The Background of Study

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

Chapter one contains the background of study that explains the subject of research including the language background or the mother tongue of the subject. The background of study also provides the reason why the research is worth conducting. Furthermore, this chapter explicates the problems to discuss, the scope of the study, the goals of the study, and the organization of the study.

1.1 The Background of Study

Communication is the way to get information in the world, and one of the means of communication is language. There are many languages in the world, because of this people need an international language in order to interact with other people around the world. English language is one of the international languages spoken by many people in the world. It is estimated that the number of people in the world that use English to communicate on a regular basis is 2 billion http:www.esoe.co.ukblog4-reasons-why-learning-english-is-so-important , accessed on 19 February, 2014. English becomes more important because it is used in many aspects of life. In economic aspect, English is the dominant business language. If someone is to enter a global workforce, it becomes a necessity to speak English. Many researches show that cross-border business communication is most often conducted in English. Apart from economic aspect, cultural aspect is also dominated by English language. Many of the world’s top films, books, and music are published and produced in English. By learning English, one not only has access to a great wealth of entertainment but also learns other culture. Furthermore, English is popularly promoted by being used in internet. Most of the content produced on the internet 50 is in English. In short, the acquisition of English allows people to access an incredible amount of information http:www.esoe.co.ukblog4-reasons-why-learning-english-is-so- important , accessed on 19 February, 2014. Since English is regarded as an important need to face globalization, many people are motivated to learn English either in English courses or in school institutions like university. English Department of Faculty of Letters in Jember University is one of many school institutions where people learn English language. Unavoidably, the students use English language to communicate with each other inside or outside the class. Every student in English Department has different way in producing English. There are many factors that cause the differences, like the way of learning English, the frequency of using English, the language background, and culture. The students that come from various towns and cities have different language background or mother tongue L1 since the towns and cities have different languages. As a result, the L1 generates distinguished ways of speaking in every student. Basically, the distinction in the way of speaking is affected by culture. Every culture and language system has different ways in structuring words and sentence. The effect can be seen from the accent, the pronunciation, the action, and the pragmatic process. Hymes 1972 in Cheng’s article 2005: 8 states that “for any speech community, there are preferred ways of formulating and expressing certain ideas that involve familiarity with the language conventions shared by the members of the speech community”. The distinction can be discovered through several expressions in English language. One of them which is the focus of this research, is gratitude expression. Usually, every culture has its own way to express gratitude. Language background as one of components of culture gives special effect in the way of expressing one’s gratitude. People with different language background may have different strategies in expressing their gratitude. The act or the pragmatic process of students in expressing gratitude also can be different. The reasons above motivate the researcher to investigate the most used strategies of gratitude expression in English Department of Faculty of Letters, Jember University. Beside investigating the strategies of expressing gratitude for students whose language background are different, this research also want to crosscheck how far the transfer of pragmatics is happened on EFL learners in doing their gratitude expressions. The subject of this research is the students from English Department of Faculty of Letters in Jember University, especially academic year 2010. This research observes whether there is distinction in the students in expressing gratitude despite of having different language background. The students come from various ethnic; they are Javanese, Madurese, Using, and Sundanese. Originally, those dialects are from one island called Java. However, different geographical location and tribes brings out different manners in expressing gratitude in the students’ language. This research takes 29 participants out of 136 students from English Department academic year 2010. This research focuses on three ethnics which are Javanese, Madurese, and Using. It is because most of the subjects in English Department of Jember University come from those ethnics. There is indication that every language background has different ways and strategies in expressing gratitude. This research falls on Interlanguage Pragmatics area. Bardovi-Harlig 2005:7 states that “interlanguage pragmatics research investigates the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge in second languages, deriving its research methods from comparative cross-cultural studies and second language acquisition research”. Cross-cultural studies and second language acquisition have similar control in communication process between the native speaker and non-native speaker or among EFL learners whose language background are different. Regarding the process of collecting data, this research use questionnaire that is adopted from Cheng’s research 2005 entitled “An Explanatory Cross- Sectional Study of Interlanguage Pragmatics Development of Expression of Gratitude by Chinese Learners of English”. This research uses the taxonomy of gratitude by Cheng 2005 that have 8 main strategies to analyze the results of this research. Those strategies are thanking, appreciation, positive feeling, apology, recognition of imposition, repayment, alerter, and attention getters. Research strategy of this research is Discourse Completion Task DCT. Questionnaire by modification is used to adjust with the case of the research. Beside doing questionnaire, there is also interview with the students before they finish filling in the questionnaire. The interview is aimed to confirm the validity of the data regarding the tribe of the students.

1.2 Research Problem