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grades. Those three grades are: grade seven eight and grade nine. Grade is a school level under which students are joined based on the students’ age and their
cognitive development.
a. Eight Grade of Junior High School
Here in this study, the participants of the research are the 8D class students of the eight grade or the second-year students of JHS 2 Mlati Sleman. They are in
the age between twelve and fifteen years old. The students receive six session of English teaching a week over a period of two semesters with the duration of 40
minutes in each meeting.
b. The Curriculum for Junior High School
Indonesian government changes the education curriculum every ten years. The latest curriculum is 2004 curriculum that is called Kurikulum Berbasis
Kompetensi KBK or Competency Based Curriculum CBC. However, the government has developed the CBC and produced new curriculum, 2006
curriculum, which still becomes a part of CBC. The researcher puts information about 2004 curriculum because it is the root of the 2006 curriculum
implementation. 1
Competency Based Curriculum Competence Based Curriculum was firstly implemented in 2004. This
curriculum provides some competencies that lead to students’ achievement of discourse competence which requires the students to use English according to the
cultural and situational context. However, this competence is always supported by
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the other competencies. They are actional competence, linguistic competence and strategic competence.
In CBC, the government has already formulated same competency standard, base competency and indicators for each of all education level. All
school has the same guidance system to carry on teaching-learning process, whereas each school has different condition and quality. Therefore, the
government improved and completed the curriculum into the 2006 curriculum. The 2006 curriculum is called School Based Curriculum SBC or Kurikulum
Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP.
2 School Based Curriculum
Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP is a part and a development
of the 2004 curriculum. Similar to the 2004 curriculum, government provides similar content standard competence standard and base competency for each of
all education levels. However, the indicators are different one school to another since they have different conditions. Each school has an authority to formulate the
indicators based on the condition of its students. Each school will have same competency as another school, but it will have different indicators from other
school. In other words, KTSP is developed by school and school committee with reference to competence standard and content standard as well as curriculum
guideline made by the Body of Education National Standard Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan BNSP,
2006.
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The KTSP requires students to achieve an objective. The objective of English subject in Junior High School is that students should have the following
abilities: a
Developing communicative competence, both oral and written competence to achieve literaly level of functional.
b Having awareness on the essence and the importance of English language
to increase nation’s competitive ability in global society. c
Developing students’ understanding on the relationship between language and culture.
B. Theoretical Framework
This research focusses on 8D class students’ perception on the
Implementation of cooperative learning in English class of JHS 2 Mlati. Therefore, the researcher exposes two major parts of theories namely perception
and cooperative learning in this research. Those theories are employed to provide a basis to gain students’ perception on the Implementation of cooperative learning
in English class. According to Richards and Rodgers 2001, Cooperative Language
Learning CLL is part of a more general instructional approach also known as Collaborative Learning CL. Cooperative learning refers to variety of teaching
methods in which the students works in small groups to help one another learning academic content. Students are expected to help each other, to discuss and agree
with each other, to assess each other’s current knowledge and fill gaps in each
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other’s understanding Slavin, 1995. Johnson et al. 1990 defines it as the instructional use of small groups so that the students work together to maximize
their learning. By synchronizing the characteristics of cooperative learning the researcher obtained from the related theories, it is expected that the researcher
could know that cooperative learning implemented in the class has the same characteristics with the kind of cooperative learning stated in the theories.
How do the students perceive the implementation of cooperative learning? Do they perceive this teaching-learning process positively or negatively?
According to Altman et al. 1985, the way a person interprets or perceives this information depends on a person’s clarity and familiarity of the stimuli, physical
characteristics, needs and values, knowledge, feelings and past experience. The way the students perceive something will
influence the students’ behavior response, whether it is in positive or negative way. Thereby, when the students
perceive cooperative learning positively, the students’ behavior response will be
positive too. Then, they will support the use of cooperative learning as an aid to improve their English proficiency. However, if the students negatively perceive
the implementation of cooperative learning, their behavior responses will be negative too. As a consequence, they will not perceive cooperative learning as an
aid to improve their English proficiency. According to Altman et al. 1985, perception is made after passing
through four steps. Those are the stimuli, sensors’ selection of the stimuli to
people’s mind, the perception, organization and interpretation people’s mind do to
