T1__Full text Institutional Repository | Satya Wacana Christian University: Teachers’ Difficulties in Teaching Using English in International Class of Economic Faculty T1 Full text

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TEACHERS’ DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING USING ENGLISH IN INTERNATIONAL CLASS OF ECONOMIC FACULTY

THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Sarjana Pendidikan

Chanhyung Cho 112012901

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROGRAM FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS UNIVERSITAS KRISTEN SATYA WACANA

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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@ 2016. Chanhyung Cho and Prof. Dr. Gusti Astika, M. A.

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 Language Education Program, Faculty of Language and Arts, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga.

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INTRODUCTION

In these days, English is the most common language to use in the world. English also becomes international languange that is needed principaly in Economic field. As Neeley (2012) said in his article, more and more multinational companies are considering English as their corporate language, even though their native countries have their own language. However, the use of English is not only applied in big companies but also in small and medium-sized enterprises. It is obviously that a company needs people who can speak English in order to promote their companies and to deal with other bigger or smaller companies. This is the reason why the economic students have to study English hard so that they can compete internationally in the future.

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asked to learn in a full English class. This program not only focuses on English, but also focus on the contents, Economy. In this program all the subjects were related to the economic study but using English in teaching as the medium of instruction. Thus this program can be categorized as CLIL class. However, difficulties started to appear since most the students that enrolled in this program had never experienced CLIL classroom before they enrolled to Faculty of Economy, their junior and senior high schools still use traditional EFL pedagogies.

The teacher have to use only English in international classes, so they might have some difficulties in managing the class. The other difficulty is the teacher‟s confidence and experience. Actually, the educational background of the teachers who are in international class in ICMAP, is English, Education, and Economy. However, many of them didn‟t have enough experience teaching in English before, especially for a specific purpose. As Parkay, Stanford, and Gougeon (2010) mentioned in his article, teachers who want to succeed need high level of professionalism and commitment. This is the reason why they have difficulties in teaching in international class. Based on the discussion above, the research question used in this research is „What are the teachers‟ difficulties in teaching using English in international class of

the Economic department?‟

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teachers. First, the teachers might have significant information such as what kind of challenges and problems that actually they faced. Second, after knowing the problems the teachers can be more prepared for the class with better understanding. Third, the learners in international class of the Economic department can learn their Economic materials easier from the teachers. These things could become a recomendations or suggestions when they teach in English in international class.

LITERATURE REVIEW

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

In order to master content of any specialization, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is one of the growing learning methods in the world. According to Coyle, Hood, and Marsh (2010), “Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language”. Besides

that in the development of CLIL, Coyle, Hood, and Marsh (2010) also stated that, “The recent growing interest in CLIL can be understood by examining best practice

in education which suits the demands of the present day, globalization and the forces of economic and social convergence have had a significant impact on who learns which languange, at what stage in their development, and in which way”. Moreover, Novotna and Hofmannova (2005) mentioned that the aim of CLIL is to lead to improvement in two subjects, the foreign language and the non-language area competence, and through CLIL, students can develope the positive attitudes to foreign language. From these perspectives, we can see that CLIL could help the teacher to increase the level of education systems worldwide since it can give positive impact to students on mastering both linguistic and the learning content.

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traditional EFL pedagogies, thus even though they can learn with reading books, it could be difficult to learn with full English speaking in the class, because they are not familiar with speaking English.

Common difficulties in teaching using English

English is a foreign languange. It is a difficult subject for students in Indonesia. Firstly, one of the problems that can be predicted is communication. English is not the students‟ mother tongue, so it would affect students‟ understanding in class. Ariana (2007) uttered that the main use of language is for communication, but it can be the main obstacle. Moreover, it brings the result of not being able to understand some concepts in students‟ mother tongue. It is also important to concentrate on grammar and other skills. However, communicating skill is the most important to do in economic activities such as trading, negotiating, and so on. Ariana (2007) also mentioned that it is a good solution to use a translator or translation to get rid of the communication problem. However, the teacher have to use full English in international class, and they have to teach students without translators and translation. So, sometimes it brings about some communication problems.

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statements we can see that for students, English skill can become a problem in class and can be difficulties that the teacher should face.

Recommended stage of using English in class

There is a research from Lee (2008) which aimed to understand the difficulties experienced by some subject teachers who teach their subjects in English in bilingual schools. The subjects are Mathematics and Science in that research. Even though Economic and Mathematics are different subjects, somehow the way to teach the learner is similar. They, who are the Mathematics teacher in Lee‟s research and Economic teachers who are my participants, have almost same experience when they taught those subjects in English to non-native English learner. Lee (2008) examined that using English in bilingual classes should have some stages for learners. For examples, for the method in the first years, he recommended teachers use 75 percent of learners‟ mother tongue, and 25 percent of English. And then, it is better using 50

percent of learners‟ mother tongue, and 50 percent of English. Thus, the amount of

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7 Qualification of international/CLIL teachers

International/CLIL teachers have to have good English skill to explain the materials. They have to have high standard of knowledge of the subjects. Novotna and Hofmannova (2005) uttered that the CLIL teachers‟ common competences is to cover the knowledge of the subjects, skills, and their application. Moreover they mentioned that CLIL teachers should have good skill of the target language and rely on the learners‟ native language with care. Novotna and Hofmannova (2005) also

argued that CLIL teachers have to be able to give the effective ways how students‟ negative impact of learing could be decreased tactfully and to do that they have to use various effective strategies. Moreover, they also mentioned qualified CLIL teachers who should be able to determine appropriate strategies to work. Further, teachers need the ability that can maintain students‟ motivation and interest with proper

learning processes and oppotunities in appropriate time management.

THE STUDY

Context of the study

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the courses in the Faculty of Economic in Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. The ICMAP teachers use full English in their classes except some situations such as even though teachers explain some material with English 2~3 times but students can‟t understand at all, they use Indonesian language. They had never experienced the CLIL class before the students enrolled the ICMAP. Because of that reason, the teachers faced many difficulties from the students.

Method of research

This research describe teachers‟ difficulties in using English in International Class of Economic Faculty, and descriptive method was used for this research. Sandelowski (2000) mentioned that descriptive method is the method that is for describing characteristics or behaviors of phenomenon or the given population. It is also one of the research types which primarily relate with finding out “What is/are” question.

Participant

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before they started teaching in ICMAP courses. Those 3 ICMAP teachers had different educational background.

Research instrument

Semi-structured interview was used for interviewing them. The interview proceeded on the basis of questions that had been prepared. Moreover, face-to-face interviews (FtF interview) were used in each interviewees‟ office. According to Raymond (2006), “FtF interviews can take its advantage of social cues. Social cues, such as voice, intonation, body language etc. of the interviewee can give the interviewer a lot of extra information that can be added to the verbal answer of the interviewee on a question. Of course the value of social cues also depends on what the interviewer wants to know from the interviewee.”It shows that FtF is appropriate

interview to get a lot of extra infomation from interviewees. And it is quite proper with semi-structured interview, because interviewee can give them some new questions depending on their social cues. The languages used in these interview were English and Indonesian, depending on the interviewees.

Data collection procedure

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was about teaching difficulties in using full English in Economy classes. Questions were also developed to get more useful data during the interview.

Data analysis procedure

The interview data was analyzed through transcibing, categorizing. First, the data recorded from participant of ICMAP was transcribed. After that, it was categorized into the several parts such as „students‟ ability‟, „classroom management‟, etc. After that, the next step was analyzing the data that were categorized after the two steps. Then, finding and discussions were deducted from these categorized data.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This section discussed the difficulties in teaching using English in International Class of Management and Accounting Program (ICMAP) of Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. Based on the interview, there were 7 difficulties included in the following discussion. From all of the difficulties, some of the teacher had the same difficulties with other teachers but some of them had different perspectives on specific difficulties.

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English rather than using Indonesian. According to them, since the students had difficulties and couldn‟t understand even though they tried to explain with easier vocabulary, they just explained with Indonesian language.

Classroom management

The first difficulty that the teacher faced in their class was about the classroom management. Some teachers faced this difficulty not only from students, but also from other factors such as teaching system. As for the CLIL teacher, they might have difficulties for managing the class because in the international class, the teacher uses only one language to manage the class, and in this case English is used. One of the teachers‟ difficulties are the interaction with students. Teachers use

English because it is in the international class, however, sometimes using English may disrupt the communications between the teacher and students due to lack of understanding in English. It is also because generally not all of the students have the same level of English. First, teacher A said,

I have difficulties. First, not all of students are mastering English for that class. Second, in the ICMAP class, the students feel special because they think they are better than the others especially from the regular class, so its affect the classroom management.

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The teacher A, B, and C uttered that their daily assignments were to prepare and review the material that the students studied in the previous class and the students would study in the next class. Nevertheless, some students didn‟t prepare the material because of their attitude. Fernandez (2009) mentioned in his research that the learners have to bring to their classroom with implicit linguistic knowledge of their L1 about the materials. The ICMAP students could get that knowledge through their daily assignments from ICMAP teachers, however they didn‟t prepare the material for next class. Even though teachers gave the assignment to the student to teach them more clearly in the next class, the students didn‟t follow their teachers‟ instruction. Teacher C also mentioned the classroom management difficulty that was caused by student. He claimed that students didn‟t have clear idea of what was expected from the classes

and their programs, so that some students felt quite reluctant to join the class actively. Moreover he had some kind of challenges because there were no fixed systems or lesson plan at the first year of ICMAP, 2013. Teacher C said,

Not really difficulty but I have some kind of challenge. Those are no fixed systems or lesson plans, students didn‟t have clear idea of what is expected from them, classes, and program. Finally, some students quite reluctant to join the class.

On the other hand, teacher B mentioned that he had difficulty when explaining material in English. He said that his English is not so good, that‟s the why he had difficulty. Teacher B said,

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Absolutely he is not native English speaker, so his English explanation of the material was less perfect than as used Indonesian language. He mentioned that he had to prepare more for the ICMAP class than the regular class that used Indonesia language. Of course he could explain materials in English, however it was not as perfect as using indonesian language.

Moreover, it could be seen that the many difficulties were occured by students‟ level of English and experiences. They didn‟t have experiences using full English in their junior and senior highschool classes. It made the students felt nervous to use English in the class or felt uncomfortable to use English when they learnt economic materials in English.

Communication with students

The second difficulty that the teacher faced in their class was communication with students in English. It had connection with previous difficulty, classroom management. The teacher C mentioned that he had small problem with explaining the material in English. It meant that he had difficulty about communication in English.

Teacher A, B, and C uttered that one of the difficulties teaching using English in class was communication with students. Teacher A said,

Sometimes I got difficulties, but sometimes not because some students are very good at English but some of them are under average.

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If there are difficulties then it must be from the student sides. I always try to using English all the time. However, not all the students are 100% ready. Sometimes if student can‟t understand or can‟t get what I‟m saying, so that I have to repeat my explanation.

English was not their native language, so absolutely they had some difficult to use English. Almost communication problems were from students. Even though there were many students who have high level of English, but not all students were. Different with Teacher A and C, Teacher B said,

I can speak English but has problem with grammar and vocabulary so has difficulties to explain some material to the students.

In other words, communication problem occured not only because of the students‟ faults but sometimes it also happened because of the teachers‟ English skill. It is very different with Teacher A and Teacher B which claimed the teachers got difficulties because some of the students‟ English skills were under average.

Nevertheless, communication can be successful if both parties; teacher and students in this context, can understand what the opponent want to say.

Students’ different English ability

The third difficulty that the teacher faced in their class was students‟ different English ability. According to Teacher A some student‟s has problem with reading, speaking, and writing. Teacher A mentioned,

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According to Teacher A, students‟ ability can give rise to one of teachers‟ difficulties. As she uttered in the previous finding; difficulties of communication with students, that just a few students are very excellent in English, some others are average. It doesn‟t matter for her teaching using English. However the important part is the next part that 1/3 of her class students have poor English skill. She has to use English for teaching in ICMAP, nevertheless students‟ English skill are not enough to

understand her teaching. For example, teachers want to teach economic terminologies, students probably don‟t know not only the English words but also

Indonesian words. She mentioned in her interview, those economic terminologies are not students‟ daily word. So teachers have to explain several times and slowly

without Indonesian language.

Meanwhile, Teacher B and Teacher C agreed that students had problem especially in listening skill. Teacher B said,

I always ask them whether can they follow my explanation or not, and if they had I will try to explain again with another sentences or words. Also sometimes when the students have to write their work, I can still find there is a problem with their grammar skill.

Teacher C also said,

I did have problem actually, sometimes not all students really got what I said in English, so I have to repeat.

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simplify too much the higher level students will get boring. So, different level of English mastery is another problem for the teacher.

Teacher’s confidence

The fourth difficulty that the teacher had is about the teacher confidence in teaching in English. In teaching, the teacher should have confidence so that the teacher can deliver the material to the student well. These difficulties also experienced by Teacher B. During the interview about his confidence, Teacher B said,

Yes, sometimes we are also nervous. So, before we enter the class usually we preparing ourselves by reading and understand all about the chapter. When we read the material before class, our confidences to teach become higher.

Despite of that, different with Teacher B, Teacher A and Teacher C didn‟t seem to have any difficulties on their confidence, as they said,

Problem about confidence? Well not me I think. Because my background is already english. I graduated from the English department and then I studied in Australia, so there‟s no problem for me about my confidence.Well, about expereince is okay for me, I have been taught once in Australia.

In the same way, Teacher C uttered,

I don‟t think so because I had experience studying abroad and had experience in teaching subject using English for about 7 years.

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confidence the teacher had, the more comfortable the class will be held whether for the teacher side neither the students side.

Teaching Strategy & Method

The fifth problem that teacher had was the teacher strategy and method. As we know, there are many kinds of strategies and methods that can be used when teaching in class. However, it is important for the teacher to decide which is the best method that can be used in class. During the interview Teacher A, Teacher B, and Teacher C had different strategies and method used in class. As teacher A claimed,

I lectured by doing presentation. In class, I also sometimes gives the students class assignment in order to motivate them using English as much as possible. Teacher B said,

The teaching method that has been used is reading book and gives assessment to the students. The students might work in a group and all the material will be divided based on how many chapter we have and then each group will doing presentation.

Different with Teacher A and B, Teacher C said,

The teacher usually used communication for global preparation. I took them some reading books in the class, I also assigned the students to read the books outside the class, and after that they have to report and have presentation in the class.

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good way for motivate the students study deeper about the material. The other way was using communication. The teacher gave material such hand book or book for the students to read and practice to communicate. Thus, the students could remember in the material and improving their English ability.

Making lesson plan

The sixth difficulty that the teacher faced in their class was making lesson plan. There were many kinds of lesson plans for the teachers, and teachers could choose some kinds of lesson plan that was quite proper with themselves. However, each faculty usually had their standard format lesson plan to help them to make proper lesson plan for those faculty. The standard format lesson plan helped not only the teachers but also the students. If all teachers who teach the same material have different lesson plan, students also get confused. So some faculties have their standard lesson plan. Teacher C‟s answer had relation with this difficulty. Teacher C

explained,

In ICMAP program there is no standard format for the teacher, means each subject will have different lesson plan. I would set my own receipt, not really lesson plan but course outlines for some subject.

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B mentioned they don‟t have difficulty on making the lesson plan, because they were

teaching more than 20 years.

Motivating students

The last difficulty that the teacher faced in their class was motivating students. ICMAP is a program in the Faculty of Economic and Business of Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. The regular program and ICMAP program use almost same materials. However, the main different studying method between the regular program and the ICMAP program is the main language of the program. Regular FEB students learn their material in Indonesian, and ICMAP students used English as the medium of instruction. As teacher A, C mentioned ICMAP students feel they are more special students than the regular FEB student, because they are using English. They usually don‟t want to study harder, because of their arrogance.

To make the student motivated, 3 teachers have their own skills. Teacher A mentioned,

When students are not motivated, then you will feel like they grab you, and that is the bad thing that you have to avoid. Well you have to give them motivation, like for example give them actual example.

Different with that Teacher B said,

I try to handle the class as best as I can. For the student‟s motivation, maybe about 80% is good.

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Actually start from the beginning of the class I have reminded them of the important of being able to communicate in English for global life. Whether you are students of the international program or you are students of the regular program you still need to be able to communicate in English for your university life and the life after they graduated.

From the interview it can be concluded, Teacher A,B, and C displined the students by giving them motivation. Since teacher motivation are connected and can influence the teacher motivation so it‟s important for the teacher to maintain the students motivation.

CONCLUSION

This study found out the teachers‟ difficulties in using English in international class of the Economic Department at Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW) in order to give a contribution to help current teaching with CLIL theory for candidate teachers. The course name of the international class of the Economic Department at SWCU is ICMAP. It is the abbreviation word from International Class of Management and Accounting Program. The findings and discussions were collected by the 3 participants from ICMAP on the interview section. According to findings, the result of interview were stated that there were 7 main difficulties about using English in international class of the Economic department at SWCU. Those were classroom management, communication with students, students‟ different English

ability, teacher‟s confidence, teaching strategy and method, making lesson plan, and

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ability, motivation students, and so on. The most important difficulty was different English level of students, because of that, teachers had to make easier material and speak slowly or repeatedly, and manage time allocation of class longer.

As the above sentences analyzed, the teachers gave useful guideline such as their three steps of solutions for the lower level students. These steps were repeating their explanation, explaining again with another sentences or word, and using Indonesian languages. By 3 participants‟ interview, they used 90 percent of English

and 10 percent of Indonesian language in the class. However, according to Lee‟s idea of the stage of using English in the class, it is better to use English increases each year for the students to adapt using English easily in bilingual class. However, this research also suggested the teacher to standardize their teaching systems and lesson plan also to observe the class before teaching so the teacher can understand each level of student‟s English. The reason is that not every ICMAP students had experience of bilingual classes. Moreover, ICMAP have to be more selective when they accept the freshman. For example, they could use some entrance exam before the students enroll the ICMAP.

This study has limitations. First, this study just focused on the teachers‟

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suggest gathering and analyzing the students‟ background of education. This study

focused on the teachers‟ difficulties, not students‟, if there were the information or

opinion of students‟ side, it would probably give more specific information to the

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research was accomplished with many people‟s support and attention. First of all, I would like to God for his blessing. I am sure that without his blessing, I couldn‟t finish my thesis. Once again, thank to God to give me the tenacity and responsibility.

Second, I would also like to thank to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Gusti Astika. M.A. for his kindness, guidance, patience, help, and many things to do for me during all these times. And I would also express my gratitude for my thesis examiner Anita Kurniawati, M. Hum. for her patience in reading my thesis and giving many useful suggestions.

Third, I would like to thank to my participants. I can not finish my research without their kindness and experiences. And thanks to all of the lecturers and staffs in Faculty of Language and Art for everything during 4 years.

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Wowor, always make me happy and cheer me up. Thanks to make my memorable moments in my Indonesia and college life.

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25 References

Ariana, S. M. (2007). Teaching English to Economics Students. The Impact of Foreign Languages on the Development of the Business Environment,

984-985.

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Fernandez, D. J. (2009). CLIL at the university level: Relating language teaching with and through content teaching. Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning, 2(2), 10-26.

Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London: Edward Arnold.

Lauder, A. (2008). The status and function of English in Indonesia: A review of key factors. SosialHumaniora, 12(1), 9-20.

Lee, C. (2008). Interdisciplinary collaboration in English language teaching: Some observations from subject teachers‟ reflections. Reflections on English

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Neeley, T. (2012). Global Business Speaks English: Why You Need a Language Strategy Now. Harvard Business Review. 90(5), 116-124.

Novotna, J. and Hofmannova, M. (2005). Teacher training for Content and Language Integrated Learning. Chalrles University, Czech: Faculty of Education.

Parkay, F. W., Stanford, B. H., & Gougeon, T. D. (2010). Becoming a teacher. Pearson/Merrill, 432-462

Raymond, O. (2006). Advantages and Disadvantages of Four InterviewTechniques in Qualitative Research.Forum:Qualitative Social Research, 7(4), Art. 11, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0604118.

Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing & Health, 23, 334–340.

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27 APPENDIX Dear lecturers,

I‟m Chanhyung Cho, athesis student who is currently conducting a research. This

research is conducted to know the lecturers‟ opinions and comments about ICMAP.

Feel free to answer it in Bahasa Indonesia or English. Thank you for your cooperation.

- Do you have difficulties when you managed the class?

- Do you any difficulties when you communicate with student?

- Do you have problem with level of the students? How difficult?

- Do you have problem with your confidence and experience?

- What is your teaching method? (for example, reading books, presentation…or

and so on)

- How about the percentage of using English in class? (Any difficulties?)

- Do you have problem with your English skill to explain material?

- Any problem with teachers‟or students‟ attitude to teach in ICMAP (CLIL)?

- Do you have any problem with Teachers‟ strategies?/ what kind of strategies

are used?

- Teachers‟ motivation? Students‟ motivation?

- Students‟ problem to understand material?