T ING 0907597 Chapter1

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Nacep Asmara, 2014

The Effect of Modified Teacher’s Question on Describing Things in EFL Classroom Interaction

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses some aspects related to the background, research questions,

objectives, significance and scope of the study. This chapter ends with

clarification of terms used in this study and chapter summary.

1.1 Background

Language input which is exposed to language learners is classified into artificial

and natural input. They lead to language learning and language acquisition

respectively (Krashen 1981: 30). He clarifies that language acquisition is a

subconscious process of acquiring language, a process which acquires language

naturally. Meanwhile language learning is a conscious process of learning

language; this occurs at a formal context or classroom setting. It can be stated that

language learning may lead learners to know about language explicitly.

Different from Krashen, Ellis (1994: 12) states that both language learning

and language acquisition belong to learning as well. The point that makes a

distinction is whether the language is learnt through a natural interaction in a

social context or through a study guided with reference books or classroom

instruction, which are called naturalistic and instructed language acquisition

respectively.

Through a management of classroom interaction, instructed setting or

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result in an abundant and redundant language input which assists and facilitates

language learners to comprehend the input (Pica, Doughty and Young 1985: 143)

which, in turn, led to naturalistic language acquisition. River (cited in Brown,

2001: 165) asserted that interaction can drag learners to develop their language

repertoire because listening, reading and discussing linguistic material or even

practicing to exploit their repertoire of language give an abundant language input.

Formal input can be provided through classroom interaction. One of the

inputs controlling the elicitation of classroom interaction while negotiating

meaning to make them comprehensible is teachers’ question (Gebhard, 1996: 70).

It is due to the fact that teacher’s question can be used to arouse curiosity,

stimulate interest in the topic, clarify concepts, emphasize key points, enhance

problem-solving ability, encourage students to think at higher cognitive levels,

motivate student to search for new information and ascertain students’ knowledge

level to aid in modifying instruction. Thus a teacher can employ it to drive,

control and direct the teaching-learning process so classroom interaction can be

created as expected.

To make teacher’s question more comprehensible to language learners,

teachers can modify the question linguistically or interactionally. Linguistically

modified question is an effort of a teacher to make his/her question

comprehensible to learners by simplifying his questions adapted to the learners.

Thus meaning can be conveyed and a breakdown of a communication can be

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negotiating a meaning to confirm whether the meaning has been comprehensible

to learners such as by posing confirmation check. The modifications of question

provide opportunity for learners to negotiate meaning, which in turn provide a lot

of comprehensible input and output for learners to improve their language (Hasan,

2008: 49, Kalantari 2009: 432, Owen 1996: 49, Wu 1993: 65 and Azerefegn,

2008: 64).

Studies on the modified input have been conducted through various kinds

of exposure of target language i.e. written modified input on grammar (poniah

2008: 254), reading (Maxwell 2011: 52, Sarab and Karimi, 2008; 186 and Naimat,

2011: 681) and vocabulary (Xiaohui, 2010: 105) and non-reciprocally spoken

modified input on listening (Teng, 2001: 537).

From the elaboration, there are three important points, namely,

input, modification and question. Input is a linguistic stimulus provided by teacher

to learners. Modification is a linguistic or interactional creativity of a language to

make it comprehensible to learners. Question is a part of input, which functions to

build up an interaction in the classroom. Modified questions as input play

important roles in comprehending input. But none concerns with how far their role

in a teacher-students interaction. Therefore, this study has experimented on the

other exposure of language input, that is, the input has been exposed orally

through reciprocal interaction to find out how far the modified question affect the

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1.2 Research Questions

Based on the above elaboration, research questions can be formulated as follow:

a. Does modified question affect on EFL learners’ ability to describe things by

the use of pre-head modifier?

b. Are there significant differences between ability to describe things by the

use of pre-head modifier by upper and lower groups?

c. How are modified questions implemented in building up EFL classroom

interaction in the pre-head modifier instruction?

1.3 The Objectives of the Study

The primary intent of this investigation will be to test the effect of modified

teacher’s question, which is packaged in an instruction at which language input is

exposed through two-way classroom interaction. The objectives will be to

investigate:

a. whether modified question affect on EFL learners’ ability to describe things

by the use of pre-head modifier.

b. whether there are significant differences between ability to describe things

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d. how modified questions are implemented in building up EFL classroom

interaction in the pre-head modifier instruction.

1.4 Scope of Study

This study has covered input exposed through modified questions. It does not

intend to examine a certain kind of modification but it includes all categories,

linguistic and interactional modifications. Their treatment is situational. This

means that which kind of modification used depends on the need of the situation.

In other word, the two may happen interchangeably during the teaching-learning

process.

It has measured the effect of the modified question on the ability of

describing things by the use of pre-head modifier which includes describing

things from certain aspects such as color, age, material, quality, origin, nature,

characteristics, shape, function, activity, events, profession, classification or their

combinations.

The last, the subjects are taken from a government vocational school in

Tasikmalaya. They are the first grade of the office administration program, which

has two classes. 30 from 40 students of each class are taken to be subjects for

experiment and the other for control. All subjects are female.

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The experiment indicates that modification of question in giving exposure of

language input affects students’ ability to describe things by the use of pre-head

modifier acquisition significantly. These findings are mainly hoped to be able to

give contribution either academically or practically. Academically, these findings

will contribute to SLA applied to the development of learning materials and

instructional techniques. Practically, they may enlighten the teachers about the

importance of teachers’ question to elicit students’ engagement in an instruction

by exposing spoken modified input through reciprocal interaction. By realizing

the details behind posing questions, they are hoped to be able to control and direct

students, so they can use questioning in classroom interaction to reach effective

process in an instruction on describing things by the use of pre-head modifier and

get to the intended target, namely that the students can describe things correctly.

Teachers are hoped to be able to create as natural interaction as possible in EFL

classroom so this can create teaching-learning process supporting toward the

natural-like language acquisition.

1.6 Clarification of terms

In this study, there are some operational terms which need defining i.e. question

and questioning, modification of question and classroom interaction. Questioning

is defined as seeking information (Wu, 1993:51). He further stated that, in

English, question can be expressed by the following linguistic forms: in

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And in declarative form e.g. you mean you did not do homework (falling

intonation) the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Questioning here means that all utterances,

whatever the forms, that is devoted to reveal the students’ talk which constitutes a

manifestation of their understanding toward the meaning negotiated in the

classroom.

Second, questioning modification includes simplification or Linguistic

modification and interactional modification. The former means that, by

simplifying the input or making it simple, we do the ways in which the language

addressed to EFL learners is rendered more comprehensible, for example

shortened utterances, simplified vocabulary, repetition, rephrase, wait time,

additive etc. (Ellis 1994: 248 and Chaudron 1988: 128).

The last is the one which is widely used as negotiation of meaning (Ellis

1994: 257 and Pica, Daughty and Young 1985: 124). Negotiation of meaning is a

restructuring of interaction that occurs when a communication problem arises.

Interactional modification helps the learners to continue the interaction without

interrupting it, and solves the miscommunication problem without using their

mother language, for example, echoic question, repetition of learners’ utterances

and expansion of learners’ utterances.

The classroom interaction in this study is verbal interaction between

teacher and learners while providing input through a reciprocal classroom

interaction during an instruction, which is based on the pattern of classroom

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that, basically, there are three sequences of moves in classroom interaction i.e.