Defining RESULTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGNING PROCESS

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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS RESULTS

The results of the study are presented in this chapter. The chapter starts with results of the development of the four stages of the designing process and ends with a presentation of the design product the actual model of self-actualization language learning. This chapter is considered as the analysis results of the actual empirical process of designing the model of self-actualization language learning.

A. RESULTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGNING PROCESS

The model in the theoretical framework consists of four stages: defining, designing, developing, and disseminating. The following are the results of the study and discussion of each stage.

1. Defining

From the literature review on post-modern education, the writer took several major principles that were expected to contribute to the development of self- actualization language learning. a . The learner’s self-actualization as the major goal of education can be adapted and adopted in Indonesia. Becoming a self-actualized person whose characteristics include, among other things, being independent, creative, caring, open to experience, and able to adjust him-herself to a new environment is in line with the goal of 69 formal education in schools. It is not opposed to the contents found in current documents published by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The goal of education including language education is very much related to the achievement of the learner’s self-actualization. Seen from a post-modern view, self-actualization can sum up the goal of education in Indonesia. The goal of language education in Indonesia could then be derived from it. b. There are a number of big concepts and principles from post-modern education that can be emphasized in the process of developing a model of self-actualization language learning. Some of the relevant concepts are the following. 1 Absolute truth is questioned. 2 Domination of the strong and the wealthy over the less fortunate should be critically evaluated. 3 Equitable relations between teachers and learners and among learners themselves should be encouraged. 4 The diversity of educational processes should be emphasized. 5 Stopping marginalizing different, weaker groups of learners should be done. 6 A learner’s creativity should be encouraged to avoid mere reproduction in the learning process. 7 Learner centeredness as a consequence of constructivism is in line with the learner’s self-actualization development process. c. Since post- modern education cannot work alone to achieve the language learner’s self-actualization, it must work together with current theories and practices in language education, especially in second language education. Concepts and 70 principles from Constructivist learning, Communicative Language Learning CLT and Post-Methods Era are particularly emphasized here. Constructivist learning is considered a consequence of post-modern education, or at least it is in line with post- modern educational principles. The learner’s communicative competence as the goal of CLT can be included as the second major goal of language English education, with the learner’s self-actualization being the first or main goal. As for the guide to language learning process, one can take language learning principles from constructivist learning and the Post- Methods Era, such as Brown’s and Brooks and Brooks’. The findings of the literature review related to English language education are the following. a. English studied in Indonesia has Indonesian or regional contexts. This is English in the expanding circle a term used by Graddol. Local features, such as local accents, vocabulary and special expressions, should enrich the study of English in Indonesia, the orientation of which is no longer British or American English. Each region in Indonesia may contribute to the addition of local features to English used internationally. Those l ocal features are expected to enrich the learner’s proficiency. b. The Communicative Approach or Communicative Language Teaching is regarded as the major approach to English language education. Communicative competence becomes the major goal of language learning. In the context of this study, the learner’s communicative competence is part of the self-actualization goal or as a realization of a self-actualization aspect related to the study of English. However, it can also be considered as the second major goal with self-actualization being the 71 first . In order to reach the learner’s self-actualization goal, the English learner has to reach a certain degree of communicative competence. c. The process of reaching the learner’s communicative competence is enriched by providing learning materials that are more practical, easy to access, contextual, and closely related to character building. Character building that is in line with self- actualization goals gives variety, enthusiasm, and challenge to both teachers and students. d. In designing English learning materials it is necessary for English teachers and designers to be systematic and efficient. The design starts with the concept level first, and is followed by the planning design level, and ends with the concrete operation level. At each level, the goal, process, and content should be stated. The findings of the literature review related to language design model are the following. a. The RD steps developed by Borg and Gall were used as the umbrella procedure in designing a model of self-actualization language learning in particular and any learning material in general. In fact, the first five of the ten steps can be used by learning material writers to create a theoretically sound design product. The writer of this study, however, used the 4-D Model from Thiagarajan, et al. defining, designing, developing, and disseminating in the theoretical framework to simplify Borg and Gall’s ten steps. b. At the defining stage major concepts were defined first according to three viewpoints: language, language learning, and educational-cultural. In fact, these viewpoints are basic orientation of the design or curriculum. First, the language 72 orientation is that language is used for communication. Learning a language means learning to communicate with others. Second, the language learning orientation is learner-centeredness and those that underlie language learning principles found in the Post-method Era. Third, the educational-cultural orientation is that of post- modern education with the learner’s self-actualization being the main goal. At the defining stage a content analysis of ten design products of ELESP undergraduate theses was done in order to find out the relevance of the study to the improvement of ELESP design products. This was the first actual data that the writer dealt with. After analyzing ten learning materials by paying attention to the whole content in general and to the ‘learning activities’ developed in units, which include titles, instructions, texts, exercises, pictures, and other parts that appear, the findings are the following. a. Types of learning activities developed in the design products can be divided into two major types. 1 A type of learning activity that emphasizes the psychomotor and cognitive sides of language learning, such as doing drilling exercises, reading dialogs, completing missing words, making sentences using given words, matching words with their synonyms, matching sentences with the correct pictures, finding names of things by circling them, translating words into Indonesian, filling in the blanks while listening to a dialog, pronouncing words after the teacher, arranging letters into words, arranging sentences into a correct order, and some other types. 2 A type of learning activity that emphasizes the learner’s creativity with a significant r ole of the learner’s affective sides, such as doing pair and group work, 73 asking and answering questions based on a picture, giving a comment on others’ work, writing an announcement based on a selected situation, brainstorming followed by writing a letter to tell a selected experience, doing a word mapping of ideas continued by writing a paragraph based on the mapping, playing a game between a seller and a buyer, and some other creative types. b. The second type discussed above is potentially open to self-actualization language learning principles. The affective sides involved are much related to cooperation, tolerance, willingness to participate in an activity, willingness to express oneself, and leadership. The goals, concepts, and principles of CLT and post-modern education can be integrated into those ‘creative’, communicative activities. In designing a language game, for example, a post-modern education goal like ‘able to work together in various groups’ and a CLT goal like ‘able express oneself spontaneously in oral communication for various purposes’ can be included. c. The relevance of self-actualization language learning in this study is then connected to the finding of the second ‘creative’ type of learning activity, which is potentially self-actualizing. In short, ELESP students ’ design products have been on the right track viewed from self-actualization language learning principles. In the future they are expected to create more activities of the ‘creative’ type in order to develop their self-actualization language learning-oriented products. It is interesting to see that some activities of this second type may belong to Littlewood’s ‘quasi-communicative activities’ and some others to his freer communicative activities functional activities and social interaction activities. In a quasi-communicative activity the learning focus is still on language form, but in a freer 74 communicative activity the focus is on the mess age. The learner’s affective sides such as being cooperative, being tolerant, and having high enthusiasm can be drawn out of the learner. The learner practices using English communicatively and at the same time mobilizing all the “soft skills” needed to carry out communication with other learners. Note that the first type of learning activity belongs to Littlewood’s ‘pre-communicative activities’, especially structural activities, and its focus is language form – structure, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The results of the Content Analysis were then used as input to the next stage of the study: designing. This input influenced the writer’s assumption about how to write self-actualization-oriented activities. There is no need to develop completely new activities that have not been found in English lesson textbooks and other materials. What is needed here is the designer’s awareness of self-actualization learning goals and principles in order to make use of existing activity types and improve them according to self-actualization principles . With the designer’s experience and creativity, for example, heshe can add a learning self-actualization goal e.g., appreciating differences to the general goal of a simple game like a communication between a buyer and a seller.

2. Designing