AN ANALYSIS OF ELICITATION TECHNIQUES USED BY ENGLISH TEACHERS IN CLASSROOM INTERACTION (A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY AT SMAN 7 PADANG)
Oleh:
Nofrita Saputri*)
**) Siska, S.S. M.Pd
dan**) Yola Merina, S.S. M.Hum
Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera BaratABSTRAK
Teknik elisitasi (pancing) merupakan teknik yang digunakan oleh guru untuk membangun interaksi di dalam kelas. Ini merupakan suatu keahlian yang penting dan harus dipelajari oleh guru. Hal ini perlu dipahami oleh guru sebelum menggunakannya di dalam kelas. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif yang bertujuan untuk melihat jenis elisitasi yang digunakan oleh empat orang guru bahasa inggris SMA Negeri 7 Padang dan cara guru menggunakannya di dalam kelas. Adapun jumlah guru Bahasa Inggris disekolah tersebut yang menjadi partisipan adalah 4 orang. Dalam menentukan partisipan, peneliti menggunakan total sampling teknik. Jadi, peneliti menetapkan keempat guru tersebut menjadi partisipan dalam penelitian ini.Teknik pengumpulan data yang dipakai dalam penelitian ini adalah observasi dan wawancara. Kedua instrumen tersebut digunakan untuk melihat tipe-tipe teknik elisitasi (pancing) dan bagaimana guru menggunakannya di dalam kelas ineraksi di SMA Negeri 7 Padang.
Hal pertama yang dilakukan peneliti adalah melakukan observasi dengan menggunakan video rekaman, observation checklist dan field note sebagai alat selama observasi. Kemudian, peneliti melakukan wawancara dengan guru yang bersangkutan mengenai penggunaan teknik elisitasi (pancing) tersebut. Dari hasil penelitian ditemukan bahwa guru di SMA Negeri 7 Padang telah menggunakan teknik elisitasi dalam proses belajar mengajar. Teknik elisitasi yang lebih banyak digunakan adalah tipe elicit: inform dengan cara Wh question. Kemudian diikuti oleh elicit: confirm, elicit: agree, elicit: commit dengan cara questions using intonation, elicit: repeat dengan cara unfinished sentence question with raising intonation, dan elicit: clarify dengan cara question using inversion.
Keywords: Classroom Interaction, Elicitation Techniques
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
INTRODUCTION
English learning in the classroom occurs through meaningful interaction that involves teacher and students. Teaching and learning process will not be well conducted if there is no interaction. The interaction can be between teacher and students or the interaction between student and student. The interaction between teacher and students occur when the teacher explains the lesson. Furthermore, interaction also happens when the teacher wants to know students’ understanding toward the lesson.
Meanwhile, student and student interaction occur when they are involved in classroom discussion and peer work.
The students are expected to participate actively in the classroom interaction. Their participation in classroom interaction will affect their understanding toward the lesson. The students who participate in the classroom will more understand the lesson rather than just listen to the teachers’ explanation. The rate of students’ participation is determined by the intensity of their interaction with teacher or other students. It is the teacher’s responsibility to create the classroom interaction which involves students’ participation.
In stimulating students to participate in the classroom interaction, the teachers usually use some techniques. One of important technique employed by teacher to invite students’ engagement is elicitation techniques. According to Walsh (2011:11), elicitation techniques are the techniques used by teachers to get students’ respond. It indicates that eliciting technique is a way in getting students’ ideas and contribution in the classroom. Through eliciting techniques, students become more active because it increases students talk time, maintains students’ attention, provides students with opportunities to participate in the classroom and motivates them to learn. Thus, the teacher no longer keeps the center position in the class because the students are encouraged to be active in the lesson by interacting with the teacher.
Concerning to background of the problem, the elicitation techniques is very important in getting students’ response in classroom interaction. If the elicitation techniques often used by the teacher, it will very useful for the students to be active in the classroom. The teachers can also evaluate their teaching from students’ participation whether they understand or not toward the lesson. Therefore, the researcher wanted to analyze the teachers’ elicitation techniques in classroom interaction at SMAN 7 Padang.
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE
Definition of Classroom Interaction
Classroom interaction is a crucial aspect that should be considered by the teacher. By doing interaction, teacher can evaluate their teaching from students’ response. According to Brown (2000:165), the teacher and students maintain interaction in the classroom. While the interaction between the teacher and the students are running in the classroom, the teacher gives the material of language learning and the students get it and use it in their real life. Thus, interaction plays an important role in the teaching and learning process. In the teaching and learning condition, classroom interaction defines as an action which is performed by the teacher and students during instruction such as exchanging ideas or information and sharing feelings or experience.
Interaction plays an important role in language teaching. The students learn how to communicate with others through interaction with teacher and others students in the classroom.
Morever, Kumpulainen and Wray (2002:11) emphasize that classroom interaction is initiation – response – feedback / evaluation sequence. It can be described that during which the teacher often tightly controls the structure and content of classroom interaction, the teacher initiates the discussion by posing question. After the student has responded the question, the teacher finishes the instruction sequence by giving feedback on student’s response.
In conclusion, classroom interaction is response/feedback that given by speaker to listener in the classroom. It can help student in order to get knowledge from their teacher. Then, classroom interaction can improve students’ ability in language skills such as speaking and listening. Also, it can develop students’ critical thinking and their point of view about something and they can share it to the others. The last, respecting to the other in interaction also needed to make the interaction run well.
Definition of Elicitation Techniques
The term ‘Elicitation’ is first introduced by Sinclair and Coulthard to describe utterances in the classroom which elicit verbal response. Coulthard (1992:101) states that an eliciting is an act in which has a function to request a respond from the students, although the response may be a non verbal surrogate such as a nod or raised hand. In this study, the term eliciting is used as a discourse category to identify and to describe any utterances or exchanges inside
the classroom interaction which function to elicit a verbal response from students.
Furthermore, Richards et al (2002:176) states that eliciting is term which describes a range of techniques that enable the teacher to get students to provide information rather than giving it to them.
Commonly, eliciting is techniques or procedures used by teachers to help students actively produce speech or writing. In other words, eliciting techniques are used to ask students to come up with vocabulary and to brainstorm a topic at the start of a skills lesson.
Thus, it can be considered as effective ways that teachers should use in order to stimulate and get their students’ voice in the classroom. The elicitation techniques can be used for any skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing. Hence, there is no special time for elicitation because it can be used whenever needed.
Doff (2007:159) also describes that eliciting is a supporting technique which facilitates students to become more active participants in language learning. It indicates that eliciting technique is a way in getting students’ ideas and contribution in the classroom. Through eliciting techniques, students become more active because it increases students talk time, maintains students’ attention, draws on what students already know or partly know, provides students with opportunities to participate in the classroom and motivates them to learn. Thus, the teacher no longer keeps the center position in the class because the students are encouraged to be active in the lesson by interacting them.
In addition, Turnbull (2010:475) defines elicitation is succeeding to get information or reaction from somebody or students. Elicit is aimed to get verbal information or reaction from someone in communication. Moreover, eliciting gets students involved in the lesson so the students can active to produce speech and give information. The students become active rather than just listen to the teachers’
explanation. While, the teacher can assess the students’ knowledge and in turn adapts the lesson to the students’ need.
Elicitation is another common function of classroom teacher questions. It is supported by Walsh (2011:11), elicitation techniques are the strategies used by teachers to get students to respond with typically entails asking questions. The teacher elicit the students in question form. Thus, eliciting techniques help the teacher encourage the students to talk or produce the target language. It means that by eliciting techniques, the teacher can bring relevant information to the front of students’ mind and draw out information, language, and ideas from the students’ vocabularies, grammar, experiences and ideas.
Types of Elicitation Techniques
According to Coulthard (1992: 102) also classifies eliciting techniques into six classification as follow:
1. Elicit: Inform
It is a kind of eliciting techniques which invites the students to supply a piece of information to the teacher. In other word, it is the kind of elicitation performed in the classroom where the teacher checks to see if the students know the answer. In this techniques, teacher uses elicit:
inform in the form of questions. Usually, elicit inform used by the teachers to get students’
opinion, ideas, and new information. Therefore, elicit: inform is useful to elicit students’
contribution in the classroom.
2. Elicit: Confirm
It is kind of eliciting techniques which invites the students to confirm the teacher’s assumption. It can be realized by tag interrogatives, declaratives, positives and negatives polar interrogatives. Elicit confirm usually used by the teacher in the form of questions to get students’ confirmation. In addition, elicit confirm only used by the teacher to confirm their assumption to students.
3. Elicit: Agree
It is kind of eliciting techniques which invites the students to agree with the teacher’s assumption of which is self-evidently true. It is commonly realized by tag interrogatives and negative polar interrogatives with a falling tone. Usually, elicit agree is used by teachers in questions form to get students agreement.
4. Elicit: Commit
It is kind of eliciting techniques which elicits more than just a verbal response from the students. It is also elicits commitment from someone. Usually, teacher uses elicit commit only to make commitment with the students. In addition, teacher uses elicit commit in the form of questions to get students’ commitment.
5. Elicit: Repeat
It is kind of eliciting techniques which expects a repetition from the teachers or students’
utterance preceding the eliciting. It is realized by wh-interrogatives such as what did you say? ‘say that again’, or words, i.e. ‘sorry?’, or ‘pardon?’.
Elicit repeat is also usually used by the teacher to ask the students repeat the teacher’s utterance. It
is also applied by the teacher in the term of questions to get students’ repetitions.
6. Elicit: Clarify
It is kind of eliciting techniques which prospects a classification from the teachers or students of a preceding utterance. It can be realized by wh- interrogatives such as ‘which room?’, or a high key repetition of a word or phrase in the preceding utterance. It is also used by the teacher in the form of questions to get students’
clarification.
However, Farrell (2009:14) categorizes types of elicitation techniques only into four types. They are elicit: inform, elicit: confirm, elicit: agree, and elicit:
repeat.
a. Elicit: inform
Elicit: inform are questions that a teacher uses to invite students to supply a piece of information to obtain feedback. From the students’ responses, the teacher can find out whether the students know the answers he or she is looking for. The following example shows how a teacher can use elicit: inform to find out what the students know about vehicles and, specifically, trucks.
Teacher : What do you know about cars? What about vehicles, does anyone know the meaning of the word vehicle?
Teacher : How about trucks? Who knows the meaning of the word truck?
b. Elicit: confirm
Elicit: confirm invites the addressee to confirm the speaker’s assumption; in the classroom, many times teachers use this type to obtain specific feedback that the students are indeed following the lesson. In the previous example, the teacher used these questions both to invite students to confirm his or her assumption that students had understood the meanings of vehicle and truck and to make sure they were ready to possible use in a sentence to show they knew the meaning. This is outlined in the example of elicit: confirm that follows:
Teacher : Ok. So is everyone very clear on what a vehicle is and what a truck is? Ok. Are you ready to make sentences with these words now?
c. Elicit: agree
Elicit: agree invites the addressee to agree with the speaker’s assumptionn. For elicit:
agree questions, a teacher, for example, can use such questions to invite students to agree with his or her assumption that a specific proposal or suggestion is true. In the example follows, the teacher asks or invites her students to agree (or not) with the answers.
Teacher : It’s for transporting things, right?
Teacher : The truck brings things such as furniture, right?
d. Elicit: repeat
Elicit: repeat invites the addressee to repeat (or clarify) what was previously said. The teacher asks students to repeat their previous utterances because either he or she not heard their responses correctly or the students have said something important that he or she wants the rest of the class when the teacher does not get a clear answer and provides feedback to invite students to repeat the response.
Teacher : What did you say just when...?
Teacher : Ok! (Facing the class). John, what did you say?
Ways of Eliciting Techniques
To elicit students’ talk in classroom interaction, the teacher might modify their words or questions in provocative ways especially through eliciting techniques. Slattery and Willis (2001:48) also explain that there are five ways of eliciting techniques in the classroom:
a. Wh-questions, or questions beginning with what, who, where, when, which, and how can be used to obtain specific information. These kinds of questions are usually used by the teacher to exploit students’ existing knowledge and check students’ comprehension of new knowledge.
Hence, wh-questions are useful to elicit students’
talk in class time.
b. Questions using intonation is a kind of teachers’
ways in delivering questions to the students.
Usually, the teacher asks the questions by raising his/her intonation to make the questions clearer and to get students’ response.
c. Questions using inversion is a kind of teachers’
ways in getting information or ideas from the students. Usually, the teacher asks the students in the form of questions using inversion to check
students’ knowledge or to know students’
understanding.
d. Unfinished sentence questions with raising intonation. The teacher uses long questions by raising her/his intonation to elicit responses from the students easily. Hence, this technique is also considered as an effective way to provoke students’ responses.
e. Either/or question can be called alternative question. By asking the students to select one option among some available ones, they are made to think carefully for the right answer. By asking this type of question, the teacher cannot only check students’ careful thinking for the right answer but also motivate the students to review their knowledge in order to justify their choice. As a result, alternative question is regarded as a relatively effective way to provoke students’ responses.
The Functions and Purposes of Elicitation Techniques
According to Ur (1999:24) emphasizes that questioning can be used to find out what people do not know or to clarify what is still unclear and to the person who is questioned understand something better or to prompt him to remember something. In the language teaching context, eliciting is praised as an effective technique which both teachers and students as the center of the class can benefit. He states that benefits of elicitation are:
1. Eliciting is the tool used to create direct interaction between teacher and students.
2. Elicitation helps maximize students talking time and at the same time minimize teacher talking time.
3. Elicitation techniques involve the class by keeping students alert, drawing their attention as well as making them think.
Furthermore, Doff (2007:161) also states that there are three functions of eliciting techniques in building classroom interaction. Firstly, eliciting techniques involve the class by focusing students’
attention and making them thinks. It means, eliciting techniques can set students’ thinking and direct students’ attention toward a topic given. Secondly, eliciting techniques stimulate the students to draw or assess what students already know and what they do not know. The last, eliciting techniques give the teachers a change to see what students know and what they do not know. It means that eliciting techniques are ways for the teacher in providing key information about what the students have known or have not known. In other word, eliciting techniques
enable the teachers to determine if the students have learnt the lesson.
RESEARCH METHOD
This study was descriptive research. Gay and Airasian (2000:257) state that descriptive research determines and describes the way things are. It means that, descriptive research just describes the phenomena without giving treatment. Descriptive research has been becoming very useful in investigating many kinds of educational problems include classroom management problems. Thus, by conducting this descriptive research, the researcher would describe the types of elicitation techniques and how the English teachers use elicitation technique in the classroom interaction at SMAN 7 Padang.
In selecting participant, the researcher should know the appropriateness of the participant of the research. Gay and Airasian (2000:281) state that selected research participant must be (1) able to provide the desire information and (2) willing to provide it to the researcher. Based on the criteria above, the researcher took 4 English teachers at SMAN 7 Padang as participants. Moreover, the researcher collected the data through observation (field note and observation checklist) and interview.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
This research used two instruments to collect the data, they were observation (checklist and field note) and interview. However, the purpose of this research was to see the types of elicitation techniques and ways of English teachers in using elicitation techniques in classroom interaction at SMAN 7 Padang. The result from both instruments are:
1. Types of Elicitation Techniques
a. The English teachers that being participants in this research had been used elicitation techniques. It can be seen from the students can be active and participate in the classroom.
Although, they did not know the elicitation techniques specifically.
b. The English teachers used types of elicitation techniques. Three teachers used all the types of elicitation techniques; elicit: inform, elicit:
confirm, elicit: agree, elicit: commit, elicit:
repeat, and elicit: clarify. Meanwhile, once teacher just used some types of elicitation techniques. They are elicit: inform, elicit:
confirm, elicit: commit, and elicit: clarify because she argued that four types was enough to elicit the students’ response.
c. The elicitation techniques that were used by first and fourth teachers were not good eliciting because they only focused the material generally without eliciting based on the topic specifically to draw out students’
understanding toward the lesson. While, the second and third teachers have good eliciting technique which appropriate with the topic that were taught.
2. Ways of Eliciting Techniques
a. The teachers modifies their questions as ways in elicitation techniques. They were wh question, question using intonation, question using inversion, unfinished sentence questions with raising intonation, and either/ or questions. Wh question was used by the teachers to elicit: inform in which invite the student’ ideas or opinion related to the topic.
Then, questions using intonation was used by the teachers to used elicit: confirm, elicit:
agree, and elicit: commit. After that, questions using inversion to elicit: confirm, and elicit:
clarify. While, the teacher used unfinished sentence question with raising intonation to elicit: repeat. And the last either/ or question was used to elicit: clarify.
b. The teachers seldom used media to help them in eliciting students’ attention. Among four teachers, two teachers used video as media and one teacher used picture as media to elicit students’ attention. Moreover, the last teacher did not use media to help her in eliciting process.
c. The different classes are not determine the number of students who were active and participate in the classroom through elicitation techniques. IIS or MIA are the same. It depends on how the teachers use elicitation techniques to invite students’ participation.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion
Based on research finding, the researcher formulated the conclusion into; the result of both observation and interview showed that the use elicitation techniques by English teachers at SMAN 7 Padang was not effective yet to build classroom interaction. it could be seen from three English teachers used all the types of elicitation techniques with different ways, while one teacher only used some types of elicitation techniques. But generally
the teachers had used elicitation techniques in teaching to stimulate the students’ response but they need to add knowledge about types and ways of using elicitation techniques to build good classroom interaction.
Suggestion
After doing the investigation phase in the field and analyzing the collected data, the researcher states insightful suggestions at this point. First, all teachers should know the elicitation techniques are important techniques to build good classroom interaction. The teachers can evaluate their teaching based on the studets’ participation. Secondly, all teachers have to understand about the elicitation techniques as one effective techniques to build classroom interaction. In eliciting the students’ response, the teachers should be creative in using it espeially selecting media to help in eliciting students in order to get good classroom interaction. Overall, this research informs the readers by using elicitation techniques effectively, the students can be active in the class and good classroom interaction can be reached.
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