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A STUDY ON OUT-OF-CLASS LANGUAGE ACTIVITIES
AMONG THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF
JOANNES BOSCO JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL YOGYAKARTA
A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree
in English Language Education
By
Monika Barek Tokan Student Number: 111214053
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:
Nama : Monika Barek Tokan
Nomor Mahasiswa : 111214053
Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
A STUDY ON OUT-OF-CLASS LANGUAGE ACTIVITIES AMONG THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF
JOANNES BOSCO JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL YOGYAKARTA beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta
Pada tanggal: 13 Juli 2016 Yang menyatakan
vi ABSTRACT
Tokan, Monika Barek. (2016). A Study on Out-of-Class Language Activities among the Eighth Grade Students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta: English Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma University.
Out-of-class language activities are considered as important elements for Junior High School students because out-of-class language activities can support English learning in the classroom. Junior High School students are expected to engage themselves in the proper kinds of out-of-class language activities to support their English learning in the classroom. In fact, not all Junior High School students can engage themselves in proper kinds of out-of-class activities. Knowing the kinds of out-of-class language activities carried out by students can help their teachers to encourage students to engage themselves in English activities outside the classroom in proper ways . The purpose of this study is to obtain the information about the kinds of out-of-class language activities that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School engaged in.
This study used survey method. The researcher used a questionnaire as an instrument for this research. This study used a five-point Likert scale. The researcher distributed the questionnaires to eighty one students who were the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta.
The results showed that most students of the eighth grade of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta, as teenagers students, were frequently engaged in self-directed activities which were intrinsically interesting to them such as listening to songs, watching movies, and writing status on FB. The reason was the average score from the questionnaire in these kinds of activities were the highest one. In addition, the study also found that students were frequently engaged in self-instruction activities for the sake of learning English if the activities associated with school assignments.
The findings of this study can be used to help English teachers of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta to encourage students to engage in activities which are considered as the interesting activities for them but also can support their English. In other words, out-of-class language activities conducted by junior high school students can be used to support English learning in the classroom as far as teachers give attention to this out-of-class language activities.
vii ABSTRAK
Tokan, Monika Barek. (2016). A Study on Out-of-Class Language Activities among the Eighth Grade Students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta: Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Out-of-class language activities merupakan unsur pentingbagi para siswa SMP karena dapat digunakan untuk melengkapi pembelajaran di kelas bahasa Inggris. Siswa SMP diharapkan agar dapat terlibat dalam out-of-class language activities untuk mendukung pembelajaran bahasa Inggris di kelas. Namun dalam kenyataanya, tidak semua siswa SMP terlibat dalam out-of-class language activities secara tepat. Dengan mengetahui jenis-jenis out-of-class language activities yang dilakukan siswa, para guru dapat terbantu untuk mendorong para siswa agar terlibat dalam kegiatan-kegiatan tersebut dengan cara yang tepat. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk memperoleh informasi tentang jenis-jenis out-of-class language activities yang dilakukan oleh siswa kelas VIII SMP Joannes Bosco Yogyakarta.
Penelitian ini menggunakan metode survei. Peneliti menggunakan kuesioner sebagai instrumen untuk penelitian ini dan juga menggunakan lima poin skala Likert. Peneliti menyebarkan kuesioner kepada delapan puluh satu siswa yang merupakan siswa kelas VIII SMP Joannes Bosco Yogyakarta.
Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kebanyakan siswa kelas VIII SMP Joannes Bosco Yogyakarta sebagai pelajar remaja terlibat dalam kegiatan kegiatan self-directed yang secara intrinsik menarik untuk mereka seperti mendengarkan lagu, menonton film, dan menulisdi FB. Alasannya adalah skor rata-rata siswa dari hasil kuesioner dalam jenis-jenis kegiatan ini adalah yang tertinggi. Disamping itu, penelitian juga menemukan bahwa siswa terdorong melakukan kegiatan self-instruction untuk kepentingan pembelajaran bahasa Inggris sejauh kegiatan itu berkaitan dengan tugas-tugas sekolah.
Temuan dari penelitian ini dapat membantu para guru bahasa Inggris dari SMP Joannes Bosco Yogyakarta untuk mendorong siswa agar terlibat dalam kegiatan-kegiatan yang dianggap sebagai yang menarik bagi mereka tapi sekaligus penting untuk mendukung bahasa Inggris mereka. Dengan kata lain, out-of-class language activities yang dilakukan para siswa SMP dapat digunakan untuk mendukung pembelajaran bahasa Inggris di dalam kelas apabila para guru juga terlibat dengan memberi perhatian untuk out-of-class language activities ini.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, my deepest gratitude is for our Lord, Jesus Christ for His blessings, love, strength, inspiration, and guidance for me during the process of finishing my thesis.
Though only my name appears on the cover of this thesis, a great many people have helped me in finishing my thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to my beloved advisor, Dr. Retno Muljani, M.Pd., for her patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. My sincere thanks also goes to all the lecturers of English Language Education Study Program for teaching and guiding me during my study from the first semester until the last semester in Sanata Dharma University.
I address my gratitude to the headmaster of Joannes Bosco Junior High School, Ibu Ag. Nuranisah S, S. Ag. , who has permitted me to conduct the research in the school. I would give thanks to Ibu Asterina Saptiani, S. Pd., the eighth grade of English teacher at Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta for her willingness that I could conduct the research in her class.
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I thank my friends who make my life meaningful: Ayu Wulan Kinanti, Rosa Anindya Puspitasari, Merry Trisna Murti, Sella S. I thank them for the support, love, encouragement, laughter, and sharing.
My sincere gratitude also goes to people whose names cannot be mentioned one by one, for the prayers, support, and help during the process of finishing my thesis.
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PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI ... v
ABSTRACT ... vi
CHAPTER II.REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 10 A. Theoretical Description... 10
1. Definition... 11
2. The kinds of the out-of-class language activities ... 12
a. Self- instruction activities... 13
b. Naturalistic activities ... 14
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3. The Teenagers and Out-of-Class Language Activities... 15
a. The Teenagers and Autonomy...15
b. The Teenagers and Digital Natives...17
4. The previous study on out-of-class language activities... ... 19
B. Theoretical Framework ... 23
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 25
A. Research Method ... 25
B. Research Respondents ... 26
C. Research Instrument ... 27
D. Data Gathering ... 32
E. Data Analysis... ...34
F. Research Procedure ... 35
CHAPTER IV. RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 39
A. The frequency of out-of-class language activities... 39
B. The classification of the kinds of out-of-class ... language activities...43
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 51
A. Conclusions ... 51
B. Recommendations ... 53
REFERENCES ... 56
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LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
Table 3.1 The blueprint of the questionnaire... 29
Table 3.2 The example of the closed-ended question of ...
the questionnaire... 30
Table 3.1 The blueprint of the interview... 32
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Page
Appendix A. Research Permission Letter... 58
Appendix B. Questionnaire ... 59
Appendix C. Questionnaire Result... 60
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents a brief introduction of the study. In this chapter, there are six sub-chapters. They are the research background, research problem, problem limitation, research objective, research benefits, and definition of terms.
A. Research background
Learning English as a foreign language in an English classroom has been a concern for a long time. There are various kinds of methods, approaches, and techniques applied to conduct and, even, to support learning- teaching process in the classroom. However, some Junior High School students still find difficulties in supporting their learning in their classroom. Some of them lack their motivation in learning English inside the class, although actually they are active English learners outside the class.
Recently, research has found that out-of-class studies reveal learners who show more initiative in creating opportunities outside the classroom to support their English learning in the classroom (Benson, 2011, p. 216). Benson in recent literature proposes that the term „out-of-class‟ language activities have mainly been used to refer to activities that supplement classroom learning. According to
Benson, the activities to supplement classroom learning might include homework, access work, extra-curricular activities and the use of self-instructional materials. In addition, Benson tends to use this term in the way that out-of-class language activities are typically initiated by the learner by making use of authentic resources, involving pleasure and interest outside the formal classroom and also with the broader intention of learning. Hyland (2004) in her large study on 228 trainees and practicing ESL teachers in Hong Kong examined their activities using English out of the classroom. She found that respondents use English out of the classroom to improve their English but also engaged in independent activities. The most frequent activities were writing emails, reading academic books, and surfing the internet, followed by watching videos, reading newspapers, watching TV programs and listening to songs. However, there is still little research for Indonesian learners both teenage learners and adult learners, as foreign language learners engageing themselves in out-of-class language activities.
language use. Dardjowidjojo says that therefore, the implementation of communicative language approach is expected to achieve the balance between language usage and language use. It can be said that the opportunity to implement language learning and language use can be done in learning teaching process in the classroom, but students can seek the opportunity to support language learning and language use by actively engage themselves in out-of-class language activities. It is because students have more time to engage themselves in out-of-class language activities outside the out-of-classroom. However, some students do not know how to manage their time in proper ways by engaging themselves in proper kinds of out-of-class language activities.
Based on the researcher‟s experience as an adult learner, learning English as a foreign language is not easy. The researcher finds difficulties in using English to communicate in and out of class. Many of the researcher‟s friends as adult learners lack their motivation and they do not know how and where to improve their English skills. They just waiting for teachers to teach them by giving them an explicit instruction in the classroom even though they actively engage themselves in out-of-class language activities. They spend their times by watching movies in English language, reading English-language novels, surfing the net, and listening to English language songs. It can be said that the opportunities in making use of English are exist outside the class, but some students as adult learners do not realize it.
same situation. Although the curriculum supported the development of English language skills, encouraged various methods, the students still lacked their motivation in learning English. The English classrooms seemed very unpractical and boring, even though some of the students were the active English learners outside the class. They watched movies in English, listened to English songs, and used the internet when they spent most of their times after school. Some of them asked about the vocabularies, idioms, pronunciations which were heard from English movies and songs, but still not all of them realized that those activities could support their English learning. It seemed that the nonclassroom activities which were experienced by them could help them to increase their English language skills in a way that might not be possible in the classroom, but they did not realize it. Formal classroom learning is one way to practice and learn a new language, but there are many opportunities for learning and engaging in new languages existing outside of the classroom.
even learners themselves. There is still little attention about out-of-class language activities because out-of-class language activities are generally learners-initiated
and hidden from teachers‟ view as stated in Benson (2011). By giving support to the eighth grade students since they were in Junior High School can affect their encouragement to engage themselves in the out-of-class language activities when they are in Senior High School and universities. That is the reason why students‟ engagement in English activities outside the class, the kinds of out-of-class language activities they conduct, whether it is done for learning, for pleasure or for communication are interesting and challenging aspects to explore further.
This indicates that the need for enhancing the learning of English is not limited to the classroom, but can take place at any time and in any place, including the home as stated by Hylland (2004). This study is proposed to study more about the kinds of out-of-class language activities conducted by the eighth grade students of Johannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta whether those activities are done for learning, for pleasure, or for communication.
B. Research Problem
The problem of the study is formulated in the following question:
C. Research Limitation
This study was conducted with three classes of five parallel classes of eighth grade junior high students, namely, Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta. They were involved in the study as respondents to provide information about their engagement in out-of-class language activities. The data is presented as the preliminary data because the process of collecting the data is still too broad, only to get the broad information from the total population.
D. Research Objective
Based on the problem formulation, this study has one objective:
To investigate the kinds of out-of-class language activities that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta engaged in.
E. Research Benefits
This study is hopefully beneficial for:
1. For English teachers
encourage the students to engage themselves in the proper kinds of out-of-class language activities.
2. For the students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School
This study aims to provide knowledge and information for the students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School to engage themselves in out-of-class language activities to support English learning in the classroom. Consequently, they are suggested to choose the appropriate activities to support their English learning in the classroom.
3. For other researchers
This study aims to provide knowledge and information for other researchers. Hopefully, the results of this study can provide useful information for other researchers for their own study related to the out-of-class language activities. They can conduct studies on more specific aspects of out-of-class language activities as the kinds of out-of-class language activities to support high achievement in learning English.
F. Definition of Terms
1. Out-of-class language activities
According to Chusanachoti‟s (2010) definition: „Out-of-class‟ means any time students spend outside of the formal classroom setting to do English activities. The term “out-of-class” in this study refers to any time the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta spend outside of the formal classroom setting to do all the English activities. Therefore, „out -of-class language activities‟ in this study mean any English activities done by the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School when they are outside of formal classroom setting.
2. Engage in
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2010), a phrase
„engage in something‟ means to take part in something. This term is different with „engagement‟ in literature works as stated by Harper and Quaye (2009) that engagement is more than involvement or participation – it requires feelings and sense making as well as activity. In this study „engage in‟ means students carry out or take part in out-of-class language activities.
3. The eighth grade students
4. Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter discusses some theories and previous studies used as the basis
to study the eighth grade students‟ kinds of out-of-class language activities at Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta. There are two main parts in this chapter. The first is the theoretical description and the second is the theoretical framework.
A. Theoretical Description
In this section, the researcher discusses some literature reviews that support the out-of-class language activities. They are the definition of “o ut-of-class language activities”, the kinds of out-of-class language activities, the teenagers and out-of-class language activities, and previous study of out-of-class language activities.
To understand the meaning of the out-of-class language activities, the first section will review the definition of out-of-class language activities. In the second section, to understand the kinds of out-of-class language activities, Benson‟s (2011) theory will be reviewed. In the third section, the review of teenagers and out-of-class language activities is used to understand how teenagers deal with the digital gadget when they use their gadget in out-of-class language activities. In the
last section, literature review focusses on the previous study about out-of-class language activities
1. Definition
This study aims to investigate the kinds of the out-of-class language activities that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School engaged in their daily life. In order to attain that purpose, it is important to know the definition of the out-of-class language activities. Out-of-class language activities have important relation with learner autonomy. Learner autonomy is described as a condition of a learner having the ability to control their own learning, often outside the direction of conventional language learning in the classroom (Benson, 2011). One of the characteristics of autonomous learners is the willingness to seek the opportunities and actively engage in language activities outside the classroom, which can include (but are not exclusive to) watching movies, listening to the radio, reading extra materials, or practicing with friends and fellow students (Chausanachoti, 2009).
Previous studies indicate that there has been inconsistency in naming the term. Benson (2011) tend to use “out-of-class learning”, Hydra (2004) and Chausanachoti (2009) use “out-of-class language activity”, Al-Otaibi (2004) prefers to use “out-of-class language practice”, and Anderson (2004) chooses
classify out-of-class language activities (e.g. reading novels, watching movies, and so on) whether it is done with or without a conscious effort to learn English.
According to Chusanachoti (2010), „Out-of-class‟ means any time students spend outside of the formal classroom setting to do English activities. Therefore,
„out-of-class language activities mean any English activities done when they are outside of formal classroom setting. In this study, based on the out-of-class language activities definition review so far, it is briefly concluded that out-of-class language activities require activities done outside the regular classroom learning whether done with or without a conscious effort to learn English. The English activities can be in the forms of all activities refers to English such as writing emails, reading academic books, surfing the internet, watching videos, reading newspapers, watching TV programs and listening to the songs. It can be also in the forms of talking to another person. This study does not intend to focus on detail activities whether it is done for learning or for pleasure, so either activity for learning or only for pleasure are used in this study.
2. The kinds of the out-of-class language activities
“activity” because this study employed activities both for learning and non -learning.
a. Self instruction activities
Self-instruction activities mean students‟ conscious effort to seek out resources of language activities, without intervention from the teachers of English. Such activities include studying grammar books or doing vocabulary exercises in textbooks. In this study, the researcher chose activities in larger scope, namely reading student books, reading novels, and writing diaries. This efforts to master a particular language skill may also involve studying English in the classroom. However, this study focusses more on those activities employed outside the class. According to Benson (2011), activities that fall into self-instruction may also be viewed as occupying various positions in a continuum. On one extreme end, there is an episodic, short-term learning. On the other extreme end of a continuum, there is an autonomous learning, which is a stronger sense of self-instruction that involves long-term self-initiated learning. In order to identify self-instruction activities conducted by the students, a questionnaire about how frequent they engage themselves in the activities in reading student books, reading novels, and writing diaries will be used.
within a framework of institutional support, this may be called as „supported self
-instruction”.
This study focuses also on the second term, namely, supported self-instruction because the students as respondents involve the teachers when they do the activities outside the class.
b. Naturalistic activities
These are involuntary activities where students engage in social activities by interacting with others in English such as conversing with native speakers on the street. Naturalistic activity is normally used to refer to a language activity where students have a direct communication with users of the target language. In this study, naturalistic limits its scope to activities that involve direct communication with either native or non-native speakers as the opportunities to do these activities. A questionnaire was used to investigate how often students speak with friends, and speak with family or native speaker.
c. Self-directed activities
3. The Teenagers and out-of-class language activities
This sub-topic is used to understand how the eighth grade students in this study as the teenagers engage themselves in out-of-class language activities. According to Oxford Dictionary, the teenage as an adjective means: denoting a person between 13 and 19 years old while the teenager as a noun refers to a person aged between 13 and 19 years old. The teenagers in this study refer to the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta, who were in their 13 and 14 years old. This sub-topic employs the characteristic of teenagers when dealing with out-of-class language activities. The first aspect is teenagers and autonomy, the second aspect is teenagers and Digital Natives.
a. Teenagers and autonomy
According to Anderson (2008), teenagers are ego driven. They are becoming adults and want more control over the language situation where they conduct. Their world revolves around one question; “What does it mean to ME?”. Anderson sees a need to let teenagers have more choice and begin to take responsibility for their own engagement in language activities. Anderson points out that it should be noted here that it is very difficult to engage in or learn a
second language in “a class”.
Further, according to Anderson (2008), there just are not enough hours in the school year and the classroom is also very artificial and many times
independent learners. Teachers should direct students to resources for language engagement outside the classroom and provide them with these opportunities. Teenagers can engage themselves in much more efficiently by themselves through input outside the classroom. Briefly, it can be said that teenagers have autonomy to do language activities outside the classroom but they also need support from their teachers. This is one character of teenagers in conducting out-of-class language activities as this study employed for.
To understand better the other character of teenagers when dealing with language, it is better to employ also the way children and adult dealing with language. This study focuses on out-of-class language activities whether it is done for learning or not, therefore, the next explanation does not require specific attention to whether children, teenagers or adult doing activities for formal learning or not. This explanation focuses more on the character of children, teenagers and adults when dealing with language especially foreign language whether it is done for informal learning or not.
According to Singleton (1999), there is a common misconception (even among teachers) that children are better at languages. In fact, Singleton points out
that the apparent “ease” by which children deal with language is because of the immense opportunity they have and also the amount of time they can spend
“learning” and not from greater ability.
According to Singleton, (1999), teenagers have the best of those both aspects. They still have a very flexible and still developing cognitive network, but
they also have more “conscious” control of language and the ability to categorize, manipulate and test logically the language they encounter. Teenagers engage themselves in language because it is meaningful to them. Children learn and engage themselves in language because they have a natural affinity and also there is evidence of a deep need. Adults deal with languages for many intrinsic reasons (and this may be a reason why they can be so good at learning languages, all things considered). Teenagers deal with a language not only for marks but because it is meaningful. Relating the rationale and purpose of language engagement is a must with teenagers. This aspect makes the way teenagers deal with language in out-of-class language activities is different with children and adults as this study employed for.
b. Teenagers and Digital Natives
Natives”. Digital Natives means a person born or brought up during the age of digital technology and therefore familiar with computers and the internet from an early age. This study was conducted for eighth grade students as digital natives, therefore, it is better to employ the aspect how the students as digital natives deal with language in out-of-class language activities using their digital gadget.
Prensky (2001), points out that teenagers learn differently, they have hypertext minds. They do not learn in a linear model anymore. Images are the driving force of learning and text supports. He points out that experience in dealing with gadget teaches and changes or “trains” teenagers‟ brain as they spend hours upon hours using computers, watching the video, text messaging. This too often is not considered by the language teacher. According to him, in the context of classroom language learning, teenagers crave “the new” and “the now”. Content should be up to date and authentic materials promoted. Further, teachers should give students more opportunity to produce materials in their classrooms
and thus “ensure” current content.
computer and internet in their daily live affect the way how they choose the kinds of out-of-class language activities.
In other words, teenagers are different. They are neither children nor the adults. They bring to the classroom the language engagement situation in a unique set of cognitive, emotional, social factors which is different from children and adults. They spend the time to engage in language activities outside the classroom in a unique way also. They do the language activities differently. In so many ways, teenagers are the same like all learners. They respond to different forms of motivation, they take in language and try to make sense of it, they struggle with pronunciation and remembering vocabulary. However, there are still some important differences (mostly in the affective aspect) that need to be highlighted as this study employed for.
4. The Previous Studies on out-of-class English Language Activities
The previous studies on out-of-class English learning activities reveal some different aspects. Some studies reveal that out-of-class language activities can support English skills. Some other studies emphasize the way how students do the out-of-class activities for pleasure and tend to do the activities in passive activities.
Benson (2011) argues that students who engage in out-of-class language activities show more initiative in creating opportunities for learning and using foreign languages than their teacher notice. Similarly, Rubin (1975), Naiman et al.
importance of the out-of-class language activities employed voluntarily by learners outside the language classroom. As described by Naiman et al (1978), learners are identified as those who involve themselves actively in the language learning task in a number of different ways. These including adding related language learning activities to their regular classroom input.
The study of Suh, Wasanasomsithi, Short, and Majid (1999) to the students at Indiana University found similar results. This study used student interviews to examine what kind of out-of-class language activities the students participated in and whether they thought they were successful or unsuccessful in improving their English conversation skills. The findings indicated that the students relied mostly on independent leisure activities. Some students stated that the activities improved their listening comprehension. Watching television was the most common independent activity that the students participated in out of the classroom. The students indicated that watching television and going to movies improved their conversation skills. However, what seemed to be helpful for one student was not helpful for another in the learning process. This study points out the important fact that different English activities used outside of the classroom will be preferred by and beneficial to different kinds of students.
internet, followed by watching videos, reading newspapers, watching TV programs and listening to songs. In other words, the learners in her study rarely engaged in activities involving face-to-face interaction, especially outside the work or study environment. They had a tendency to focus on those activities which did not involve face-to-face contact.
In different contexts, where the target language is a foreign language, Pickard (1996) claims that German students tend to choose activities involving the receptive skill such as reading and listening rather than the productive skills, but are also influenced by whether the activity is intrinsically interesting to them. There have been also some studies within the Hong Kong context, Yap (1998) looked at the out-of-class use of English of 18 secondary school students and found that the students tended to engaged in receptive rather that productive activities, including reading newspapers and watching English language television. They found it hard to create opportunities for speaking and writing.
Previous studies on out-of-class language indicate that there are many English language learners who do not take advantages of English language activities outside of the classroom and miss the potential time to improve their language skills. Moreover, even though learners do practice and use English outside of class time, it is within a limited scope of activities and most often done individually.
There has been also a great consistency of receptive skills (listening and writing) being the most widely used out-of-class language learning activities as stated by Pickard (1996), Pearson (2004), Hyland (2004), Al-Otaibi (2004), Chausanachoti (2009), Marefat and Barbari (2009). Productive skills, such as speaking and writing, are not considered since the opportunities to use them outside the class are severely limited. However, given the small number of sampling, such conclusion should be made cautiously.
In brief, the previous studies in out-of-class learning activities were conducted mainly in other countries and for adult learners. Another aspect in the previous studies that the studies on out-of-class language activities have not really considered in detail is the out-of-class language activities conducted by younger or teenager in Indonesia.
skills of listening and reading indicating that these Indonesian students are largely passive learners of English.
There is also one study conducted by Lamb (2002) who investigated Indonesia‟s poor learning conditions in a provincial area. Building on his previous quantitative research on learning strategies, this exploratory research aims to look deeper into what enables students to learn English under difficult circumstances. 16 undergraduate students from different faculties participated in the interview. From the analysis, it is revealed that opportunities to use English in a meaningful communication outside the class are exceedingly rare. This might be due to the negative images constructed by society to those who speak English in public – the same problem faced by students in Hong Kong (Hyland, 2004).
B. Theoretical Framework
In this theoretical framework section, the researcher will show the relevant theories mentioned in the theoretical description to answer the research question. The question is related to the kinds of out-of-class language activities that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School engaged in.
naturalistic activities will be applied to categorize and to analyze the kinds of out-of-class language activities that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School engaged in their daily life.
In order to know the kinds of activities based on the character of the teenagers as the respondents of this study, the researcher applied also the theory of Anderson (2008) and Prensky (2001). Anderson emphasizes one character of teenagers namely autonomy. According to Anderson, teenagers already have autonomy to do the out-of-class language activities. Their autonomous aspect affects the way they engage in the kinds of out-of-class language activities. Meanwhile, Prensky highlights the other character of teenagers when dealing with out-of-class language activities. Prensky emphasizes teenagers as Digital Natives who deal with digital since they were born. This will affect the way teenagers choose the kinds of out-of-class language activities.
CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This chapter discusses the methodology of the study. It is divided into six parts. There are research method, research respondents, research instrument, data gathering technique, data analysis technique and research procedure.
A. Research Method
This study is intended to investigate the kinds of out-of-class language activities conducted by the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School. In order to attain the objective, the study employed a survey research.
According to Creswell (1994), a survey research provides a quantitative or numeric description of some fractions of the population or the sample through the data collection process of asking the same questions of the people. In other words,
“surveys asks a number of the same questions, all related to the issue, to find answer” (Fraenkel, et al., 2012, p.393). Typically, the survey is the most widely used social science data gathering technique. Neuman (2011) points out that survey method as the quantitative research in which the researcher systematically asked a large number of people the same question and then recorded their answer.
According to Vaus (2002), survey method is one method of collecting, organizing and analyzing the relevant data which are collected by a variety of techniques and in many studies it may be appropriate to use the range of research methods. In this study, the writer used questionnaire and interview as the tools. In order to collect the quantitative data, the researcher asked questions to the respondents which were related to the main issue of this study, namely, the kinds of out-of-class language activities. The data from the questionnaires became the main data while the data from the interview as the supporting data. The main data collected from the questionnaires were presented in a quantitative way, in the form of numeric information. The supporting data gathered from the interview were presented descriptively.
B. Research Respondents
In this study, there were eighty one respondents out of 148 total students of the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School Yogyakarta. The respondents aged around 13-14 years old with various experiences in engaging themselves in out-of-class language activities. In this study, the researcher selected the respondents randomly from three classes out of the five parallel classes as mentioned in the research limitation in Chapter One to be involved in this research.
observation the seventh grade students mostly already deal with out-of-class language activities using their digital gadget. Moreover, the English teacher of Joannes Bosco Junior High School said that most of the students engaged in out-of-class language activities. Therefore, they are supposed to take the opportunity in their eighth grade to engage themselves in out-of-class language activities in a proper way. To strengthen the opinion, the study requires various kinds of activities that the respondents engaged in, in order to better understand and answer the research question.
Meanwhile, the other participants were four participants out of the eighty one participants to be interviewed based on their positive attitude towards English. The writer asked their English teacher to choose them as the participants, by considering their positive attitude towards English language and actively participates in out-of-class English activities.
C. Research Instrument
1. Questionnaire
The questionnaire is a printed form of data collection, which contains questions or statements for subject to respond, often anonymously. Moreover, written questionnaire is typically more efficient and practical. According to Best and Kahn (1986) questionnaire is one of the data gathering instruments in which the respondents answer several questions or respond in a form of writing.
In this study‟s questionnaire, the questions were devised to investigate students‟ reported out-of-class language activities dealing with English by referring to Hyland‟s instrument of the questionnaire (Hyland, 2004). The investigated a number of different areas including information about the English activities they carried out in their daily lives. In this study, the researcher adapted
some items from Hylland‟s questionnaire and adjust it with the activities that are properly done by teenagers. Therefore, this study employed only eight items out
of fifteen items in Hylland‟s questionnaire. The researcher omitted some activities that can be categorized as the activities that are less familiar among the eighth grade students. They were writing emails, reading academic books and articles, surf the internet, reading newspapers and magazines, attend meetings, listening to the radio, talk on the phone. However, the researcher included activities that might not familiar among teenagers but useful to them such as reading novels and writing diaries. The blueprint of the questionnaire can be seen in Table 3.1 on page 29.
which respondents must choose from a fixed set of answer. The fixed set of the answer in this study were in the form of the categories English learning activities based on the finding of the previous studies conducted by Littlewood & Lui (1996), and Yap (1998). The researcher also adapted some categories of activities
based on the teenager‟s interest.
Table 3.1 The blueprint of the questionnaire
Aspect of research Theories Kind of question
The questionnaire in this study consists of 8 statements related to the out-of-class language activities that students generally conduct. These 8 statements were divided into quarters, where each skill (i.e. listening, reading, speaking, and writing) was given equal attention (i.e. two questions). The researcher provided the questionnaire by using Indonesian to make the questions understood (see Apendix B on page 59). The example of the closed-ended questions of the questionnaire can be seen in Table 3.2 below.
Table 3.2 The example of the closed-ended question of the questionnaire
How frequently do you carry out these activities outside the classroom? Please give a tick (✓) to the scale of frequency that indicates your answer! The scale is: 5=very often, 4=often, 3=sometimes,2=rarely, 1= never .
Activities Very
often
Often Sometimes Rarely Never
For the sake of data processing, the questionnaire used a Likert scale ranging from very often (value of 5) to never (1). Likert scale in this study was used to measure the frequency degree by using five scores from 5 to 1 in which the categories ranked from high to low in some meaningful way. In this study, the degree of frequency is rated as: „5=very often‟, „4=often‟, „3=sometimes‟,
„2=rarely‟, „1=never‟.
2. Interview
The other instrument used to collect the data in this study was the interview. Interviewing is a well-established method of data collection, which, because of some unique qualities, is still widely used. One of most important aspects of interviewing is that it is flexible (Ary, et. al. 1979: 174). It is also stated that there are two types of interviews: structured and unstructured. In structured interviews, the questions and the alternative answers are already provided. On the other hand, unstructured interviews form is informal. The questions are given freely concerning with views, attitudes, beliefs, and other information.
get more specific and rich data from the participants. This helped the writer to be possible to elicit both planned and unplanned responses and gathering meaningful data. The writer interviewed the participants by using Indonesian to make the questions understood.
Table 3.3 The blueprint of the interview
Aspect Theories Questions carry out English activities outside the classroom? ( Just give a rough estimate)
D. Data Gathering 1. Questionnaire
As explained before, this research deals with one major problem. To solve the problem, this study would gather the data with the following technique.
conduct this study was sent to the authorized department at Joannes Bosco Junior High School. The students were informed about the objectives and the significance of this study when the research distributed the questionnaire. They were also asked to state their very honest responses and answers. The researcher also asked the students if they needed any clarifications, they could ask the researcher. After the students finished filling out the questionnaire, they were requested to recheck their responses for incompleteness or missing answers.
2. Interview
The data gathering of the interview in this study was conducted by following 3 steps. The first one was conducted to get the number of participants. The English teacher was asked to give as much as information about the participants. It required student‟s participation in and out class‟ activities, and student‟s achievement in English.
The second stage conducted by interviewing the participants. This was an informal interview conducted based on some basic questions about their out-of-class activities. The interview itself was conducted no longer than thirty minutes. The researcher got the permission from participant to record and film the interview by using cameras. It took place in school and at a time that was most suitable, after getting the agreement from school and participants themselves.
E. Data Analysis
1. Questionnaire
The data gathered in this study which was in the form of the questionnaire and the closed-ended questions were analyzed. In this study, in order to know how many students engaged in particular kinds of out-of-class language activities, and how frequent they did it, the researchers summed all the responses. In other words, all the responses are counted by summing the number of responses. Then the analysis is explained in the form of the paragraph.
Meanwhile, in order to investigate the mean or average score of (the frequency of out-of-class language activities), the following formula was used:
̅ ∑ ∑
∑ fx: total of respondents who choose the same degree of frequency in each statement
∑ n: total of all respondents
In order to operationalize this concept, this study used two kinds of measurement: frequency and classification. To gauge the frequency, a 5-point Likert scale is employed (5=very often‟, „4=often‟, „3=sometimes‟, „2=rarely‟,
Data analysis results from the questionnaires were first converted into numbers and presented into tables in Microsoft Excel. The mean scores for each activity were calculated in order to gain a preliminary data of frequency of students‟ out-of-class language activities. After that, the data were analyzed by
classifying the activities based on Benson‟s kinds of language activities. 2. Interview
The data gathered through interview were analyzed by comparing and contrasting to the theories mentioned in the previous section. For analysing the interview data, a content analysis method were used. In the analysis process, the
interviewee‟s responses to each question were firstly translated into English and
then transcribed. After that, the responses were analyzed in terms of themes related to the study objectives.
The last steps in analyzing the data were summarizing the results of the questionnaire and the results of the interview. Thus, the writer had the descriptive conclusion according to the data that had been analyzed.
F. Research Procedure
1. Planning
The researcher began the research by making some questions related to the research topic. There is one major research question in this study, “What kinds of out-of-class language activities were the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco
Junior High School engaged in?” To support the study, the researcher planned to use survey method. As Ary et al. (2010) points out that survey method begins with a question that the researcher believes can be answered most appropriately by means of the survey method. After that, the researcher looked for literature review in order to support and to enrich the topic being discussed in this study. 2. Defining the Population
According to Ary et al. (2010), the defining population is essential for identifying the appropriate subjects to select and knowing to whom the results can be generalized. The population of this study was the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School.
3. Sampling
The researcher decided to choose randomly three classes, out of five parallel classes of Joannes Bosco Junior High School, as the sample of respondents.
class, the participants should be those who really engage themselves in out-of-class activities. Four learners were chosen to be interviewed with some considerations from the English teacher as mentioned before.
4. Constructing the Instrument
Ary et al. (2010) state that two basic types of data gathering instruments are interviews and questionnaires. The researcher used those two instruments in this study. The questionnaire instrument in this study was the close-ended questionnaire. Vaus (2002) points out that, close ended questionnaire is easier to code and quicker to answer, therefore close-ended questionnaire was selected as the main data gathering technique.
In interviewing the respondents, the researcher used the informal interview but based on structured questions. The interviewer read the questions to the respondents in a face-to-face setting and recorded the answer. The researcher also prepared the additional questions when the responses seemed incomplete or not entirely relevant.
5. Conducting the Survey
In conducting the survey, the step also included training the users of the instrument, interviewing subjects or distributing questionnaires to the subjects, and verifying the accuracy of the data gathered (Ary et al. 2010). The researcher distributed the questionnaire to all the students and interviewed four of them.
researcher came to the school on 7 June 2016 to gather the data by distributing the questionnaire. The students were informed about this research and were asked to fill in the questionnaire honestly.
The researcher distributed 81 questionnaires to 81 eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School, Yogyakarta and as a result, all the 81 questionnaire sheets were returned to the researcher. All of the students as the respondents filled in the questionnaires.
6. Processing the Data
CHAPTER IV
RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter deals with the presentation and discussion of the research results which provide an answer to the research question. The research problem is what kinds of out-of-class language activities that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School engaged in. In this chapter, the data presentation and discussion will be presented and analyzed in two sub-chapters. The first sub-chapter is about the frequency and the mean score of out-of-class language activities and the second one is about the classification of out-of-class language activities.
A. The frequency of out-of-class language activities
Table 4.1 Frequencies and mean score of out-of-class language activities
I listen to the songs in my home from the mobile phone whenever I want. I listen also the songs from the radio in the car when I go to the school or go back from the school. I listen to the songs mostly in Prambors radio station. The songs in Prambors are mostly in English and I like it.
Furthermore, from Table 4.1 on page 40, it can be seen that 10 students said that they very often watched movies. 25 students and 27 students said that they often and sometimes watched movies. It can be said that students spent most of their time by watching movies besides listening to songs. From the interview, when asked how frequently they watched movies, one student said:
I spend most my time at home, and what I do is I just watch English movies. That’s all.
In reading skills, 8 students claimed that they very often reading student books, 22 students often reading student books, 28 students sometimes read student book, and 22 of them rarely read student books. It is interesting that one of them never read student books. It can be said that students spent their time mostly to read students books rather than to read novels. It is interesting that none of the students said that they very often reading novels, even 21 of them claimed that they never read novels. 8 of them admitted that they often read novels and the other 15 and 37 students noted as those who sometimes and rarely read novels. When asked why they did not read novels, one of them said:
The other student said:
I think reading novels is not as interesting as listening to the songs or watching the movies. Reading novels take a lot of time and when you read the novel you cannot do any other activities.
In speaking skill generally, students spent less of their time to practice speaking. Even though they mentioned speaking to friends and other people as a fairly common activity, they rarely found opportunities to speak in English outside their study environment. When asked with whom they practiced speaking English, one of them said:
I practice speaking English only with Ray, my friend, so far. I do not practice it with the other people. It is hard for me to find the other friends to speak English with.
The other student said:
I practice speak English with some of my friends, but sometimes we mix it with Indonesian.
In writing skill, students spend most of their time to write their status on FB rather than writing a diary. 8 students admitted that they very often wrote their status on FB, followed by 18 students and 32 students said that they often and sometimes wrote their status on FB. Students tended to write their status on FB because it was easy for them to do this activity. One of the students said:
I tend to write my status on FB in English because what I need is just write it in simple sentences and because it easy to do it by using my handphone.
teenage students at their eighth grade of junior high school and shared this common but various activities, something about them as individuals led to differences in the frequency of time they participated in. This could relate to what Rubin (1975) and Nunan (1991) described as the traits of successful language learners in their studies. Some students are more motivated than others and seek out opportunities to use English when the students are not in the classroom.
The interesting thing, as explained in the previous page, that students did not read, write and speak outside their study area as much as one might expect and although they mentioned speaking to friends and other people as a fairly common activity, they rarely found opportunities to speak in English outside their study environment. 21 students were noted as those who never read novels. 30 and 11 of them noted as also never write diaries and write the status on FB. In speaking skills, 12 and 23 students claimed that they never speak in English either with friends or family and native speakers. 6 students even never watched movies although for some students watching movies were the interesting activity. It can be said that the eighth grade students of Joannes Bosco Junior High School rarely found the opportunities to do those activities.
B. The classification of the kinds of out-of-class language activities
Table 4.2 Out-of-class language activities ranked in order of frequency
The English Activities Average score Listening to songs 3.73
Watching movies 3.25 Reading student books 3.17 Writing status in FB 3.00 Speaking with friends 2.35 Reading novels 2.12 Speaking with family
or native speakers
2.01
Writing diaries 1.19
The above table ranks the activities in order of frequency. A mean figure close to five means the students very often do the activity. A mean figure close to four means the students often do the activity, a mean figure close to three means the students sometimes do the activity. A mean figure close to two means the students rarely do the activity and a mean figure close to one means students never do the activity.
score: 3.25 followed by reading students book with an average score: 3.17 and writing status on FB with an average score: 3.00 .
Based on Benson (2011), the findings from the questionnaires reveal that the most frequent kinds of out-of-class language activities that the students engaged in are self-directed language activities, followed by self-instruction language activities and naturalistic language activities.
1. Self-directed activities
It can be seen in Table 4.2 on page 44 that the two top rank activities which get the highest score are self-directed language activities. In self-directed language activities respondents typically do the activities without the conscious effort to learn English but also to learn English. It is not surprising to know that they are favored especially for the teenagers because they did these activities very often and often. The other reason is that these activities like listening to songs, watching movies, writing the status on FB (although writing the status on FB ranked bellow reading student books), are inherently interesting in themselves, and might actually form students daily routine ( it can be seen on the previous interview on page 41). The findings also correlate with the study by Pickard (1996) who finds that the prime reason for choosing out-of-class language activities employed by 20 advanced German learners of English was the intrinsic interest value of the activities.
engage in those activities by using digital gadget. In other words, students already have autonomy to seek the opportunity to do those activities. This result correlates with the theories about autonomy as stated by Anderson (2008). Anderson points out that teenagers have autonomy to engage in activities that are useful to them. For teenagers, the autonomy to engage in listening to songs, watching movies was needed since they have less time to do it inside the class. Anderson sees a need to let teenagers have more choice and begin to take responsibility for their own engagement in language activities.
In the interview, listening to songs was the favorite activities carried out by 3 participants. They listened to the songs almost every day intentionally to learn English but also just as a pleasure activity. As the intentional activity, one of them said that she listened to the songs that she interested in from YouTube and seeks the lyrics on YouTube. The others commented that if they found difficult words in songs, they consulted the words in the dictionary. The other interesting reason why they listened to the song for learning English was because of their family. Two of them said that their family encourages them to listen to the songs. One of them admitted, “My father said that listening to the song can help me to understand English better. He teaches English at the international school
and I follow his suggestion”. Another one added:
My older sister told me so, that listening to songs can improve my English. I follow her suggestion and it works.
I spent most of my time in my home after school; I just stay at home and watching American movies because I can understand American English better. I try to watch the movie without the subtitle because it can help me to understand the sentence only by listening not reading the subtitle.
Meanwhile, as a pleasure activity, they said that listening to songs could release the feelings. Listening to songs also could reduce the stress and give a pleasure.
Self-directed language activities that were done by teenagers in this study
correlates also with Prensky‟s (2001) Digital Natives theory. According to Prensky, teenagers as digital natives learn differently, they have hypertext minds. They do not learn in a linear way. Images are the driving force of learning and text supports. This is the way how they “train” their brain as they spend hours upon hours using computers, watching the video, text messaging. It can be said that the way they train their brain in learning affects the way they choose the activity they spend outside the classroom especially when dealing with English by using their gadget.
2. Self-instruction activities
though its rank is below self-directed rank) correlates with the autonomous character of teenagers learners as stated by Benson (2011) and Anderson (2008). Learner autonomy is described as a condition of a learner having the ability to control their own learning, often outside the direction of conventional language learning in the classroom (Benson, 2011). Similarly, Anderson (2008) points out that to give teenagers more autonomy also means to give them more opportunity to become independent learners. Teachers should direct students to resources for learning outside the classroom and provide them with these opportunities. Teenagers can learn much more efficiently by themselves through input outside the classroom.
In the interview, all participants said that English was very important in their life so they intended to engage themselves in English activities purposefully. In other words, they seek the opportunities to use English outside the classroom. One of them considered that he seek the opportunities for the sake of his future. He said:
In my opinion, English as an international language is needed everywhere nowadays. In addition, some jobs need those who mastering English well. So, I have to prepare myself from now on by engaging myself in activities outside the classroom, who knows, one day I need it in my jobs.
Furthermore, the other participants added:
assignment you find also English there. So, I need English to understand it.
They considered also that English is needed to help them if they study abroad. They commented on the way they prepare themselves to study abroad. One of them admitted:
For me, I need English for study abroad. I really want to study abroad. It seems that study abroad is the interesting and challenging thing. Though in Indonesia there are many good schools or universities, but for me, study abroad can enrich my experience. I think I can reach my dreams by looking for the scholarship first.
From their comments, in general, all participants looked for the opportunities to use English.
3. Naturalistic activities
the current status of most English language learners in Indonesia who are still passive learners (Lamb, 2002). They are quite able to understand English but they would find themselves at struggle when producing the language.
