The purpose of this research is to find out knowledge about culture and language, and the perception of cultural awareness as a contributing factor, directly or indirectly, when they learn the foreign culture of the language. The results of this research showed positive perception (62%) of cultural awareness as a contributing factor in learning English and the students agree that it is impossible to learn English without cultural awareness. However, study of students' perception towards cultural awareness as a contributing factor was not clear and more research is needed.
The researcher expresses her greatest gratitude to Almighty Allah SWT who has bestowed His guidance, blessing and mercy on her in the completion of this thesis. The researcher realized that many people in conducting the research and writing this thesis have contributed their valuable suggestions, guidance, assistance and advice for the completion of this thesis. Awalia Azis, S.Pd., M.Pd, the other consultant for all the invaluable knowledge, professional expertise and motivation along the researcher completed this thesis.
Background
Many students are interested in learning English as a foreign language because the culture of the native speakers themselves. Most English foreign language teachers said that cultural awareness is mostly absent in the learning process, it leads to much effect in learning English as a foreign language. Of course, this condition makes a contradiction with cultural awareness in learning English as a foreign language.
Whereas, in learning English, cultural awareness is a contributing factor that affects students' understanding in learning English as a foreign language, as explained above about the advantage of learning culture.
Problem statement
Based on the above explanation, the researcher believes that it is important to know the students' perception of cultural awareness as a contributing factor in learning English. The student's perceptions are necessary to know on the basis that the student as the object of the learning process. After knowing the students' perception, hopefully appropriate adjustments can be made to the success of the learning process in cross-cultural understanding as a suggestion to the teacher, and further information will be useful in the development of cross-cultural understanding as a subject in English Education Department at Muhammadiyah University of Makassar.
How Students of the English Department at Muhammadiyah University Perceive Cultural Awareness as a Factor Contributing to Learning English as a Foreign Language.
Objectives Of The Research
Significance Of The Research
Scope of the research
The related research has been analyzed and observed by the researcher with regard to the technique, approach and the like. To this end, a group of English speaking students were taught English through Interchange Series and their perception of culture was assessed using a questionnaire prepared by the researcher. The same questionnaire was also administered to the parents of the same students to detect possible differences.
The results revealed that English language learners are largely different from their parents in their perception of defined cultural issues. While the English language learners were oriented towards Western culture, their parents were biased towards domestic issues. Ibrahim Abusihab's research entitled "The Effect of Cultural Awareness on Students' Motivation to Learn English as a Foreign Language in Jordan".
The research was undertaken to highlight the effect of cultural awareness in Jordan on learning English as a foreign language. Most Jordanian EFL teachers note that cultural awareness is largely absent in the English orientation process in Jordanian schools. Helmi's research was titled "The Effect of Cultural Awareness (Aceh) as a Contributing Factor in Foreign Language Learners".
In this research, the researcher focused on the effect of the contributing factor towards cultural awareness, and found that it is impossible to learn a foreign language without culture in it. In this research, the researcher focuses on cultural awareness as a contributing factor in learning English as a foreign language, it has nothing to do with parents' background and culture above.
Some pertinant Ideas
- The People of Bugis and Islamic society
- Concept of Perception a. Definition of Perception
- Changes of Perception
- Culture
- Cross cultural understanding
- Culture in the classroom
- Teaching culture
- Languange and Culture
Perception is not something static, but can change. The first process of change that is affected by the psychological processes of the nervous system in the human senses. Language learning and cultural awareness are related, and the lights to be taken into account when designing the foreign language curriculum should get a good knowledge of their own culture so that they can compare it with foreign languages. Vrbora (2008) emphasizes that teaching a foreign language without teaching at the same time where the culture is meaningless.
He should avoid raising cultural issues that are offensive because his role is to help students learn the foreign language/culture. A foreign language teacher can consider these suggestions when teaching foreign language culture. The integration of the cultural aspect in foreign language learning is necessary to facilitate the learning of the culture of the foreign language.
Students of foreign languages have a good knowledge of cultural aspects of the foreign language culture builds the students' cultural competence, which leads to effective communication between native language teachers and the foreign language speaker. They insist that the foreign language teacher and the foreign language teacher because they learn foreign languages communicative and effective. As a result, students may have a positive motivation or interest in learning English as a foreign language.
They should develop an awareness of the cultural differences between English and their own mother tongue because the acquisition of knowledge of the culture of foreign language learners becomes bicultural and communicate easily and easily with the foreign language. For many generations of language learners, cultural studies meant providing background information in foreign language learning. O'Dowd claims that the goals and methodologies of foreign language teaching will inevitably reflect certain beliefs about how the world should develop and what role our learners should play in this world (As cited in O'dowd Robert, 2004:11).
Kitao suggests that "the study of culture is a useful part of foreign language teaching because of its influence on language and communication." This has benefits for the language learner as it increases motivation and students' interest in target culture and its people, and improves understanding of student's own culture.
Conceptual Framework
The principle of language determinism, the way of thinking is determined by the language of its speakers, and language relativity, differences between languages must be reflected in the differences between its speakers. It is designed with the quantitative method and descriptive approach to present a fact about the students'.
Research Variables And Indicators
Purposive sampling is a sampling technique based on specific objectives regarding the features and characteristics of the population (Arikunto.
Research Instrument
Techniques of Data Collection
Each questionnaire was administered to 40 students of the English Department of Muhammadiyah University of Makassar to understand their perception about Cultural Awareness as a contributing factor in learning English. The above result came from the description "I think that culture and language are related in foreign language learning, especially foreign English language". Description "Most native culture that is not based on Islamic values is bad". This statement to gain what their perception of the external culture of other nations that there are Muslims became a minority.
The writer observed that all the participants who selected the “strongly disagree” option are women. Description number 6 is "I fully understand culture and cross-culture". The result in table 4.6 concludes with 68% "voice" of the 27 participants who agreed that they really understand culture in the broad definition. The table above showed the result from the description "cultural awareness needed with limitations in learning English as a foreign language".
Description "Moslty of local culture cannot become a model for our people" The results showed that there were 24 participants (60%) who chose the option. Intercultural Understanding" help them understand Cultural Awareness in Learning English as a Foreign Language. The statements are: "I fully understand culture and interculture", and "I think that culture and language are related in foreign language learning, especially English foreign language".
The second research question was “How do students of the English Department at Muhammadiyah University perceive cultural awareness as a contributing factor?” The researcher found some differences in views on this question. One of the important points is "are there limits in cultural awareness for EFL learners?" This statement is based on the definition of cultural consciousness itself. Approximately 22 participants believe that a restriction on cultural awareness is necessary, while the other approximately 18 participants believe that restrictions on learning English are unnecessary.
Based on the above explanation, the students of the English Department of Muhammadiyah University of Makassar believe that cultural awareness cannot be separated from English learning.
Conclusion
This chapter consists of two sections, the first section dealt with the conclusion of findings of the research and the other one dealt with suggestion. Furthermore, the researcher adds some suggestions for the best English learning in the English department of Muhammadiyah University of Makassar as the pioneer to teach and train professional English teacher, and the other researchers who are interested in this issue or any related issues in work to develop the future.
Suggestion
Abushihab, Ibrahim., 2016. 'The effect of intercultural awareness on students' motivation to learn English as a foreign language in Jordan'. Clavedon--- (2000).Assessing Intercultural Competence in Language Teaching.(Retrieved10 September 2015).Http:/www.Inet.Dpb.Dpu.Dk/I nf odok/Sprogforum/Espr18/Byram.Html. Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching: A Practical Introduction for Teachers, (ViewedOktober7th2015):Http://Noyeslodge.Cornell.Edu/.
Cohen,. (2002). A language instructor's guide to strategies for learning and using language and culture. University of Minnesota. Djigunovic J., (2001).Early EFL Learning in Context – Evidence from a Country Case Study.ELT Research Papers 12–05.British council.pdf file Doughty,C.J.,& Long,M.H.(Eds).,2003. 'The second language handbook. Teaching English as a Foreign Language or a Second Language. Ann Arbor: The University of Minchigan Press.
Helmi,.(2016).Effect of cultural awareness in learning English as a foreign language.Educ,journal.Pdf.file. Addressing culture in the EFL classroom: The challenge of moving from a traditional to an intercultural perspective. Promoting the Concept of Cultural Awareness as a Curricular Objective in an ESL/EFLS Setting: A Case Study of Policy and Practice, Lebanese American University.
Network-based language teaching and the development of intercultural communicative competence, thesis: Http:// Miless.Uniessen.De/Servlets/Derivateservlet/Derivate- 12412/Diss.Odowd.Pdf. Rahim, Uddin Choudhury., 2014. The Role of Culture in Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language.
