Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Nowadays, Pare is phenomenal. As a village, Pare is a phenomenal place because it is known as English Village which began since three decades ago. Pare as an English Village provides the strategic position to learn English. In Pare, people can speak English through various methods. English is an obligation when globalization comes true, and study English in Pare is a right choice to face globalization. As an English Village, Pare has more effective and efficient methods than the other places. Pare has significant development, especially for its English Village in Tulungrejo. Students in Pare are not only from around Java but also from Sumatera, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, Lombok, Papua, and other places in Indonesia. They are in Pare to study English. The students study English in campsclass that is suitable to their needs and purposes, such as general English, speaking, writing, reading, listening, translating, grammar, pronunciation, expression, idiom, TOEFL, IELTS, First Certificate, English Culture etc. However figures Mr.Kallen, Mr.Ramdan, Mr.Putut, Mr.Edi, Mr.Ten, etc, courses ACCESS, BEC, The Daffodiles, Smart, etc., students, and camps ACCESS, Marvelous, GLOBAL, Mahesa, etc ACCESS, Marvelous, GLOBAL, Mahesa, etc con tribute Pare‘s development recently. perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user One of the most popular English courses in Pare is Basic English Course BEC. It was known as an Islamic English course in Indonesia. It is popular enough so that it has already had about 12,000 alumni from various towns in Indonesia. This course is located at a small district named Pare which is about 30 kilometers in the north east of Kediri Regency, East Java. The exact address is on Anyelir Street 8, Palem, Pare, Kediri, East Java, P. O. BOX 146. The phone number is 0354 392987. This address was truly the place where the founding father, i.e. Kallend Osein, and his family lived. Because of the existence, Pare, that was a lonely place, is then to be an English studying center. More than twenty English courses established by the graduates of BEC there. That is why the small district is amazingly visited by many people every year to study English intensively at the English courses. This automatically makes the economics of Pare increase. Among the English courses, BEC is the most popular one according to the respondents filling in the observation check-list distributed by the writer. Wahani 2001: 6 regarded it as one of the largest English courses in Kediri even in East Java. BEC is so unique that it can fulfill the expectation of being able to speak English without paying such a usual expensive fee Gatra, April 4th 2005. In fact, a number of reports show that Indonesian learners‘ commonly have not attained a good level of speaking English proficiency. Eviyuliwati 1997 who conducted a research at SMU IKIP Malang reported that students have difficulties in using grammar and in applying new vocabulary items in speaking class. In addition, Tutyandari 2005 mentioned that the students keep silent in speaking class because they lack self-confidence, lack prior knowledge and perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user because of poor teacher-learner relationship. It is reflected on the types of classroom tasks provided by teachers. Since the teachers have an important role in fostering learners‘ ability to speak English well, they need to maintain good relation to EFL learners, to encourage them to use English more frequently and to create fun classroom activities. All of the teachers‘ objectives, of course, are influenced by their belief in what way the classroom should be managed. From those two evidences, the writer argues that Indonesian EFL learners face problems in developing their speaking performance in classroom practices relate to the linguistic factor grammar and the personality factor teacher‘s belief. In this study, grammar refers to the body of rules which underlie a language, and this covers rules that govern the structure of words, clauses and sentences Cross, 1991:26. Meanwhile, Kagan‘s 1992:65 defines teachers‘ beliefs as tacit, often unconsciously held assumptions about students, classrooms and the academic material to be taught. She further adds that teachers‘ beliefs have an important bearing on the instruction they provide to students. On the importance of understanding teachers‘ beliefs, Johnson 1994: 439 outlines the following three assumptions that underlie the teachers‘ beliefs: 1 teachers‘ beliefs affect perception and judgment, 2 teachers‘ beliefs are reflected in classroom practices and 3 there is a need to understand teachers‘ beliefs with a view to improve teaching practices and teacher education programs. Therefore, Borg 2003:81 suggests that teachers are active, thinking-decision makers who make the instructional choices by drawing on complex practically- perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user oriented, personalized, and context-sensitive networks of knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs. Since the teachers are active decision makers in classrooms and they are mainly responsible for what goes on there, it seems necessary to explore certain issues regarding to their belief. Besides, one of the most controversial debates in language teaching is about grammar teaching. Then, the teachers‘ belief of teaching grammar in the classroom becomes a great issue to be discussed. Should the teacher believe that teaching grammar is extremely essential to be applied in the classroom? And how that beliefs influence the classroom practices? Both centered questions lead into the possible factors that may affect the teachers from transforming their beliefs into actual classroom practices. Rooted in this brief explanation and a dearth of research conducted about the relationship between teachers‘ belief and their practices in teaching, the writer is interested more to conduct a study that bring the brighter point of view on that issue. Since grammar has been a long problematic area for both teachers and learners in classrooms, mainly in improving students‘ speaking proficiency, this study focuses on the relationship between teachers‘ belief and different approaches applied in classroom practices to grammar teaching in speaking class. Recently, there is a research about teachers‘ beliefs and practices in teaching grammar conducted by Sabiq 2013. This research investigated five English teachers from two State Senior High Schools in the eastern part of Cirebon Regency, West Java, Indonesia. The results of the study revealed that: 1 teachers believe that grammar is the structural patterns or rules which construct a perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user language, that it is more important for writing activities rather than speaking, 2 in the term of practicing teaching which are in line with their beliefs on the importance of grammar in the context of curriculum, a group of teachers practice it as an internalized and subordinated part of teaching the text while the other one practice it as a stand-alone part among the other features of a text, and 3 there were five identified factors as influencing teachers‘ belief and practices in grammar, such as experience, understanding of the current curriculum, collegiality, references and workshop training. From that previous study and some references the writer have read, there are many studies investigated language teachers‘ beliefs and attitudes towards grammar teaching in formal school, such as primary and secondary school. Moreover, those previous studies were only limited and focused either on the approach and technique of teaching grammar based on their beliefs. Furthermore, the study of teachers‘ beliefs also has not been done yet in the non-formal school, such as English Course. Being aware of that fact, the writer wants to explore teachers‘ beliefs in teaching grammar and the classroom practices applied in a language course. With regard to the reality of how English can be learnt simply just by having a short course in Pare Kediri, the writer is very enthusiastic to conduct a research in one of the English Course available, Basic English Course. Several motives come to my mind before deciding BEC as the subject of my study. First, this is the elderly course in Pare which has been succeeded to be the leading light commit to user of other English courses. Second, this course offers three programs Basic Training Course BTC, Candidate of Training Class CTC and Training Class TC in which are oriented in improving speaking proficiency and focused on grammar such as tenses, active passive voices, directindirect speech, etc. Last but not least, the writer concernes to carry out the study in BEC because of the friendship rationale. There are five of my colleagues who are also willing to co nduct a study in BEC with different pedagogical aspects such as the students‘ motivation, the classroom management, the academic standards, the textbook used and the course management. The importance of studying English teachers‘ beliefs in teaching grammar and observing the teachers‘ classroom practices in Basic English Course Pare, Kediri leads into the case study of six English teachers tutors. Presumably, researching teachers‘ beliefs requires the data which cannot be collected merely quantitatively. It needs to be conducted through interviews and observations. Suddaby 2006: 636 also states that there must be some degree of congruence between the research questions and the method addressed the questions. The objective of this study is to generate theory rather than to test certain hypothesis. It is for those reasons, then, the Qualitative Approach and Grounded Theory Method are chosen to conduct this research. commit to user

B. Problem Statements