40 The first fact acquired from the interview was that the authority applied
the method to all classes of the first and second year without exceptions. The third year students were excluded considering the importance of reaching the best
results in the national exam UAN. Therefore, the teachers thought it was best to focus more on the materials than the language used in delivering the lectures for
the third grade. Furthermore, the teachers interviewed mentioned that the Content-based
Instruction method was partly applied, for there were only four lessons, namely Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics which were delivered in English.
This goes along with Stephen D. Krashen and Tracy D. Terrell’s suggestion that “Content activities refer to learning academic subject matter such as math,
science, social studies, art, and music in the target language.” 1983 Those subjects were chosen to be the models of CBI principles
implementation because, in fact, most of the English specific terminologies used in them are similar with the commonly-used Indonesian terms. This reasoning led
the teaching team to expect no difficulties for the students in learning, since it was easy for them to refer the English terms to the Indonesian ones which are not
much different. This way, the students might acquire new vocabulary items more easily, since they would automatically work out both the English and Indonesian
terms to get the meaning while learning the new words for the first time.
2. The Teaching System
The teaching system used in the international class of SMAN 3 Yogyakarta was also different from that of the ideal immersion program. There were basically
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41 two kinds of teaching system used. The major differences between them lied on
the teaching staff and the language used in delivering materials. These two distinctive features will be elaborated in the following paragraphs.
The first teaching type was performed by the school’s regular teachers. These teachers taught the subject using Indonesian as the means of delivering
materials due to inadequate English proficiency. Discussions were held in the students’ and teachers’ mother-tongue. The teachers also gave notes and
explanations upon the topic of discussion in Indonesian. However, the modules and exercises given were in English. The teachers had prepared some exercises
before the class and then gave them to the students in the end of discussion. Those exercises were mainly taken from some guidebooks for teachers.
The second teaching type was conducted by some lecturers from several highly-regarded universities invited by the school to give lectures every once in a
while. The lecturers invited did not cover all subjects but only Mathematics and Sciences. Based on the students we interviewed, the lecturers showed up in turns.
They only taught in class twice a month with certain arrangements. The Biology lecturer usually came together with the Physics one, while the Mathematics
professor often came with the Chemistry one. However, changes might happen along the way in accordance with the class division.
Unlike the regular teachers, the lecturers were expected to teach fully in English. Nevertheless, the expectation could hardly ever be met. In the
observations done, the researcher learned that most of the lecturers did not use English entirely during the lectures. The most excessive case was the Physics
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42 lecturer who spoke Indonesian the whole time, while the exposure of English was
only given in the form of Power Point presentation. In the other pole of extremes, the Chemistry professor used English most of the time during the class.
Nonetheless, she sometimes had to use Indonesian when the students found it difficult to grasp the materials. The other lecturers had their own ways in
delivering the materials. The Biology lecturer made an agreement with the students on what language they preferred to be used in delivering the materials
before starting the lesson. They finally decided to combine Indonesian with English to make it easier for the students to get the main ideas of that day’s topic.
Yet, she used Indonesian most of the time. As noticed during the observations, the ideal roles of teachers and
students were not present in the international class of SMAN 3 Yogyakarta. Teachers still acted as the controller of the teaching-learning activities, while
students had not been autonomous enough to be responsible for their own learning. This situation does not support Littlewood’s statement that a CBI
classroom is learner-centered because students are actively engaged in class activities 1981.
3. The Emphasis of the Language Used – Written or Spoken?
