COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT IN CLASSROOM INTERACTION OF TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

This study aimed to describe about the ways and reasons of engaging students cognitively in classroom interaction of English as a foreign language (EFL). This study applied descriptive qualitative method and the subjects of this study were six English teachers from SMA Panca Budi, SMA Unggulan Al-Azhar, and SMA Plus Al-Azhar in Medan. This study used observation and in-depth interviews as the instruments of the technique of data collection. This study used Miles, Huberman, and Saldana steps such as 1) data condensation, 2) data displays, and 3) data verification as the technique of data analysis. The results showed that the teachers with high knowledge of instructional design but low knowledge of ICT and teachers with low knowledge of instructional design, but high knowledge of ICT used four out of five ways of engaging students in English learning such as 1) developing creative teaching, 2) designing problem-solving, 3) aiming at a reason, and 4) enabling students to evaluate. However, one way was not found such as 1) enabling students decision-making since the limited duration of teaching by using zoom meetings and the condensed syllabus of English learning during covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, they did the four ways differently of engaging students cognitively in classroom interaction of teaching EFL. There were two reasons for different ways of engaging students cognitively in classroom interaction of teaching EFL indicated by 1) different lengths of experiences in teaching and, 2) different knowledge of instructional design and technology. Then, the novelty of this study was 1) cognitive engagement in English learning is dependent on the specific topic to teach, and the ways of cognitive engagement in English learning are dependent on the teachers’ knowledge of the subject taught and technology.