Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Nowadays, many people learn foreign languages. One of the foreign languages that people learn is English, which is an international language. The same thing happens in Indonesia. English becomes a trend in this country. Related to this phenomenon, many people believe that it is better to learn English as early as possible because they consider that children learn languages faster, with less effort, and with better result than adults Yuwono, 2000: 4. Consequently, a lot of preschools offer English as one of the subjects emerge. Although a lot of young learners are taught English since their early age, unfortunately many of them are not very successful in acquiring this language. There are so many reasons for this failure, such as “unfriendly” English teachers and ineffective teaching methods. In addition, many parents are not aware of their involvement towards their children’s academic success in this case is learning English. These reasons make young learners feel afraid and unmotivated to learn English more seriously. Motivation is a major aspect that influences the achievement of the learner in learning the language. Culture, family, school, and the children themselves are four most important impacts on the children’s motivation to study. Studies on students’ success and good quality of learning process reveal that the best thing a family can do is being involved in their children education 1 Hopkings, 1997: 2. Despite its background, like income and culture, each family is a “home learning environment” which has the strength to encourage as well as develop the children’s learning process and achievement at school. Parents as part of family, have the capability to improve their children’s schooling since they have “intimate knowledge” of their children, like their skills, needs and interest. It will be a good thing if parents can keep their involvement until the children in high school. Parents who are the students’ closest persons have an important responsibility to make their children realize that English is an essential language. Some students are lucky to have parents who are concerned with their education, and have the desire that their children should be able to master English. To achieve this purpose, many parents send their children to private courses to have extra English classes. However, they still need guidance from their parents and expect that their parents will support them in learning English. In contrast, other students do not have that kind of parents for example, since both of their parents are working. So they have no time to involve in their children’s schooling. Regardless, parental involvement in the process of learning English as a foreign language is highly needed and vital today. Considering the phenomena above, we can not just hand over the problems to schools as formal institutions to solve. What a very young child learns is almost exclusively what hisher parents teach Match, 1981: 6. The writer assumes that parents must optimize their involvement to take part in young learners teaching process and support their children with inputs that they need to gain success in learning English as a foreign language. Furthermore, before parents can optimize their involvement, they must understand the significance of parent’s involvement toward their children’s education. One of the examples of parent’s involvement that students need is guidance in learningstudying English. By guiding their children, there is a better chance that they will be more encouraged to learn English. The success of teaching learning process can be seen from the student achievement. Achievement is a result which has been achieved by individual after the students accomplished some assignment Azwar, 1996: 11. It means that achievement in education is the result which has been achieved by someone after she or he follows certain subject at school. To reach good learning achievement, there are some factors that determine, one of them is parental involvement Ellis, 1997: 52. According to Levine and Havighurst 1992: 142 “Parental involvement as cooperation and support from parents about their children’s education, that is when parents provide a positive environment for learning at home, reinforce school rules and expectations, and require or at least attempt to require their children to study hard and complete their assignments, so the teacher’s job is made easier and his or her effectiveness can be greatly enhanced. “ The students, whose parents can optimize their role, will reach better achievement. On the other hand, parents with low awareness of their roles caused negative effect on their children achievement. As we all know that parents have so many roles related to their children’s development in education especially in learning English such as parents as first teachers, motivators, and partners and so on. In this preliminary observation, the writer sees that almost all of the students’ parents in SD Al Azhar Syifa Budi Solo come from middle to high-class background in terms of their intellectuality and economy, which can support the expected theories of parents who play their roles in helping the young learners’ success in learning English as a foreign language. Based on the information from the head master of SD Al Azhar Syifa Budi, the children have a good achievement that can be seen from their achievement at every semester test which is high. This research will focus on the third year student because from the interview with the English teacher, the students’ achievement in English is mostly high. Knowing the importance of parental involvement in English learning, the writer wants to know the influence of parents’ involvement toward the achievement of their children. So, the writer wants to conduct the research entitled: THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTS’ INVOLVEMENT IN ENGLISH LEARNING TO THEIR CHILDREN ENGLISH ACHIEVEMENT AT THE THIRD YEAR OF SD AL AZHAR SYIFA BUDI SOLO IN 20072008 ACADEMIC YEAR. B. Previous Study To prove the originality of this study, the writer will present some previous researchers in relation to this research. The first researcher is Hesty Setyarini 2002 who conducted a research entitled “The Relationship between Parental Involvement and Students’ Motivation in Learning English at The First Year of SMP Christian 1 Salatiga.” The purpose of her research is to find out what kinds of involvement parents had to motivate their children to learn English. The second researcher is Krisna Hartantyo 2005 with his study entitled “The Impact of Parents’ Roles toward the Success of the First Year Laboratory Christian Elementary School Salatiga in Learning English as a Foreign Language.” Her research describes the parents’ role toward the success of students in learning English. This research related to the same theme that is about parents’ involvement in English learning as the same case of Hesty’s and Krisna’s research. What makes this research different with both of that research are the objective of the research and the subject. The objectives of this research is to find out whether the parents’ involvement in English learning have positive and significance influence to their children English achievement at the third year of SD Al Azhar Syifa Budi Solo. The previous researchers take students’ parents of SMP 1 Christian Salatiga and SD Christian Salatiga as the subject of research, while the subject of this research is students at the third year of SD Al Azhar Syifa Budi Solo.

C. Problem Statement