STUDENTS’ PERLOCUTIONARY ACTS TO THE LECTURERS’ COMMUNICATION ABOUT LEARNING TASKS
(A Study at English Department of STKIP PGRI SUMBAR) Oleh:
AHMAD NUSI Dibimbing Oleh:
Dra. Yelfiza M.Pd Rika Afryanti M.Pd
English Department
College of Teacher Training and Education (STKIP) PGRI West Sumatra
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ABSTRAK
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apa saja jenis respon mahasiswa terhadap tugas yang dikomunikasikan dosen serta bagaimana cara mahasiswa merespon tugas yang disampaikan tersebut.
Disamping itu, penelitian ini juga bertujuan untuk mengetahui kenapa mahasiswa memberikan respon yang berbeda-beda terhadap tugas yang disampaikan dosen. Lebih lanjut, penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif.
Partisipan dari penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa jurusan bahasa inggris di STKIP PGRI SUMBAR yang diambil berdasarkan purposive sampling. Dalam mengumpulkan data, peneliti melakukan pengamatan dengan merekam proses belajar mengajar yang dilakukan dosen dan mahasiswa. Kemudian, peneliti mendapatkan beberapa data dari pengamatan yang telah dilakukan. Dalam mengkomunikasikan tugas pada umumnya disampaikan secara lisan dan terjadi diawal,ditengah dan diakhir penjelasan. Dalam hal ini, mahasiswa merespon dengan menggunakan confrimation dan disconfirmation response terhadap tugas yang dikomunikasikan dosen. Di dalam confirmation mahasiswa merespon dengan cara direct acknowledgement, positive feeling, clarifying and agreeing response. Selanjutnya mahasiswa merespon dengan cara impervious, irrelevant, interrupting, incoherent, and incongruous response untuk tipe disconfirmation. Namun, respon yang banyak dilakukan mahasiswa adalah disconfirmation response. Respon tersebut dilakukan tergantung dari situasi dan kondisi kelas saat tugas itu berlangsung.
Kata kunci : Perlocutionary acts, lecturers’ communication, learning tasks.
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INTRODUCTION
Communication is a process of delivering information (messages and ideas) from one or more person to other. In general, communication is made orally or verbally that can be understood by both participants. If both participants cannot understand and communicate in verbal language, communication can still be done by using body movements, show certain attitudes, such as smiling, nodding of head and shrugging. This way is called nonverbal communication.
Both ways of communicating have the function, especially in the classroom in which the language has very diverse functions.
Communication functions both lecturers and students in classroom have transactional and interactional function. Students in the transactional context have both academic needs (ability to make good grades) and interactional needs (feel affirmed as a person). Virginia, Jason and Joan (2009:8) say that communication which is always used to interact with others, especially in learning and
teaching has two functions. The first function is the transactional function that focuses on the content of language used. In other words, refer to communication as means of delivering message to influence or achieve the goal. Through this function the lecturers deliver the message to the students about learning tasks. The second function is to express social relations and personal attitude which is called interactional function. Those functions will help the lecturers to make the students easy in receiving the message by knowing the contexts. In other words, the message that will be given by the lecturers to the students can be accepted without misunderstanding. All explanations above cannot be separated from the study of speech acts.
Speech acts is the part of pragmatics which is talking about process of communication. At this point, speech acts are always used by lecturers to deliver the message. Lecturers who serve the illocutionary acts will convey the message so it can be seen how the students’ perlocutionary acts, as the effects of communication. Students’
perlocutionary acts are very important in the
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learning process because it will describe how far the lecturers are able to influence the students in accordance with the message expected. One kind of messages that will be delivered in the classroom is task.
Tasks in learning and teaching process become a crucial part to measure the students’
understanding. If the students can do the tasks well, it means they are good in understanding the material. Contrary, if they cannot do the tasks as expected, it means there are some problem has occurred, such as they do not understand about the material or the students misunderstanding about the tasks instruction which is delivered.
Misunderstanding about message that is uttered by the lecturers in delivering tasks can make the students do the tasks different. Sometimes, they do the tasks contras and without any respond.
Based on the pre-observation in English Department, that is found most of students misunderstanding about message which is delivered by the lecturers about tasks.
For example:
Situation: A lecturer asks her students to make a paragraph with one topic sentence and some supporting details.
Lecturer’ instruction: Choose one topic and write it in one paragraph.
The fact shows, some students do not make the tasks as expected. Sometime there is only topic sentence without any supporting details. It seems their respond about tasks that is given are same, different and contras. Contrary, when a lecturer asks their students to find a problem and state it in background of the problem they cannot do it. Most of them only bring some sources and show it as a problem. In other side, at one class when the lecturer asks to make a task about report presentation, most of the students do it correctly.
At this point, in delivering tasks the lecturer always uses the speech acts. The lecturer implements the illocutionary act that eventually the students can understand the purpose of utterances so that it can be seen the students’ perlocutionary acts.
All phenomena and problems have occurred because of the problems in speech acts. They are illocutionary acts that are uttered clearly and there are ambiguous which eventually resulted in the students’ perlocutionary acts. As consequence and the crucial position about the problems above, the researcher is interested in analyzing about students’
perlocutionary acts to the lecturers’ communication about learning tasks.
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE In communication process, especially to convey the message about the task, perlocutionary acts is an important part to determine the extent to which students are able to understand and spell out
what has been communicated by the lecturer. When students' perlocutionary acts in accordance with what is presented by the teacher about the task then the communication can be said successful. The term of perlocutionary acts here is the study about the response, the effect or feedback in communication.
Based on Austin in Cutting (2002:16) Perlocutionary act, is performing an act by saying something. That is the effect caused by the lecturers’ communication about the task according to the context of utterance.
In addition, Cutting (2002:16) perlocutinary acts is the effect on the listener or the hearer’
respond. Students will respond to the utterance rightly if they understand it. For example “He was really hot because of weather”. Then, Lecturer said to us “your class is too hot”. This utterance is called illocutionary act. When it sees from basic meaning it is just a statement, but in fact it is asking students to do perlocutionary acts. At this point, Dwi Sundari (2009:6) says that there are some effects in communication. The first effect is cognitive. Cognitive here is student understanding of the information conveyed. This relates on the understanding of the task instructions and procedures. This cognitive is the first effect which is very important because it is the initial stage of communication effects presented by the lecturer.
The second effect is affective. Affective is related to attitudes and values. It includes the feelings, interests, attitudes, emotions, and values. When lecturer delivers the message about task, students will respond it with a variety of forms of effects such as likes, dislikes, lazy face, spirit and others.
The third effect is psychomotor. This is the category of effects that can be seen from the form of action.
Furthermore, Tubbs and Moss (2008: 23) stress that effective communication raises at least five of feedback: understanding, pleasure, and influence on the attitude, the better relationships, and actions. Understanding here is the part of cognitive feedback. Pleasure, attitude and the better relationships are the feedback of affective about the message is delivered. An action is done by the students is called the behavior feedback.
Feedback or respond in effective communication as a goal to be achieved both speaker and listener. Lecturer as a speaker always hopes that students respond to he or her message is same with expected.
Jalaluddin (2009; 127) says that response should be same with the message which is delivered.According to Tubbs and Moss in Arbi (2012; 179) divide the response into two groups, namely confirmation and disconfirmation.
Confirmation is the responses that can make the interpersonal relationships strengthen. But when responses occur in communication create the
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negative side in relationship between the speaker and the listener is called as disconfirmation.
Confirmation responses involve direct acknowledgement, positive feeling, clarifying response, agreeing response and supportive response. In addition, disconfirmation responses encompass tangential response, impersonal response, and impervious response, irrelevant response, interrupting response, incoherent response and incongruous response.
Similarly, Robert (2013:8) divides the way how people do confirmation respond and disconfirmation respond in some parts. They are direct acknowledgement, positive feeling, clarifying response, agreeing response and supportive response for responding the speaker communication in confirmation. Besides, they are tangential response, impersonal response, impervious response, irrelevant response, interrupting response, incoherent response and incongruous response.
More detail, Andi (2012:4) says that confirmation responses consist of direct acknowledgement, positive feeling, clarifying response, agreeing response and supportive response. Then, disconfirmation responses involve tangential response, impersonal response, and impervious response, irrelevant response, interrupting response, incoherent response and incongruous response.
From the all statements above, it can be concluded that response in perlocutionary acts has two types. There are confirmation respond and disconfirmation respond.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The researcher used qualitative design because the researcher wants to describe the students’ perlocutionary acts about learning task that is communicated by the lecturer at English Department in STKIP PGRI SUMBAR.
Perlocutionary acts are done by the students to respond the lecturers’ illocutionary acts in communicating the learning task.
Researcher chooses the participant by
“Purposive Sampling “. The researcher will take the source of data from English class at English Study program at odd semester 2014/2015 academic year. In the offering subject taken from English Department at STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat, the researcher found 23 subjects taught by English lecturers. Researcher identified each characteristic, and based on the characteristics, researcher chose the subjects in which learning tasks are frequently given by lecturers. From the analyzed all subject the researcher identified 6 classes that will be a source of data. They are research, literature, speech, grammar III, vocabulary and reading.
FINDINGS
Researcher found the two kinds of students’ response in perlocutionary acts. They are confirmation and disconfirmation response. The students give feedback to the lecturers’
communication about learning tasks with confirmation and disconfirmation.
The students’ responds with acknowledgement when they know about the material. The students understand about the material because the lecturers explain it clearly, concisely and precisely. Then, the students reach deeply understanding from weekly tasks. Weekly tasks are made equipped with the group presentations’ explanation so that the students easily to respond the lecturers’ communication about learning tasks with confidence. Moreover, some of them respond to the tasks because they want to show themselves are better than others and just want to get the good score or reward from the lecturers. When the students respond to the tasks with an attitude that shows a sense of happy such as smiling expression, open the book and raised their hand, it refers to positive feeling.
In other side, the lecturers often ask the students about their preview topic or homework.
The lecturers often ask the students about preview topic. It aims to ask about clarification that they really understand about the topic. It happens in teaching and learning process, the lecturers uttered
" Do you understand? Anda sudah paham kan? As a way to ask their agreeing response (stated on page 50) after that the lecturers mostly ask for clarifying directly to make sure about the students agreeing response. Agreeing response and clarifying response are frequently happen together.
The agreeing response and clarifying response happen because they respond it as appreciation to the lecturers. Furthermore, it because they just want the lecturers immediately move to another topic or immediately close the classroom.
Furthermore, the researcher found that the students respond with impervious, irrelevant, interrupting, incoherent and incongruous response which is called disconfirmation. At this point, the way of students in responding can bother interpersonal relationships. The students do the different way in disconfirmation response because they do not know about the material. It is becoming reason because some of disconfirmation response is commonly found with impervious and irrelevant caused by unfamiliarity with the material. This aspect is caused the several reasons such as the lecturers’ explanation is incoherent, the materials are too long and varieties, then the students’
awareness in learning itself is low. It can be seen from the students lack of attention when explanations occurred also become a reason why it happened.
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On the other hand, the researcher found some of students’ response with interrupting because of the class situation is crowded. Another reason comes from lecturers’ communication about learning tasks are not specific. The lecturers often ask them generally so that some of students respond it together and precede each other. They precede in answering the tasks because they want to show themselves. It becomes interrupting response by disturbing interpersonal relationships between students and students and students and lecturer.
Next, the students’ incoherent response occurs because the students do not follow the explanation of their lecturers well. They often respond with incoherent because of fear of the lecturer. In other case, they give incoherent response because they do not know about the materials. So they respond with incoherent of not at all.
Last, the incongruous response happens because some students feel that they are senior in that class. Besides that, the researcher sees that the incongruous response occurs because of their habitual. It depends on the way they speak in daily life.
CONCLUSION
The students have confirmation and disconfirmation response in perlocutionary acts to the lecturers’ communication about learning tasks.
In addition, the students’ confirmation and disconfirmation have different ways in giving respond. They are direct acknowledgement, positive feeling, clarifying and agreeing response for confirmation and impervious, irrelevant, interrupting, incoherent, and incongruous response for disconfirmation. Each of categories has their reason why they did it.
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