Martha’s story Martha’s Description

59 features can motivate us at least to open the website. Perhaps it needs the ideas of young people who master layout designing. MA22 Further, Martha shared her experience related to class situation when they were studying vocabulary with ELTGallery. Martha often felt uneasy to ask her friends when she got confused. Therefore, she preferred to consult her dictionary and tried to solve the problem herself. I often got confused to whom I should ask, because everybody was very busy with their monitor during the lesson. I felt uneasy to disturb my friends and asked questions. I usually consulted my dictionary. Just sometimes, I asked my friends’ opinion about my sentences. MA33 Some friends also helped her in giving feedback to her work since they had the portion in ELTGallery to do that. Unfortunately, Martha could not confirm and consult the feedback she got because she did not know who wrote the comments for her. She could not check them in the website. She hoped that the lecturer would take over the role of giving feedback to make it fairer. The feedback was ok.. I got much from friends but not from the lecturer. And sometimes I got confused why my sentences were commented in such a way, but I couldn’t confirm to the one who criticized them because I didn’t know who did that. I often felt that it was unfair. Ideally, it should be the lecturer’s task to criticize the students’ work. MA42 When she was asked about the tasks in ELTGallery, she liked the variation of the exercises. Yet, she minded with the number of the questions in each type of exercises. It was too many for her. The variation of exercises in ELTGallery is good, quite various. But, the number of the questions in each type of exercise is just too much. It seemed it is only focused on the weekly tasks in which we had to complete 75 sentences and make 20 sentences each week. I think it would have been better if we had fewer numbers of questions and various types of exercises. MA24 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 60 According to Martha, the main problem of having too many exercises to do was staring the monitor too long. She said it was not good for her health. I had to stare the monitor in quite a long time to do the tasks and it is not good for our health. MA36 Moreover, when she also had other tasks to do, Martha had to be able to steal the time in between other activities to do her weekly vocabulary tasks. Whereas she said she had tried to manage her time well but it still never seemed enough. Even she tried to do the tasks with her handphone bit by bit. She felt exhausted with that. …Only the burden of doing the tasks was quite high. Moreover if we also had homework from other subjects, the modem was error, there were a lot of things in mind…wow, it felt like I my mind was about to explode. You’d better stay away from me. Hehehe… MA45 …I always felt in a rush to complete the tasks, miss. Whereas I thought, I had made my time schedule to arrange my activities and time to do campus tasks. But, I don’t know…the time seemed never enough. It was very very exhausting. MA38 …Even when I was doing other activities like church or choir, I sometimes stole the time to do the tasks bit by bit with my hand phone. The tasks were like haunting me every time. MA39 When she was asked whether she also experienced it in other classes or not, she said not all of them. She confessed that web-based vocabulary class was a bit hard to handle. Yet, she found it challenging and she felt she could beat the challenge proven by her final result. She got an A for this subject. Q40: Did it happen to the tasks in all subjects you’ve ever taken? MA40: Hhmmm… not all subjects actually, but I don’t know this one was a bit hard to handle. But I really felt challenged and I think I was successful. I got an A for this subject. Well, it was worth fighting for, miss. Further, Martha also shared how she managed her motivation in joining the web-based vocabulary class. She confessed that it was not easy to keep her 61 always in a good mood in enduring the learning process. Yet, she did not want to waste her efforts and ruin things. She tried hard to be well committed. …I tried to be well committed. Sometimes during the process, my mood was up and down. Quite moody. But when I remembered that I’ve been through this much, this far, then it was such a pity if I kept on being lazy and following my mood. It was such a self-alarm to motivate myself to get back on the track. MA44 At last, when she was asked which classes she preferred, she liked the conventional class more. It was because conventional class offered more interactions and supervisions. In conventional class, the lecturer still helped the students more actively. Conventional class is better because the lecturer helps the students more actively. I myself prefer the conventional class. I guess it is more effective because there are more supervisions and interactions in class. In web-based class with ELTGallery, when we got confused we felt awkward to ask, the weekly tasks are just so many. In my opinion, vocabulary should be learnt bit by bit, repetitions should be more, because I tend to have short time memory so I still need more practices. MA20 ELTGallery offered new challenges in web-based vocabulary class. The learning process was not always easy and nice but Martha did not let herself give up. Although sometimes she also felt that the weekly tasks were very burdening, she still tried hard to complete them.

B. Interpretation

In this part, I will try to interpret the participants’ lived experience in vocabulary web-based learning based on their anecdotes. The discussion in this part is divided into two sections namely the participants’ profile and the participant s’ lived experience in vocabulary web-based learning. 62

1. The interpretation of the participants’ profile

Both Dipta and Martha were twenty years old when they joined the web- based vocabulary class. They were in their adulthood period and they were in their second semester. Based on the research on frequency counts, university students need around 2000 high frequency words with additional of 1000 further high frequency words to support their study Nation, 1990. Further, as cited in Richards 1976: 78, Mackey 1965: 173 stated that college students are estimated to understand some 60.000 to 100.000 words. Therefore, Dipta and Martha should have been ready to face the challenges in web-based vocabulary class which took the materials from 3000 Word Power book. Dipta and Martha were raised in well- educated family. Dipta’s father was the head of librarian in Sanata Dharma University. His mother was the vice headmaster in SMK Putra Tama. Martha’s father was a pensioner of PDAM and her mother was the headmaster of SMPN 2 Mlati Yogyakarta. Seeing from their family background, they were well-supported to have good education to prepare their future. However, Dipta and Martha had different reason for choosing PBI in Sanata Dharma University to continue their study. Dipta decided to continue his study in PBI Sanata Dharma because he thought that being a teacher was a promising job. Besides he also thought that English was fun and he enjoyed studying English. Meanwhile, Martha decided to continue her study in PBI Sanata Dharma because she realized that she had a good talent and interest in English since she was in senior high school. She had a strong will to improve her English skill since she wanted to be excellent in it. This difference might give significant PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 63 meaning in Dipta’s and Martha’s lived experience in joining web-based vocabulary class.

2. The interpretation of the participants’ lived experience

The interpretations below were divided into pre-figured themes and emerging theme. The pre-figured themes were determined based on the conceptual truth in theoretical framework. The emerging theme was the theme which appeared during the data gathering. It was not predicted before.

a. Pre-figured themes

The pre-figured themes here cover three main discussions. They are autonomous learning with ELTGallery, challenging vocabulary learning with ELTGallery and ELTGallery learning atmosphere. The discussions are as follows. 1 Autonomous Learning with ELTGallery ELTGallery is developed based on CALL principles since it applies computer as the media of language learning. One of CALL principles is promoting learner autonomy. Thein 1994 as cited in Egbert, Chao, and Hanson- Smith 1999:6 described a learner-centered classroom as one that develops learners’ confidence and skills to learn autonomously and to design and coordinate tasks in a variety of contexts. Dipta realized that ELTGallery was designed in such a way that it promotes autonomy learning. …ELTGallery supports the students to be autonomous because the features are completed with the instructions of how to do it. We also got guidance and explanation from the lecturer in the class about what to do and how to do it…DA33 The notion of designing and coordinating tasks in a variety of contexts led Dipta to take initiative to seek information which was not provided in 64 ELTGallery. He had his dictionary to check the pronunciation. He improved his knowledge of word formation in linguistic class. He also learnt more phrases from structure class, internet and dictionary. His vocabulary learning was not limited only in vocabulary class. Further, he also improved his ability in spoken text through English movies and songs. Unfortunately, Dipta felt less confidence when he was given a chance to manage his learning autonomously. He even felt that the autonomy given was too much. He still needed more supervision and interaction with the lecturer in the class. He wished that the lecturer still actively moved around to check the students’ work and communicated with the students to build interaction in the class. Martha perceived the chance of being autonomous learner deeper. She knew that ELTGallery would offer different learning process since it required the students’ responsibility to manage their own learning process and progress. Therefore, time management was very important for her. She really concerned to her time management because most of the activities and tasks were done outside the lesson hours. Further, Martha agreed that ELTGallery also supported the notion of developing the students’ confidence and skills to learn autonomously. ELTGallery provided the learning materials for one semester. Since Martha was typically a curious student, she could prepare herself by reading and doing the exercises before the class. By doing so, she said that she was more ready and confident to join the class. This fact is in accordance with a belief that a teach er’s role is to challenge learners’ thinking, not to dictate or attempt to regulate their thinking for them Savery and Duffy: 1995 as cited in Egbert, Chao, and Hanson- PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI