Self-Access Center

Listening Comprehension
Listening plays an important role in second language instruction for several reasons. If we can not hear it well, we will find it hard to communicate or perhaps we can not pass our listening examination for instance. In fact, the college students often take the wrong way when listening and this leads them to the poor result. It should be noted that the learner’s perception of their listening problem and strategies can affect their comprehension both positively and negatively. Thus, in order to help the college students get improved with their listening skill, it is needed finding out their listening problems which cause difficulties to them. In listening all things, I usually feel confused and sometimes not understand what the speaker talking about. For instance, when I talking with tourist who comes to Indonesia, I usually feel amused with their pronunciation, because their pronunciation is different with others. Example tourist from Australian, their pronunciation is different with the tourists from American or England. I’ve ever to talked with western people from England, when I was talking with them, their speaking accent is quickly and not clear for me. So, sometimes I mused to think what they said to me, I thought for a while the words who they have said. And for other examples, I also confused to listening to the music and watching movie, because I can not listen clearly and understand what the speaking talking about. Sometimes, when I watching movie I usually not put the subtitle in it. Because I want to learn to listen the speaker talking about, without subtitle.

Speaking
Every problem can be solved, likewise the problem to speak English fluently that college students have. Even though the problem seems as students’ problem, but in fact teachers also play an important role in solving this problem. Students’ difficulties to communicate in English must be solved as soon as possible considering their needs in facing the working world. In conclusion, by forcing the students only to speak English during the class and having conversation club will solve their difficulties to speak English. Usually when we were listening the lecturer speak with us, sometimes we can not understand what they mean because most of college students do not seriously to pay attention to the lecturer. Because of there are so many accent of English in this world, for instance there are Australian accent, British accent, American accent, etc. So sometimes it makes us mistakes in English speaking. In English speaking we also must pay attention to the pronunciation and grammar because it will helps us easily to speak English and easily to understand when we hear the tourist or other peoples speak English with us. And also in English speaking trouble, there are so many peoples say that we must not pay attention to the grammar and the tenses, the important is between the first speaker and the seconds speaker can understand to each other without use good grammar and pronunciation. But for me, it is wrong. As the college student, we must speaking with good English, that is we must use good tenses, grammar and pronunciation in speaking. Speaking is important and prominent for us to communicate to the other peoples in this world. Accordance with my experience, I ever speak with native speaker everywhere, but I heard there’s no grammar or we should use right English, but the important is between we and them can understand to each other. I usually spoke with them without use the grammar or tenses, but I just speak and speak with them, and they can understand what I meant or what I spoke to them, and so are they, they also speak with me without use the tenses like we’ve learned before, but they just speak like usually they speak to other native speaker. And from that, I can learn that in speaking, we are not depend on the tenses or grammar like we’ve ever learned, the important is we should be bold to speak with them without think if we will make mistakes, we just speak and speak with them.

Reading Comprehension
There is reliable evidence that reading comprehension difficulty occurs frequently in children who are actually good decoders and spellers. The breakdown in reading comprehension can occur for any number of reasons. It’s important to understand that for us as the college students to adequately comprehend an author’s written message it requires them to be able to analyze and sort through multiple layers of text meaning. For simplicity’s sake I’ve broken those layers down to four separate processes.
First, to properly comprehend a written passage a child must be able to decode the word on the page.
Second, the child needs to hold the information in working memory long enough for the information to be extensively prosessed.
Third, the child must have adequate vocabulary, grammar and syntactical skill to organize and interpret the message efficiently.
Fourth, the child needs to acces higher order thinking skills to process the written message and go beyond the surface layer of the text and infer possible meaning.

Writing
Sometimes for the lecturer, teaching writing lecture is not only the job of the English department alone. Writing is an essential tool for learning a discipline and helping students to improve their writing skills is a responsibility for all faculty. In writing there are some common problems that many students commit to when writing essays in college. These errors are made in the college admission essays, as well as when students are completing essays for classes they are taking. Keep these points in mind when writing an essay to ensure the highest score possible. You don’t want all the hard work you put into the research to go to waste because of a lower score due to the following errors. Writing also makes us confused, because in writing if there’s missing just one word, it will makes what we write will be wrong. So, in writing the right English, we should pay attention and carefully if we want to write it.

English Grammar
The reason why student pick up some grammar points more quickly than the teacher expects and other more slowly is often connected to their first language, confusions between different uses of similar forms of grammatical forms that don’t have an equivalent. Even teachers who know the language the students speak can be miss out on particular aspects of this, such as students who speak a particular dialect or different language at home, or grammatical forms that only educated speakers of that language would be familiar with. Responses to this include rearranging the syllabus to leave more difficult points for particular students until later, concentrating on the particular areas of difficulty they have when the time comes, and approaching the same grammar point several different ways with gaps in between to let their subconscious get to work.
Careless grammatical errors and typos are more serious problem than many students realize, and in some classes they can have a significant impact in your grade. Whle most words processing programs automatically check for common spelling and grammatical errors, there are many mistakes that these programs won’t catch. If grammar is not one of your strengths, buy a style guide or check out one from the library so you can familiarize yourself with grammar rules and review grammatical issues you find confusing. Also consider visiting your school’s writing or tutoring center for help. And in grammar, for me that is a difficult thing because I difficult to establish the tenses.

Pronunciation
Problems with learning good pronunciation and with understanding English spoken at natural speed faced by the primary school children. In this essay I would like to draw attention to problems the primary school students have with learning English pronunciation. It seems that many teachers are not prepared to teach this area of English to young learners and so pronunciation activities are very often neglected and that results in students not being able to communicate with others properly in their older life. Many of older students, who were not taugh them and that results in them not understanding the spoken language. Some of them can not produce the sounds properly, they have problem with intonation and word and sentence stress and so communicating certain thing causes problems to them. Pronunciation is an aspect of verbal communication which makes it effective and attractive. Therefore, the sighnificance of pronunciation becomes highly considerable in the process of verbal communication. Speakers of a particular language have a very deep and strong impact of the sounds of the alphabet on their pronunciation.
There are certain sounds which every language processes. Most of the sounds which a language has seem to be similar, but they are not pronounced in the exact manner. There are certain differences in pronunciation. Therefore, when a person speaks any non-native language, he has to face certain sound difficulties. For example, the Japanese do not have the sound of ‘r’ in their language. Therefore they have to use an alternative sound available in their language according to their convenience. While pronouncing the sound ‘r’, they pronounce ‘l’ sound. Similarly, the Arabic language does not have ‘p’ soundand they replace it with ‘b’ sound. But there are many other factors present which affect the pronunciation of sound. A person who is a non-native speaker of any language always face some problem.
The learners of the English language often have a craze to speak fluently and while attempting fluency in speaking skill, they become unconscious of the rules of connected speech and make mistakes in pronunciation unwittingly. Fluent speech flows with a rhythm and the words bumb into each other. To make speech flow smoothly the way we pronounce the end and beginning of some words can change depending on the sound at the beginning and end of those words. And also there is a problem of transliteration with the non-native speakers in the pronunciation of English language. For example, java is the mother tounge of the people of Jogjakarta and they are in habit of using java sounds. This repetition of pronouncing English sounds in java style consolidates the mispronunciation.
And in pronunciation, there is a lack of correspondence between the spellings and their pronunciation. For example, ‘tion’ on the end of a word is pronounced ‘shun’, while ‘sion’ can be pronounced ‘zhun’. There often many way to pronounce a particular spelling pattern, but I certainly helps to know what the variations are. For example, the pattern ‘ough’ can be pronounced ‘uff’ as in ‘enough’ and ‘though’, or ‘or’ as in ‘ought’ and ‘bought’ or ‘oh’ as in ‘although’ and ‘dough’. There are penalty of words in English language which have silent letters but these words are unknowingly pronounced which make these words mispronounced. For example knife, knowledge, knave, kneel have ‘k’ silent which should not be pronouncet at all.

Time Management skills
Most students find that their gratest challenge in adjusting to college life and so succeeding in the classroom is in managing their time effectively. This is especially true for community college students who often work long hours. Adult students deal with the additional issues of child care and family and home responsibilities.
When evaluating your schedule, or how you spend your time, you also need to consider your goals and priorities. What is most important in your life, right now you family, friends, school, hobbies, or other activities? As you look at how you spend your time, ask yourself if this matches your priorities.
Even though attending class and completing assignments in a top priority for most students, many find that they are not allowing enough time for their studies. On the average, students should spend about 2 hours of study for each hour of class time. For example, if you are carrying 12 credits in a semester, you should allow 24 hours per week for study. Includes time for reading, writing papers, preparing projects, and for test preparation.

Stress Management
Actually, stress is a natural feeling, designed to help you cope in challenging situations. In small amounts it’s good, because it pushes you to work hard and do your best. Stress heightens the sense and your reaction times, which means it can enchange your performance, including in exams.
Leaving home to start college means lots of big changes, such as moving to a new area, being separated from friends and family, establishing a new social network, managing on a tight budget and starting your studies. For most students, these changes are exciting and challenging, but for some, they feel overwhelming and can affect their health.

Managing Homework
Usually, I always forget with my homework/assignment from lecturer. And because of my busywork. Because for many college students, the best time to get homework or home assignment done will be straight after go back from school or campus. Others might need a break to play and unwind first. No matter what, the optimal time is when we can be around to supervise ourselves in doing our homework or home assignments. Most students can only concentrate for about 15 minutes at a time before they might need a brief break. In managing homework or home assignments, we should be able to divide our time because we also need a entertainment to refresh our brain like watching TV or playing outside, playing game station, might be a reward for when the homework or home assignment has been finished.

Plagiarism
In my life, when I was in the school if I felt so tired and busy I usually cheat the work or from my friends of classmates, and I usually copy their files which contains the schoolworks. Actually plagiarism is a bad behavior in the life but I feel so when I’ve cheated or copied the works from my friends, before I cheat or copy their works, I never think that plagiarism is a bad behavior because when that time I just felt that it was a common thing who the peoples ever do. After I was in university, I realize that it is a bad behavior, because with our won efforts is very good than we must cheat the works or assignments from our friends, although we get the low score but we do it honestly, it very good and worthy because we do it by ourselves.