Digital Texts and the New Literacies

Education is very important for the development of a country. Countries with high educational standards are considered developed. Skills in critical analysis are vital to advancing the nation and oneself in the 21st century and also to provide experience as an important asset to compete in the future. The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between learning using practical methods and its impact on students' critical analysis skills. In this research, a descriptive analysis method was used to describe the problem of a correlation study in practicum-based learning with students' critical analysis skills. The data collection technique used was the literature study method. The literature taken is based on previous research related to the topic. Research shows that practicum-based learning is considered useful in honing critical analysis skills, stimulating initiative, learning motivation, and establishing collaboration. The results obtained are that practicum-based learning is able to improve students' critical analysis skills by increasing student activity during practicum learning. These active students encourage students to do their practicum well and can get answers to unsolved problems.

Reading is one of the main skills to be learned and used in schools and through the entire life of an individual. Its crucial importance made reading one of the central topics in different academic disciplines such as education, psychology, linguistic and neuroscience. Advances in multidisciplinary approaches to and studies of reading gave us the reason to talk about the science of reading. Improvement in research into reading during the last century reveals the fact that different approaches emphasized the importance of partially different aspects of reading skills. Different approaches presented sound arguments for different priorities in teaching and learning of reading. For some decades ago strong dichotomic arguments were so sharp that in the United States the reading literature talked about ‘the reading wars’. During the recent decades, the debate of reading and approaches to reading, reading skills and reading processes have changed. Studies of reading presented different arguments for partially different priorities. The Reading Teacher (RT) has for many decades been the one of the most important arenas for the presentation of new findings, ideas, arguments, and trends. Our present corpus-based study captured the frequent collocations and their usage in the RT publications – 952 articles comprising 3 548 008 words - during the last decade, 2012-2021. TreeTagger was used for part-of-speech tagging and CQPWeb/CWB framework was employed as the corpus interface in the analysis process. The findings clearly revealed that "reading comprehension" was the most frequently used collocation, and it has never weakened its position in the RT publications in the last decade. While instructional activities and processes like ‘shared reading’, ‘during reading’, ‘while reading’, and ‘after reading’ were given considerable attention, ‘before reading’ was almost forgotten. Findings also show that linguistic diversity among students, particularly in the US, also made an impact on the emerging of new topics and thus frequency of concepts like bilingual, multilingual, translanguaging, and coaching. Findings related to the ascending and descending trends reading collocations in RT publications regarding other aspects of reading, teaching of reading, and reading processes are discussed and some ideas for future research are presented.

: Critical thinking skills (CTS) is one of the main focuses of the educational system around the globe as a means to equip students with the 21st century learning. In parallel, Malaysia too highlights critical thinking skills with the curriculum transformation witnessing more emphasis on student-centred learning approaches. These include constructivism, mastery learning and inquiry-based learning. However, most teachers find difficulties in embarking on these new ways of teaching. Hence, this qualitative study sought to explore teachers’ views and the challenges when implementing a subset of inquiry-based learning called Socratic method in classrooms. The researchers employed a purposive sampling method to select five (5) teachers teaching various subjects to be involved in the semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that most of the teachers had positive views on the application of the Socratic method specially to enhance the critical thinking skills. Despite that, there were a few challenges faced by the teachers particularly on their content knowledge, knowledge on questioning methods, class participation, topics and time constraints. Based on the challenges extracted, this study concluded that the teachers require due support particularly in terms of their subject knowledge and teaching skills in carrying out the Socratic method in classrooms effectively. Thus, this study proposes for further actions to be taken in helping teachers by providing professional trainings and developmental programs to effectively implement the Socratic questioning in the classrooms.

The Covid-19 pandemic has posed major challenges for the education sector worldwide. Face-to-face university courses have to be taught online. University instructors have faced significant difficulties in creating a student-centered learning (SCL) environment online. The aim of this study was to investigate the major challenges of creating student centered learning in Thailand and focused on a population of college instructors attending Thai EASTEM webinar on "Student-Centered Learning in Internet-Based (online) Teaching", offered in year 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aims of this webinar series aimed to provide information on student-centered online learning, how to effectively conduct SCL-based online classes and strategies for better assessments in online learning. There were more than 1000 participants attending all three webinars. The online questionnaire was designed to gather information required by the study. Both quantitative and qualitative were analyzed according to emerging aspects of the online learning activity including learning goals, tools & resources, roles and assessment. As results, most instructors had concerned about fairness and honesty in online assessment, how to create SCL online teaching and students' skills in using computer for online learning and students' readiness in terms of equipment. The study findings are of great use in areas of education development in higher institutes of learning. The findings are also of considerable value in creating SCL online learning environment for college teaching in a digital era and adaptation of instructors towards new way of teaching and learning.

Application of Graded Reading Materials in the Teaching of Reading Skills for Children with Reading Difficulties

The aims of this study are to analyze the materials and activities used in teaching reading and the result is to describe the process of improving students’ reading skill using communicative language teaching (CLT) used by the teacher at tenth grade of SMAN 10 Depok. The approach used in this study is qualitative, that is by doing observation, interviewing, and giving questionnaire. Through descriptive qualitative approach, the data of observation, interview and questionnaire are analyzed in description. Based on finding of the study,the reading material in class X MIA 1 at SMAN 10 Depok using English book 2013 curriculum. The activities in the class the teacher divided the students into groups to discussing the reading material and give conclusion or suggestion for students, it can be concluded that teaching reading using communicative language teaching can improve the student English reading skill in an English class, because the class activities were communicative. As show by the score the highest score is 95 and the lowest score 65, the average of students score in class X MIA 1 at SMAN 10 Depok is 82,2. The result from questionnaire, most students enjoy in reading class using CLT because, the teacher clearly and always gives opportunity to the students to ask the question it make students easier for understanding the text reading.

The contemporary conditions of the educational process, marked by the dynamics of social changes and the impact of technological progress, pose challenges to the educational system that require innovative approaches to spiritual and intellectual upbringing. A special place in this process is dedicated to the development of communicative culture, which becomes not only a tool for pedagogical activity but also the basis for forming a well-rounded personality. This article is devoted to analyzing the impact of communicative culture on the effectiveness of spiritual and intellectual education in modern education. The research results demonstrate that systematic and targeted implementation of communicative culture in the pedagogical process significantly improves the level of understanding between educators and learners, fosters an open and trusting atmosphere, which is key to effective spiritual and intellectual upbringing. The author explores the potential challenges and limitations associated with interactive learning and highlights the role of digital technologies in supporting interactive education, especially in connection with the state of war and the transition to a distance learning format. The potential of interactive learning tools to stimulate active interaction and exchange of ideas among participants in the educational process is revealed, emphasizing their role in forming a culture of dialogue and cooperation. The importance of creating a safe communicative space where every participant can freely express their thoughts and ideas is separately highlighted, contributing to the development of independence and responsibility. The use of interactive forms of work as effective tools of communicative culture is considered through the prism of their impact on the formation of skills in critical analysis, empathy, and effective interaction. The study demonstrates that the use of interactive methods and digital technologies enhances the efficiency of the educational process, forming an open and trusting atmosphere, which is crucial for spiritual and intellectual upbringing.

science students, especially upper division students, are stereotypically considered to be introverted and therefore poor candidates for an active learning curriculum. Ironically, the requirements of their field demand skills in critical analysis and evaluation, as well as communication and collaboration skills, that are not easily acquired in the traditional classroom environment with a lecture agenda where students maintain a basically passive role. This paper describes experiments with active learning techniques performed in two different upper division computer science classes, Societal Issues in Computing and Computer System Security. In spite of the traditional views of computer science as an individualistic subject matter with self centered nonsocial students, the authors have used active learning techniques in their classrooms for several semesters with encouraging results. In addition to an improved attitude and stated increased satisfaction, students' test results showed increased comprehension and improved critical reasoning abilities.

In large class university science courses, there is a great challenge to apply active learning methods and impart to the students essential skills in critical analysis and thinking, independent learning and problem solving. In this article, I describe an approach where traditional textbook-based teaching was systematically replaced by the use of research papers. In this approach, research papers were used for teaching, assignments and formal assessments. During the classes, important concepts were explained and then applied to real life research problems. In two assignments, students were required to read research papers independently and then apply the gained knowledge. The assignments included a commentary on a specific research paper, a drawn diagram on a disease pathway and most recently, a video assignment to describe a specific cellular aspect related to aging. In the formal assignments, students were given a specific research paper beforehand and then had to understand the content in detail. The actual assessment consisted of interpretation of research data derived from the paper. As a result of these changes, memorization was completely eliminated from the module. Based on individual student comments and a formal poll, the overwhelming majority of students felt that they had gained useful skills. Furthermore, the majority of students expressed that they preferred the research paper-based method of teaching and assessment over traditional lecture-based teaching. These outcomes show that even in large science classes, it is possible to engage the students in active learning. The skills obtained are likely to be advantageous for students during their subsequent modules and undergraduate research projects as well as in the long term preparation for their professional life.

Reading is a verbal linguistic skill, which includes the identification and understanding of printed symbols, and it is a complex process similar to all processes, requiring understanding, linking, and conclusion by communicating with readers. This article has four goals; to find the goals of reading education, to explain the two types of reading, to determine the assessment of reading skill, and to find the steps of teaching reading skills. This article used library research, the data in the form of literature and analysed without using statistical techniques. First, one of the goals of reading education is the ability of students to find new ideas and knowledge. Second, that there are two types of reading. The first type is silent reading, and the second type is aloud reading. Third, assessment of reading skill in a general characteristic consists of two aspects, namely pronunciation and comprehension. Fourth, the teaching of reading skills has the following steps: Providing readable texts for students to read in secret or in public, appropriate for the available study times. Dialog about the content of the read. When the teacher wanted to explain the rules, the teacher does the shortest explanation, because the focus in teaching reading is to provide read texts, and read them secretly or publicly. The teacher provides an explanation of difficult vocabulary, or problem terms in students. At the end of the meeting, the teacher gives assignments about the content of the reading, such as summarizing the material, assigning the subject, or other assignments.

Against the background of the increased importance of multimodal expressions in today's textual landscape and the importance of young people's reading skills in the encounter with argumentative texts on the internet, the aim of this thesis is to increase knowledge about lower secondary students' critical reading of digital multimodal argumentative texts in L1, such as digitally published opinion pieces, Youtube videos, and websites. Drawing on multimodal social semiotics combined with critical literacy, the following research questions were studied: How do students read and make meaning of digital multimodal argumentative texts? How does students’ agency emerge through their descriptions of reading digital multimodal argumentative texts? What educational implications for teaching about reading multimodal argumentative texts can be discerned? 12 lessons in three classes (students aged 14-15) in Sweden have been filmed using three video cameras, in which the students make meaning of texts individually, in pairs, and in groups of four. 12 interviews with students in pairs have been conducted using video recordings as stimulated recall. Intertextual content analysis was used to examine the transcripts of the video recordings with an expansion to include aspects of visual grammar. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the recorded and transcribed interviews. Findings indicate students’ awareness of ulterior motives in the texts, yet relying on professional-looking texts or senders who appear authoritative. Lacking knowledge of argumentative text analysis, the students invent strategies when examining the texts. The students show agency in their reading process when finding their individual reading paths and making use of previous knowledge. Multimodal affordances are primarily used when reading texts dominated by other modalities than verbal text. Consequently, reading education needs to deal with reading and analysing argumentative as well as multimodal texts.

One of the important skills that should be mastered in foreign language is reading. In teaching reading activity in the classroom, sometimes students get difficulty in comprehending the text. They could not comprehend the text well that is caused by some factor. One of the factors is lack of information. Pre-questioning is one of the techniques in teaching reading which can give an interaction between the teacher and the students to read the text. The purpose of pre-questioning is to build students’ interest and motivation. This study was conducted by the implementation of pre-questioning technique to teach reading comprehension descriptive text. The population was the students’ of English Education Department at Universitas Islam Lamongan. The sample was the students of first semester. The class consisted of 30 students. Pre-questioning technique used some tests; each test was different items of questions. The data was taken by observation checklist and tests. The measure of the students’ achievement was stated by Harris (1969:134). The data have got from the result of pre-test, formative test1, formative test 2 and post-test. It found that post-test is higher than pre-test and formative test. The percentages were added from pre-test 56.67% to post-test 80%. In conclusion, pre-questioning gives the contribution towards students’ reading comprehension ability. After conducting the study, the researcher suggests that in teaching reading, the English teacher should build a favorable atmosphere at times of teaching-learning process conducted, because a conductive condition in teaching would become one way to carry out the material to be taught and improve the students’ interest and motivation in learning English, especially in reading skill. Key words: Reading Comprehension, Teaching Reading, Pre-Questioning Technique, Descriptive Text

This study aims to examine the implementation of short Surah recitation habituation as an effort to strengthen Islamic values in Islamic Religious Education (PAI) learning at SMKN 1 Blora. The study arises from the condition of vocational schools that tend to prioritize vocational skills while giving less attention to the development of religious values and character. This research employed a descriptive qualitative approach with field research methods. Data were collected through participatory observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation, involving one PAI teacher and three purposively selected twelfth-grade students. The data were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis technique to identify patterns and themes. The findings reveal that the teacher actively acted as both facilitator and role model by leading students to recite short Surahs for 5–10 minutes before each lesson. The habituation was carried out consistently and inclusively, initially facing challenges due to students’ limited ability in Qur’an recitation. However, through continuous guidance, motivation, and the provision of printed and digital texts, students gradually became more active participants. The practice created a religious and conducive classroom atmosphere, strengthened discipline, nurtured social attitudes, and improved Qur’an reading skills. A key factor supporting the success of this program was the active involvement of students and the teacher’s innovation in overcoming obstacles, particularly by providing accessible learning resources in both printed and digital formats to ensure inclusivity. This research concludes that the habituation of short Surah recitation serves as a simple yet effective strategy to instill Islamic values in vocational schools, with success determined by teacher exemplarity, student participation, and institutional support.

In a rapidly evolving higher education landscape, fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations is vital to preparing students for the complexities of contemporary professional, social, and political contexts. This presentation explored how Learning Developers at London Southbank University (LSBU), an institution committed to vocationally relevant and professionally recognised education (London Southbank University, 2025), led initiatives to embed discipline-specific Academic Practice(s) and English Language support into curricula. Focusing on two diverse programmes, Level 4 (first year, undergraduate) BA Business Management and Level 6 (final year, undergraduate) BA Fashion Communication, Learning Developers collaborated with subject tutors to identify key areas where students faced challenges in engaging with academic content. In Business Management, interventions targeted critical reading and analysis skills needed to evaluate case-studies and construct evidence-based arguments. In Fashion Communication, teaching focused on fostering critical reflection to refine research questions, aims and objectives, and methodologies/methods for critical research proposals, while enhancing peer-to-peer feedback to align with academic standards. These collaborations resulted in co-designed materials, co-teaching, and workshops tailored to each programme’s unique demands. Preliminary results highlighted the transformative impact of this approach. Students in both programmes reported increased confidence in navigating discipline-specific academic language and applying it within their fields. Quantitative data show improvements in first-time assignment submission rates, overall pass rates, and the quality of submitted work. Academic staff also noted enhanced student participation and deeper critical engagement with course materials. This case study demonstrated how embedding academic practice(s) within vocationally focused programmes can address persistent barriers to student achievement. It offered a replicable model for institutions seeking to enhance outcomes by bridging disciplinary divides and equipping students to engage critically in diverse contexts.

This study introduces a teamwork approach implemented in the “Treatment of waste and gaseous effluents” curricular unit (CU) within the Mechanical Engineering Master program at the University of Minho. Recognizing the importance of fostering critical thinking and scientific literacy skills, particularly for master dissertation development, this CU included teamwork where students had to prepare a short critical literature review about a separator technology selected by them using some scientific papers. Furthermore, a field visit to a company was organized and a seminar seeking to promote active learning strategies. To equip students for teamwork, lessons covered effective scientific literature searching, reference management software utilization, and the critical review writing process. Initial feedback from students was obtained through the application of a short questionnaire and the results indicated a positive response to the teamwork activity, with reported improvements in literature search proficiency and critical analysis skills. The collaborative learning environment was appreciated, and students expressed enhanced confidence in evaluating research methodology and forming informed opinions.