Undergraduate Conference: Linguistics and ELT

Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana

(UKDW) held a webinar entitled “Linguistics and ELT in the PostPandemic Era” on January 6, 2023 The webinar featured two distinguished speakers. They were Dr. Fransisca Endang Lestariningsih, S Pd , M Hum from the English Language Education Department of UKDW and Prof. Dr. Hj. Suwarsih Madya, M A, Ph D from the English Language Education of Sarjanawiyata Tamansiswa University. The webinar was held online due to the pandemic Even though it was conducted online, the enthusiasm for joining the event could be seen from the participants from different regions in Indonesia as the number of participants reached more than 70 students from state as well as private universities in Indonesia.

In the undergraduate conference, a number of students from PBI UKDW got the chance to present the topics they had prepared in Applied Linguistics class In total, there were 22 parallel presentations delivered individually or in groups. Among them, 8 were presented by PBI UKDW students while the other 14 presentations were delivered by PBI students from Universitas Muhammadiyah Sorong, Universitas Borneo Tarakan, Universitas M u h a m m a d i y a h B a n g k a B e l i t u n g , Universitas Harapan Bangsa, Universitas S

Yogyakarta, and IAIN Palangkaraya The topics were about issues related to linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT). The participants were given 10 minutes to deliver their presentation and additional time for question and answer session.

This webinar was part of the Final Examination in Speaking for Academic Purposes and Applied Linguistics courses for PBI students batch 2021. As the students from the two classes were the one organizing the webinar, they can also learn about responsibility, discipline, and integrity as a student. Meanwhile, for the external parties, the webinar was expected to provide new insights and knowledge regarding various topics presented in plenary and parallel sessions. Moreover, the larger audience will be able to identify challenges and find solutions to ELT-related issues in the postpandemic era they are currently facing.

According to the organizing committee, the feedback from participants showed that they truly enjoyed the webinar and found the topics presented by the keynote speakers were very interesting. They were also looking forward to the next undergraduate conference held by PBI UKDW Besides gaining new knowledge, through this webinar students could also learn to think critically in facing various challenges in ELT.

[Lita Probowati]

practice before we have a presentation in the future), relaxation (be calm down and take a deep breath since relaxing ourselves slows our heart rate, reduces our blood pressure, and relieves tension which can make us think positively better), positive thinking (our brains tend to remember unpleasant memories longer and better, so we have to train ourselves to think positively to balance the process our brains do), peer-seeking (reach out for friends who have similar problems and discuss on how to overcome the problems together because the realization that others have the same problem may serve as a source of emotional regulation by social comparison), and resignation (this is a passive strategy where the learners do nothing or worse: giving up and quit, so this strategy is not recommended since it doesn't have any pedagogical value) Teachers cannot force the students to learn if they're not ready because according to Thorndike's Law of Readiness, it will only create unpleasant learning experience Instead, teachers can help the learners by encourage, support, provide time and space to them. When they make mistakes, be there to correct them in a not-intimidating manner so they don't feel humiliated. Praise them when they have shown efforts to learn. Teachers can also make the learning environment fun by using a mobile application (try applications that offer speaking training such as ELSA SPEAK or Duolingo) to teach English.

Now that we have figured out the why and how in English speaking anxiety, we can understand and implement better strategies in reducing the anxiety. Speaking holds a role in our English skill, and if we don't speak, we will lose our identity. (CH)