CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1. Background of the Study

In the classroom students do their educational activity - learning - but they also do another activity like playing and socializing with their friends. Classroom is a small miniature of wide society filled in with many elements. Classroom is a real social context where its elements (teacher and learner) enter into equally real social relationship each other, but, in the sense of education, it's an artificial environment for teaching, learning, and using a foreign language.

The process of teaching and learning is the most common element in the language classroom. Language teaching, in a simple word, can be defined as the activities which are intended to bring about language learning. It is assumed that language teaching is proposed to help people to learn and use the language. According to Dewey in Risk (1985 : 6), language teaching is the direction or the guidance of learning. Learning, as every body knows, refers to the acquisition of knowledge and skill. Based on these definitions, then, language learning will be placed in appropriate definition as the learning to have knowledge and skill in language.

The process of teaching and learning almost occurs in the classroom. Tsui (1995 : 1) defines classroom as a place where more than two people gather together for the purpose of learning, with one having the role of the teacher. Classroom is not a place where the teacher just carries out predetermined routines, but rather than a place where various elements interact one another. These elements are the teacher with their educational background, the students, experience, knowledge, and expectation and also the activity in the classroom.

Language learning occurs through meaningful interaction. Interaction, then, will certainly involves students. In other words, it can be said that language learning is a two-way interaction between all the elements in class. Those elements handle the same significant role in deciding whether the learning will achieve its aim or not. Each element cannot dominate the others. The teacher, then, handles a significant role in creating an atmosphere that stimulates students to participate in the classroom. The teacher also has to plan certain activities and interactions in order to achieve or produce a particular behavioral outcome.

According to Anderson, as quoted by Skinner (1984 : 4-6), the teacher's role in the classroom can be described under three broad categories : (1) Selecting and organizing material (The teacher has to select and organize the material to be learned); (2) Guiding and directing learning; and (3) Evaluation to know how well he has done as a teacher and how well his students have learned.

One important element, besides the teacher, is the students that also play many significant roles. In the language classroom, the students can be positioned as object; but sometime they have to put themselves as subject. It means that they are not only as receiver but also as an independent one who can speak up, give ideas, and contribute to language in the classroom. As Chaudron's opinion (1998 : 9) learners have their own initiative, productivity, and strategies in classroom learning rather than passive absorption of the teachers' information of precise adherence to the performance of classroom activities.

In the speaking classroom, the teacher and the students have significant roles to the process of teaching and learning. These elements (teacher and students) constantly interact one another in which the teacher and the students are the main subjects. In speaking class, the teacher is not allowed to dominate the class where he keeps talking or giving more question. Each element has as much to contribute as very other participant in determining the direction and outcome of the interaction.

Interaction simply means communication which implies more than one person. The importance of interaction is explained by Rivers (1981 : 160-162) : "Through interaction, students can increase their language store as they listen to or read authentic material, or even the output of their fellow students in discussion, skits, joint problem solving tasks, or dialogue journals. In interaction, students can use all they possess of the language -all they have learned or casually absorbed - in real-life exchange. Even at an elementary stage, they learn in this way to exploit the elasticity of language" (Brown, 1994 : 159).

Ellis (1988 : 94) states the role of interaction into following points : (1) when learners are addressed by fully component speakers of language, the latter adjust both the formal and discourse levels of the language they use. Learners also employ certain strategies to enable communication to take place; (2) there is insufficient evidence to decide whether these interactional modifications are responsible for the route learners follow in Foreign Language Development (FLD) or Second Language Development (SLD), although it would seem unlikely that those are the major determining factors. There is an evidence to suggest that the types of learners' interactions developed by the influence of the rate progress; and (3) Interaction contributes to development because it is the means by which the learner is able to crack the code.

In the speaking classroom, interaction should be encouraged. In other words, it is the teacher's responsibility to promote the interactive language teaching in the class. In the interaction, however, teacher should not dominate the class, instead facilitate students in practicing speaking as much as they possibly can. As Rivers says :

"For the genuine interaction language learning requires, however, individuals (teachers as well as students) must appreciate the uniqueness of other individuals with their special needs - not manipulating or directing or deciding how they can or will learn, but encouraging them and drawing them out (educating), and building up their confidence and enjoyment in what they are doing". (1987 : 9)

From the explanation above, we know that interaction in the language classroom is very important in the process of teaching and learning. In the speaking classroom, how the teaching-learning process run well also depends on the interaction between the teacher and the students. Therefore, understanding the interaction happening in the speaking classroom is also very important. Based on the description above, the writer is interested to study the interaction in a language classroom - especially speaking - of the tenth grade in the Senior High School.

2. Identification of the Problem

Related to the background of the study, there are some problems that may arise. The writer identifies the problems as follows :

a. How is the English teaching process at SMA X?
b. How is the English learning process at SMA X?
c. How is the interaction between the teacher and the students in the Speaking classroom?
d. What kinds of feedback does the teacher use in the speaking classroom interaction?
e. What are the problems faced by the teacher in the speaking classroom interaction?
f. What can English teacher do to overcome the problems?
g. How can the teacher and the students overcome the problems?

3. Limitation of the Problem
In order to reach the expected goal, the writer limits the problems on the following terms :
a. The study is limited to the pattern of interaction happening in the speaking classroom.
b. The writer stresses the analysis on the percentage of teacher's talk and student's talk in the speaking classroom interaction.

c. The population of the research is limited to the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri X.

The method used in this study is descriptive method and the data are analyzed by using FLint system.

4. The Formulation of the Problem
The problem discussed can be stated as follows :

a. How is the percentage of the teacher's talk and the student's talk occurring in the speaking classroom interaction?

b. What patterns of interaction happen in the speaking classroom interaction?
c. What kinds of problems occur in the speaking classroom interaction?

5. The Benefit of the Study

From this study, it is expected that the result of the research can give a contribution to the language teaching and learning in general. To the researcher, many new valuable experiences in language education are useful for her preparation to be an English teacher in the future. To the teacher and the students, this study is very useful because they will get much information related to their activities in the classroom, especially in what patterns are the interactions between the teacher and the students happened in the speaking classroom. The teacher can also identify the problems arising in the speaking interaction and able to overcome them. Hopefully, the description of the interaction in the speaking classroom can give a valuable input to improve the quality of language teaching and learning.