Background of the study

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses background of the study, statement of the problems, purpose of the study, significance of the study, scope and limitation and definition of the key terms.

1.1 Background of the study

Teaching English in early age is very important to develop the children’s language competence especially in learning foreign language. In Indonesia, English has been taught to the students in elementary school. Hopefully, the students will have a good ability in English. English subject is first introduced to the first until sixth grade students of the elementary school and they are commonly called as young learners. Teaching English to elementary school students is absolutely different from teaching junior or senior high school. Teaching elementary school does not emphasize on teaching grammatical rules or determining the sentences pattern. It purposes to introduce them with the vocabulary, or teaching them how to spell and pronounce in the term of simple sentences. Teaching English to young learners is focusing on the shaping the children as the future users of English in the world which requires a high level of spoken and written communication Smith in Sabillah 2004: 3. Elementary students have their own characteristic, cognitive, personality, psychology and social characteristic that need a hard work to manage them. 2 Therefore, it is very important to interact and adapt with their world and teaching them should be relevant with their way of thinking or their cognitive aspect. Active learning through interesting and meaningful games, puzzles, singing a song, coloring pictures will grow the children positive attitude toward English rather than teaching them about the grammar rules and make them more interested in learning process. It was supported by Phillips in Sabillah, 2004:67 that teaching children to learn and develop becomes more important than simply teaching the language. The formal education is badly needed to improve the teaching learning activities in achieving the objectives, of the National Education Program. It can be done in school and outside of school. The education in school called formal education that one continues formally from the kindergarten until a particular level. The education outside it is called non- formal education which is not continued like the formal one, such as English Course. The English Courses Program grows fast in our country. They have their own strategy to find their members. Like what has been done by VIP English Course, one of the non-formal English education club in Malang, which focused in making the cooperation with some school in making an English Club for the students as the program of school extracurricular activity. VIP English Course has also own method in teaching learning activities. Especially for teaching of English for Young Learners EYL that has become popular in recent year. According to Toohey 2000 teaching strategy is all of the activities and resources that the teacher plans in order to enable student to learn and for the achievement of particular educational purpose. It means that the teaching strategy is 3 plan for someone else’s learning, which includes teacher’s explanation and information, student activities and task, teaching, and learning materials which will be used separated and measured. In line with it, teaching strategy is needed to achieve the teaching language purposes and also to motivate the students to learn, because teaching will be successful if the teacher implements the appropriate strategy in the class. If the teacher wants to motivate the students to learn, they have to know first what the appropriate strategy to make the students interest to learning, because if the teacher employs appropriate strategies and make the material interesting for the students, those strategies can make the student motivate in learning English process. Meanwhile, Brophy in Santrock, 2001:418 stated that strategies for improving the motivation of two main types of hard-to-reach and low achieving student are discouraged students who lack the confidence and motivation to learn, and interested or alienated students. Akyuni 2008 who studied about teaching strategy used by the teacher at SDN Dinoyo 1, Malang found that the teacher used some strategies, such as arranged seating in U-shape, with the form circle, establish routines collecting homework, the teacher gave good performance in teaching by body language, facial expression and gestures to deliver material. Another study was conducted by Warnaningtyas 2003 who investigated teaching strategy in teaching speaking at Bhinneka English private course Malang. She found that expository and immersion strategies were used because they were good to be applied and made classroom more fun and interesting. 4 Based on the statement above, we can conclude that those of strategies are good to be applied to deliver the material and made the classroom more fun and interesting, Akyuni used some strategies, such as arranged seating in U-shape, with the form circle, establish routines collecting homework, the teacher gave good performance in teaching by body language, facial expression and gestures to deliver material. Meanwhile Warnaningtyas used expository and immersion strategies because they were good to be applied and made classroom more fun and interesting. Different with the writer that interested in conducting a study on teaching strategies to improve students’ motivation of SDN Mulyoagung 3 in learning English. The writer chooses SDN Mulyoagung 3 Malang because the program or extracurricular activity had been done at the school in the afternoon after class was offer. Dian, one of parents of the students in the elementary school said that the activities had been done in the afternoon. Therefore, she worried that the students have low motivation in learning English because they feel tired, hungry, sleepy and uncomfortable. Based on the reasons, the writer is interested to conducted the research about a study on teaching strategies to improve students’ motivation in learning English. This research aims to give large contribution to make foreign language teaching interesting and communicative to young learners.

1.2 Statement of the Problem