Communicating Meaning Teachers’ Purposes of Using Indonesian in Teaching English I
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From both of the observations, I found that only Teacher 2 used Indonesian in communicating meaning. Excerpt 2 below shows the use of Indonesian in communicating
meaning. Excerpt 2 taken from the observation with Teacher 2
T2 : “Any question? For the next meeting please bring speech oration for dubbing
activity.” S: “Speech oration itu apa pak?”
T2 : “Speech oration itu pidato, seperti pidato kepresidenan, pidato dalam rangka
menyambut hari kebangkitan . Sudah jelas?”
S: “Sudah pak.” T2
: “Any other question?” S: “No.”
The excerpt above showed that the teacher used Indonesian in communicating meaning to make it easier for the students to understand. First, teacher explained what
students had to do for the next meeting using English. Because the students did not understand with the meaning of
“speech oration”, the teacher explained it by using Indonesian. The use of Indonesian in this case was very helpful because after the teacher
explained it in Indonesian, students got the meaning of “speech oration”.
From the evidence above, it could be concluded that the use of Indonesian to communicate meaning was helpful. By translating the difficult terms using the first language,
teacher could help the students to have a better understanding on the topic being talked. Spratt 1988 stated that sometimes teachers communicate meaning through paraphrasing or
translating into their first language. In order to make the students got clear meanings of the words or terms, it was better when the teacher paraphrasing or translating them into
Indonesian.