 60.76 for the post-test, meanwhile students’ mean scores for the pre-test in the EG were 40 and 72.69 for the post-test. Thus, the t-test between both groups was 9.39 and the t-table was 2.056 which used 0.05 as the level of significance for this research. Because the t-test value was higher than the t-table (9.39 > 2.056), Ha was accepted and Ho was rejected. Therefore, the CIRC technique can improve the content and organization of students’ writing in doing recount texts. In addition, because students work in groups, they have more opportunity to learn and share their ideas with other students to produce better writing.

Designing a grammar test, among other tests, for classroom use requires much effort and the resul... more Designing a grammar test, among other tests, for classroom use requires much effort and the results need to be tested for reliability to ensure that it gives teachers the information they need about their students’ achievement and to make sure students are fairly scored. However, the data shows that most of the tests given to students to measure their performance were not tested for their reliability. It seems that teachers, as well as lecturers, do not bother with the reliability test or do not have the knowledge or opportunity to conduct the test. Therefore, this paper presents a way to design a reliable test without having to test for its reliability by using corpora such as COCA and BNC. After designing two sets of TOEFL-like grammar test, the writer pilot tested for their reliability to prove that this way of designing a test was effective. Then, the results were compared with the reliability of TOEFL grammar designed by the ETS, the official TOEFL test designer. The analysis results showed that the reliability of designed tests was .85 and .88. The results of this comparison showed that the grammar tests designed by using a corpus was very similar to those designed by the ETS, i.e. .86, proving that the designed tests were reliable, thus did not require any reliability test. Therefore, it is recommended that teachers use a corpus in designing a grammar test when a reliability test is not considered as an option for obtaining a reliable test.

Conference Presentations by Faisal Mustafa

Listening is considered the most significant skill in language learning, but EFL programs at univ... more Listening is considered the most significant skill in language learning, but EFL programs at universities in Indonesia provide very limited credits for this skill, i.e. 80 hours all together distributed in three semesters. The purpose of this research was to find out whether this limited number of hours could help EFL students achieve advanced level in listening to authentic English spoken by native speakers. To collect the data 20 students majoring in an EFL program in an Indonesian university were tested with authentic material. The test results showed that the total score obtained by the EFL students was 49.6% in average. Therefore, it can be concluded that the ability of the EFL students in comprehending the authentic language spoken by a native speaker of English was very low. This result suggests that students are to be exposed more to listening practice such as watching movies or listening to podcasts to improve their ability in comprehending language produced by native speakers of English. INTRODUCTION Listening is one of the skills that should be mastered by the learners of English language. According to Widiastuti (2012), this skill is used more frequently than other skills. Therefore, the teacher of English needs to emphasize improvement of listening skills, particularly the listening comprehension, since the level of comprehension in listening also influences other skills (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011, p. 986). Furthermore, Nunan (2002, p. 238) agrees that listening is a very crucial skill for EFL students. In EFL programs offered by Indonesian universities, listening comprehension is one of the core courses and it is usually taught in three to four semesters. For example, at Syiah Kuala University listening comprehension is divided into three levels, i.e. literal listening, interpretive listening, and advanced listening. Each level is taught once a week for every week of a 16-week semester. At 100 minutes a meeting, the classes total 80 hours of instruction time for all 3 semesters. This time is not adequate for students to reach advanced levels of listening proficiency. However, there has been no research suggesting how many hours are required to reach advanced levels of EFL listening proficiency. Therefore, the aim of this research was to confirm whether the number of learning hours offered by the EFL programs at universities in Indonesia is adequate to make students achieve high level of proficiency in listening. The success of learning listening comprehension skills by EFL learners is determined by how much they can comprehend language produced by a native speaker

Plagiarism has been frequently found in academic writing produced by EFL learners, including in I... more Plagiarism has been frequently found in academic writing produced by EFL learners, including in Indonesia. It has been claimed that plagiarism is motivated by poor understanding of plagiarism. This paper is intended to find out to what extent the EFL students in Indonesia understand what constitutes plagiarism. To collect the data, the EFL students at state universities in Banda Aceh who were writing their undergraduate dissertation or proposal for the dissertation were given a set of questionnaire about plagiarizing activities and they were asked to mark the activities as plagiarism and not plagiarism. 34 EFL students were selected by using convenience sampling technique. The data from the questionnaire were analyzed to find out the percentage of students who considered plagiary acts as not plagiarism. The analysis results showed that almost all students (97.70%) were well-informed that exact copying from a source without citation is plagiarism. However, 52.87% of the students were not aware that paraphrasing from source without citation constitutes plagiarism. More surprisingly, 76.86% of the students considered patch writing with citation are not plagiarism. In addition, 60.30% of the students have not been exposed to the concept of self-plagiarism. These findings suggest that students' knowledge on the concept of plagiarism was very poor. Therefore, it is advised that academic writing courses offered in EFL program be revised to cover plagiarism in more detail.

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 2018