The Application of the English Hour

31

CHAPTER IV RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter discusses the results of the research and the discussion of the findings. There are two sections to be discussed in this chapter. The first section discusses the results of the observation, the questionnaire and the interview. The second section focuses on the discussion of the application of the English hour to answer the first research problem and the effects of the English hour toward the students’ perceived improvement to answer the second research problem.

A. Research Results

This part consists of the results of the observation, the questionnaire and the results of the interview. The results of the questionnaire were based on the students’ experience; and the results of the interview were based on the teacher’s experience and perceptions during the application of the English hour teaching strategy.

1. The Application of the English Hour

The English hour teaching strategy was applied in every meeting which has two meeting hours or 90 minutes. Ba sed on the teacher’s interview, this strategy was applied one meeting hour because the teacher used the second meeting hour to make the lesson clearer or to make the teacher’s explanation for a certain material clearer. The teacher said that the English hour teaching strategy was created based on the students’ English ability. Most of the students did not 32 really have a good ability in English such as vocabulary and grammar. Because of that reason, the students were afraid of speaking English or interacting with others in English. The English hour was only applied inside the class during the teaching- learning process. Firstly, the teacher used this strategy to motivate the students to speak English. The students were accustomed to listen to what the teacher said and practice to communicate with their friends and the teacher by using English during the teaching-learning activities. As cited in Richards Rodgers 2001, Johnson 1982 states that communication is an activities which involve the language in the real context of learning. The teacher asked the students to communicate with others in English such as asking permission before leaving the class, asking and answering questions, asking and giving something. By practicing English in the real context of life, the students could enrich their vocabulary so that the students were more confident to speak English. The process of conducting the English hour is as follows. Based on the observation and the teacher’s interview, the process of conducting the English hour was started from listening. Firstly, the students were asked to listen to the teacher’s explanation for the certain material by using English. After that, the students were given a chance to speak English. In applying the English hour teaching strategy, the teacher asked the students to use English when the students discussed the material of the Enlish subject and when the students interacted with others. The teacher said that the English hour was the strategy which was used to create a listening habit for the students, after that the 33 students will have a speaking habit. In addition, the teacher used English as the main language during the teaching-learning activities by using the English hour teaching strategy. The purpose of creating the listening habit as the first step of conducting the English hour was the students could listen to the correct pronunciation of the words. The teacher said that sometimes the students knew the vocabulary, but they did not know the correct pronunciation of the words. Furthermore, the listening habit was used as the first step of conducting the English hour in order to enrich students’ vocabulary. The teacher said that by listening to the teacher’s explanation of the certain topic in the English subject, the students found some new words that were rarely used by the students. As what the teacher said in the interview: Dalam pelaksanaan English hour pertama-tama guru menjelaskan tentang suatu materi dengan tujuan agar siswa mengetahui pelafalan suatu kata. Selain itu, agar siswa dapat menambah kosa kata baru yang jarang siswa gunakan. Setelah mendengarkan penjelasan materi pelajaran, siswa diberikan kesempatan untuk berbicara bahasa Inggris. In the application of the English hour teaching strategy, firstly, the teacher explained the materials in order to give the true pronunciation of a word to the students in the teacher’s explanation. Besides, the students could add their vocabularies which were rarely used by them. After that, the students were asked to practice speaking in English. Moreover, the purpose of practicing English by asking some questions and communicating with others was to build students’ self-confidence and to help the students in speaking English. 34 Each week, the teacher used one meeting hour or 45 minutes for applying the English hour teaching strategy and the teacher used about 15 minutes to explain the materials. For discussing the materials and practicing to use English, the students were given 30 minutes. Based on the result of the interview to the teacher, the teacher applied the English hour teaching strategy as interesting as possible to take students’ interest such as giving the chance to the students for speaking English in the group discussion and interacting with others. Moreover, the te acher also tolerated students’ grammatical and pronunciation mistakes so that the students were not afraid of trying to speak English. Dalam pelaksanaan English hour kesalahan grammar dan pronunciation diterima karena tujuan English hour untuk memotivasi siswa berani berbicara bahasa Inggris dimana sebelumnya siswa berbicara bahasa Inggris hanya 25 hingga 30 saat proses belajar mengajar berlangsung.Oleh karena itu, kesalahan grammar dan pronunciation diterima untuk menjaga agar siswa tetap berani berbicara. In the application of the English hour, the grammar and pronunciation mistakes were accepted because the purpose of the English hour was motivating the students to speak English. Motivating was given to the students because the students used English only 25 up to 30 outside the English hour teaching strategy. Because of that, the grammar and pronunciation mistakes were accepted to keep students’ confidence. However, the teacher also gave correction to the students’ mistakes in order to improve the students’ English ability. The teacher said that giving correction to the students ’ mistakes was important because the students would improve their speaking skill by knowing about the mistakes. However, the teacher did not always give correction to the students; the students would improve their 35 English in the learning process. In addition, the students sometimes used Bahasa Indonesia for communicating with others; and the students sometimes used English word by word when they did not know the vocabulary. In the questionnaire, there were three questions related to the teacher’s statement that the English hour was created and applied as interesting as possible to take students’ interest such as giving the chance to the students to speak English in terms of discussing and interacting with others in English. There were 98 of the respondents who answered that the English hour teaching strategy was an interesting teaching strategy and 2 of the respondents who answered that English hour teaching strategy was not an interesting teaching strategy. The next question, there were 96 of the respondents who answered that they were given a chance to speak English and 4 of the respondents who answered that they were not given the chance to speak in English. The next question, there were 81 of the respondents that answered yes, 17 of the respondents that answered no, and 2 of the respondents who did not give the answer that the students interacted or communicated with others in English. From the results of the questionnaire, it showed that the English hour teaching strategy was an interesting teaching strategy in which the students were given the chance to practice speaking English after the teacher explained the material. The students could also have a lot of practice to communicate and interact with others in English during the teaching- learning process. As stated previously that the teacher tolerated the students’ grammatical and pronunciation mistakes, and the students also used Bahasa Indonesia for 36 communicating with their friends during the teaching-learning process in the English hour teaching strategy, there were two questions related to those things. There were 85 of the respondents that answered yes and 15 of the respondents who answered no, meaning that the grammatical and pronunciation mistakes were tolerated during the teaching-learning process in the English hour teaching strategy. For the next question, there were 73 of the respondents who answered that they asked to translate Bahasa Indonesia into English when they used Bahasa Indonesia as language to communicate with others during the English hour teaching strategy and 23 of the respondents who answered that they did not ask to translate Bahasa Indonesia into English. From the results of the questionnaire, the grammatical and pronunciation mistakes were accepted during the teaching-learning process in the English hour teaching strategy. Moreover, the students were asked to translate Bahasa Indonesia into English when the students used Bahasa Indonesia for communicating with others during the English hour teaching strategy. Based on the result of the interview to the teacher, the teacher also gave correction to the students’ mistakes during practicing of speaking English. As stated previously that giving correction was given to improve the students’ English ability. In the interview, the teacher said: Kesalahan grammar dan pronunciation diterima selama pelaksanaan English hour agar siswa tidak takut untuk berbicara bahasa Inggris, tetapi guru tetap memberi koreksi jika perluagar siswa tahu kesalahannya kemudian siswa dapat memperbaiki. Tetapi koreksi tidak selalu diberikan. 37 The grammar and pronunciation mistakes were accepted during the application of the English hour teaching strategy to keep the students’ confidence on speaking English. However, the teacher still gave correction towards students’ speaking if it was needed to give correction so that the students would know the mistakes and made correction by themselves. It means that the teacher still made an interesting application of the English hour teaching strategy. There were two questions related to the way of giving correction to the students’ mistakes and students’ feeling toward the teacher’s correction. There were 41 of the respondents who answered that the teacher gave correction to the students’ mistakes by giving the correct sentence with the same context and 56 of the respondents who answered that the teacher gave correction by addressing the wrong sentence and correcting into the correct sentence. The result for the next question, there were 98 of the respondents who answered that they accepted and used the teacher’s correction and 2 of the respondents who answered that he was afraid of speaking English after he got the correction from the teacher. From the results of the questionnaire, Most of the students accepted the teacher’s correction and they were not afraid of speaking English.

2. The Effects of the Strategy