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Classroom Interaction in Teaching and Learning English
(A Study of Student Tourism Department in Eleventh Grades at SMKN 2 Padang)
Oleh : Syarma Yurina *)
**) Mayuasti, M.Pd dan **) Melvina, M.Ed
.
Staff pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera BaratABSTRAK
Interaksi yang terjadi di kelas kepariwisataan pada kelas 2 yang melibatkan antara guru dan siswa yang dapat membantu siswa untuk lebih paham, aktif serta produktif didalam pembelajaran bahasa Inggris. Adanya interaksi didalam kelas menciptakan kondisi yang yang kondusif dan tidak monoton sehingga siswa lebih leluasa untuk mencobakan bahasa Inggris di kelas. Dalam penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengetahui tipe apa yang digunakan oleh guru Bahasa Inggris di SMKN 2 Padang dalam pembelajaran bahasa Inggris pada kelas 2 kepariwisataan dalam mengaplikasikan Interaksi teacher-student interaction, teacher-students, student-student interaction and students-students interaction. Jenis interaksi yang empat ini berdasarkan dari bentuk-bentuk interaksi yang dijelaskan dalam teori Dagarin (2004). Jenis penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah Descriptive Research. Penelitian ini menggunakan pengamatan ceklis dan catatan lapangan sebagai sumber data penelitian, pengamatan tersebut adalah hasil dari pengamatan peneliti didalam kelas yang mengamati interaksi apa saja yang terjadi di dalam kelas kepariwisataan dan bagaimana cara pengaplikasianya.Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa guru bahasa Inggris dan siswa kepariwisataan di SMKN 2 Padang menggunakan interaksi teacher-student interaction maksudnya adalah interaksi yang terjadi antara guru dengan siswa, teacher-student interaction adalah interaksi yang terjadi antara guru dengan siswa yang lebih dari satu, student-student interaction yaitu interaksi yang terjadi antara dua orang siswa, dan students-students interaction adalah interaksi yang melibatkan diantara lebih dari dua siswa atau juga dalam kelompok, namun interaksi yang ini tidak ditemukan pada penelitian di kelas kepariwisataan.
Keywords : Interaksi di kelas, Interaksi antara guru dengan seorang siswa, Interaksi antara Guru dengan siswa yang lebih dari satu atau dalam kelompk, Interaksi antara siswa dengan siswa dan Interaksi antara siswa yang banyak dalam kelompok.
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
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INTRODUCTION
In teaching English, we need to know what our students need to understand the English language itself. It is because English is not the native language for Indonesia people, it means that the learning process surely meet various difficulties. This is also due to the English language itself is not a second language and is not derived from the mother tongue. Therefore, English is needed in the global era, especially for students of tourism department at SMK N 2 Padang, who the success of their career is determined by the smoothness of communication as globally.
Based on the above explanation, to reach more students creative, innovative, and more productive in language, we need classroom interaction that encourages the willingness of the students to be involved and contribute active in class. As for the things that cause the interaction in the classroom is needed because the English language curriculum component that functionalist. Which language is a communication tool between teachers and learners that vary depending on who is communicating, in a situation such as what kind ofcommunication would take place, and what is being communicated. The purpose of interaction in communicating in this view is to build social relationships (interpersonal) and develop insight through the exchange of information among the parties involved in the communication (transactional) delivered through both oral and written media.
Meanwhile, if in the classroom no interaction then the class will feel monotonous, not excited and lose the passion for learning as a passive classroom situation.
Classroom Interaction
The concept of interaction has a significant importance in the classroom too;
it is an essential part in learning and teaching processes. Hedge (2000 : 27) states that classroom interaction is the fundamental fact of classroom pedagogy because everything happening in the classroom happens through a process of live person-to-person interaction. During such kind of interaction learners make efforts to generate comprehensible output, which turns to be
sources of input for other interlocutors.
Misunderstanding occur frequency in classroom interaction due to the different factors, which can be, on different occasions, phonological, syntactic, vocabulary, contextual or cultural, to name only a few. To get meaning through or seek correct interpretation, or make up for communication breakdown, the learners resort to all sorts of strategies. The feedback of the learners get from their teachers and peers drives them to the development of knowledge.
Dealing with the principle of classroom interaction as the fundamental pedagogy fact in classroom activity, Hall and Walsh (2002 : 187) state that classroom interaction is one of the primary means by which learning is accomplished in classrooms. In language classrooms, it takes on an especially significant role in that it is both the medium through which learning is realized and an object of pedagogical attention. Through their interaction with each other, teachers and students construct a common body of knowledge. They also create mutual understandings of their roles and relationships, and the norms and expectations of their involvement as members in their classrooms. That is to say, through interactions with their teachers, students are socialized into particular understandings of what counts as the official curriculum and of themselves as learners of that subject matter. The patterns of interaction also help define the norms by which individual students‟ achievement is assessed. Students draw upon these patterns and norms to participate in subsequent classroom activities and thus they are consequential in terms of not only what students ultimately learn, but also, more broadly, their participant in future educational events and the roles and group memberships that they hold within these events.
Furthermore, Dagarin (2004 : 5) states that classroom interaction as a two-ways process between the participants in the learning process. The teacher influences the learners or vice versa. It is mainly achieved by two means of resources; language and non-verbal means of expression. Non verbal resources play just as important a part as
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language does. This holds true for a classroom as well as for other classroom situations. The one thing that makes the classroom different from any other classroom situation is that it has a primary pedagogic purpose. Teacher spends a lot of time talking, lecturing, asking questions, and giving instructions, and so on. The teacher does not only use language for these functions, but he or she demonstrates and uses mime a lot.
Ellis (2005: 13) states that classroom interaction involves two main aspects, which are negotiation of meaning and feedback, if these two elements are not available in the classroom, the successful of learning through interaction can not be spoken. It is also claimed that classroom interaction contributes to acquisition through the provision of negative evidence and through opportunities for modified output. It then is rich of meaning negotiation where the learners can receive feedback from the interlocutors.
Types of Classroom Interaction
There are several types of classroom interaction in teaching and learning English as a foreign language. It has been formulated by Mateja Dagarin (2004). It can be classified based on the participants, the time and the purpose. Based on the participants of the classroom interaction of teaching English, it can be divided into four. They are teacher-student interaction, teacher-students interaction, student-student interaction and students-students interaction. The four types of the classroom interaction will be explained as following:
a. Teacher-Student Interaction
In maintaining classroom interaction, the teacher has to do interaction to the students in the class. Teacher-student interaction is the interaction which is done by the teacher with one student in the class.
Moore and Anderson (2003 : 134) shows that effective teacher-student interaction can and does take place but that these synchronous media seem to have little direct impact on educational outcomes.
Dagarin (2004: 10) states that the type of teacher-student interaction is conducted when the teacher refers to one student by giving a question to be answered. It is often used for evaluation of individual student.
This arrangement can also be used for an informal conversation at the beginning of the lesson or for leading students into a less guided activity.
Furthermore, Barnes (2005: 131) explains that the teacher-student interaction focused on describing the patterns typically of interaction in the classroom. The pattern involves the teacher posing a question to a student to which he or she usually already knows to answer. The student is expected to provide a brief but correct response to the question, which is then evaluated by the teacher with such phrases as “good,” “That‟s right” or “No, that‟s not right”. Each round of interaction typically involves one student at the time with the teacher moving on to ask question of another student once he or she has evaluated the prior student‟s response.
Scrinever (2005: 3) explains that the teacher-student interaction happens between the teacher and one student, that is to say a teacher takes a part such interaction. He or she negotiates with the student the content of the course, asks questions, uses student‟s ideas, lectures, gives direction, criticizes or justifies student talk responses. On the other hand, the student will benefit by drawing on experience of their teachers on how well to interact in the manner that is most effective.
In same line, Hammer (2009 : 14) describes that during teacher-student interaction, the student seeks to demonstrate her or his speaking skill in front of the teacher that is why latter should consider his way of interacting which is very crucial in learning and teaching. The teacher should focus on three things when they talk with their friends as (1) The student must pay attention to the kind of the language of the student is able to be understand. For example, teacher should provide an output that is comprehensible for the level of all the students. (2) The teacher must think about what they will say to their students, hence the teacher speech is as resource for learners.
(3) Teacher also has to identify the ways in which they will speak such as the voice, tone and intonation.
Furthermore, Feng (2013 : 10) explains that teacher-student interaction is understood to be an important issue in education and teacher-student interaction is beneficial for student‟s learning. Teacher-student interaction identified seven categories of
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teacher‟s behavior such as; clarifying feelings, praising, using students‟ idea, asking questions, lecturing, giving direction and criticizing. During teacher-student interaction, teacher can use strategies such as denomination, correction and expansion to re conceptualize the information provided by the student.
In addition, classroom interaction happens if the teacher and student do interaction in the classroom directly and orally. By doing interaction, teaching and learning language process will be better.
Teacher and student can accepted well the information from each other.
b. Teacher-Students Interaction Another type of classroom interaction is known as teacher-students interaction.
This type of interaction focuses on how the teacher as the centre of the teaching process does interaction with the whole students in the class. Moore and Anderson (2003: 132 ) explains that teacher-students interaction is conducted when the teacher refers to the whole class at the same time. He or she takes the role of a leader or controller and decides about type and process of the activity. The primary function of such interaction is controlled practicing of certain language structures or vocabulary. Mostly, they are in the form of repeating structures after the teacher as the model. This type of practice is also referred to as drill.
Similar opinion about the teacher – students interaction as the interaction which is done by a teacher to some students is claimed by Dagarin (2004 : 11), they state that teacher-students interaction is a kind of relationship between teacher and students both in or out of the classroom, is influenced strongly by the teaching perspective embraced by the teacher. Within the instructional communication discipline, teaching can be viewed from two perspectives.
In addition, Myers (2008 : 6) explains that teacher whose teacher-students interaction governed by the rhetorical perspective communicate with their students as a means to influence or persuade them.
Communication is teacher-centered, which means the teacher sends a message, gives question to the whole students who play a passive role as the recipient of the message.
To communicate effectively with the
students, teacher focuses on teaching clearly, making course content, relevant, and acting in assertive manner.
Finally, in teaching learning process, classroom interaction is one part that can not been lost. It is because every teaching learning process, lecturer will interact with the teacher to students. It means, classroom interaction should be kept by lecturer and student. Thus, classroom interaction as a way process between teacher and learner.
c. Student-student interaction
Many theories have claimed that student-student interaction is a kind of classroom interaction where the teacher only posts her or himself as the facilitator of the teaching and learning process. Johnson (2005: 4) supports that if student-student interaction is well structured and managed, then it can be an important factor of cognitive development, educational achievement of students and emerging social competence. Here, the students work in peer (two students) and they share information individually to another friend in same peer.
It can also develop the student‟s capacities through collaborative works. Therefore, learner will establish social relationship through this kind of interaction, where the sense of learning community is promoted and isolation is reduced in the classroom.
Similar opinion about student-student interaction works in peer comes from Paula (2002: 2), she adds that talking students with their peers about the content of the course is a powerful way for them to reinforce what they have learned. The teachers, then must encourage such type of interaction between learners because it is the fastest and the best way, it makes students active rather than passive participants.
In addition, Sharp and Huett (2005: 3) state that student-student interaction is a kind of classroom interaction where the student works in peer and their share information with their peers and receive feedback. While acknowledging the importance of the type of interaction in distance education, student-student interaction also encourages experimentation, sharing ideas, distributed participation, and collaborative thinking.
Furthermore, Murphy and Edgar (2010: 114) claim that student-student interaction can assume the role of one
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student to another or between multiple students engaged in group settings or alone.
It is also believed that the basic way of student‟s interaction is how the student can do interaction each other. Student can compete with each other to see who the best student in the class is; student can work individually on their own toward established criterion; or students can work together, cooperatively, taking responsibility for each other‟s learning as well as their own.
In conclusion, the interaction between student to students who are communicating with each other in the classroom to develop the potential that they have. The class where students have the opportunity to communicate with one another effectively help students build their knowledge. Thus, by emphasizing collaborative and cooperative nature of scientific work, the students share the responsibility to learn from each other, discuss different understanding, and shaping the direction of the class.
d. Students-Students Interaction Beside the student-student interaction which built in classroom interaction of speaking, another students‟ interaction is students-students interaction. Students- students interaction in classroom can be closely monitored and nurtured if needed;
particularly because the classroom is self- contained the teachers and the students are in close geographical proximity (Murhead, 2001: 22). It is often facilitated by the relationships formed in the real-time environment of the classroom. This interaction fosters future communications and relationships that the students can utilize in and out of the class.
In addition, Dagarin (2004 : 31) states that students-students interaction is a kind of interaction which is particularly useful for encouraging interaction among the students.
In large classes, they present the only possibility for as many students as possible to speak. The students use more language function in group work than in other forms of interaction. It has also been proven that student perceive them as the most pleasant ways of learning, because they feel relaxed and subsequently communicate better.
Similar opinion about the student- student interaction comes from Payant (2012 : 4), student-student interaction during tasks
provides opportunities for students to engage meaningful interaction and draw on linguistic resources to support learning processes. It is also believed that student- student interaction in classroom can increase participation, develop communication, receive feedback, enhance elaboration and retention, support learner control/self regulation, increase motivation, increase understanding and to increase teambuilding, discovery, exploration and closure for the students.
Finally, Interaction students-to- students is an essential part of every experience. In the classroom, this interaction occurs naturally, because students listen to each other's comments, asked each other, and build relationships through frequent contact. Teachers can also foster interaction between her/his students in learning settings, but there is no doubt that the interactions among of them also important as well.
Teaching and Learning English
Teaching and learning a foreign language it means that English is not the native language or not the mother tongue of a person. In other words, the person must learn the English language from the bottom, he/she must know the rules and laws in using the language. That is because since the language used is not the same everyday use with a foreign language. In the English language teaching, teachers not only teach theory and requires the use of the word, but also how the pronunciation of a word or sentence. These two things are very important to note in the teaching of English.
In same line Wanath (2006: 114) states that teaching learning process is the arrangement of environment within which the student can interact. In other words, in teaching, a teacher should be creative in creating a good atmosphere in the classroom. By creating a good atmosphere, the students will participate more in teaching learning process.
It can be summarized that teaching learning process is a process of interaction which involves teacher and students. Where teacher is not only transfers his/her knowledge but also helps students to change their behavior to be better. In teaching learning process, the teacher also should be
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creative in guiding the students to participate more in the classroom.
It means that the teaching and learning of English intended for those students who are not users of English, thus need interaction to make the activity in the class more active and productive. It because the language of their mother language is not English, then automatically everyday language they use is not English. Therefore, students are required to learn a foreign language which should start all the material from the bottom. They also need to know the rules and procedures for the use of foreign languages.
Furthermore, Marlow Edigeret all (2007) states that in teaching and learning English as foreign language also the teacher should do well to keep this natural process in view. Teachers must keep language naturalness of their students. In other words, the teacher is able to organize students to language with naturally without memorizing effect and stammered while communicating with a foreign language. Thus in communication, students are able to demonstrate proficiency and fluency in using the English language.
Besides that, in the book step of teaching English by Elizabeth Weal, Tenaya Pres (2011) explained that in order to teach the English language must be through the stages. The beginning stages of listening, speaking, reading and then writing. It means language teaching there are four main skills that need to be included to make the students really proficient. It should be considered include listening, speaking, reading and writing. The stages are the steps to make it easier to learn the English language well and orderly. Other than that, the stage regularly can help learners to fluent foreign language.
In conclusion, in learning a language, especially English, required stages and an ideal learning process so that the material presented to students can be achieved well.
While students easily understand the material that gradually the students will also be automatically easy to practice the language that was originally foreign to them, over time it would be easy just to use it.
RESEARCH METHOD
The design of this research is descriptive research, this research has purpose to analyze the classroom interaction in teaching English and how the classroom interaction done. Descriptive research is a kind of qualitative research that search fact and phenomena in details that is described by the researcher systematically and accurately data based on phenomena existed.
Gay and Airasian (2000: 275) also state that descriptive research determines and describes the way things are. It showed that a descriptive research investigated the things or issues by using some explanations or opinions or descriptions directly to the issues or problems that was studied. Thus, this research had purpose to analyze the classroom interaction in teaching English, this statement is really suitable for the aim of this research because interaction is one of the aspect of social life.
This research conducted in SMK N 2 Padang. It is one of public Vocational High School in Padang, West Sumatra. The researcher involved the English teacher of this school who teach tourism department to be participants in this research which have done classroom interaction in their teaching and learning process. It because, tourism department only one class in this school and only one teacher who thought English in this class. The researcher recruited English teachers who thought in grade 1 tourism from these schools participated in the study which has been carried classroom interaction in the learning process them.
The researcher used purposive sampling to discuss this study. It because, This technique used when the researcher wanted to select a purposive sample that represents a broader group of cases as closely as possible. According to Patton et all (2002) purposive sampling techniques involve selecting certain units or cases
„„based on a specific purpose rather than randomly. It means informed sample adapted to certain criteria applied by the destination of research as specific as.
Researchers conducted research on discipline, then select samples are people who were experts in the field of personnel alone. While, SMK N 2 Padang was matching with this sampling because the title of this research is a study at tourism
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department it means purposive sampling technique can apply in this class.
Related to the explanation above, SMK N 2 Padang was suitable with this technique.
SMK N 2 Padang is one of the best school in the city, it can be conclude that the interaction will be a good class because the school has a student with good input.
Therefore, information about the interaction of the class will be got.
Besides the teacher as the participant, the students are also involved as the participants since the purpose of this research was not only describing teacher- student interaction but also student-students interaction. The students‟ interactions are divided into student-student interaction and students-students interaction.
Since the aim of this research describes the classroom in teaching English, the instrumentation shall be prepared to describe the social life fact. Some appropriate instruments will prepare carefully. It is said because an instrument can determine the quality of research data to answer the two research questions, there are what the types of classroom interaction and how the classroom interaction done. In this research, the researcher will do classroom observation to get the data and researcher uses observation checklist, field note and video as an instrument.
Related to the instrumentation above, the researcher done classroom observation to get the data by using observation checklist, field note and take video. These techniques of collecting data in this research considered to the focus and the purpose of the research.
In gathering the data for analyzing the classroom interaction in teaching English at SMK N 2 Padang, the researcher prepared some instruments above. Then the technique start from observation checklist, next field note and take video.
For the first, the researcher observed the classroom interaction that happened in the tourism class. Then, the researcher used observation checklist. Next, the researcher filled the field note after the researcher had done the observation checklist. For the last, the researcher done took video to made the data more clearly and accurate
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It is known that the data of this research qualitative data from classroom observation and interview. After getting the
data from observation checklist, field note and video, the researcher analyzed the data which has to pay attention to all information related to the indicators of classroom interaction since it is a process of making a detailed description of the case. In addition, Gay and Airasian (2000: 239 - 241) suggest some techniques in analyzing data from the data gathered, classified the data and interpreted the data.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
In getting the data related to the classroom interaction at SMK N 2 Padang, the researcher used observation checklist.
The researcher used observation checklist to observe the teacher and students about what the types of classroom interaction in teaching and learning English are and how the teacher and students applied the classroom interaction in teaching and learning English. The researcher was done this research at 16th of September 2015. The data was taken during the discussion about the activity in the past week in which the material is about changing sentence from the present tense to past tense, than followed with another material that is changing the sentence from the present tense to present perfect tense.
Actually, the researcher planed to get the data about two times, but there are things that different from the conjectured researcher, thus the data collection is only performed just one time only. It is because when the researcher conducted the first data collection, the researcher found only two types of interaction. They are teacher- student interactions and teacher-students interactions. Then when processed of study was ended, the researcher planed to take the second data collection for tomorrow.
Furthermore, the researcher asked to the teacher that the researcher wanted take the data for next day, because the researcher wanted to see how they learn during discussions or group. The teacher explained that the vocational high school especially in eleventh grades tourism department did not groups work in English subject. It is because the teacher thought that the group work only wasted of time because many students not be studied as seriously and the students only
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chatting with friends without completing the task of their group.
Otherwise, the thing that made teacher did not conduct the group work in class because the teacher would like to finish the learning materials as soon as possible because in eleventh grade in the second semester they became a trainer in various tourism industries. Thus, teacher believes that group work is not too important and without group work teaching and learning English in tourism class is more effective.
Based on information from teacher before, the more important matter is about the use of tenses because she teaches a class tourism which is important for students to be able to speak in English.
Although, in the collect the data, the researcher found one of classroom interaction else, it is student-student interaction. While this interaction happened not in context learning English, the student does not talk about their study but they were talk about something else.
Beside, student-student interaction is found by the researcher in tourism class when college the data. It happens between one student and one student, while it happened beyond the topic of learning English. Among them there talked about something else, and among them talked about their lesson. It happened repeatedly until the time of the study is over.
In addition, when the learning material is about a text, the teacher would make it as a homework assignment. The teacher asks the students to find examples of the text and then assign students to identify what the words used in the text. Thus, the researcher concluded that, although the researcher done as much as any number of data collection, it still found only two types of interaction, namely teacher-student interaction and teacher-students interaction. While students- students interaction can‟t found in teaching and learning English.
CONCLUSSION
The researcher concludes that :
1. There were two types of classroom interaction types which found by researcher in SMK N 2 Padang at tourism department; teacher student interactions, teacher – students
interactions and student-Student interaction that done in tourism department at eleventh grades.
Especially student-student interaction is almost happened out from the context learning English.
2. There were three types of classroom interaction did not found in teaching and learning English in eleventh grade tourism department at SMK N 2 Padang that is students – students interactions.
3. The teacher did not use grop work or pairs in teaching and learning English because the teacher was want to make the process of the learn english is more efective and fastly to finished the material. It because student of eleventh grades became a trainer in semester II.
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