Learner Research and Information Collecting

69 cultural contexts. Contextual materials empowered also the students to have proper knowledge or flexible skills which could be used for solving problems in social contexts. [own translation] Then authentic materials were: the real writings. The students were taught to write in English. Parts of writing that needed my fully attention were pronunciation, punctuation, capitalizing words and dictions. So, authentic materials were ideal for teaching. [own translation] The teacher insisted that contextual materials really helped the students in reading and writing because they learned from their own lives. The teacher states that: the contextual materials which I applied helped the students enough in learning English.The students were taught about what they experienced in their lives. In learning English, we transferred Indonesia to English. [own translation] The teacher used contextual topics in teaching such as daily activities. The teacher decided the contents inside the topics based on students‟ personal lives, social contexts and culture contexts. The authentic materials were applied by the teacher to make a connection between learning process and a real world. The teacher said that the students were motivated to read and write when he used authentic materials as instructional materials and instructional media. The authentic teaching materials were newspaper, real advertisement, etc. Catherine, 1992. Theme 2 : The implication of discussion method This second theme was generated from activity code and technique coding code. Teaching method that was used by the teacher was discussion method. The teacher motivated the students to work in group. The teacher said that: 70 method that I used in teaching and learning English was a discussion method or group discussion. In a group there was a transaction of questioning and answering. The students who were considered as passive students were active in a group to deliver or to answer the questions. The students were not doubt to create mistakes because they learned through modelling their freinds. [own translation] Discussion method run through this way. The students were divided in some groups to discuss about new lessons, and then one group read their questions to the whole class. The other groups gave answer to the delivered questions. This method was successful to motivate students to read and write. According to Brown 2001, the students should discuss first the purpose of reading to put a side some unimportant information while reading a text. Brown 2001 promoted also the techniques of reading one of which is making questions and gave the questions to another group to answer them. For teaching media, the teacher used pictures in order to motivate students to read and write . Like the teacher said: The teaching media that I used were audio. I also used pictures. For example, if I showed the pictures, students would directly recognize the pictures. It was easy for them to memorize. The students were very active when they learned through picture. [own translation] The students were enthusiastic to read and write when the teacher used pictures. The teacher suggested to use autentic media; authentic pictures because the teaching media were ideal for teaching. In sum, group discussion and authentic pictures were effective to teach reading and writing. The instructional activities were developed by mantaining discussion group and TBL in which they were modified to have relevant activities. The writer used also authentic pictures to design instructional media. 71 Theme 3 : The limitation of learning focus This third theme refered to activity code and technique code. The learning focus was assessed through analyzing the difficulties of students. Like the teacher said: My long findings, I detected the difficulties of the students in reading such as mispronouncing words. When they pronounced some words incorrectly, I directly revised it. Intonation also became my concern. I taught the students the right way. To deal with students ‟ difficulties in reading, I needed to revise mispronouncing words in reading. Similarily, to write I needed to concern on the real writing or punctuation which should be used in writing and reading.” [own translation] The teacher said it four times that the students still needed many improvements in the basic English competences. To teach grammar was not mentioned by the teacher, yet grammar was important for writing. In sum, the writer concluded that the target students needed some improvements in the basic English comptences. The materials were adapted to basic English comptences. According to Brown 2001, the designer could identify the proficiency level of the students sustained the students‟ backgroung knowledge and the target tasks. Brown 2001 used ACTFL 1986 guidelines to divide the language proficiency of the students. Based on Brown s‟ 2001 classification, the target students were categorized into novice- high proficiency or false beginner. The students had progress beyond the beginner. They needed to acquire very simple forms, pronounces, definite and indefinite articles, singular and plurals nouns, simple sentences and in a progression of grammatical topics Brown, 2001. 72

2. Planning

This second stage of RD covered some main instructional steps of design process. They were to develop general guidelines, identify goal, topics, and general purposes and specify learning objectives. Figure 4.2 showed the framework of this stage. Figure 4.2: Planning Framework a. Developing General Guidelines The writer developed the general guidelines to design the relevant materials obtaining the research findings. Based on the findings, the writer regarded four variables which are shown in figure 4.3. The variables were task- based learning, contextual materials, authentic materials and novice-high level. The contextual materials regarded the interesting and contextual reading and writing topics for learning. The authentic materials promoted the authentic reading texts and pictures. Then the novice-high level regarded the simple instructional reading materials and the simple instructional activities for reading and writing. Planning Specifying learning objectives Identifying goal, topics, and general purposes Developing general guidelines 73 Research findings Guidelines Figure 4.3: Corelation between the Reasearch Findings and Guidelines

b. Identifying Goal, Topics, and General Purposes

This stage was established to identify the goal, topics, and general purpose. The goal was adapted from KTSP 2006. According to Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan 2006 English had three goals to be taught in every senior high school. Nevertheless, the materials were suplementary materials for the tenth grade students of SMA Katolik Villanova Manokwari, so the goal was to improve the students‟ reading and writing skills using contextual materials. The topics were chosen by the writer. The purpose to choose the topics was to provide contextual and interesting topics. To decide the topics, the writer considered the findings of the needs survey to provide the relevant topics. In the other sides, the topics were established from the basic competences in KTSP 2006 regarding the functional texts and the simple stories or essays that need to be learned by the students Badan Standar Pendidikan Nasional, 2006. The Task-based learning was relevant for learning The relevance of contextual and authentic materials Novice-high level Using pre-task, task cycle and post task Using authentic pictures Choosing Simple - contextual reading materials Using simple integrated reading and writing activities Using interesting and contextual topics for reading and writing 74 functional texts and simple essays covered announcement text, letter, recount, narrative, descriptive and news item. There were seven units and topics which were going to be elaborated in the materials. The titles of the opics were What is it about?, Dear, Curly hair and brown complexion, My experiences, Write a story, Papua lost paradise and TV Papua news. The seven topics and titles of the materials were put in the table 4.3. Table 4.3: The Topics and Titles of the Materials Units Topics Titles 1 Announcement Text What is it about? 2 Letter Dear 3 Descriptive Text I Curly hair and brown complexion 4 Recount Text My experiences 5 Narrative Text Write a story 6 Descriptive Text II Papua lost paradise 7 News Item TV Papua news Then the general purposes of this design were the indications to assess students‟ performances inside and outside the classroom after accomplishing a certain topic. The general purposes were considered as the basic competencies which were in KTSP 2006. The basic competences were the learning outcomes which the students need be achieved nationally. The competencies were flexible which were developed to maintain the characteristics of the students, pre- competency and the characteristics of the subject Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan, 2006. The basic competencies of whole units were presented in table 4.4.