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1. Learners’ Characteristics and Needs
A survey was done to find out the learners’ characteristics and need. The
researcher interviewed a teacher to obtain data on the students’ characteristics and
needs from teacher’s side, including the motivation and students’ ability in
English class; methods used and the materials used in English class. The researcher also interviewed the students to obtain their background in English,
their opinion about English, their activities and expectation, and also their motivation in English.
There are eight classes of seventh grade and there are three English teachers in SMP PL Bintang Laut. Every teacher should teach four skills in the
class where they teach. Three of them teach all of the grades. Every teacher coordinates one grade. They coordinate the teachers and they looked for the
suitable material and activities. They did not develop the syllabus because the syllabus is already prepared by the government. The teacher usually develops the
main activity from the coordinator and suits it with the class. For the seventh grade, the teacher focuses on reading and writing skills. For the eighth grade, the
focus is on listening and speaking skills. And for the ninth grade, the focus is on the material used for National Examination UAN.
There were two specific books used by the teacher. The books were from the institute; one was for the stu
dents’ hand book and the other was for the exercise book. For the materials, the teacher searched from the book given by
institute and many sources like internet, movie, etc.
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The teacher also shared the difficulties in teaching the students in which the passiveness of the students was still a problem. The students were afraid to
show their-self up, to make mistakes, and it made the teacher confused. The students did not want to speak up whether they knew the material or not. They
kept silent and they did not ask the teacher when they did not know because they were afraid to speak. The teacher tried to use simple language to explain the
material and tried to be more patient, and when the students seemed confused with the explanation, the teacher tried to use 50:50 language
–means 50 English, 50 Bahasa-. Moreover, the teacher tried to point the students in a question-
answer section to force them to speak more. The s
tudents’ ability in English was ranged. There were students who had good English ability and also poor English ability. It because of the students were
coming up from different school which had different level in English. Their backgrounds in English were also different. Some of them use English in their
daily, but some never use English outside the class. The students’ motivation was moderate. There were eight classes with
different conditions. Some classes had a high-motivated with English, some was vice-versa. The characteristics of the students were varied; some serious, and the
others like doing fun and even belittle the teacher. Sometimes, the students trust their private lesson-teacher more. However, they were highly motivated to join the
class if the activity was interesting for them. When the students felt bored, they would easily try to find another activity or disturb others.
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The expectation from the teacher trough the students’ was that the students would be highly motivated in learning English. Therefore they would be more
active in the class. The teacher said that English would be very important for the students because English is an international language, many great books use
English and even a game also uses English as the language. Moreover, English would be very useful in their daily life. They can see the world and communicate
with friends from different countries using English. In addition, the teacher hoped that the students could pass the English exam in the National Examination UAN.
To point at that expectation, the teacher tried to give the students motivation by explaining that learning English was highly needed and there would be a goal in
learning English. The researcher
also interviewed some students to get the students’ point of view. Some of them used English in their daily conversation, some got English
since they were in the elementary school, kindergarten school, and some only used English when they were in the class and knew limit vocabularies. In their
learning process, some felt they easily bored with the activities, only few students said that learning English was much of fun because they used it as their daily
language. Actually, all of them liked English and knew that English is important, but the teaching-learning activities made them easily bored and they did not
understand the material. Finally, they did not have high-motivation in learning English. The
students said that they love fun activity like games, watching movie, and outdoor activity. They would be more enthusiastically follow the activity and understand
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the material better with that fun activity. The atmosphere in the class also became one of the causes that gave effect to the students. When the teacher set-up
comfortable atmosphere, and all the member of the class also could set-up that, the teaching learning activity would be enjoy and going fun. Some of the students
said that they actually really wanted to learning English deeper, but there always a trouble-maker in the class who disturbed their concentration. Thus, they overcome
it by sitting in front of the class. Some had the initiatives to overcome their difficulties in learning English by asking the teacher, their friends, or taking a
private lesson. They really hoped that learning English would be much fun than their process now.
From the interview, the researcher also noted some points; the material should be suitable and applicable for the seventh grade students of junior high
school; t he material could raise students’ motivation in learning English. The
material should encourage the students to be more active, highly-motivated, and also enjoy in teaching-learning process.
2. Goal, General Purposes, and Topics
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