6 believed that real actions should be encouraged to solve problems of English
learning in the country. Therefore, action research is selected to use in the study. Besides providing opportunities to practice English in a non-classroom
setting, gathering the participants to learn English in the program aims to empower them in which they are able to have power to make progress both in
their learning and the others‘. As known, the highest need of becoming a human being is to self-actualize oneself in the real world challenges. Therefore, the most
effective learning should support learning empowerment in which every individual is able to motivate himself to keep making improvement in his life. The
program as a result should accommodate the need and should be able to create a learning situation which both provides opportunities to practice English
authentically and empowers the participants.
B. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
The study addresses one of the root cause problems of the learners‘
incapability to use English which is due to lack of authentic communication practices. It is true that they have learned English but it is generally agreed that
their English achievement remains low. The study therefore stresses on how the action of applying cooperative learning in a non-classroom setting is able to
improve the participants‘ communicative competence and their learning empowerment.
From the definitions of authenticity, it can be inferred that authentic communication has various meanings. Firstly, it refers to the society speaking
7 English as their language. Secondly, it refers to communicating with people who
do not speak Bahasa Indonesia such as Japanese, Chinese, etc. Thirdly, it refers to potential real communication in which people learn English to be able to
communicate like how the language is used in real communication. Besides focusing on practices on authentic communication, the study also
highlights the use of cooperative learning activities. They promote equal participation and collaboration in the learning process. Some of them are jigsaw,
STAD Student Team Achievement Division, Tea party, small group teaching, role playing, etc.
C. PROBLEM LIMITATION
The study in specific focuses on authentic communication which refers to potential real communication. It means that all the communicative activities
conducted by the research participants are intended to assist them to communicate like in the way the language is used in real communication. Specifically, the study
highlights the use of CL activities on tea party, writing around, running dictation, and play pretend activities through role playing.
The facts that many English learners in the country are not able to use the language despite learning it for years and that many of them have limited
exposure to communicative activities have become the reasons of focusing on authentic communication. It is believed that it assists the learners to practice the
language like how it is used.
8
D. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
