The teaching of listening in Indonesia is essential, a process that is considered to be indispensable. This paper explores several factors that affect students’ listening comprehension ability; which are: Limitation of Vocabulary, Teaching Strategy, Limitation of Materials and Equipment, Student’s Listening Anxiety, Exposure towards American English and culture. The main purpose of this research is to determine which factor that significantly affects students’ listening comprehension ability. After going through factor analysis, it is found that the most dominant factor that affects listening comprehension ability is Limitation of Listening Materials and Equipment. This study was conducted in three schools: SMP Negeri 1 Cisarua, Bandung, SMP Negeri III Cisarua, Bandung, SMP Negeri I Parongpong, Bandung.   Key Words: Listening Comprehension Ability, Exposure towards American English and Culture     

The purpose of English language education is to provide students with the capabilities to understand the language in appropriate way and to have good ability in written and oral (Richard, 2008). If students are not able to speak English fluently and clearly, this purpose will be hard to achieve. So, it is essential to study this phenomenon in order to discover if students actually have problems with speaking, and then we can recognize what kind of problems and the reason of it also their perception in Speaking English as a foreign language in Indonesia. This study employed qualitative research paradigm as an intensive, holistic description, and analysis of a single instance, phenomenon, or social unit (Alwasilah, 2011). The study employed a descriptive method with multi instruments as observation, questionnaires, and interviews. Populations of this research were taken from a class of last semester students at STKIP Siliwangi Bandung and the sample were taken from four high achievers and four low achievers from the classroom. The result showed that students’ behavior lead them to speaking difficulties, those who are not interested in speaking activity, relatively get trouble in speaking for academic purposes. This study showed that students who experience difficulties with speaking often have problems with their motivation and self-confidence so that they feel quite hard to recognize their true skill. Somehow, many students have positive attitude and perception toward the concept of fluency in speaking English. They consider that fluency in speaking is something important to master; they think it will be very useful for their carrier in the future. Keywords : Speaking English, Difficulties

This study examines whether the use of Oral Drills and Role-Play method could improve students’ interactive speaking achievement. This study used quantitative research using pre-experimental method with one group pre and posttest design. The study was conducted in SMP Advent II, Setia Budi, Bandung. The participants of this study were 30 students from the first year students at SMP Advent II Setia budi, Bandung as the sample and they were grade VII at SMP Advent II Setia Budi, Bandung. This study used one experimental group as the sample. A pre-test and post-test were done. The experimental group was given treatment (Oral Drill and Role-Play Method). The data gathered was then statistically calculated and analysed. According to the interpretation, if p Value (Sig.) ≤ ???? (0.05) then HA is accepted and H0 is rejected and If p Value (Sig.) ≥ ???? (0.05) then H0 is accepted and HA is rejected. After calculating the data it was known that the p-value = 0.000 lesser than alpha 0.05. Result of the study showed that there is a significant difference in improving students’ interactive speaking achievement after using oral drills and role-play method.   Keywords: Interactive Speaking, Oral Drills, Role-Play Method

Writing is considered as the hardest skill to be learned. Some students said that the difficult part to write is to generate ideas. They admitted that their ideas were out of focus. They could not generate and develop the ideas. To solve it, teachers surely require various teaching techniques that help students to generate ideas in writing. One of the technique is mind mapping. Based on this mentioned reasons, this study is aimed to investigate the differences between teaching writing that does not use mind mapping and the one that uses it in term of ideas.This study employed qualitative method. The data sources of this study were first grade students in one of departement in university at Bandung. The collected data were obtained by writing tests. The result of writing tests was scored by using a rubric. Based on the analysis result, it was found that there were the differences in the writing that did not use mind mapping and the one that used it in term of ideas. The writing that used mind mapping tended to be more focus. Besides, it also had deepen explanation of the topic as well as clear main idea and supporting ideas. From this finding, it can be inffered that mind mapping do really help students to generate ideas in writing. Therefore, teachers can use this technique to teach writing in the classroom.   Keywords: writing, mind mapping, main idea

This study is to find out the reading comprehension ability of the students at SLTP Advent 4 Paal Dua Manado, when being taught using the Direct Method and the Lecture Method. The population of this study was seventy-six second year students at SLTP Advent 4 Paal Dua Manado, who were divided into two groups, the experimental and control group. The main problem of this study is to find out the effect of the Direct Method in teaching reading comprehension. The result showed that there was no difference in the reading comprehension ability of the students who are taught using Direct Method and students who are taught using Lecture Method. But there was slightly difference between the mean score of post-experimental and post-control. Therefore, the suggestion for English teachers is to teach the reading comprehension using the Direct Method because the Direct Method can improve students’ ability in reading comprehension. Key words: Reading comprehension, Direct Method.

This study not only aims to introduce Sundanese culture which is part of Indonesian culture, but also analyses the phenomenon that exists in Sundanese puppets performance as one of the entertainment for the Sundanese people with Semiotic. In this study, the researcher analyzed two factors that determined the result of this research. Firstly, the researcher found the role of color as a kind of pictorial metaphor. In each puppet, it will be seen whether the dominant color of puppet represents the characteristics corresponding to the color or has a significant difference. The secondly, the researcher analysed the appearance of each puppets. This research used four puppets from category of Panakawan, two puppets from category of Knight, and two puppets from category of Giant. Qualitative method is used for describing the result and the result showed that almost puppets appearance represented their character except Cepot that also known as Astrajingga. His appearance did not represent his characteristic especially his color face. Keyword Semiotics, Sundanese puppets, color of Sundanese puppet 

This study attempts to find significance difference in enhancing students’ reading comprehension ability by comparing two teaching methods: Numbered Heads Together (NHT) and Think-Pair-Share (TPS). In this study, the respondents were students of Grade VIII from SMP Advent II, Setia Budi and students of Grade VIII from SMPN 1, parongpong. After careful detail of analysis, the result found is the average gain for Numbered Heads Together group is 0.2553 and Think-Pair-Share group is 0.5127. The p-value = 0.001 < α (0.05), which means there is a significant difference on the students’ ability in reading comprehension between those who are taught using Numbered Heads Together (NHT) method and those who are taught using Think-Pair-Share (TPS) method. Keywords: Numbered Heads Together, Think-Pair-Share, Reading Comprehension.

The purpose of this study is to find the enhancement of students’ vocabulary achievement using Online Games and Pictures Instruction. This study used quantitative research method and comparative design. This study was designed to seek the answer to the following question: Is there any significant difference on the students’ vocabulary enhancement between those who are taught using Online Games and Pictures Instruction? In order to answer that question, there were two classes in grade eight of SMP Perguruan Advent XV Ciracas, Jakarta Timur. They were divided into two groups, grade 8-a was Pictures Instruction group and grade 8-b was Online Games group. The vocabulary test (pre-test) was given at the first meeting. After 16 hours of treatment, the post-test was administered to both groups to see the significant of both methods. The data was analyzed using SPSS 17. The normalized gain of the students who are taught using Online Games 0.2802. It can be concluded that the gain level of Online Games is low. While the normilezed gain of the students who are taught using Pictures Instruction is 0.4631. It can be concluded that the gain level of it can be concluded that the gain level of Picture Instruction is average. The obtained result through the normalized gain indicated there was a significant difference between the group which was taught through Online Games and Pictures Instruction. Based on the result of the data the null hypothesis was rejected and some recommendations are given at the end. Key Word: vocabulary, teaching, Online Games, Picture Instruction

This study aims to enhance students’ writing skills through Daily Journal writing. This research was divided into three steps: giving pre-test, giving treatment (writing daily journal), and giving posttest. The result showed significant difference between control and experimental group. Experimental participants was improved through the writing of daily journal, and the score gained by participants showed that there was a significant effect on students’ writing skills. The achievements showed that the mean difference of post-test scores between the two groups was -.45433 and for the standard error mean was .03840 with pValue .050 (see Table 3), means that Ha is accepted and Ho is not accepted. It means, writing daily journal is strong enough to improve the students’ writing skills. Keywords: Journal Writing, Writing Skills, Daily Journal Variations

The purpose of this study is to find out whether Think Aloud and Visual Imagery have significant difference in enhancing students’ reading comprehension. This study used comparative design, test the comprehension of the students through pre-test, treatment, and post-test. This research was done to 32 students of class 8F in Visual Imagery group; they were given passage to read and draw the image created in her mind on the paper; and 29 students of class 8E in Think Aloud group; the teacher and students think aloud the answers to the questions that were found in the text. The study was done in SMPN 1 Parongpong, West Bandung for 5 weeks or 640 minutes. Result of the study showed the average gain for Visual Imagery group is 0.038 and Think Aloud group is 0.125. The p-value = 0.686 > α (0.05), which means H0 is not rejected. Thus, there is no significant difference on students’ reading comprehension between those who are taught using Think-Aloud and those who are taught using Visual Imagery. Keyword: Reading comprehension, Think Aloud, Visual Imagery