DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ COMMUNICATION SKILLS THROUGH COMPREHENSIVE LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

*) Written by Sudiro

<!–[if  I. INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problem

Indonesian students’ poor mastery of English communication skills has become a major problem of the subject existence. The condition is even worse by the curriculum changes that usually take slow effect. The speed is somewhat hindered by the goal understanding distortion of the most English teachers in Indonesia who mostly emphasize the achievement of high scores in Final Examination only which is not at all communicative.

Because language is fundamentally social as well as cultural and develops as human beings participate in the social, cultural, and historical activity using symbolic mediation. In so forth, the school vision, society paradigm and government regulation still tend to neglect discourse competence as the core of English Language Teaching (ELT). (Puskur, 2003).

Discourse competence is supported by linguistic, socio-cultural and actional competences maintain strategic competence as a model of communicative competence. (Puskur, 2003).

Discourse competence is the ability to combine language structures into different types of unified spoken and written discourse (dialogue, political speech, poetry, academic paper, cookery recipe, etc.). This happens as interplay of micro level of grammar and lexis which constitutes cohesion and macro level of communicative intent and sociocultural context forms coherence. (www.btk.elte.hu/cett/DOWN/APPWEB/POU1.doc).

As communication means, English is a practical language for practical usages too. However, it is only a little reflected in the Indonesian school ELT. The result is clear that most upper learners are reluctant to use the language, as it should be. Whereas the middle ability class still assume that English is like the other subjects, which emphasize greater in knowledge rather than skill. Even the lower ones give up to deal before going to ‘the strange language’ for them.

Limited exposure to the language as it is not used as the mother tongue, little usage of the language as the medium of instruction and students themselves hardly ever use the language in mate to mate communication also constitutes another obstacle for the English teachers. Dichotomy of learners – teacher is very visible in their interaction, which of course, lower the natural authentic meaningful communication rarely happens between them. It is indicated by several features of non-communicative communication like exclusive or excessive use of display questions, form focused feedback and echoing learners’ responses (Gloria Gil, 2002).

The writer considers the condition must be optimized. It means teachers as the main actors in classroom interaction shall optimize English not only as the content of the instruction but it should also be a comprehensible communicative medium of the instruction. By such exposure, higher English language proficiency levels may be facilitated. It is hoped that the success will start here.

There are two problems arise:

1. Is comprehensive language exposure effective to develop students’ natural communication skills in English?

2. How to optimize comprehensive language exposure in English Teaching Learning Process?

 

By supplying comprehensible input of communicative exposure students can achieve higher natural communication skills. ELT teachers can get integrated understanding to widen communicative exposure in English.

 

D. The Scope of the Study

Therefore, it will be discussed about language exposure as comprehensible input in ELT and the alternative way to meet the immediate students’ needs for natural use of language.

 

E. The Significances of the Study

1. To retrieve teachers’ awareness about the importance of language exposure as the means of comprehensible input in learning English.

2. Students get English not only as a subject matter but they also practice it as medium of communication with the teachers as well as among themselves.

 

<!–[if II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

 

A. Teacher’s Role

Julia M Dobson (1985) says that there are four major sources of motivation: the joy of discovery, the satisfaction of control, the joy of remembrance, and the elation of use. Another source of motivation is that teachers build into an English course to reinforce the learners’ original desires to learn the language. One device that always helps in building a group spirit is to make each learner feel that the teacher is a member of the group too. Once the learners develop a strong group identity, the teacher will find that they are more motivated to express themselves in English. Therefore, primary responsibility of the teacher is to revive motivation. Without strong motivation learners will fail in their attempts to bridge the gap between manipulative and communicative phase of language learning.

When the students feel secure the process of learning English will step on the ladder of success from getting knowledge until discovery and actual use of the language.

 

B. Classroom Communication and Learners Initiatives

Erickson (1982) characterizes that learners – teacher might maintain the ideal English class as a place where learners learn to communicate through communication. Whereas, characteristics of classroom communicative communication are the use referential questions, continuous correction of learners’ mistakes, use of speech modifications, hesitations and rephrasing.

The ideal English classroom interaction can be achieved when the students involve in multi-way communication of meaning between students – teacher and among them.

Sue Garton (2002) says by taking up learners initiatives, teacher frequently produce lexis interaction that interaction some way related to those utterances, and therefore provide the learners with a context of vocabulary items, as well as examples of collocations and lexical phrases

Changing the roles of learners and teachers enables learners take more initiatives that will lead to interaction, and therefore it will increase comprehension of input.

 

C. Wider Opportunities For Learners

Gloria Gil (2002) suggests the learners must be given opportunities to develop strategies for interpreting language in actual use. When teachers speak, they constantly estimate the students’ knowledge and assumptions, in order to select language that will be interpreted in accordance with their intended meaning. Since language not only carries functional meaning, it also carries social meaning. The social situation determining the nature of the language and the language can help determine the social atmosphere of the situation. The situation may be formal or informal. The use of informal speech not only reflects but also accelerates the development of a personal relationship. The informal situation bears more natural atmosphere of language production. To foster acquisition of the L2, the interaction takes place there must resemble as much as possible natural conversation.

It begins from simple to a complex relationship which is produced while the teacher and the learners are collectively constructing discourse which main purpose is to provide means for the learners to develop cognitive understanding to foster language development.

Sue Garton, (2002) indicates that learners actively engage, to a greater or lesser degree, in the creation of what occurs in the classroom and thus affect classroom events as much as they are affected by them. Successful participation in the classroom events requires that learners accurately perceive both subject matter information and the social organization of the participation.

Students – teacher interaction should not only carry out academic content of the language lesson but also the interaction itself. Such an interaction will give students more exposure to the language which later maintains discourse among them.

Moon (2000) suggests that learners’ learning English efficiently could be through providing them with a meaningful context for absorbing knowledge and giving plenty of opportunities for language exposure. Exposure means all activities which are authentically related to learners’ daily life experiences. They could provide a meaningful context for deepening their understanding of their foreign language.

 

D. Give Students Sufficient Time

Johnson (1995) points out that creating more opportunities for learners’ participation in interaction for learning process allows greater variability communicative interaction. Learners and teachers are given space to create their own learning opportunities, which then incorporated by the teacher into the lesson. Wait 3 to 4 seconds before taking the floor again, instead of the more common 1 second, the positive effect obtained include more learners responding, an increase interaction, the length of the responses, and an increase of learners initiating questions. There will arise complex experience, abstract conceptualization, reflective observation, and active experimentation.

Like what proposed by David Nunan (1992) that Language learners need positive experiences of what (and how much, interaction fact, even at the elementary stages) they can do with their language communicatively. Such feeling of success will increase their self confidence and the discourse competence develops through confidence.

 

E. Effective I-R-F Move

Analysis of Classroom discourse at the third move interaction I-R-F has been introduced by Richard Cullen (2002). ‘I’ represents an initiating move, ‘R’ is the response of the class and ‘F’ is the follow up/feedback comment by the teacher. Initiating move is represented by such as a question posed by teacher. The teacher’s F-move has a primarily evaluative function. It gives learners feedback about whether the response was acceptable or not. Feedback or follow up is thus seen as obligatory, inevitable feature of teacher initiated classroom exchanges.

According to Richard Cullen (2002), there are five specific strategies of F-move that the teacher particularly appears to use:

• Reformulation, the teacher makes frequent use of this strategy to repair a learner’s contribution, and thus provide the class with model of correct usage, without interrupting the flow of discourse she is developing with the class.

• Elaboration, the teacher embellishes her reformulations of the learners’ responses by adding to and extending the learners’ original responses, the teacher’s elaboration provide a linguistically richer source of input for the class, while at an effective level, they serve to show that she listens to what the learners have to say with interest.

• Comment, the teacher picks up on a learner’s response (by repeating it), and then adds a comment of her own.

• Repetition derogatorily is described as ‘echoing’, it is acknowledging a learner response and confirming it as acceptable and initiating the process, ensuring that all learners have heard it, and to confirm the idea but not to form initiating which it was expressed.

• Responsiveness refers to the general quality the teacher exhibits listening and responding meaningfully, and with genuine interest, to the content of what the learner is saying.

 

By implementing the proportional I-R-F move in the context of EFL classroom interaction effectively, students will have sufficient teacher’s control even they still have independent participation in the formation of classroom language discourse. One thing that the teacher should remember is that the feedbacks should affect as minimum risk as possible towards the elimination of students’ responses.

 

 

<!–[if III. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

A. Recent Mainstream of ELT in SMP

Most Indonesian SMP EFL teachers teach English only like the simple examples given in some copied documents and some quoted from up grading short courses in the teachers’ profession organization such as MGMP. Only little in number has tried to innovate their teaching styles. Most of them basically follow their assumptions about the curriculum operated. School Based Curriculum (KTSP) even remains as a priding jargon for the teachers to implement whatever they want. Factually, most of English teachers make an elegant breakthrough not to study the theoretical foundation of the curriculum but directly implement the copied syllabus and lesson plan (RPP). On the other hands, there are still many teachers who only follow the material organization printed in certain books or other publications like students’ worksheets (LKS). In daily context, they do not realize the invention of competence based curriculum and still indoctrinated by books centered curriculum.

Classroom interaction becomes a quiz-like show where teacher as the jury and students as the participants of the contest. Teacher talking time still dominate the instructional interaction with sets of teachers questions which must be answered by students in ordinal turns or randomly chosen with trial and error mentality.

Some teachers have tried to invent discussion for students’ activity but it is still absurdly carried out with some students’ rejection to their grouping. Teachers usually make an easy and secure way of grouping by putting them according to their seats position which of course many times happen imbalances. The idea of natural use of language is forgotten, the language exposure is artificial and the classroom discourse never achieved.

The effect is tragically embarrassing by not only due to the low score of achievement tests but also incapable students in English communication. When the students hear English oral expression, they react uncertainly or even mockingly with no gasp of understanding.

 

B. Language Exposure to Maintain Classroom Discourse

Nowadays there have been many teachers shifting gradually from non communicative into more natural communicative approaches both in the teacher talk or known as scaffolding talk and teaching the content itself. The consequence of this evolution is the students-teacher communication takes place in less formal rather than in the previous era as it is indicated to be more motivating. By such motivation, more language exposure will automatically be maintained through the activities which lead both the students and the teacher to communicate ‘more English’. The ‘English’ English can be said authentic. And when the classroom interaction expressions have reached to this stage, the initiatives – responses will come to the natural one.

1. Interacting Interaction

One of the requirements in KTSP is that English teachers must carry out the classroom activities in the target language. The exposure to the authentic language is a mandatory action to gain classroom discourse. The discourse can be maintained by daily classroom talks or scaffold. The examples of the expressions can be seen in the table below:

No	Activities	Initiatives	Responses	Follow Ups
1	Greeting	Hello, everybody	Hello, Ms Anna
2	Ending lesson	Ok. Just one more time and then that’s it.
No	Activities	Initiatives	Responses	Follow Ups
3	Checking attendance	Is anyone away? Who knows why?	May be he’s gone to see the doctor.	Ok, let’s hope he’s better soon.
4	Instruction	Please, stand up	action	Thank you. Listen to me, please.
5	Approach to discipline	Quiet please. That’s good Eva. Thank you Anton.
6	Interaction	Who wants to tell the story?	Me, Mom!	OK, Susan. You can start now.

 

To be interactive, scaffolding talks must be effective to meet some characteristics as follows:

Make the students interested and challenged in the given tasks.

Make the tasks simpler by dividing them into sub tasks.

Lead the students to the immediate solution of the tasks in line with the goals

Show priority scale.

Prevent students’ boredom in performing tasks.

Show how to get breakthrough.

 

2. Academic Interaction

Classroom discourse must also be maintained dealing with the content of the classroom activity or the academic materials. When a certain material to be taught can be carried out both written and oral, the oral cycle must come first to create informality and the ‘easy’ perception in the students’ minds and the written cycle presented later for the idea of precision. When the cycles are carried out in reverse, the discourse flow will stop because the students tend to memorize rather than communicate.

Instead of the dichotomy of oral-written, there must be sufficient input to the students before coming to the core of the lesson. When the teacher is about to teach a description, for example, the students must be supplied by the comprehension of the simple present tense, adjective and noun phrase. These topics must be related with model texts. After the students have been ready with them, just begin with the academic discourse about description. Students and the teacher can work hand in hand to create oral text of a certain thing or person. This cooperative learning can be developed not only students – teacher collaborate classically but the teacher can manipulate a situation that student – student co-workers or multi worker groups can be formed and run well. Individual tasks can end up the cycle before going to the written one with similar steps. Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah (Dikdasmen) through Pelatihan Terintegrasi Berbasis Kompetensi (PTBK) summarizes the rhetoric of the approach as follows:

Building Knowledge of the Field (BKoF)

Modeling of the Text (MoT)

Joint Construction of the Text (JCoT)

Independent Construction of the Text (ICoT)

Building Knowledge of the Field (BKoF)

Many SMP EFL teachers feel pessimistic to create classroom discourse through natural exposure in this stage because they are still patronized by the former thoughts of teaching language components individually.

In actual practices the language components can be presented in context. By such efforts, students do not only study the construction or a component but how to operate it in the natural way of English as a communicative language. In addition, the students do not feel bored only because they concentrate on a certain language construction or form.

Modeling of the Text (MoT)

Teacher can supply a model of authentic texts in the sense language authenticity or situation authenticity. Authentic language text can be retrieved from many books or website whereas authentic situation text can be composed together (students – teacher) in a classroom discussion.

Joint Construction of the Text (JCoT)

Horizontal peer to peer collaborative or cooperative learning is fostered in this stage. By operating students’ experiences of language exposures in the previous stages, they are led to perform constructive works of building a discourse in the form of text. The teachers’ roles to give feedbacks must not be classical, but tends to be to individual groups for they have different products with different problems, too. Again, students’ initiatives are precious things here.

 

 

Independent Construction of the Text (ICoT)

A student is an individual with his own unique personality, thought, emotion, idea and feeling. Individual independent construction is the follow up of collaborative group work which, of course, can not accommodate all individual within groups. In this stage, individual idea is developed as the reflection of admiration to the differences. Teacher must be a facilitator, motivator, consultant and assistant to the individual participants in the classroom. Here, the natural communicative initiative arises from individual student and may be reinforced or given feedback by the teachers or, for some extent, by their own mate.

 

<!–[if  IV. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

A. Conclusion

From the above discussion, we can see that by comprehensive language exposure through daily classroom and academic natural authentic interaction, students will be supplied with sufficient language exposure which leads to the discourse competence achievement. By maintaining good discourse, students can benefit natural communication in the target language of English.

To optimize comprehensive language exposure in teaching learning process, an EFL teacher of SMP must begin to use scaffolding talks for the medium of instruction. The scaffolds will make the students accustomed to getting and using the target language in the higher content or academic talks which is possible to their age with the four steps of teaching rhetoric.

 

B. Suggestion

To develop students’ communication skills through comprehensive language exposure needs teachers’ creativity, energy and total devotion to the students’ success. Any creativity is acceptable as far as it include students’ to participate in the discourse formation.

To control teacher’s challenge to the students, it is important for the teacher to control with the initiating move, response and feedback. The role of feedback is obligatory not only as an evaluative device but also how to create motivated control to the students discourse in acceptable way.

 

<!–[if V. REFERENCES

 

Cullen, Richard. (2002) Supportive Teacher talk: The Importance of The F-Move, ELT Journal Volume 56/2 , Oxford University Press.

Dirjen Dikdasmen. (2004) Materi Pelatihan Terintegrasi Bahasa Inggris, Depdiknas.

Dobson, Julia. (1985) Effective techniques for English Conversation Groups, English Language Programs Division Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, Washington D.C: US Information Agency.

Frost, Richard.(2004) A Task-based approach, BBC British Council teaching English, http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk.

Garton, Sue. (2002) Learner Initiative in The Language Classroom, ELT Journal Volume 56/1, Oxford University Press.

Gil, Gloria. (2002) Two Complementary Modes of Foreign Language Classroom Interaction, ELT Journal Volume 56/3, Oxford University Press.

Johnson, Karen E. (1995) Understanding Communication in Second Language Classrooms, Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, David. (1998) Collaborative Language Learning and Teaching, Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, David. (1998) Teaching Grammar in Context, ELT Journal Volume 52/2, Oxford University Press.

Petrovitz, Walter. (1997) The Role of Context in the Presentation of Grammar, ELT Journal Volume 51/3, Oxford University Press.

Puskur. (2003) Dokumen Final Bahasa Inggris, www.puskur.net, Depdiknas.

Richard, J.C. (2002) Methodology in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press.

Rothschild, Mmi.(2008) The Great Grammar Debate: Part I, Home Schooling Online with The Jubilee Academy, http://www.thejubileeacademy.org.

www.btk.elte.hu. (2008) The Components of Communicative Competence.