LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

1.      Find your strengths.

Learning how to learn by find our strengths in both vital senses such as ears and ayes are experiential, mindful, and engaging. Through it we can explore a set of learning experiences that can be more effective and interesting to develop our English capability. Begin by explore your ears and listen to your teacher. Based on my experiences, I engaged train my ears as my first activities as an individual to became an active listener since I learned Actional Functional Model. In the active listening activity, intentionally focuses on who I was listening to, whether in a lecture, in a conversation, or a group, in order to understand what is said. So, I am interested to listening the news report on MetroTv which called Indonesian Now streaming every Saturdays, at 9 a. m. Tascha Liudmila and Dalton Tanonaka are news presenters of this show. Realize that, I should then be able to replay or repeat back in my own words what they have said. This does not mean I agree with, but rather understand, what they are saying. Understanding about this rule, I took one topic as my concern that I would told to someone else with what I have listened. One of the topic is kid and hajj where Mr. Dalton as a presenter of the information. I tried to be more concentration and listened carefully. After that, I told to my cousin, Indri what I have heard about kid and hajj. Every year, millions of Muslims travel to Makkah to perform Hajj. Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam and is one of the most important duties we need to carry out. Now, children can explain or act out how a person may return from  Hajj and how to feel transformed by the experience.  Participants in this age group must perform a mock hajj and orally explain the basic rituals of hajj. Children should appear before judges with ihram.  They should be able to demonstrate tawaf, sai, jamrah, and the importance of the day of Eid Al-Adha to the judges. Besides, I will be always listening to English News Report to train my ears and find my strengths. Then, tell someone/friends what I have listened from the News. And one day, it has proved that I have a strong ears, of course, I will be always listen to my Tutor at lecturing and make it as my habit.

Then, I train my eyes by read a short article about some English Learning Strategies literature or book which related on my lecture.  Again, I told to my cousin Indri who can understand English well. Because of my home work about Psycholinguistics where I supposed to understand much of articles, I read about psycholinguistics scope that told as part of the field of cognitive science and is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce and acquire language. Especially in language acquisition, the article serves some definition, for example; language acquisition is studied in relation of three classes of variable. The terms of them are environmental factors, cognitive processes and innate linguistic mechanism. In those reading process, I use addition technique in reading, like skim the material.  Here I read only chapter headings, introductions, and summaries.  Beside that, because of my problem is lack of vocabulary, I read by highlighting and underlining key information, and taking notes. After that, I can re inform some important information of that article to others people, like my friends at campus. In discussion class, I saw a little progress in my self, like following the discussion actively, and able to shared my new ideas to my friends about lecturing materials. I hope, I can do this activity very well, so it is mean I have strong eyes. It will be more helpful to my life and make it as my habit in understanding English.

2.       Develop your intrinsic motivations and change your extrinsic motivations to be your intrinsic motivations since only intrinsic motivations help learners to be successful.

One thing that I have realized is about my motivation. As long as I live, in my personal, I only have an extrinsic motivation. Every time I do something, my motivation comes from outside an individual. My motivating factors are external, or outside, rewards such as money or grades. It has happened, because I do not understand about the nature of motivation exactly. I think it will be okay, do something or get something because people beside you, or to get reward. Yet, since I learned the lecture material about Actional Functional Model, I begin to understand about motivation and how to separate it. Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from inside an individual rather than from any external or outside rewards, such as money or grades. So that, I ask myself change my wrong motivation. I will become a person who will work on my English, because it is enjoyable. If I find some trouble in my English course, I will try finding a solution to a problem because the challenge of finding a solution is provides a sense of pleasure. I will leave my self who is someone work on the task because there is some reward involved, such as a prize from parents or a grade from my teacher.

I become aware external rewards are not enough to keep a person motivated. For example, last week, I have a lot of assignments of all lecturers; I have almost given up to do it. Especially my Psycholinguistics assignment that I need to read 16 articles, make their recension, make one paper, make reading report from two books and also two power point. It has made my crazy, and I decided did not make it. Why it can be happened? Because I may want to get a good grade on an assignment, but if the assignment does not interest anymore, the possibility of a good grade is not enough to maintain my motivation to put any effort into the project. I was really disappointed to my self, and I waked up from my silliness. I said to my self, I will do every single work because I would like to do it, not because someone. In my mind, everyone is born with the ability to think and learn a specialized cognitive code called human language. Many ways to acquire language understand and produce it, especially in English Language Learning. All languages work in the same way. They all have words and sentences and sound systems and grammatical relations. Like birds inherit the ability to fly and fish too swim, men also inherit the ability to think and to use language in a manner, which is unique to our species. Because of that, start from now, I already to motivate my self to learn and change my extrinsic motivation. I am going to speak English in my class and practice in my community. And sometime if I fell not confident with my self, I will stay continue practicing my English, even though my friends will laugh at me. It does not matter. We will not be enjoying with our self, if we always think about someone else think about us. Nothing will happen if we make mistake and don’t let it bother you. That is I have said to my self as an effort to change my mind set and motivation in learning and practice English.

Common Writing Problems

Writing well is not just an option for students now, but a necessity in the study of a second or foreign language. Along with others skill in English, writing is considered as one way to measure individual’s language proficiency. From a pedagogical point of view, writing is not a natural activity but is a highly complex task. Learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the four macro skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in question is a first, second or foreign language (Nunan, 1979: 35). Based on this theory, many researchers have proved that almost student has greater difficulty in writing than other. Beside low knowledge of grammar and sentence structure, some of students also difficult to formulate ideas and opinion because they are limited by literacy support. Students who find writing very difficult and frustrating will not interested doing the task, and will try to avoid writing whenever possible. As a result, there are many factors which influence the students’ writing difficulties such as literacy crisis, lack of language capability and low motivation.

First of all, lack of engagement with literacy is one major problem that will create obstacles throughout students’ writing processes. Literacy represents the ability to read and to write.  In case, students often do not ‘enough’ information to support their creativity in writing, so that the ideas not connected and relevant with the topic.  They are also not sure that neither these ideas nor the vocabulary they use is unnecessarily repetitive. Literacy would be most helpful in require creativity and critical thinking to improve students’ writing ability. Graham and Perin (2007:7) note that writing is sometimes seen as the “flide side” of reading. It shows that students must be skilled readers to be skilled writers. Much of reading is useful to enrich writers’ background of knowledge which necessary to present an idea, developing and organizing the idea into good written form.

Another of difficulties in writing is lack of language capability which consists of grammar mastery, vocabulary, and structure of sentences. It can be shown by recent study (Bahri & Sugeng, 2009) found that eight most common errors of students’ writing were: verb-tenses, articles, word forms, capital letters, punctuation, missing words, spelling, and prepositions. Apparently some students possess limited vocabulary and poor understanding of grammar. So, they get difficulties in doing their writing tasks. Moreover, good writing relies on a student's language abilities. A language problem may manifest student's writing itself as awkward phrasing and inappropriate use complete sentences in their writing.

In addition to literacy crisis and less of language capability, finally is about motivation. Motivation has long been a major problem for most teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) or as a foreign language. Lack of motivation is a reason for failure and low self esteem in writing activities. Student lacking in motivation usually passive in writing activities. According to Lo and Hyland (2007) motivation is also influenced by learners’ sense of agency and feelings of mastery and control over the learning activity and their interest in it. There could be many reasons why the student is not motivated, for example a weaknesses in literacy support and language capability. The combining of those problem become distorted image of self indirectly, stuck their mind as difficulty getting started on writing assignments. Even though student may have good writing intentions, focusing mostly on grammar seems more difficult to do. There are many errors that they will make, when they do writing. Furthermore, formulating an idea in writing can be difficult because it involves transforming or reworking information, which is much more complex if the students’ lack of literacy support.  So that, students felt under pressure every time dealing with writing task and consider writing as uninterested activities.

To conclude, writing is produced in different formats, such as sentences, lists, outlines, paragraphs, essays, letters, and books. The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired. It is must be practiced and learned through experience. Otherwise, students writing in a second language can not get beyond in language problems when doing their writing. Individuals may have difficulty with one or more aspects of written language such as proper use of grammar, vocabulary, organizational skills, and initiating writing. Also, the lack of literacy support and unconfident with own writing product can make the task of writing even more complicated.

REFERENCES

1.      Lo, J., & Hyland, F. (2007). Enhancing students’ engagement and motivation in writing: The case of primary students in Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(4), 219–237.

2.      Nunan, David. 1979. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.

3.      http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/centers/iws/writingcenter/commonprobs.stj

4.      Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York.Washington, DC:Alliance for Excellent Education.

5.       journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/joe/article/.../98 DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING IN VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SMPN I SELONG EAST LOMBOKWEST NUSA TENGGARA IN THE SCHOOL YEAR 2008/2009

Saiful Bahri (Hamzanwadi College Selong Lotim NTB)

Bambang Sugeng (Yogyakarta State University)

MATERI SOSIOLOGI KELAS XI IPS: MOBILITAS SOSIAL

MATERI SOSIOLOGI KELAS XI IPS: MOBILITAS SOSIAL

Berbohong Ternyata Membahayakan Kesehatan (Whooila!)

Mereka yang dalam posisi menyembunyikan sesuatu menempatkan dirinya dalam bahaya. Rasa bersalah hanyalah awal. Seiring dengan rasa bersalah, mereka yang berbohong, menghilangkan kebenaran atau menyimpan rahasia berisiko terhadap beberapa komplikasi kesehatan.

“Sebagai permulaan, berbohong melepaskan hormon stres. Peningkatan hormon ini menyebabkan denyut jantung dan pernapasan meningkat, pencernaan melambat, dan hipersensitif pada serat otot dan saraf,” kata MD Saundra Dalton-Smith, penulis Set Free to Live Free: Breaking Through the 7 Lies Women Tell Themselves.

Efeknya mungkin tidak serius, tapi seiring waktu, berbohong dapat menyebabkan kondisi, seperti penyakit jantung koroner, stroke, kanker, diabetes, dan gagal jantung. Mengapa?

“Tekanan darah meningkat dalam hati ketika Anda berbohong. Inilah yang dapat mengancam hidup Anda dalam jangka waktu lama,” kata Dr Smith, seperti dikutip dari Bettyconfidential.

Sebagai informasi, kaitan antara tekanan darah dan berbohong seperti ditunjukkan alat pendeteksi kebohongan. Polygram atau lie detector bisa akurat menguji kebohongan karena alat ini mengukur tekanan darah seseorang.

Mungkin berbohong tidak secara cepat membuat Anda terserang stroke, tapi ada bukti bahwa semakin Anda berbohong, semakin mudah Anda mendapatkan bencana.

Menurut hasil penelitian pada November 2010 oleh Departemen Psikologi Universitas Ghent di Belgia dan telah dipublikasikan jurnal Consciousness and Cognition, “Sering berkata jujur membuat seseorang sulit berbohong, dan sering berbohong membuat seseorang lebih mudah berbohong.”

“Dengan kata lain, Anda menuai apa yang Anda tabur. Semakin sering Anda berbohong maka semakin mudah Anda melakukannya, begitupun sebaliknya,” kata Dr Smith.

Mereka yang kerap berbohong atau menyimpan rahasia besar selama bertahun-tahun mungkin tidak merasakan gangguan apapun. Namun dari waktu ke waktu, mereka secara signifikan lebih berisiko pada kondisi kesehatan yang buruk.

Ternyata, berbohong tidak hanya menyakiti hati seseorang secara, tapi juga tubuh Anda.

“Daripada terjebak dalam lingkaran setan kebohongan seperti dalam film The Dilemma, jalan terbaik adalah jujur secara konsisten,” saran Dr Smith.

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