Contoh Proposal  Metodologi Penelitian Bahasa Inggris

INTRODUCTION

1. 1. Background

Nowadays, in big cities, it is no longer strange to get children speaking English everywhere even in public transportations. This situation invites any jealous from adolescents or adult learners. Every time adult learners see a child who speaks a foreign language fluently, the learners regret not having started learning the foreign language earlier. It is widely believed that the earlier people start learning a second language, the more successful they will be. People regretting are subconsciously showing their new motivation to speak English. Children speaking English, in fact could be particular motivation for adults to learn English. Earlier means children ages, about the years of 6-12. This is the ages of primary students.

Why do adults have difficulty in learning English? Because from the children ages, interest and motivation of speaking English were never be cultivated on them. Another reason is that the lack of English educational materials taught to them. The phenomenon of hundred thousand students who did not pass the final examination because of their English proves the English inadequacy of students’ proficiency. The root of this inadequacy must be coming from elementary school, a place where they gain the fundamental of English. Having lack motivation since the children ages invites bigger trouble in the future. First trouble is that we are lack of motivation underlying rare practices affecting on the speaking ability. Regarding to the proof, the researcher believes that it is too late to begin building motivation in adults or teenagers learner. Since motivation plays a very crucial role in learning English especially in encouraging people to speak English, motivation should be built from the children age.

Why it should be children in the first place to be molded to have big motivation to speak? Since children are more successful L2 learners than adults (Troike 2006), the writer believes that children should be engrafted earlier. Respecting the above issue, the ways to build or increase motivation to speak is rarely found. The classic matter is that now children are also involved in the outworn paradigm, “Learning English is Hard”. This paradigm commonly exist in villages even big cities like Bandung, Jakarta, Surabaya, etc. To negate this destructive paradigm the teachers have to provide a stronger circumstance than this. From the school, the place where children perceive English materials, teachers begin to think of effective ways. The effective ways is not enough to grow up the interest, there should be other stimulant.

This research will focus on the motivation to speak English, because speaking English considered has so many troubles to do, compare with other three English skills. In accustom to speak English, people generally said that they feel shy to utter words, they have fears to be wrong, they don’t want to take offense if people mock them because of their wrongness; it badly affect their motivation to speak. On the other hand, speaking English is also regarded as the most applicative skill. It can be done by everyone even by a child of two who is not able to read or even hold pencil rightly. Everywhere it can be practiced without any device used. Strongly related to the social live is speaking English for sure. This English ability contains high relevancy toward the social and educational live. People can read and write well, but is he

already good in English if he could not articulate it into the spoken form with correct grammar and pronouncing? No. Again, motivation plays a very crucial role here. Meanwhile learners still lack of motivation to speak English better.

After talking much about motivation affecting people to speak English, now is the turn to discuss the “how to”. How to increase the motivation from the children age is very essential, since adults’ motivation can be easily affected just by looking at the good children performances in speaking English. In increasing motivation, the children should firstly have the interest in learning English. As stated by Efendi and Praja (1989) that learning with interest is better than without any interest, the researcher begin to concern on how children can have any interest in learning English which lead them to the increased motivation to speak. Students’ interest can occur in an enjoyable and animated situation.

The curricula in our country change over the time. It has affected the materials taught in the class, since teachers are allowed to teach with their own ways. However, it is important to connect the materials that are done in the children classroom to communication in the real world. What has been missed by most of teachers is that they lower the children opportunities to use English in their daily lives. The forgotten fundamental concepts that remain occur in educational field is that teachers just teach the student to learn English in the classroom NOT to use the English. In other words, the material given to the children should fit their live activities.

However, many schools now decide their own material to be taught in the classroom as long as it can achieve the basic competence regulated by the government. The spread of material given is uncontrolled. As the case in Subang, there can be one material given in one school, yet we cannot find it at others. It would be just fine, if the material is not really worth to increasing the students’ motivation. Problems of motivation then emerge because there are materials that in fact can increase the children motivation while it is not given to the students. In this case, “introduction material” is the matter.

Regarding that the researcher found that children motivation need to be promoted earlier with the supporting material, introduction material need to be taught in every elementary school. This material will be useful for their entire life and from the teacher improvement perspective, teacher can teach the students “how to use English” not “how to learn English”.

This research in general is aimed to stimulate discussions on what’s good to teaching English in term of increasing students’ motivation to speak English since the children ages focused on the materials given.

1. 2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Due to the background, the researcher addresses these following questions:

1. How does the introduction material increase students motivation in differ between students of senior school and first graders of elementary school?

2. Which grade in elementary school is more meaningful to implement introduction material to increase its students’ motivation to speak English?

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter reviews relevant literatures for the sake of strengthening the researcher’s perspectives of the need of introduction material to be shared to all elementary school students.

2.1 Motivation

As Ball (1957) claims, ‘motivation is a central concept in any theory of education.’ Therefore, it is essential to demonstrate different points of view on definitions of motivation in order to achieve a better understanding of the role of motivation in language learning. According to Ball (ibid), motivated students refer to those who wish to do things that teachers expect, while unmotivated students are the ones who are unwilling to do things based on teachers’ expectation. In contrast with teachers, psychologists (e.g. Lewin, 1952 et al) study the concept of motivation to a greater extent. Lewin, a member of the cognitive school, emphasizes that learning itself is motivation which determines success. (ibid) However, Bruner (1966) seems not to be in line with this suggestion, arguing that when learners are forced or pushed to learn, they might fail to maintain their natural curiosity. In contrast, Beard and Senior (1980), two behaviorist psychologists, believe that ‘incentives and rewards’ are motivations for establishing behavior. Spencer (1959) appears to support this idea, suggesting that it is primarily important for teachers to apply various types of ‘rewards’ to stimulate students to possess ‘interests and goals’ in the performance of tasks.

2.2 The Urgency of Increasing Primary Students Motivation

Improving student motivation is one of the keys to improve education in general and language learning in particular. Cultivate children motivation should be build earlier as what Dweck (1986) said that reforms are beginning at the earliest possible level so that children are able to achieve higher in later years. In fact, the role of learners’ motivation in learning a second language has been examined by many researchers who are interested in this subject area (e.g. Belmechr and hummel, 1989 et al).

Besides, children have limited life and learning experience. Adults, in comparison, do not enter the FL classroom as virgin tabula rasa, but bring in a wealth of background knowledge and a long history of learning experiences on which the teacher can effectively capitalize to facilitate their learning; specialized by Pratt Johnson (2006:14) as they are all already masters of one language, frequently having the additional invaluable experience of learning another.

One of the strong urgencies convinced by Harmer (1998:8)While real motivation comes from within each individual, young learners rarely have clear motivation; they may come to class simply taking it for granted, or because they like the teacher. They will all at once be less able to assume responsibility for their learning—supported by a reset in Oxford (1990)to use the metacognitive strategies of focusing, arranging, planning, monitoring, and evaluation—in effect also ruling out any serious attempt at large-scale comparative assessment of their progress. Older, especially adult students will know the importance and see the point of study.

Meanwhile, Brumfit (1997: v) gives a list of the characteristics which young learners share:

1. Young learners are only just beginning their schooling, so that teachers have a major opportunity to mould their expectations of life in school.

2. As a group they are potentially more differentiated than secondary or adult learners, for they are closer to their varied home cultures, and new to the conformity increasingly imposed across cultural grouping by the school.

3. They tend to be keen and enthusiastic learners,4. Their learning can be closely linked with their development of ideas and concepts,

because it is so close to their initial experiences of formal schooling.5. They need physical movement and activity as much as stimulation for their thinking, and

the closer together these can be the better

2.3 How to Increase Primary students Motivation

One of the key principles in the issue of teaching children is that of attitude and motivation.

In this respect, Argondizzo (1992:6) propounds the view that “most children who start foreign language instruction do not have autonomous motivation to learn a foreign language.” Children will learn better if they are motivated and want to do it. Supported by Pintrich and Schunk (2002:245) stating It is very important for children to have intrinsic motivation, referring to ‘motivation to engage in an activity for its own sake’.

it is possible to enhance children’s motivation by creating an appropriate environment and using proper teaching methods and materials. By stressing meaningful aspects of learning tasks, encouraging pupils to have clear and specific goals, promoting perceptions of good speaking ability, and giving activities that are challenging but within their competence, children might be more intrinsically motivated to learn English.

According to Ryan and deci (2000), ‘intrinsic motivation generally refers to motivation to engage in an activity because that activity is enjoyable and satisfying to do.’ Dörnyei (2002) indicates that the result is in accordance with his theoretical proposition that task motivation is “fuelled by a combination of situation-specific and generalized motives” (p. 151). His model for a motivational L2 teaching practice comprises four main dimensions:

Creating the basic motivational conditions, namely, laying the foundations of motivation through establishing a good teacher-student rapport, a pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere, and a cohesive learner group with appropriate group norms.

Generating initial motivation, that is, “whetting the students’ appetite” by using strategies designed to develop positive attitudes toward the language course and language learning in general, and to increase the learners’ expectancy of success.

Maintaining and protecting motivation through promoting situation-specific task motivation (e.g., by designing stimulating, enjoyable, and relevant tasks), by providing learners with experiences of success, by allowing them to maintain a positive social image even during the often face-threatening task of having to communicate with a severely limited language code, and finally, by promoting learner autonomy.

Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation through the promotion of adaptive attributions and the provision of effective and encouraging feedback, as well as by increasing learner satisfaction and by offering grades in a motivational manner.

Differ from him, Pintrich and Schunk said that motivation is to stress meaningful aspects of learning tasks. They say that authentic tasks that have meaning in the real world should be stressed in the classroom.

2.4 The Urgency of Supporting Material for Promoting Children Motivation to Speak English

Brown in 2002 argued that motivation is a complex phenomenon and is made up of many components, both internal and external. The second or foreign language learners who either intrinsically or extrinsically meet their needs in learning the language will be positively motivated to learn.

Regarding to what’s Brown stated, students are recommended to have more applicative material because they need not only to learn language but significantly also to use language.

Related to the introduction material that they will use for their entire live in meeting and knowing new people and social lives, Thornton (2001:12) has the following to say on the importance of motivation:

“…some experts go so far as to say that motivation is more important than the learners’ aptitude or the method of teaching employed. One thing teachers are sure of, however, is that fun and games are a must in the English language classroom because they are intrinsically motivating for children and again, because they are part of a child’s natural world: the “here and now” of a child’s life.”

Further, Philips(2001:5) argues that “younger learners respond to language according to

what it does or what they can do with it, rather than treating it as an intellectual game or

abstract system. Introduction as a beginner level material can lot of motivate primary children to speak as what Moon (2000:3) points out that young learners learn a foreign language:

through motivated by teacher by listening and repeating. by imitating the teacher. They want to please the teacher. They feel embarrassed

when they make mistakes.

At this point, it is obvious that the applicative material is playing a crucial role for shaping and fostering children’s motivation in learning. In this case, that is introduction material.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

This research employs action research design. It will be more satisfying for the researcher having two advantages from conducting this research by using this qualitative design. First advantage is to create change upon the certain less applicative material to be taught to primary children, as the result of the “action”. Another reason that goes together supporting this decided design is having more critical educationist toward the materials being taught. Secondly as the result of the “research”, this research will provide many new understandings on what materials to be given without neglecting learners characteristic and other aspects influencing learning process. This design will also cover the necessary of discovering the ways to motivate primary children to speak English through learning materials. Regarding as qualitative research, this method can be adjusted during the actions of this research.

3.2 Sample

This qualitative research will have twenty second students from each of elementary school and senior high school. The twenty elementary school students will be labeled as “first group” and the others twenty from senior high school will be labeled as “second group”. Both samples will be compared in the boundaries of their class performances including their willingness to speak, their interests, and their motivation affected by the material given, “introduction” material. In order from the comparison the researcher could discover characterization between adolescents and children, the range of materials need, and the impact of “Introduction” material learning process. This sample are chosen because they are unmotivated English Learners indicated by low marks of this subject. The first elementary school is one of a few numbers of elementary schools that implement introduction material for the primary children.

3.3 Data Collection

The researcher will then gather the data needed by employing observation and close-ended interview. Observation is done to monitor the performances and the motivation to speak of students from both levels of the school. It is also conducted to have wider understanding on “what’s going on” from taught material point of view. The observation done several times before finally the researcher found an imprecise answer to what she was seeking for. That was the material to increase students’ motivation to speak and hopefully to others English skills. Participant observation is regarded in the best position to collect data about the observable features of the interaction between teacher and students when s(he) is teaching introduction material. To strengthen the argument of the researcher, close-ended interview is also employed. The students will be investigated after having introduction material in the class. The senior high school will have it in English, whereas the primary children will have it in Indonesia. The same questions for all the samples though those are presented in different language.

3.4 Data analysis

As the result of the observation, the first method, the data would be analyzed by firstly comparing the data collected from each level of school. It should be done with the focus of evaluation of the material given in its role to motivate students to speak English. Then it would

be classified into several categories which will be constructed into more systematic arrangement of each classification. The data will be presented in the form of table.

Secondly, as the researcher also employs close-ended interview which is just “yes or no” questions, the result from the interview will be counted according to the students answer to each question. After that, as the result of the each answer calculation, the researcher will transform it to percentage. The data will be shared in the form of tables; one table for describing each group.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study will be addressed in the concerning on promoting children motivation to speak English. Then the result of this study will affect three parties : government, teachers, and the students itself.

For the government it will bring new light of the perspective in deciding the materials given or being taught to the children. The characteristics of the students affected by the relevant materials will greatly affected students motivation. There are two things that should be focused on (1) the materials being taught should be applicative to be used in their daily communication (2) there are different system and circumstances that the government should consider in deciding the materials to be taught. Being more selective and objective is part of the people expectation toward the policy stated by the government especially related with education

Teachers as the facilitator in the learning process will begin to concentrate the learning process not only on how children understand it but also on how children can use it for their communication. In order to promote the students ability, the teacher should conduct the material in several times with the same pattern but not in a dry classroom drill, yet it should be constructively done in the meaningful ways. If the material is already motivated the students, the teacher will not need to face difficulties in conducting the learning steps of it.

As adolescents, they actually will begin to think that learn something big should begin from the smaller first. Taking advantages from each material given will actually derive motivation rather that they just sit in the class without anything to bring home. Realizing children as an active learner, they might be more motivated by providing not stressful and applicative material in the classroom.

In short, it will provide a new way for all educationists to view the children and its material in term of enhancing students’ motivation to speak English earlier. And the result will give you further evidence on the students perspectives toward the material taught.

by, Cika