THE EFFECTS OF TEXTUAL ENHANCEMENT ON STUDENTS’ LEARNING SIMPLE PAST TENSE ON READING TEXT
Noor Fitriah
STAI Darul Ulum Kandangan South Kalimantan, Indonesia Email: [email protected]
Abstract
Grammar is very needed to gain the communicative comptence as the main goal of learning foreign language, so the grammar should be learned and acquired by the students in order to be able to avoid making mistakes when using language whether in speaking, listening, reading and writing. in line with this, Our capacity for expression is built on a structural basis known as grammar. People are better able to control the effectiveness of their language use when they are more aware of how it works.. Teaching and learning grammar of a language is still being questioned is a controversial issue,
“teach or not teach Grammar”. This factorial research design was investigated the effects of textual enhancement in learning simple past tense toward students’ initial (high achievers and low achievers). The participants were the eighth graders at SMPN 1 Daha Utara. to determine the effects Two-Way ANOVA was employed to analyze the data. The results demonstrate although the textual enhancement had significant effect and the students in different initial had different achievement. and also found an interaction between the TE and students’ initial.
Keywords: Textual Enhancement, Students’ Learning Simple Past Tense, reading text.
A. INTRODUCTION
Communicative Language Teaching, or CLT is an approach which is commonly used in teaching process and students are hoped be able in spoken and written language and knowing the meaning. But, it makes students have difficulty in form. English, as foreign language and as one of the important languages in Indonesia, In order to master the four core English skills, the students must learn English form. As being incompatible with their experiential and communicative worldview, CLT has traditionally opposed grammar-based curricula and formal grammar instruction. The ideal way to introduce a new language to young beginners, according to many experts, is to avoid teaching grammar as the first lesson when teaching English as a foreign or second language (e.g., Ellis, 2003 and Krashen, 1982). However, Long (1985), who recognizes that communicative action is the fundamental aim in the classroom, promotes a form-focused approach that involves intervening in the interlanguage building process by calling learners' attention to specific elements of English.
Input enhancement (IE) is as a way of developing grammar instruction in second/foreign language classrooms. The technique of making language input more noticeable to learners is known as input enhancement. In other words, IE refers to a strategy to teaching second languages that makes a conscious effort to make the goal form in this input enhancement by visually changing how it appears in the text (Alshadhan, 2011). So, the target forms in the text are made more noticeable to the learners. The idea of input enhancement emphasizes techniques to make input salient to learners and is a
strategy to get their attention. It is predicated on the idea that noticing is necessary before understanding input. (Gass and Selinker, 2008). Externally, input salience can be raised through the explicit discussion of target forms, metalinguistic, descriptions, unambiguous evidence, input flood, processing instructions, grade-path, and textual augmentation.
Thus, there are many different types of input augmentation that try to make specific forms of the second or foreign language more noticeable in order to draw the students' attention to them (Alsadhan, 2011).
Textual enhancement is a specific form of input enhancement hypothesis and as external attention drawing device whereby any particular feature of the oral or written (such as grammatical items or structures, lexical or phonological items) that is related to techniques used to increase the visual appearance of texts. This input enhancement technique can be applied by teachers in the classroom in written through typographical alterations such as boldface letters using different front types, underlining, color-coding, italicization, capitalization, etc, to direct learners’ attention to aimed linguistic form.
In order to investigate the effectiveness Textual Enhancement (TE), the present research was conducted. Previous emperical studies which treated TE on students learning English of grammatical aspect use. Such as simple past and simple present tense (Ayiewbey , 2013; Torkabad & Fazilatfar,2014; Nahavandi & Mukundan, 2013), conditional and future tenses (Jahan &Kormos,2015), Passive voice (Wicaksono, Julien Arif, 2015; Lee,2007, Meishan,Chan, 2011), Loewen &Ineoglo (2016) investigated the Spanish past tense. And Dalili, Ketabi, Kassaian & Eslami (2011) investigated the effect of Textual Enhancement on system learning English Dative Alternation. Those findings can be references for the researcher in conducting the current research.
The previous studies of Textual Enhancement showed that several researchers have conducted studies in grammar/ form learning strategy which focus on Textual Enhancement in the form of simple past tense, but there is no study yet for Indonesia learners. And there are many different sample, context, methodological cues used in the task, text length, learners’ text familiarity which affect different result of the studies. So, the researcher believe that those findings are not conclusive yet. The present study makes an attempt to contribute to the finding in the same regard by focusing on Indonesian learners in learning simple past tense. The aim is to investigate whether Textual Enhancement has significant effects or insignificant effects on Indonesian learners. And also since the students have different initial, high and low achievers, the researcher wants to investigate the effect of the Textual Enhancement to both students’ initial.
The problems of this research was examining the effect of using textual enhancement. The question to be raised was formulated as follows:
1. Is there any effects of textual enhancement on students’ learning past tense form?
2. Is there any significant different achievement between students with the high achievers and the low achievers in learning simple past tense?
3. Is there any interaction between the Textual Enhancement and students’ initial (high achievers and low achievers) in learning simple past tense?
4. What are the students’ perspective toward the use of textual enhancement?
The result of the research is expected to confirm the effectiveness of Textual Enhancement on students’ learning simple past tense on reading text, especially for junior high school students in Indonesian context. It is proposed to verify the existing belief on the effectiveness of the Textual Enhancement in learning simple past tense on reading
difference result of the previous research regarding implementation of Textual Enhancement technique. In addition, this research is essential in knowing further of students’ initial could influence the students learning simple past tense and to inform that which students high and lower achievers would perform better in Textual Enhancement.
Besides that, this research is expected to be useful for the English teacher and the other/
further researchers, it hopefully could enrich the teaching techniques in teaching grammar that can be applied in the classroom. and it would be useful to provide scientific reference for further research dealing with the application Textual Enhancement in teaching grammar.
B. METHOD
This research used quasi- experimental design and it attempted to investigate the effect of textual enhancement on students’ learning simple past tense on reading text.
Quasi-experimental research was implemented with factorial design because the researcher tried to examine the impact of two independent variables, namely the active independent variable and the attributive independent variable. Textual Enhancement was the study's active independent variable, while students' beginning levels of ability, or high achievers and low achievers, was the study's attributive independent variable. The main goal of employing a factorial design was to determine whether the treatment's effects were consistent across different student groups, high achievers or low achievers. The simple factorial design can be seen in table below.
SIMPLE FACTORIAL DESIGN (2X2)
Variable Variable
Students’ initial Textual Enhancement technique Conventional technique
High achivers A1 B1 A2 B1
Low achivers A1 B2 A2 B2
Note:
A1 : Experiment group A2 : Control group
B1 : Students with high achievement B2 : Students with low achievement
A1B1 : High achievement students were taught by using Textual Enhancement Technique.
A2B1 : High achievement students were taught by using conventional Technique.
A1B2 : Low achievement students were taught by using Textual Enhancement Technique.
A2B2 : Low achievement students were taught by using conventional Technique.
The total number of accessible population of this research was 65 students of the eighth grades which are divided into three classes, each class has about 22-23 students.
And two classes were chosen in this research, the class VIII B as an experimental group and the class VIII C as an control group. The two classes are consisted of 22 students, then the total of the participants are 44 students.
C. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Post test was conducted after the treatments were treated to both control and the experimental group. As the posttest result in the control group have been given. The complete descriptive of posttest of both groups can be seen on table below:
THE DESCRIPTIVE STATISTIC OF THE POSTTEST IN THE CONTROL AND EXPERIMENTAL GROUPS
Teaching Technique
Students' Initial
Mean Std.
Deviation N
high achievers 59.82 9.347 11 control group low achievers 69.82 11.677 11
Total 64.82 11.521 22
high achievers 71.55 6.378 11 experimental group low achievers 69.45 4.204 11
Total 70.50 5.379 22
high achievers 65.68 9.848 22
Total low achievers 69.64 8.567 22
Total 67.66 9.338 44
Table above showed that there were 11 participants in the control group who were high achievers, with a mean post-test score of 59.82 and a standard deviation of 9.347, while there were 11 participants in the control group who were low achievers, with a mean post- test score of 69.82 and a standard deviation of 11.677, for a total mean of 64.82 and a total standard deviation of 11.521. The mean of high achievers in the experimental group was 71.55, with a standard deviation of 6.378, and the mean of low achievers was 69.45, with a standard deviation of 4.204. The two groups' combined mean was 70.50, and the experimental group's combined standard deviation was 9.848.
Then a two-way ANOVA was conducted, with textual enhancement and students’ initial as the independent variables and the posttest scores as the dependent variable, to determine whether there were any significant effects of the two main variables on the students’ performance. All of the statistical analyses were carried out using SPSS, with the level of significance set at .05.
EFFECT OF TEXTUAL ENHANCEMENT ON STUDENTS’ LEARNING SIMPLE PAST TENSE
Source Type III Sum of Squares
df Mean Square
F Sig.
Corrected Model 929.159a 3 309.720 4.392 .009
Intercept 201421.114 1 201421.114 2856.300 .000
Groups 355.114 1 355.114 5.036 .030
Initial 172.023 1 172.023 2.439 .126
groups * initial 402.023 1 402.023 5.701 .022
Error 2820.727 40 70.518
Total 205171.000 44
Corrected Total 3749.886 43
DIFFERENT ACHIEVEMENT BETWEEN THE HIGH ACHIEVEMENT STUDENTS AND THE LOW ACHIEVEMENT STUDENTS Source Type III Sum of
Squares
df Mean Square
F Sig.
Groups 355.114 1 355.114 5.036 .030
The table showed that the F between group is 5.036 with the p- value (Sig.) is .030 with the level of significance .050, thus the p-value was smaller than .050 (.030<.050), it meant that there is effect of textual enhancement on students’ learning simple past tense.
THE DIFFERENT ACHIEVEMENT BETWEEN STUDENTS WITH THE HIGH ACHIEVERS AND THE LOW ACHIEVERS Source Type III Sum of
Squares
Df Mean
Square
F Sig.
initial 172.023 1 172.023 2.439 .126
From table above, it can be seen that the F across groups is 2.439, and the p-value (Sig.) between the initial (high and low achievers in both the control and experimental group) is.126. (Sig..126 >.050) It is higher than the significant level. The findings indicate that there is no appreciable difference in proficiency between high performers and poor achievers in the control and experimental groups of pupils studying the simple past tense.
THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE TEXTUAL ENHANCEMENT AND THE STUDENTS’ INITIAL
Source Type III Sum of Squares
df Mean Square
F Sig.
groups * initial 402.023 1 402.023 5.701 .022
According to table, the F across groups is 5.701, and the first p-value (Sig.) between high and poor achievers in both the control and experimental group is .022. This value is less than the significant level (Sig..022. < 050). The textual enhancement and the students' initial (high achievers and poor achievers) learning of the simple past tense are intended to have interacted.
The point of this research was investigating the effectiveness of textual enhancement on students’ learning simple past tense. The first research question was initially set and statistical analysis by Two-way ANOVA was carried out. The findings showed that textual enhancement had a considerable impact on students' understanding of the simple past tense. The rationale for this conclusion was that the results showed that the F across groups was 5.036, the p-value (Sig.) was.030, and the threshold of significance was.050, meaning that the p-value was less than.050 (.030.<.050). It is implied that there were significant differences between the two groups or that the alternative hypothesis was accepted in place of the null hypothesis. This finding signified that there was significant effect of textual enhancement on students’ learning past simple tense of the eighth graders at SMPN 1 Daha Utara. Hulu Sungai Selatan, South Kalimantan.
This finding of this research on the effect of textual enhancement on learning simple past tense. According to Elshan Sarboland (2012), Ayiewbey (2013), Mahdi Ghasemi Torkabad & Ali Muhammad Fazilatfar (2014), textual enhancement increased students' understanding of the simple past tense and improved their grammar performance. The purpose of textual enhancement is to draw learners' attention to linguistic forms by making input perceptually more vivid and emphasizing particular language forms and structures (Fotos and Nassaji, 2011). Elshan Sarboland (2012) discovered that bold and underlined Textual Enhancement (TE) formats were more successful than other forms at getting readers to notice and learn the simple past tense. And according to Ayiewbey (2013), italicized and bold-faced letters both improve students' ability to read, however the bold-faced group performed significantly better than the italicized group.
Additionally, textual augmentation encourages students to focus on linguistic features (Torkabad & Fazilatfar, 2014). When students pay attention to that form, they are more drawn to and concentrate on the simple past tense.
Another study that was in support to the effectiveness of Textual Enhancement was conducted by Nahavandi & Mukundan (2013), it was revealed that there was significant different in the three groups, control group, textual input enhancement and textual input enhancement plus explicit rule presentation group. the finding of this study showed textual enhancement can be effective focus on form technique, at least for English simple past tense and the English foreign learners (EFL) population investigated.
The Textual Enhancement (TE) made the learners more focus on the simple past tense that they learned. The textual enhancement draws students' attention to and places a greater emphasis on the improved words in the text, even while the text encourages them to focus more on language function and meaning than on form (Ayiewbey, 2013).
The impact of textual improvement can be seen in the learning of passive voice (Wicaksono, 2015) and verbal (Mehrdad, 2015), in addition to the simple past tense. In his study on the impact of textual enhancement on passive voice, Wicaksono (2015) discovered that students who received enhanced instruction that included textual enhancement achieved significantly higher levels of passive voice proficiency than those who received only explicit instruction. Accordingly, Mehrdad (2015) conducted a study, and the findings indicated a strong impact of TE on verbal learning in male EFL students in high school.
Practically, Textual enhancement can be applied in the classroom it helps students to draw the English learners’ attention in certain grammatical aspect without to lengthy grammatical explanation and it can help students to learn grammar implicitly and independently by noticing and focusing to the enhanced target form on the reading text, such as bolding, italics, underlining or bigger fonts to the certain target form written on the text.
The next finding of this research was intended to know the effectiveness of textual enhancement toward the high English achievers and low English achievers. The separation was conducted based on the students’ midterm scores that given by the English teacher at SMPN 1 Daha Utara. Both groups students in control and experimental groups were divided into four small groups, control and experimental groups with high achievement students and control and experimental groups with low achievement students. Each student in both classes were divided as eleven students in the control group as high achievement learners and eleven students as low achievement students.
students as low achievement students. According to the findings, there is a.126 p-value (Sig.) between the starting (high and poor achievers in both the control and experimental group). (Sig. .126>.050) It is higher than the significant level. As a consequence of the analysis, the null hypothesis was accepted and the alternative hypothesis was rejected. In learning the simple past tense, it is intended that there is no appreciable difference in accomplishment between students in the high achievers and the poor achievers of the control and experimental groups. On the other hand, Wicaksono (2015) discovered that TE was more successful when applied to low achievers than high achievers.
Following that, it was evident from the interaction between the textual enhancement and the students' initial grades (high achievers and low achievers) that there was a relationship between the two. It was found that the interaction occured as indicated by the results that high achievers had significant result and also low achievers had significant result. Thus, the Textual Enhancement can be implemented for students in high achievers and students in low achievers.
The last, the questionnaire showed although less than half number of the students (32%) said that they were not mastering past simple tense after treatment given, then only half of them felt that they found some benefits in giving textual enhancement in learning past simple tense. As the questionnaire provided by a researcher, the researchers proposed a question about awareness and the realizing of past simple tense when there was textual enhancement used in teaching. Only 10 students were agreed and only twelve students gave negative response. Related to focusing in past simple tense aspect, only 41% gave positive response whole thirteen students disagreed with the statement.
The last aspect being asked to the students was the overall impact of giving textual enhancement on past simple tense mastery. 55% of the subject or twelve students claimed that textual enhancement gave positive impact in mastering the past simple tense. On other hand, the rest, 10 students felt no different impact with Textual Enhancement.
D. CONCLUSION
This research investigates the textual enhancement on students’ learning past simple tense. Based on the research findings and discussion in the previous, it can be concluded three conclusions. First, there was a big difference between the test scores of the experimental group's (those who used textual augmentation during instruction) and the control group's (those who didn't) pupils in the past simple tense. The outcomes showed that the experimental group's pupils fared better than the control group's students using traditional methods, which provided text improvement. Secondly, there is no discernible difference in learning the simple past tense between students in the control and experimental groups who perform well and those who perform poorly. Third, it was discovered that Textual Enhancement (TE) and students' beginning performance (high achievers and low achievers) interacted.
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