TASK TYPES USED TO TEACH ENGLISH FOR DIFFERENT
STUDY PROGRAMS OF THE SECOND GRADERS: A
QUALITATIVE STUDY AT SMA N 1 SALATIGA
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Meyrawati Christanti Rahmi Andarsih 112009120
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
TASK TYPES USED TO TEACH ENGLISH FOR DIFFERENT
STUDY PROGRAMS OF THE SECOND GRADERS: A
QUALITATIVE STUDY AT SMA N 1 SALATIGA
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Meyrawati Christanti Rahmi Andarsih 112009120
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2013 Meyrawati Christanti Rahmi Andarsih and Listyani, M, Hum.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga.
Abstract
Task is one tool used to acquire learning process. Through task the learners could explore, apply, and also practice what they have learnt. This study attempted to describe types of tasks that are used to teach English to second graders students with different study programs. This study used a research question: What kinds of task used in teaching English for different study programs of second graders in SMA N 1 Salatiga? The students of three second grade classes of senior high school with different study programs and also three teachers who taught different study programs of second graders in SMA N 1 Salatiga would be the participants of this study. The data were collected using observations.The data collected were analyzed using qualitative data analysis. This study found four different types of tasks used by the teachers to teach in English class. Detail analysis would be shown in each different type of tasks.
Key words: task, task types, teaching English, second graders of senior high school.
Introduction
As stated before, each study program has different focus on the learning process, that makes each study program has different learning subject. Based on my experience, there are some different regulations and also some major differences that usually become the consideration of the students on choosing their study program. Nevertheless, in this globalization era, English become an important learning subject in Indonesia. Not only in the language study program, English is also taught in science and social study program. The high awareness of the use of English as a global language leads Indonesia‟s educational department to provide English as foreign language in each stage of school in Indonesia without an exception. Durand (2006:7) said that it is very important to master English because this language is used in almost all kinds of source of global information. This fact becomes a new homework for English teachers to explore the tasks types that will be appropriate for each grade of English learning.
Nowadays, task has become an important thing to be considered. Task itself has been explored in decades by some language experts. As cited in Nunan (2004), Richards, et al. said that task is “an activity or action which is carried out as the result
of processing or understanding language (i.e. as a response)”. Skehan (1998) also mentioned five keys characteristic of task:
- Meaning is primary.
This part explains that the meaning of the task is a part from the outcome of the task.
- Learners are not given other people‟s meaning to regurgitate.
The learners have the opportunity to finish the task using their own style and they may also choose any language form to finish the task.
- There is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities. In task-based language teaching, the task designed is related to real-world activities. Like it is stated in Ellis (2003), a task involves real-world process of language use.
- Task completion has some priorities.
Willis (2004) stated that task is goal oriented which emphasized on understanding and conveying meaning so the task could be completed successfully.
- The assessment of the task is in terms of outcome.
In order to create communicative language learning, a task has to be designed with communicative outcome. As cited in Jeon and Hahn (2006), Willis (1996) stated that the target of language is used for a communicative purpose in order to achieve an outcome.
Ellis (2003: 16) also defines pedagogical task:
correct or appropriate propositional content ha s been conveyed. To this end, it requires them to give primary attention to meaning and to make use of their own linguistic resources, although the design of the task may predispose them to choose particular forms. A task is intended to result in language use that bears a resemblance, direct or indirect, to the way language is used in the real world. Like other language activities, a task can engage productive or receptive, and oral or written skills and also various cognitive processes.
Nunan (2004) in his book tried to define a task in simple language. He stated that that task “is a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language” (Nunan, 2004:4). Here, Nunan stated that task should have a sense of completeness where it can stand alone as a communicative act task from the middle until the end of the task itself. Also, task focuses on the meaning rather than grammatical form, but it still considers the importance of grammar,
…their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in
order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, a middle and an end.
In English as foreign language learning (EFL), task type plays an important role on the process of teaching and learning. Krashen (1985) stated that meaningful language that influences the taskwork can empower the learners to acquire unconscious “acquisition”. Especially in English learning, there are some types of
task to acquire language learning from Task-based Learning method that provide meaningful learning task. “In task-based language teaching (TBLT), direct communication is primary, but a remarkable consensus holds that mere interaction is not sufficient: the tasks are supposed to draw and focus the attention on the critical features of the language, too” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, cited in Harjanne and
Tella, 2008). Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993) as cited in Zacharias (2011 p.197) classified tasks according to the type of interaction which occurs in the process of accomplishing the task that shown in the following classification:
1. Jigsaw task is a task which involves the learners to combine different pieces of information into a whole form.
2. Information-gap task is a task where there are some groups or some individual students who have incomplete information about something and they have to find and must negotiate with other groups or students in order to complete their information.
4. Decision-making task is a task where the students are given a problem with some numbers of possible resolutions. Here, the students have to choose one solution through negotiation and discussion.
5. Opinion exchange task is a task where the learners engage in discussion to exchange their ideas without a need to reach into an agreement.
Shavelson and Stern (1981) as cited in Nunan (2004) stated that a task designer has to consider some elements such as content, materials, activities, goals, students, and social community. A task designer has to consider the content of the task as the subject matter taught to the students. In line with the content, a task designer also has to consider materials as the things learners can observe or manipulate based on the activities that the learners will be doing during a lesson. Materials and activities a task designer created have to be a bridge for the learners to acquire the goals or the teachers‟ general aims for the task. Moreover, it is also important to consider the learners‟ ability, needs, and interest so that the learners can
do their best in finishing the task. Also, a task designer has to consider the social community of the learners. Social community here means the class where the task will be applied. A task designer has to consider the class as a whole and also consider the sense of „groupness‟ in that class.
which specify the relationship between participants in a task, settings which describe where the task takes place (either in the class or out-of-class arrangement), actions which are the procedures and sub-task that the learners have to perform, monitoring which is given in order to supervise the progress of the task, outcomes which are the goals of the task, and feedback which will functioned to evaluate the task given to the students. In minimally, a task should contain two elements which are input data and initiating questions to acquire the goals of the task (Wright, 1987a, cited in Nunan, 2004).
According to Nunan (2004), input refers to the spoken, written and visual data that learners work with in the course of completing a task. Data used in input section can be provided by a teacher, a textbook or some other sources such as articles from newspapers, magazines and journals, songs, news stories and reports, literary works, etc. A simplified input can help the learners to process the language easier. Also, by increasing the frequency of target language items, patterns, and regularities in an input phase, it can give better input for the learners. Giving meaningful input for the students can help them to acquire the goals better.
statements are those that are related to the learners, not the teacher, and those that are couched in terms of observable performance.
The third component of task is procedures. Procedure is needed to process the input and to specify what learners will actually do with the input drawn in the point of the learning task. A procedure is also considers the focus or goals from a task which is called procedural goals. Procedural goals are basically concerned with skill that the learners get or skill that the learners use – in here called as skill getting and skill using (Rivers and Temperley, 1978, cited in Nunan, 2004). In skill getting, learners can master their phonological, lexical, and grammatical forms through memorization and manipulation. Meanwhile, in skill using, the learners can apply those skills in communicative interaction. Furthermore, „procedures‟ is also focus on the
development of accuracy and fluency from the learners.
The definition of the task above made me curious because I believe that there must be a reason from the teacher in choosing task types that he/she uses.
Thus, by referring to the reasons I revealed before, the research question of this study was what kinds of tasks are used in teaching English for different study programs of second graders in SMA N 1 Salatiga? The purpose of this study was to describe the type of tasks that are used to teach different study programs of second graders students of SMA N 1 Salatiga.
The result of the study hopefully can be used as a consideration for senior high school English teachers in choosing, developing and applying suitable task for learners. This paper is also dedicated for teachers who have questions in minds about the kinds of tasks that should be used to teach different study programs of senior high school students. Also, through this paper, it is hoped that the students will be able to acquire better understanding in English.
The Study
were II IPA 2, II IPS 2, and II Bahasa 1. I conducted nine class observations, three times for each class. These observations were recorded, but the recordings were not transcribed. The recordings were used to make the analysis easier by playing several parts of the observation to get the valid findings of this research.
The setting of the study was in SMA N 1 Salatiga. It was located in Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. The participants for this study were chosen by the criterion-based method. Three classes of second graders of senior high school with different study programs and three teachers who taught different study programs of second graders in SMA N 1 Salatiga were the participants of this study.
The data were classified based on the coding related to the types of the task that the teacher used in teaching and learning process. I interpreted the data that I classified through descriptive written explanation (Lynch, 1996). The data were discussed from the simplest task the students got to the complex one. The extract from the tasks given during the observations was also presented in the discussion in order to support each finding.
Discussion
questions called procedure phase to acquire the goals of the task. I presented the findings based on the type of tasks identified from the observation.
Communication strategy task
The first task type identified in the data was a communication strategy task. This task was given in reading section of literary work of Macbeth. Nunan (2004) in his book said that reading could develop a variety of reading skills such as reading for details, skimming, scanning, and making inferences. He also stated that the reading itself could be used as a good start to a discussion when the reading was used as pre-reading. Moreover, this task was considered as communication strategies task because this task was designed to encourage learners to practice communication strategies which were paraphrasing and simplifying the text while they were translating the text into their native language. Input data used in this task was a narrative text from handout entitled Macbeth. The teacher also gave handout for the activity section.
words in an appropriate way. The goal of this activity was to make the students get the main idea of the story from the text.
Secondly, as procedure phase from this activity, the students were asked to translate the text into their native language (Bahasa Indonesia and or Javanese) in order to get better understanding through the text. As the input, the teacher read the first sentence from the text and translated it into Bahasa Indonesia. This input was functioned as stimulation and an example for the students before they are asked to do the same thing. The students were not allowed to use any dictionary; they had to guess the meaning of some unknown words, phases or concept using the surrounding context of the text (Nunan 2004). The goal from this activity was not only to get the deeper understanding of the text, but also to answer the comprehensive questions in the form of true or false questions directly and orally. Through this activity the students were able to practice their reading skill in scanning. They had to find only the key word from the text in order to find out whether the statements in the true-false questions were right or wrong because they already understood the text.
Puzzles or Fill-in-the-blanks task missing lyrics. Here is the lyric used in the listening section:
Extract 1: Complete the lyric of "Price Tag” song bellow
Seems like everybody's got a ________ (1),
I wonder how they sleep at night. When the sale _________ (2) first, That you can't even have a good time
And it wasn't low blows and video hoes,
Am I the only one getting tired? Why is everybody so __________ (13)?
Money can't __________ (14) us happiness
Can we all slow down and enjoy right now?
Guarantee we'll be feeling alright [Jessie J ‒ Outro]
__________ (8), Forget about the ___________ (15)
The goal from this task was to complete the song lyric from the listening section. Through this task, the students were able to practice their ability in selective listening where they only had to listen for key information without trying to understand every word in the lyric (Nunan, 2004). However, this activity was not a hundred percent succeed because some students had already known the lyric very well so they did not have to listen to the recording.
Dialogue and role play task
The third task type identified was a role play task which was given to teach expressions of anger and annoyance. The dialogue and role play task itself was a task that was close to real-world situation the students usually experienced. This task also gave a chance to students to improvise the story because they only got some clues, not the whole dialogue. As the input, the teacher gave a handout for the students. The handout contained some special expressions to show anger and annoyance to others. Some examples were on how to apply the expressions into sentences, and some situations and clues which the students had to transfer into a dialogue. The teacher pointed two pairs of students to read a dialogue which contained anger and annoyance expression. The students were asked to read the dialogue loudly with appropriate intonation. Here is the dialogue:
A: Hello, Squirrel the Tree Climber!
B: Hey! You know it really burns me up when people call me by that name! A: Oops, sorry. It’s just that I heard some boys called you like that.
B: Yeah, okay. Forget it.
A: Sorry about that. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I am just wondering why people call you like that now.
B: Oh, it started last week when I saw a basketball lying on the school court. So I thought I would make the PE-teacher upset by hiding it. I took the ball then climbed a tree to hide it there. But I got stuck and nearly fell but I grabbed on and hung there for nearly half an hour before janitor found me. A: It must be embarrassing for you.
B: It was extremely embarrassing, especially because it was in the school website the next day, and the title was Squirrel the Tree Climber. Boy, I almost died of embarrassment.
Through reading the dialogue as both procedure phase and input phase, the teacher was able to check students‟ pronunciation and intonation in expressing their feelings of anger and annoyance. By reading this dialogue, not only the students reading the dialogue who got the input, but their friends who listened to them also got a picture on expressing anger and annoyance.
patterns of their target language speech community that would cover their life at home, at school and at leisure.
To finish this task, the students got input in the form of situations and clues and some examples of anger and annoyance expression such as “I am fed up with…”, “I am upset with…”, “I am angry with…”, “It annoys me when…”, “I don‟t like it when…”, “I can‟t stand it when…”, “It burns me up when…”, and “I hate it when….” There were two kinds of situations and clues that the students had to choose. They had to develop the situations and clues but those were not more than 15 exchanges. Here were the situations and the clues:
Extract 3: Create a dialogue on the clues given. Situation 1:
A and B are friends who loves parachuting. A went parachuting with some other friends last weekend, but didn’t ask B to join. B sees that A is just getting home from school and goes over to talk.
1. B greets A.
2. A replies the greeting.
3. B asks how the parachuting was. 4. A answers the questions.
5. B expresses anger.
6. A apologizes and explains why B wasn’t invited. 7. B expresses disappointment.
8. A repeats an apology. 9. B accepts an apology. Situation 2:
X and Y are roommates in a dormitory. X has a new laptop. One day, when X is taking bath. Y has a trouble with his/her PC, so Y use X’s laptop. After taking a bath, X is very angry when seeing Y using the laptop.
1. X asks what Y is doing 2. Y explains.
3. X expresses anger.
5. X complains about privacy. 6. Y repeats an apology.
7. X tells Y not to use something without permission.
In order to finish this task, the students had to explore their ability in making sentences. Role play also gave chances for the students to choose the words that they wanted to use or to say. Because the situations that they got from the teacher usually happened in daily life, they tended to make the dialogue naturally like a common daily life communication. The students would also be able to put little unexpected details to the dialogue that they created, which it showed that this activity succeeded in making the students creative.
Linguistic practicing task
The goal of this task was to make the students be aware of the use of certain modal and the choice of appropriate type of modal to put on a sentence. The procedure phase of this task was taking some sentences in an appropriate form and kind of modal. The modals the teacher taught in this section were five groups of modals which were “can, could, and be able to”, “could (do), and could have (done)”, “must (have) and can‟t (have)”, “may (have) and might (have)”, and “may and might (future)” modals. Each section of modal required the students to finish certain types of grammar exercises such as choosing appropriate modal, completing sentences with certain modal, writing down sentences used certain modal, and completing some sentences with appropriate modal based on the situation given.
Conclusion
order to make sure that the task was not going to waste because the students had already memorized the lyric. Also, in the role play section, it would be better if the teacher did not give limitation to the amounts of exchanges that the students made, because it would give more space for students to explore their language ability. English teachers had to create the more interesting and creative task to teach grammar to students because of the amount of the grammar thing given in a meeting. In this way, the goals of the task will be achieved better, and the students will also be more motivated to learn English.
Acknowledgement
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