22 Although we can learn by reading and listening, real depth of
understanding knowledge happens when the learner expresses the new learning herself, either through discussions or writings, the
learner needs to encode the learning themselves, rather than simply receive what others have encoded
—heshe needs to verbalize when watching, hearing, or performing new tasks.
Verbalizing is a powerful concept. The point of what stated by Marzano
1998 is that by actively interacting verbally to certain activity, learners can achieve real depth of understanding rather than only become passive during the
process. In this case, the role of teacher as instructor appears to be crucial since interaction is thought to be important in naturalistic language acquisition, how is it
accomplished in low financial capacity learners? The writer is interested in findings how learners‘ interaction takes place in second language acquisition
classroom settings, and also the significance of their awareness, motivation, facilities toward the English learning.
d. Low Financial Capacity
The researcher is going to divide the discussion of low financial capacity factor into two sub-sections. The first sub-section discusses about the concept of
the low financial capacity factor and the second sub-section discusses the effects on students with low financial capacity.
1 Concept
According to data in Central Statistics Board of Indonesian Government 1999, in measuring absolute poverty, a basic need approach is being adopted.
An individual is considered to be poor if and only if hisher income level is below defined poverty line. Poverty line is basically a minimum standard income
23 required by an individual to fulfill hisher basic necessity for both food and non-
food Central Statistics Board of Indonesian Government, 1999. Since poverty is ubiquitous and complex, there are sets of definitions of
poverty which are absolute and relative poverty. Absolute poverty in one hand is broadly defined as an absence of means for the satisfaction of basic human needs.
These basic needs can be translated into financial requirement as poverty line. And the relative poverty on the other hand refers to falling behind most other in
the community Human Development Report, 1997. Refers to the statements above, it means that individual or people is considered to live with low financial
capacity when they cannot fulfill any needs and necessities that beyond the life basic requirement, or even unable to fulfill the basic requirements in their life.
2 Effects on Students with Low Financial Capacity
In classrooms, we often find some students who do not perform well in a subject or some subjects. They are not able to achieve the standard determined by
the school. According to my experience as a teacher in English subject, it happens that most of the students who come from low financial capacity are lack of
English knowledge at school because they are not supported by extra English course outside the classroom, which means their English learning time is only
done at the school with limited time allocation for sure. Khattak et al. in Souriyavongsa 2013 states that the poor socioeconomic
is one of the factors that create learners face with the use of foreign language. In addition to that, Hashemi in Souriyavongsa 2013, identifies
that students‘ weakness in English language learning is due to the differences of social contexts,
cultural environments. Besides, a survey into the causes of English language
24 learning anxiety in students by Khattak, Jamshed, Ahmad, and Baig in
Souriyavongsa 2013 also found that students are afraid of making mistakes in the classes, failing the exams, as well as the poor socioeconomic cause of the poor
performance in learning languages. Based on that idea, it is clear that low financial background affects learners especially in their process of ELL.
Based on Horgan‘s 2007 explanation that the academic achievement is affected by many factors such as parents‘ attention, learning motivation, and
social economic condition, the researcher would like to show that besides low economy factor, family factor also affects
the learners‘ condition. The impact of family income on children‘s ability to learn, even to acquire the language that
allows them to learn, is now well established Hoff, 2003. The researcher also found that some studies show that children who live in persistent poverty have
more obstructions in their cognitive and social development, and poorer physical or mental health, than those who live in poverty for a short time only McLoyd,
1998; Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997; and Sacker et al., 2002. In conclusion, this low financial factor basically forces learners to be
limited in their access of learning language especially English, which needs proper guidance and facilities that cannot be relied on minimum support of
finance. In simpler words, learners from this condition is prone to consider English as just a subject of curriculum, and their target of learning at school is to
be able to answer questions on daily conversation and final tests. This factor becomes the main substance or variable to be involved in this research as it can be
seen also on the research question, whether or not there are effects from this factor towards the
learners‘ process of language learning.
25
3. Lived Experience Research
