Principles of Task Task Development

There are some key components of input, the learner and procedures proposed by Nunan 2004. The components will be explained as follows. 1 Grading input The first thing to consider is the complexity of the input. The grammatical factors will be very important. The grammatical complexity will be affected by the length of a text, propositional density, the amount of low- frequency vocabulary, the speed of spoken texts and the number of speakers involved, the explicitness of the information, the discourse structure and the clarity with this is signaled. 2 Learner factors Learner factors are all those that the learner brings to the task of processing and producing language such as background knowledge, interest, motivation, etc. Brindley 1987, cited in Nunan 2004: 120 proposes a list of questions that need to be considered in relation to each of these factors. Table 3: Learner Factors Factor Question Confidence  How confident does the learner have to be to carry out the task?  Does the learner have the necessary level of confidence? Motivation  How motivating is the task? Prior learning experience  Does the task assume familiarity with certain learning skills?  Does the learner’s prior learning experience provide the necessary learning skillsstrategies to carry out the task? Learning pace  How much learning material has the learner shown heshe is capable of handling?  Is the task broken down into manageable parts? Observed ability in language skills  What is the learner’s assessed ability in the skills concerned?  Does this assessment conform to his her observed behavior in class?  In the light of the teacher’s assessment, what overall level of performance can reasonably be expected? Cultural knowledge awareness  Does the task assume cultural knowledge?  If so, can the learner be expected to have it?  Does the task assume knowledge of a particular subject Linguistic knowledge  How much linguistic knowledge does the learner have?  What linguistic knowledge is assumed by the task? 3 Procedural factors The final step deals with the students requirement to perform on input data. With the increasing use of authentic texts, the trend has been to control difficulty, not by simplifying the input data but by varying the difficulty level of the procedures themselves.

6. International Mathematics Education Study Program

Yogyakarta State University has been running some international classes to be a world-class university. International Mathematics Education study program is one of international classes in Faculty of Mathematics and Science. According to Marsigit 2009:6 there are six criteria to be a world-class university such as 1 citation of every faculty 2 peer review 3 international outlook 4 teaching quality 5 graduate employability and 6 quality research. These criteria have described the requirement to become a world-class university. It can be seen that faculties have a big impact to achieve this vision. Students of International Mathematics Education study program should be prepared to face the international class. It is known that the materials will be written in English. Furthermore, they will get English instructions and explanations in teaching and learning processes. That is why they need to learn English in order to support their study.

B. Review of Related Studies

There are some researchers who have conducted the research focus on English for academics purposes and content-based instruction. Long 2011 conducted a research study related to English reading skills and mathematics. She claims that reading skills and math performance are very closely related. Her study suggests there are specific skills needed for students to process written information, such as decoding skills and reading comprehension. Duenas 2004 also conducted the research about content-based instruction in second foreign language education. In this research, she analyzed the whats, whys, and whos of content-based instruction in ESL EFL . Based on this research, she defines four characteristics of content-based instruction stated as follows. 1. Subject matter core –the fundamental organization of the curriculum should be derived from the subject matter, rather than from forms, functions, or situations.