CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. First Language and Foreign Language
This part comprises the difference between L1 and Foreign Language. 1. First Language
First language is a language that one has learnt first. Based on Cambridge dictionary, L1 is the language that someone learns to speak first. The language also is one uses most in daily live.
The L1 which is meant in this research is Bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia is official language of Republic of Indonesia. The language is commonly used by Indonesian in their activities. Bahasa Indonesia is also the main language in teaching and learning process in Indonesia. Teacher usually uses Bahasa Indonesia to greet students, deliver material, give instruction, and another activity in all subjects except foreign language lessons. In teaching English as a foreign language, Bahasa Indonesia has its own role to be applied in teaching and learning process. According to Butzkamm (2003), the L1 is for all school subjects including foreign language lessons. It means that L1 is employed as an alternative classroom instruction used in EFL class.
a big role for students to learn new language. Furthermore, Thongwichit (2013) adds L1 has now been continually studied as a potential resource in language learning. Besides learning achievement, L1 also has a significant role in reducing students’ affective filters and giving them a more effective way to learn.
2. Foreign Language
A foreign language is any language that is not native to a particular region or person. It is a language not widely spoken and used by the people of a community/society/nation. According to Nunan (2003), Foreign Language context is a situation where the language being learned is not the society’s
language of communication (e.g., learning English in Japan or studying French in Australia). Another example is English in Indonesia. English is considered a foreign language because the country has Bahasa Indonesia as an official language and it is not an English-speaking country. Indonesian people rarely use English in their daily communication. English is only taught to people who need to learn it for their studies or their career.
traveling to a foreign country, for business or vacation, will be much easier if a person can speak the language.
3. Using L1 in FL classrooms
Learning English as a Foreign Language will be influenced by the use of students’ first language. The L1 will give both positive and negative
implication of Foreign Language learning. Butzkamm (2003) summarizes the principles and advantages of using L1 as follows; using the mother tongue, we have (1) learnt to think, (2) learnt to communicate and (3) acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar. Besides, mother tongue aids make it easier to conduct whole lessons in the foreign language. The use of the L1 saves learners from a feeling of frustration they might have within their FL learning.
In fact, the use of L1 also has limitation. According to Jadalah and Hasan (2013), using L1 may become a habit resorted to whenever any difficulties arise. Other than that, this use might be misleading sometimes owing to differences existing between the L1 and the FL. They add that when L1 is used, errors might emerge owing to negative L1 transfer. As an example, difficulties for Arab learners may be related sometimes to the different syntactic structures of sentences in Arabic and English. While Arabic has a V-S-O sentence structure, English generally follows the S-V-O pattern. Another example in Bahasa Indonesia, the structure of noun clause is different with English. In Bahasa Indonesia the pattern is noun + adjective, but in English adjective + noun.
In considering the advantages and disadvantages of L1 in learning foreign language, teacher has to have strategy to make teaching and learning process more effective. The strategies that can be applied in foreign language classes are code switching, code mixing, and translating. Code switching is a situation where speakers deliberately change a code being used, namely by switching from one to another (Jendra, 2010). An example, a teacher switches from Bahasa Indonesia to English “Anak-anak kita lanjutkan materinya, Now
open page 25 please!”
lexical items (Jendra, 2010). Example, “Budi, tulis jawabanmu on the white
board ya”. Both code mixing and code switching are aimed at making the
students accustomed to listen both Bahasa Indonesia and English at one time. The last strategy is translating method. Teacher can translate word or sentence in English to Bahasa Indonesia, or Bahasa Indonesia to English. According to Samadi (2001), The Grammar Translation Method (GTM) allows for the extensive use of L1 to explain new items and to enable comparisons to be made between FL/L2 and L1.
B. Foreign Language Learning
Learning is acquiring or getting of knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction (Brown, 1987). Furthermore, Stern cited in Brown (1987) states language learning is mainly a matter of imitation. You must be a mimic. Just like a small child he imitates everything. In this case, teacher as a model and students will imitate what teacher say and do. Based on Moeller and Catalano (2015), language is the vehicle required for effective human interactions and yields a better understanding of one’s own language and culture. Studying a language provides the learner with the opportunity to gain linguistic and social knowledge.
learner’s everyday life. Thus, foreign language learning contexts are very
different from second language learning contexts, for in second language learning contexts, the language being learned is often used in the learner’s larger
social context (Moeller and Catalano 2015).
In the history, According to Moeller and Catalano (2015) traditionally, learning a foreign language was thought to be a ‘mimetic’ activity, a process that
involved students repeating or imitating new information. A popular method of teaching in the 1950s, called the audio-lingual approach (ALM), promoted an imitation and practice approach to language development. The major figure in the ALM classroom was the instructor who was cast into the role of drill sergeant, expert, and authority figure. Students were relegated to practicing and imitating patterns of the instructor. So the class is will be teacher’s centered learning. Now, learning of foreign language is not based on teacher’s centered learning but students’ centered learning. Students have to practice more in class
so they can speak foreign language fluently
They add that foreign language learning has many benefits. Study of another language allows the individual to communicate effectively and creatively and to participate in real-life situations. Learning another language also provides access into a perspective other than one’s own, increases the ability to see
C. English Pedagogy
Pedagogy is becoming a term of increasing importance in English studies. Pedagogy is a complex field of practice, theory and research in its own right (Alexander: 2009), Furthermore, he explain that;
Pedagogy is the observable act of teaching together with its attendant discourse of educational theories, values, evidence and justifications. It is what one needs to know, and the skills one needs to command, in order to make and justify the many different kinds of decisions of which teaching is constituted.
English pedagogy is all about practice, theory and research of English. English language learners need special consideration not only because they lack the language skills and knowledge (vocabulary, grammar, structures, etc.) of first language learners, they lack understanding of the embedded cultural knowledge. Therefore, teacher has to know how to make English language learners master in English by considering the use of L1 in EFL classes. In general the teachers were found to employ the students’ L1 for a number of common functions:
instructional: facilitating comprehension, explaining grammar, new words and
concepts; managerial: classroom management (instructions, discipline); providing feedback; and for affective purposes, such as encouraging and comforting students (Inbar-Lourie, 2010).
beneficial especially for low-level students, as it helps them to stay focused and be involved in the lesson (Elmetwally, 2012)
D. Previous Research Findings
There are at least three previous research findings which can support the concept of this research. Manara (2007) carried out a research about teachers’
and students’ opinions of the use of the mother tongue in the EFL classroom and
teachers’ and students’ decision making of when to use L1 in their teaching and
learning activity in the classroom. The subject is nine non-native speaker teachers (6 females and 3 males) and 216 students from three different universities in Central Java, Indonesia.
The data gathering was done firstly by conducting a classroom observation to find out the teachers’ and students’ practice of using the mother
tongue in the EFL classroom. After the classroom observation was conducted, two sets of questionnaires were distributed to the teachers and the students to find out their general perceptions on the use of the mother tongue.
Besides, Mahadeo (2013) investigated the teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards the pedagogic use of Creole in English language classes in Mauritian State Secondary Schools. It also explores their reasons for doing or not doing so and their perceived effects of the use of Creole in the students’ English language learning. The research used a mixed both qualitative and quantitative approaches in data collection and data analysis.
The data comprised English language teachers’ responses to (i) questionnaires gathering their views regarding the use of Creole in English lessons, (ii) interviews concerning their general opinion about employing Creole in English classrooms, and (iii) classroom observations about what happens in their actual teaching. His study was conducted in two secondary schools in Mauritius where all students speak Creole as their L1. There were 20 participants in the study, 10 from each school.
The findings and data analysis indicate that (i) there were three distinct types of English language teachers in Mauritius as far as the beliefs and attitudes towards Creole use in English classes are concerned; (ii) whereas using English solely in English classes could provide students with maximal exposure for language enhancement, Creole had a pedagogic role to play in such aspects as building rapport, catering for learners’ diversity and facilitating students’
Furthermore, Thongwichit (2013) conducted a research with the aim was investigating the university students’ attitudes and purposes of L1 use in English
classrooms to propose a guideline for teachers of English at the university level. The researcher used a mixed methods type research to integrate data from multiple sources: survey, semi-structured interview and field notes from a group of the second-year, the third-year and the fourth-year students at a government university in southern Thailand.
The results showed that the overall students hold positive attitude towards L1 use as it plays significant roles in domains of affective filter, comprehensible input, language preferences and language proficiency. Furthermore, the data revealed that L1 is expected by the students to be used in translation, instruction, discussion, vocabulary, grammar and comprehension check.
Similarly with those three researches above, this research was conducted to know how the use L1 in EFL classes. Then, the technique of collecting data of the previous research was also similar with this research, they are; interview, observation, and questionnaire. On the other hand, this research also had differences with those previous researches like in the subject of research; two previous researches were done at university level and one previous research was done at secondary school. Next, the result of all previous researches only explained the students’ and teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards the use of
