LingPoet: Journal of Linguistics and Literary Research

Gamifying Collaboration: Enhancing EFL Reading Skills through Kahoot! Application

2025-09-23T11:42:33+07:00

This study explores the effectiveness of Kahoot-based collaborative learning as an instructional strategy to enhance reading skills among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The research was conducted at Senior High School in Medan with 22 tenth-grade students as participants. Utilizing a Classroom Action Research (CAR) approach, the study was implemented in two cycles, each comprising planning, action, observation, and reflection phases. The data were collected through a combination of quantitative (pre-test and post-test scores) and qualitative (student activity observations and documentation) methods. The pre-test results revealed that none of the students met the minimum passing grade (KKM) of 75, with an average score of 47. In Cycle I, only 31.81% of students surpassed the threshold, with the average score increasing to 70. However, in Cycle II, a notable improvement was observed as 72.72% of students scored above the KKM, raising the average to 80. Furthermore, qualitative findings indicated significant growth in student engagement, participation, and enthusiasm, with student activity levels rising from 55% in Cycle I to 87% in Cycle II. These results demonstrate that integrating the Kahoot application into collaborative learning environments can significantly improve both cognitive outcomes (reading comprehension) and affective factors (motivation and interaction) in EFL classrooms. Kahoot's interactive and gamified nature creates a learner-centered atmosphere that promotes active participation and facilitates deeper comprehension of reading materials. The study concludes that Kahoot is a valuable digital tool to transform traditional reading instruction into a dynamic, engaging, and collaborative experience, thereby contributing to improved literacy outcomes in EFL contexts.

Framing Paradise Online: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Destination Narratives on France Travel Website

2025-09-26T16:46:33+07:00

Tourism promotion increasingly relies on digital platforms where destinations are framed through carefully constructed narratives. Using a multi modal discourseanalytical approach, the present study seeks to examine textual and visual element from lonelyplanet website, particularly the destination of France to represent tourist destinations as idyllic “paradises.” The analysis reveals that destinations are frequently framed through metaphors of escape, authenticity, and exclusivity, highlighting natural beauty and cultural uniqueness while downplaying local challenges or complexities. Additionally, multimodal resources—such as imagery, layout, and interactive features—play a central role in reinforcing persuasive narratives that align with global tourism imaginaries. Findings suggest that online tourism discourse constructs not only desirable places but also particular identities for travelers, positioning them as explorers, culture seekers, or luxury consumers. This study contributes to tourism discourse research by demonstrating how digital travel platforms commodify places through strategic language and multimodality, shaping both destination branding and tourist perceptions.

Enhancing Pronunciation Through Storytelling: A Case Study of Two EFL Learners

2025-09-27T15:15:58+07:00

This study aims to investigate the effect of storytelling on pronunciation development among SMP and SMA students. The research focuses on how meaningful repetition, emotional engagement, and confidence-building in stories support articulation, intonation, stress, and rhythm. Using a qualitative approach, students’ storytelling performances were recorded, analyzed, and observed to identify patterns of pronunciation improvement. The results show that repeated phrases in narratives helped students master challenging sounds naturally, emotional content improved prosody and expression, and engaging stories enhanced speaking confidence. Storytelling created authentic, motivating contexts that encouraged students to practice language purposefully, combining cognitive, emotional, and social engagement. These results suggest that storytelling is a dynamic, student-centered strategy for pronunciation teaching, offering repeated practice, emotional engagement, and confidence support simultaneously. Incorporating storytelling into language instruction can improve students’ oral proficiency, prosody, and communicative effectiveness, making pronunciation learning more natural, effective, and enjoyable.

Men’s and Women’s Language Features in Taylor Swift’s Interview with Jimmy Fallon

2025-09-28T13:42:46+07:00

This study aims to analyze men’s and women’s language features and their functions found in The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon's episode with Taylor Swift. A qualitative method with a sociolinguistics approach were applied to analyze the data, and to collect the data, the researcher uses the documentation technique. The researcher also utilized Lakoff’s theory of women’s language (2004), Coates’ theory of men’s language (2015), and Jakobson’s theory of language functions (2013) to answer the research problems. The result of this study highlights three main findings. First, there are 80 Jimmy Fallon’s utterances included in men’s language features. It consists of minimal response (38.75%), compliment (28.75%), interruption (17.50%), and command and directive (15%). Second, there are 271 Taylor Swift’s expressions included in women's language features, namely lexical hedge and filler (59.41%), intensifier (16.24%), emphatic stress (13.65%), empty adjective (4.43%), hypercorrect grammar (2.58%), rising intonation on declarative (1.48%), super-polite form (1.11%), question tag (0.74%) and avoidance of strong swear word (0.37%). Third, men’s and women’s language features found in the data serve several functions, namely expressive (72.63%), phatic (10.06%), referential (7.26%), metalinguistic (5.31%), and directive (4.75%). Accordingly, it can be concluded that not all men’s and women’s language feature as well as their language functions found in this study. There is no use of swear, taboo language, and precise color term. There are also no utterances that have a phatic function.

Breaking Gender Stereotypes in STEM Through Beauty Advertising: A Semiotic Analysis

2025-09-28T15:45:03+07:00

The OLAY advertisement shows the challenges that women still face in STEM fields, such as discrimination and negative stereotypes about their competencies. This study aims to explore how the advertisement uses communication strategies to support women’s empowerment and change how people see gender issues. It also examines how brands can influence shifts in public views on gender roles. This research uses a qualitative content analysis method, with data taken from OLAY India’s 2022 YouTube advertisement. The data were collected by observing scenes that show gender inequality, taking screenshots, and analyzing them using Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory: denotation, connotation, and myth. Semiotic signs are found in OLAY advertisements, both visually through the scenes in the video and verbally through the narrative and text displayed. This study shows that OLAY advertisements contain visual and verbal signs that represent the challenges faced by women in STEM fields and how they strive to fight gender stereotypes and inequalities. The findings of this study suggest that advertising can be an effective medium for promoting gender equality and changing society’s perception of women's traditional roles.

“The Perfect Organism”: A Marxist Reading of Expendable Labor in Alien (1979)

2025-09-29T01:39:13+07:00

Ridley Scott’s critically acclaimed 1979 science fiction horror film Alien depicts the struggles of the crew of a spaceship named Nostromo against a murderous alien monster. The film has been interpreted through critical lenses such as feminism (Kuhn, 1990), psychoanalysis (Telotte, 2001), law (Crofts, 2021), and racism (Sobchak, 2001), but there is still room for other interpretations. This paper proposes a Marxist Cultural Studies reading of the film by conducting a close textual analysis of its narrative structure, character dialogue, production design, and cinematography to explore three core Marxist concepts: alienated labor, class conflict, and commodity fetishism. This is extended into an overview of the film’s contemporaneous socio-economic contexts of 1970s America (USA), such as power structure in the industrial economy, employment anxieties, corporate hegemony, in addition to the lasting effects of (Cold) War in the West. Findings show alienation of the Nostromo crew from: 1) their ‘product’ (the murderous alien lifeform they were directed to retrieve); 2) their productive activity (agreement to substandard terms driven only by wage compulsion); 3) their human potential (absence of purpose from labor); 4) other workers (distrust and expendability). The class conflict between the proletariat (the Nostromo crew) and the bourgeoisie (the faceless, inhumane corporation represented by the AI ‘Mother’ ship computer and by extension, the alien) structures the film’s narrative of exploitation and betrayal. And lastly, the alien monster can be interpreted as a fetishized commodity desired by the corporation for its potential value, completely outweighing the value of the crew’s lives. By paralleling these findings with the overview of 1970s America’s socio-economic issues in capitalism, such as distrust of authority and corporate hegemony, possible influences on the film’s themes can be seen. In conclusion, this Marxist critique reveals the film’s portrayal of expendable labor in ways that still resonate with modern audiences despite geopolitical space, facilitating a cross-cultural engagement on timeless and global social issues.

Analysing Bilingualism Utterances on Agatha Chelsea and Jerome Polin’s Podcast

2025-09-29T22:55:30+07:00

Bilingualism is crucial in fostering global communication and cultural exchange. The study aims a) to analyze the bilingual utterances in a YouTube podcast of Agatha Chelsea and Jerome Polin, using Weinreich’s framework to understand the interaction of language use in digital courses; b) to highlight how bilingualism manifests in informal, public communication, and to provide insights into the implications of bilingualism for society and education. This study employs a qualitative descriptive approach, which aims to describe and explain a phenomenon or situation using qualitative data. The data were collected through a document analysis technique. It comprises of three steps namely identifying the documents, transcribing the data, and categorizing & coding the data. Then the data are analysed to determine the types of bilingualism in speech and the reason beyond the structure of the utterances. The result indicates that 80.6% of the bilingual utterances are subordinate bilingualism, while 19.4% are compound bilingualism. This ratio highlights the predominance of blending languages for clarity and inclusivity in digital media. This article contributes to the discourse on bilingual communication in digital platforms emphasizing the importance of bridging linguistic and cultural divides while enriching linguistic studies with real-world applications.

Introducing Criticizing of Orientalism from Within

2025-09-30T11:18:11+07:00

This paper outlines the theoretical framework Criticising Orientalism From Within (C.O.F.W.) that foregrounds the methodology of research for the thesis Orientalism From Within: A Critical Study Of Pandering And Catering To The West In Three Contemporary Indian-English Novels (2006) Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and the book Orientalism from Within Arundhati Roy and Her Contemporaries (2010) Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia.The workings of imperialism and neo-colonialism in the contemporary situation is pitted against postcolonialism via Indian-English literature, and explored in the chapter titled Criticising Orientalism From Within specifically and the study generally. This chapter is an eclectic fusion of six modern theorists. The slant or methodology used is criticism and analysis of the three novels vis-à-vis an eclectic or diverse theoretical framework. However, this paper concentrates on Dipankar Gupta’s book India is for Sale and his term Orientalism from Within that this research has borrowed, adapted and adopted as a title to the theoretical framework, the thesis, and the book mentioned above. All the other theorists employed to create the theoretical framework will be discussed generally.