Naela Hidayatul Mukaromah, 0203519053 (2023) ASSESSING DISCOURSE COMPETENCE IN EFL ONLINE LEARNING WRITTEN CHAT OF POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SEMARANG. Masters thesis, UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SEMARANG.

PDF - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (4MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted classroom learning into virtual one. Thus, the assistance of technology was inevitable. WhatsApp Group (WAG) became one of the most popular platforms to use in bridging non-face-to-face interaction between students and teachers and facilitating their learning activities. The flow of communication in this online mode boosted some problems, including whether the students' communication run smoothly and comprehensively. To identify this case, students' discourse competence plays important role in producing meaningful and well-organized conversation within text. This research aims at assessing the realization of discourse competence in the online EFL learning written chat of the students at Postgraduate Program of Universitas Negeri Semarang. The study belongs to qualitative research with discourse analysis as the research design. The transcription of students’ chat in their WhatsApp Group of two lectures becomes the research data which was collected and analyzed using manual chat recorder and observational notes. The data was analysed using the theory of cohesion by Halliday & Hasan (1976), coherence by Brown & Yule (1996), deixis by Levinson (1983), and generic structure by Celce-Murcia (2008). Then, the relation among those four was investigated and assessed using indicators from The Common European Framework of References (2020). The findings showed that students applied cohesion, coherence, deixis and generic structure appropriately in the chat. All of those four components of discourse competence are so interrelated that every relation indicates particular meaning. Finally, when it comes to the assessment, students’ discourse competence achieves the level B2-C1. B2 shows strong performance that focuses on argument and social discourse while C1 indicates such good access to a broad range of language, which allows fluent and spontaneous communication. It can be inferred that students, in discussion session, take an active part in informal discussion in familiar contexts with particular strategies to help the development of the discussion. In term of organizing chat text, students produce clear, good flow, well-structured speech, and show the controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices. Based on this recent research, it is highly suggested that teachers/lecturers should motivate students to be more active in online learning as well as provide extended learning material for improving students’ discourse competence. Furthermore, due to the limited data and findings in this study, it is highly suggested that further studies analyze other aspects in WhatsApp chat, such as inserted media/file, voice note, and so on to gain thorough comprehension.

Actions (login required)

View Item