The Design and Organization of the Textbook

relation to the English language teaching and learning. To make this clearer, the translation of the first four base competences are provided as follow: 1. To be grateful of having opportunity to learn English as the means of International communication. 2.1 To appreciate polite and care attitude in teacher-student communication and among the students ’ communication. 2.2 To appreciate the attitude of being honest, disciplined, self-confident, and responsible in transactional communication to the teacher and other students. 2.3 To appreciate the attitude of being responsible, caring, helpful in group working, peaceful in doing functional communication. To evaluate student base competence mentioned above, in the manual of textbook it is described the criteria to evaluate the first four base competences. Those four basic competences are categorized into the aspect of attitude encompassing respect, honesty, care, bravery, confidence, communication, social awareness, and curiosity. In each criterion, teachers must evaluate the students using score from 1 the lowest to 5 the highest. The students can be evaluated using four different kinds of evaluation. The first is performance assessment which is meant for the learning result outcome and the learning process. It means that teachers must assess student performance through their learning process and outcome. In the manual, however, is not explained the specific form of the learning outcome should be applied, neither the learning process assessment. It means that this curriculum give teachers freedom to decide the form of assessment they are desiring to administer. The second is In the manual of textbook, it is also explained. As the consequence, many teachers complain about the assessment systems since the variables in base competence of number one and two are difficult to assess. Both variables do not related to the English teaching PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI and learning. However, teachers must evaluate the students using them during the program. These three cases indicate that the developer of this textbook does not pay attention to the basic principles of materials development and to important theories in developing teaching materials. Lesson units presented in textbook are supposed to be based on what the aim of textbook has established. Interestingly, most teachers as the evaluators of this textbook also have the same notion regarding material development. Because, logically if the teachers saw that the lesson units presented in textbook had the problem such as no enough reading and listening text or no pronunciation materials, they then would not say that the aim of textbook did not have any problem at all. However, fortunately there are still two teachers out of 17 who see that the aim of textbook does have problem. Surely, these two teachers are highly able to evaluate textbook comprehensively. Another evidence shows that this textbook is not a good resource for the students when the teachers answer the open question in the questionnaire. Many of the respondents say that this textbook has very limited materials. In addition to it, textbook does not challenge the students. It is considered too easy. This definitely is against what Piaget has proposed about cognitive development which is divided into 4 stages according to the age. The typography of the textbook is intangible and the lively colorful pictures seem to well suit the needs of adolescents for some respondents. However, the number of the pictures presented in the textbook seemed to be not well suited and tended to be distracter since in the age of junior high school students, usually called as adolescents between 11 – 15 years old, the students can learn something more abstract and containing logical ways. Therefore, for late language learners such as adolescents and adults, the most cases occur in Indonesia, new vocabulary is easier to learn than new sounds or new grammar. In contrary, as the result survey shows, this textbook hardly provides adequate vocabulary in term of quantity. This condition was substantiated by the respondent as shown in the interview transcript below: “Oh God, this textbook is definitely under standard. I am really sure that this book was made in a rush. A very noticeable part is that many typos in this book. And it is too easy for my students, too many pictures but lack of tasks and texts. The government really didn ’t pay attention to it, I think .” respondent 2 “This book is good. It is colorful. Many pictures support the activity. But sometimes I feel it is too many. There is no listening section I guess and the text is very limited though I add with my own texts .” respondent 2

4. Language Content of the Textbook

The survey result also tells that this textbook does not provide pronunciation exercise as well as word stress and intonation. According to the survey result, this textbook do not promote either the vocabulary building or grammar exercise. In which, again, this proves what Tomlinson 2008 explained that textbooks fail to help the learners to make full use of the language experience available to them outside the classroom. The researcher seems to doubt that this textbook was created and developed based on the theories underlying the material development.

5. Language Skill Presented in the Textbook

Those two survey results are confirmed by other survey result. The teachers disagree that this textbook provides adequate reading and listening texts for the students. In result, it is not surprising that teachers do not promote this textbook as a PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI good resource book for the students. In the survey result, the teachers do not agree either this textbook covers the students need or a good textbook. In fact, Nation theorizes that material developers must agonize over the four strands to create and develop a balanced textbook. They have to assure that the learners later can learn from textbook through the reading and listening materials presented in textbook as the meaning-focused input. In other word, in Krashe n’s 1981 term, this textbook does not provide enough language input text namely listening and reading text. In short, this textbook obviously is not considering the language learning and teaching principles as well as the material developme nt’s principles.

6. The Topic Presented in the Textbook

The research shows that this textbook entitled When English Rings the Bell presents some positive qualities. This textbook represents both gender groups, various ethnic group in Indonesia and different religion groups. This textbook has accommodated the cultural and group diversity in Indonesia. This textbook is also easy to get because students and teachers can get this book by downloading from the Indonesia Education Ministry ‘s website. Regarding the topic presented in textbook, this book also has accommodated the relevance topic to students although in terms of the content, teachers found that this textbook was too easy for the students at that time. The writing and speaking skill are adequately presented in textbook according the survey result. In spite of the positive quality of textbook, the research also presents the pitfalls of textbook. It is worth mentioning that the criteria which teachers least satisfied is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI the skill presented in the textbook and the language content that comprises grammar reference, recycling and review, and vocabulary. With respect to the big number of the writing and speaking exercise of this textbook, teachers felt shortcomings of this textbook in terms of providing listening and reading exercises are real. It seemed that the developer of this textbook managed to take the emphasize on the productive skills namely writing and speaking skill. As the matter of fact language learning is definitely needing the receptive and productive skills in balanced as suggested by Krashen 1981. On different sub criterion, it was found that this textbook seemed to not giving enough room for students to use this book independently since it is lacked of grammar reference. This textbook also shows that there is inconsistency between the curriculum and the lesson unit presented in textbook. The researcher found that this textbook was not developed with a strong foundation of basic principles in developing textbook. Shortly this textbook in some aspects is positively responded and in some more other aspects negatively responded by the teachers. Commenting on this research itself, the researcher believes that this research stands close to other similar research conducted by experts and other scholars in terms of the method by conducting a survey. It is worth mentioning such as what Litz 2002 researched in South Korea on a textbook evaluation and ELT management. Another scholar to mention is Sadehvandi 2012 who also conducted textbook evaluation by administering a survey in Iranian EFL context. However, this research unavoidably has shortcomings that need to be improved in the future. The main shortcoming that is obviously seen and conceptually may raise