Strengths Strength Strengths and Weaknesses of

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a. Listening Skill

1. Strengths

First strength was that the listening materials are accompanied by background information. According to Field 2002, background information is very important to motivate the students and help the students to know what they will hear. Interlanguage: English for Senior High School Student X provides background information in listening activities. It gives the information about the situation the students will hear and helps them to understand it. Figure 4.22 background information of listening activity The second strength was that the listening materials are accompanied by questions. Field 2002 states that by giving the comprehension questions, the teachers can ensure that the students listen with a clear purpose and measure how far the students understand the material. This textbook provides questions for the listening activities that can be used to check students’ comprehension. Figure 4.23 Questions in listening activity 79 The next strength was that the listening materials are accompanied by activities which help comprehension. Field 2002: 244 states, “More effective than traditional comprehension is the current practice of providing a task where learners do something with the information they have extracted from the text”. It is effective because tasks or activities demand individual responses from the students. This textbook provides various activities related to listening such as fill in the blanks, matching pictures, choosing true or false, etc. Those activities enable the students to check whether they have understood the materials or not. Figure 4.24 Example of listening activity

2. Weaknesses

First weakness was that Interlanguage: English for Senior High School Student X does not provide any recorded material. Textbook should provide authentic listening materials for the students. Since there is no recorded material, listening activities cannot be taken from this textbook. The second weakness was that listening activities or tasks are not appropriate with genre based principles. Since this textbook is designed based on genre based approach, the organization should be based on teachinglearning 80 cycle. There are five stages in teachingcycle; Building the Context, Modelling and Deconstructing the Text, Joint Construction of the Text, Independent Construction of the Text, and Linking Related Text. Some stages are not covered in listening skill part; they are building the context and linking related text. Independent constructions are provided in every unit, but modelling and joint constructions only appear in several units. Not every unit is sequenced properly. The only unit which is sequenced based on teachinglearning cycle is unit V, although there is no building the context and linking to related text. The organization of the stages is modelling, joint constructions, and independent constructions. Unit I and unit VI only cover joint constructions and independent constructions. Unit IV and unit VII provide none but modelling and independent constructions. The other units unit II, III, VIII, IX, and X only cover independent constructions.

b. Speaking Skill

Next was about speaking skill in Interlanguage: English for Senior High School Student X.

1. Strength

The strength of speaking skill was that the material for spoken English is well designed to equip learners for real-life interactions. According to Cunningsworth 1995, textbooks should provide speaking activities that can help the students to be more confidence to participate in a conversation. It is important because the reason of learning a language is to communicate. In order to be able to communicate, the students need to learn the expressions that commonly used in 81 daily conversations. Interlanguage provides speaking material for real-life interactions in a form of dialogues and role plays. The topics used for those activities are varied and commonly used in real-life interactions, such as introducing, showing sympathy, giving instructions, making appointment, thanking, etc. Figure 4.25 Example of daily life expression

2. Weakness