Advantages and Disadvantages of Content-Based Instruction

or even ideally with both isolated reader – whom a group of associated readers would normally only impede - and non-isolated reader. Therefore, it gives universal effect. 2.1.3.2 Principles of Teaching Writing In relation with the teaching English, Sokolik 2003 also proposed several principles of teaching writing. They are: a. Understand student’s reason for writing b. Provide many opportunities for students to write The opportunities are important and play important role, for according to Capricornia 2001, individual learning occupied more than 50 of the activities in learning writing. c. Make feedback helpful and meaningful The immediate feedback is considered helpful. The consideration of the gradation or sequencing of the activity types is considered important to support the development of students’ writing performance. Capricornia, 2001 d. Clarity for the teacher and students, how to evaluate the writing These principles are the ones implemented in an ideal writing class. After seeing the basic principles of teaching writing, the next step is the evaluation of the teaching process, the scoring. Thus, the criteria of writing proficiency is as important as the principles. 2.1.3.3 Criteria of Writing Proficiency Setting up the criteria to determine students’ proficiency in writing can be complicated, because there are many things implied in writing. Several experts gave the criteria to asses and thus determine students’ writing proficiency, but they are differing one another. The first criterion is given by Ken Hyland in his book Second Language Writing Hyland, 2003. He only pointed out three major areas in determining students’ proficiency, which are Content dealing with stated event, document event, significance, and personal comment on event, Structure dealing with orientation, background, chronological order, and reorientation, and Language dealing with language control, diction, grammar, and style. This, by far is the simplest criteria of writing proficiency. The next criteria are developed by Brown and Balley 1984, as quoted by Brown, 2004. They are Organization, Logical Development of Ideas, Grammar, Punctuation, Spelling, Mechanics, and Styles. Seeing from the included criteria, we can see that these are concerned about the structure and the mechanic of the writing itself. Another expert, Arthur Hughes 1989 developed other criteria. These criteria include Communicative Quality, Organization, Argumentation, Linguistic Accuracy, and Linguistic Appropriately. These criteria are mostly concerned with the application and communication mean of the writing rather than the structure. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 2.1.3.4 Difficulty in Writing Irmarini 2003 in her thesis Why English is so Difficult for Senior High School Students stated that the most common difficulty in the writing faced by the students is that they are confused in formulating the opening and closing sentences, how to produce acceptable good sentence for a particular kind of composition. Another obstacle in writing is closely related to the students’ concentration, which will be split up over many things to consider, such as the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and many others. This difficulty, together with the fact that writing is a tacit knowledge has formed an assumption towards students that writing is very hard. 2.1.4 Discourse Analysis 2.1.4.1 Background of Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis is basically a study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used McCarthy, 1991. Coulthard 1985 explained that this branch of linguistic basically has its root in the incapability of syntax in explaining the nonsense structure. Thus, this gave birth to the semantics. Semantics grew into pragmatics after considering the existence of context. In a broader context, when the language is seen not only as single sentence or utterances but also as a discourse, the study of discourse analysis was born. It has become a wide-range and heterogeneous discipline that unites in the description of language above the sentence and an interest in the contexts and cultural influences which affect language in use McCarthy, 1991. When we say that a particular bit of speech or writing is a request or an instruction or an exemplification we are concentrating on what that piece of language is doing, or how the listenerreader is supposed to react; this is called speech acts Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams, 2007. Discourse analysis is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between language and the context of its use. 2.1.4.2 Discourse Analysis on Written Language Basically, the main questions in conducting the analysis on written discourse is the norm or rules people adhere when creating written texts. The written discourse analysis seeks to find the recurring principles in the structure of the text, the hierarchy of units comparable to acts, moves, as well as the exchanges. McCarthy, 1991 Other than looking for those principles, the written discourse analysis also tries to see at how the grammar of English offers a limited set of option for creating surface links between the clause and sentences, or commonly known as cohesion McCarthy, 1991. Furthermore, the written discourse analysis also tries to analyse the coherence of the text. Coherence is the link or the relation in the meaning between one sentence to another. In doing the written discourse analysis from a certain text, we can also see the writer’s lexical competence and the register mastery, instead of only the organization of the text. In analysing register mastery, we need to also consider the three aspects of register as proposed by Halliday Aveling, 2007. They are the field what is happening, the tenor who is involved and the relationship among PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI them, and the mode how this is worked out. By considering these three aspects, we can also see students’ appropriateness of using the vocabulary items. Thus, measuring writer’s lexical competence and the register mastery will be seen in a broader context, not only from how many items that they already master. However, to understand fully all those things, we also need to consider the type of the text or the genre. According to Carolyn Miller as quoted by Aveling, 2007, genre is a typified rhetorical action in recurrent situation which becomes regular pattern. From the definition above, we can see that a genre is not strictly applied, since it must also consider the specific context in which it occurs. According to Aveling 2007, in the pedagogical realm, there are six common genres of writing used in school, which are : a. recount Æ used to tell what had happened b. instruction Æ how to make something c. narrative Æ telling a story d. information report Æ communication with another person e. explanation Æ how something works f. arguments Æ building a case about a particular topic Related to the culture, we can also see from the discourse analysis that the L1 culture might be transferred to L2 sentences, thus resulting in syntactically correct sentences, but semantically or pragmatically incorrect in L2. This has a close relation to the interference of L1 towards L2 acquisition PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 2.1.4.3 L1 Interference towards L2 In teaching the language, its goal was to develop L2 as the coordinate system, which is independent of the learners L1, rather than being a compound system, in which the L1 accompanied and dominated attempted behaviour in the L2 Ellis, 1992. However, this goal is so hard to achieve in reality. Most of the case, L2 being a compound system in the classroom. This, in turn, raising the case of transfer interference error, in which the learners attempt to use L1 pattern in L2 context, thus the resulting form is incorrect within the context Gass Selinker, 2001. The interference is mostly caused by learners limited awareness and overgeneralization of language-neutral item. According to Gass and Selinker 2001, language-neutral-items are the items a learner believes are common across all languages. In relation to this concept, the learners would probably assume that learning to express some concepts in L2 only involves learning the specific lexical items and appropriate word order of the L2. In doing so, learners have ignored the existence of language specific items, which includes syntactic structures, idioms, slang, collocation, and many others. However, if learners are successfully noticing the useful language-neutral-item, not over generalizing it, the knowledge of the L1 might be useful. Thus, the transfer of L1 will be a positive transfer, when the previous knowledge facilitates the learning of a new material. The theory of L1 interference is employed here based on the Yoseph’s finding 1996 in his thesis, that the students’ prior knowledge of Indonesian Loan Words will influence the mastery of English vocabulary, although very small. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI Moreover, in the case of the similar form, it needs special treatments, because mostly it will function differently in L1 and L2 context.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

In conducting the research, the theories that will be used are the basic theory of content-based instruction, the theory of discourse analysis, and the theory of the L1 Interference. Content-Based Instruction is basically an approach about how to teach a language through certain subject matter. Thus, the language acquisition is not the main product, but a by-product instead. This theory will be used mainly to identify the teaching-learning activities done in the international class. The research aims to seek the implementation of the principles of content-based instruction in the international immersion class, so the theory will practically serve as the checklist of the observation. However, the theory will not only be used as the checklist, but also as the basic theory of the research, for further analysis. The analysis will be conducted by comparing and contrasting the activities in the practical level with the ideal practice in theory. As the object of this research is writing proficiency, the researcher also includes the basic theory of writing skill. The elaboration of this theory includes the nature of writing, the principles of teaching writing, difficulties in writing, and the criteria of writing proficiency. This elaboration serves as the basic in conducting the research. The elaboration of the criteria also serves as the basic in determining students’ writing proficiency later on. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI The theory about discourse analysis, serves as the basic theory of the analysis of students’ English writing skill proficiency. Discourse analysis itself is the theory which deals with the language use in the specific context, a development from pragmatics. The theory will be used as the basic theory and guidelines for analysing the students’ composition, to see students’ achievement in English writing skill. From the discourse analysis, the researcher will be able to find out the obstacles in writing, such as the weak lexical competence, writing organization including the use of cohesion and coherence, and also the transfer culture happened, whether the students, with all their exposure towards English, are able to construct syntactically and semantically correct sentences according to the English language. As the setting of the research is the Indonesia, in which English is not L1, the researcher includes one of the theories from the study of second language acquisition. This theory is about L1 interference towards L2. The theory explained that the mastery of L1 will have one or more interference towards the acquisition and use of L2 in the real context. This theory of the L1 interference is employed to help in the discourse analysis, to seek the influence of L1 to the L2 in the written discourse. The interference is expected to happen within the wording and sentence structure formation. From the result of the analysis, the students’ writing proficiency can be concluded. 28

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the researcher will provide the methodology applied in conducting the research. The explanation of the detailed methodology in this research will be elaborated under several subtitles, which are Research Method, Research Participants, Research Instruments, Data Gathering Technique, Data Analysis Technique, and Research Procedure.

3.1 Research Method

The methodology which was used in this research was the combination of qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative method was used considering its nature to provide the comprehensive understanding on social phenomena from the perspective of the human participants in the study Ary, Jacobs, and Razavieh, 1999. Furthermore, the problem of the research here about Content-based Instruction and students writing is closely related to the unique human behaviour as well as a new phenomenon. Since the basic root of qualitative research is phenomenology, thus this methodology was taken into account. Another consideration of taking qualitative method was its ability to take into account not only what people do, but also how they think and feel, thus providing the chance to conduct the in-depth analysis Ary et al., 1999. The quantitative method was also used in the research, combined with the qualitative method. Though both have different nature, the combination of both PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI methods is also widely used. Hammersley 1996, as quoted in Ary et al., 1999 said that researchers can combine both approaches in three ways: using one to verify the findings of the other; using one as the groundwork for the other; and using them in complementary fashion. In this case, the third way was the basic consideration of the combination, where the supporting data acquired through the quantitative means conducted in some stages would greatly help the flow of the study. This study was divided into two studies; they were review of the literature as the secondary study, serving as the basic theory that would support the analysis later. Beside to find the basic theory to serve as the underlying principles, the researcher also hoped that by doing the literature review, the researcher would not end up re-inventing existing wheel that was already in the literature. The primary study of this research is the descriptive study, a study attempted to describe certain phenomenon. The reason of choosing the method of descriptive study is the fact that this subject is a whole process with many interdependent and interconnected variables playing role in the event, which cannot be seen through quantitative study or merely statistical study.

3.2 Research Participants

After getting the permission from the government Appendix 2 and 4, the population was selected. The population which was used in this research is the second year international class students of SMAN 3 Yogyakarta. The second year students were chosen based on certain considerations, which were the amount of the exposure to English, the experience, and the broader knowledge compared to those of first year students. Another consideration of choosing the second year students was the fact that the third year students should not be disturbed and should place their concentration and the priority to the coming National Exam. Beside based on the fact that the second year students are having more exposure to the English, the sampling was also based on the consideration that the second year students are by far more relaxed because they have adjusted themselves to the school environment, whereas the first year should adjust themselves to their new school environment, which puts burden on them. Basically, the background knowledge of the samples on English Language was quite good because of the nature of the immersion class. Every student who is accepted in the international class has been selected by using a test, especially on English, and thus we could safely assume that their basic ability in English is quite good, compared to those in regular class. But, things needed to be taken into account were the talented people who were not interested in the immersion class, and thus were placed on the regular class. For the sake of the research reliability and validity, the researcher made use of random sampling, which draws a sample randomly from the whole population, so that it was not subject to the researchers biases. In this case, the list of population was generated through student number in the presence list. The number of the subject is n = N 2 + 1, in which N is the total number of population, to maintain the validity of the sample as well as limiting the probability of data saturation. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI