Tindak Tutur Yang Digunakan Mahasiswa Tahun Satu Pada Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris Universitas Islam Riau

  

Speech Acts Used by the First Year Students of English Department

Islamic University Of Riau

  (Tindak Tutur Yang Digunakan Mahasiswa Tahun Satu Pada Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris Universitas Islam Riau)

  

Oleh

Khulaifiyah

Islamic University of Riau

  Abstrak Dalam pembelajaran kelas bahasa, tindak tutur guru atau apa saja yang seorang guru ucapkan menjadi faktor penting bagi para siswa untuk membangun kemampuan bahasa asing mereka karena semakin banyak tindak tutur yang bisa ditiru maka akan semakin banyak masukan bahasa siswa. Namun siswa sering menerima hanya sedikit input bahasa dalam tindak tutur guru (dalam instruksi/interaksi kelas) Padahal, perkembangan penguasan bahasa siswa sangat tergantung pada seringnya bahasa disosialisasikan, dipresentasikan, dan diperdengarkan serta digunakan oleh guru maupun mereka sendiri dalam kelas. Karena itu, penulis menyadari pentingnya studi tentang bagaimana pesan- pesan diintepretasikan dalam bentuk-bentuk interaksi atau tindak tutur dalam situasi yang berbeda dalam kelas. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mendapatkan gambaran tentang tindak tutur siswa dalam kelas bahasa inggris di Program Studi Bahasa Inggris Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan. Hasilnya menunjukkan masih sedikitnya ragam tindak tutur yang dilakukan oleh siswa seperti meminta informasi dan intepretasi, meminta bantuan dan saran, menunjukkan rutinitas , menyapa dan memberi salam serta tindak tutur harian lain; menyatakan setuju atau keberatan. Sepertinya banyak tindak tutur yang belum didengar oleh siswa, sehingga disarankan untuk para pengajar menambah atau memperdengarkan lebih banyak lagi tindak tutur dalam proses pembelajaran bahasa di kelas.

  Kunci: tindak tutur, input, interaksi,

  INTRODUCTION

  In general, speech acts are acts of communication state (Searle,1976). To communicate is to express a certain message, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of message being expressed. Communication in classroom interaction is intended for learning or pedagogic purposes and for personal interaction, which are achieved through language. In language classroom interaction, Bygate in Rohmah (2006) mention that a teacher can be regarded as a message transmitter and the students as message receivers, so that the teacher is required to transmit knowledge and information about the grammar, the use of the language, the operation of linguistic skills and the culture of the speaker of the language.

  Allwright and Bailey (1991) state that classroom interaction can be described from interactive communication. The ones who are relevant to the aims of this interactions are: the one that “asking the students for information or language that he or she has forgotten”, “asking the other student’s opinion”, “responding to requests for clarification from the student(s), for instance by rephrasing, repeating, giving examples or analogies”, “indicating uncertainty about comprehension”, “indicating comprehension”, “asking for clarification”, “expressing appropriate agreement, reservations or appreciation of student’s point”, “interrupting where necessary to express any of the foregoing”, and so on. The teacher will also have to take into account the students’ knowledge of the world and/or of the particular topic of the interaction. This reciprocal nature of the interaction facilitates communication as both the teacher and the student co-operate to ensure a mutual understanding.

  In EFL situations the students often receive insufficient input for comprehension as it is only the classroom that provides language use, and such inputs are usually found in the form of teacher-talk (in giving instructions) and the language of textbooks. Whereas, in a language classroom, the development of the students’ language depend much on the target language that is exposed to, presented to, and used by the teacher. Therefore, the writer considers that the need to understand pragmatics theories or how to carry out the message as well as interpretation of the meaning in one’s performance is important because pragmatics studies the relationship between sentence forms and the human beings who use these forms and also concerns to contexts, situations, and settings within the language usage occur, especially in L2 classroom.

  The subjects of the present study were the first year students of the English Department at Islamic University of Riau, who took Speaking 1 course. Fifty students took the course. These subjects were chosen because their feasibility and suitability with the topic and their English level that is still in the intermediate level. It is an ideal time to work at developing conscious awareness so that they can understand much of the spoken or written language (Bern,R.G., & Patricia, 2001).

  The data used in the study was the speech acts used by the students’ in verbal interaction in the speaking class which consisted of illocutionary acts that were classified into three categories, namely: type, form and, function. The speakers performed speech acts directly or indirectly and literally or figuratively. The English utterances were recorded in every meeting. The writer was the main instrument with the help of some other instruments during observations such as: field notes and tape recording, interview, and documentation. All these instruments were documented from the first until the last observation. The writer involved herself in the process of subjects’ activity.

DATA COLLECTION

  The data needed for this study were collected through non-participant observation, recording, and interview. In acquiring the data, the following steps were taken. The first step was collecting the needed data namely all utterances spoken by the students in the speaking class. The second step was coding speech acts using serial numbers, topics of dialogues, and classifying the speech acts into type, meaning, and form of speech acts. The third step was classifying the data whether they were direct or indirect. The fourth step was identifying the dominant type of speech acts used. This procedure was conducted in order to obtain the validity and reliability of the data as a study document.

STUDY SUBJECTS

DATA ANALYSIS

  In analyzing the data, the writer used her notes gathered in the field notes and the transcription sheet as the result of the data collection. The data from the tape recorder were transcribed right after they were recorded. The

DATA AND THE INSTRUMENTS

  transcription was done at least two times. The first one was done by the writer herself, again, the writer checked the data, organizing them, breaking them into manageable units, synthesizing them, and searching for patterns interaction and the typology of speech acts. Therefore, first, the data need to be treated through a transcribing process, identifying the students’ speech acts and analyzing them.

  The data were analyzed without waiting for all data to be completely collected. Instead, they were analyzed as soon as the data collection process was conducted. Once the data were collected, transcribed, numbered and coded, they were then analyzed. Thus, the analysis of the data was done within the site during data collection

  There were three activities conducted in collecting the data; (1) data reduction, (2) data display, and (3) conclusion drawing.

  This part covers the discussion of (1) the types of students’ speech acts used in verbal interaction in the speaking class, (2) the type(s) of speech acts which was/were dominantly used by the students in the speaking class. The comparison of the number of interactions and speech acts occurred in the speaking class was good since every interaction had more than sixty percents of speech acts. The linguistic form and grammatical competence, which affected the speech acts was communicative. What was meant by ‘communicative’ here, was the teacher found few ungrammatical utterances, and incomplete sentences but it still could be understood. For example the expressions “what?“, “Etik” or the question “how many member of your family?”, and “where are you study?. (I/S-145, 152) were fully understood.

  TYPES OF STUDENTS’ SPEECH ACTS

  There were four types of speech acts found from the students’ response, namely: directive, representative, commissive and expressive, besides, three kinds of linguistic form were also found, namely: affirmative, interrogative, and negative.

  During the study, the writer paid much attention to the following aspects:

  (a) whether the utterances were followed by the actions or not. (b) whether the utterances gave different meanings between form and function or not and using performative verbs that named the speech acts. (c) had its particular basis in reasonable, all were reasonable if all the sincerity conditions were met. Let us take a look at Table 4.1.

DATA FINDING

  TYPES OF STUDENTS’ SPEECH ACTS

  It must be noted that the writer only focused on students-teacher interaction so that she ignored students-students interactions. There were four types of speech acts found from the students’ response, namely: directive, representative, commissive and expressive, besides, three kinds of linguistic form were also found, namely: affirmative, interrogative, and negative.

  Representative meaning occupied the highest number. From 269 students’ response, there were 131 items or 48.8 percents dealing with representative meaning. Then, expressive occupied 111 items or 41 percent, directives occupied 7 items or

  2.5 percents and commissive occupied an authority to bring about a state of 19 items or 7 percents. Declaration was affairs specified in the propositional not found in their verbal interaction content by saying in effect. since the speaker/students did not have Table 4.1 Shows the speech acts used by the students’.

  Speech Acts Used in Verbal Interaction in Speaking class of English Department Islamic University of Riau Affirmative 116/ Directive 2 (1) to convey information 42.9% Representative

  87 and interpretation. Commissive 18 (2) to express asking for s Expressive 9 help and suggestions t

  Interrogative 29/ Directive 4 (3) to express routine such as u 10.7% Representative 25 greeting, and leave taking. d Negative 16/5.9% Representative

  16 (4) to express daily needs such e Imperative 3/ 1% Representative 1 as an agreement and objection n

  Commissive

  1 t Directive

  1 s Expression 105/ Expressive 102 38.8% Representative

  3 Total 269 Total 269

1. Directive (a) Affirmative Form and Directive Meaning 126 S3 Is it right that you were angry with …. I think she needs your help.

  127 T What do you mean? 128 S3 If you are angry for long time, it will disturb our program. 129 T :>So what do you want from me<. 130 S3 <Please forgive her and forget it>. 131 T Ok…. Finish. It’s ok.=You are very serious.

  Utterance “I think she needs your

  help”

  was called affirmative forms When interrogative sentences because they were grammatically used are used as utterances, they are in statement forms. However, prototypically used to ask questions. sometimes, affirmative refers to However, not all interrogative directive when the speaker believed sentences are used to ask questions. that an action (forgiveness) had not Sometimes interrogative are used been done yet by H (the teacher), S indirectly to make a request. Let us see believed that H was able to forgive, S the example (1/S-107) 103 S2 Who is your favorite actress. also believed that H was about to do

  104 S5 I don’t have favorite artist,

  forgiveness for S, and S wanted

  because artist is e::

  forgiveness to be done. Therefore, it 105 T =Thing. was indirect speech act meaning

  106 S5 =No:: because they are so request . The response that might be glamour.

  needed was forgiveness (see I/S-130).

  107 S2 Can I ask one more? 108 T =Yeah.

  (b) Interrogative Form and Directive Meaning

  The utterance “Can I ask one more” and “May I ask” meant requesting the teacher’s permission to ask another question to the student. Let us see the felicity condition of request that (1) the students predicated a future action (permission) from the teacher, (2) the teacher here was having an authority to give permission, (3) the student wanted the teacher to permit her to ask more and (4) these was an attempt to get the teacher to permit her to ask and get more chance to ask. Since the condition was fulfilled, then those categorized directive “request” meaning. These speech acts had direct perlocutionary act like giving the student permission to ask more and get chance to ask.

  129 T :>So what do you want from me< . 130 S3 <Please forgive her and forget it> . 131 T Ok…. Finish. It’s ok.=You are very serious.

  31 T No… I think it’s not a big problem only five and after that you have to say it in front of your friend.

  30 S2 I think it is a big problem .

  29 T Five similarities, five things in common… five things in common. Three things you don’t have in common.

  There were only five directive meanings which applied in affirmative, interrogative and imperative. There was two speech acts performed indirectly “I don’t have good English and I think she need your help” . Meanwhile, the rest were direct within formal statement or request (Can I, May I, and Please).

  that expressed the feelings of the speaker to get the listener to do something. It expressed solidarity with another person. In this case, the student really wanted the teacher to give Sita forgiveness. The word “please “explicitly and literally marked the primary illocutionary point of the utterance as directive and was used to introduce a request.

  her and forget it” was the speech act

  Another Directive meaning occurred as the students’ response was: begging. The utterance “please forgive

  (2) 128 S3 If you are angry for long time, it will disturb our program .

  (c) Imperative Form and Directive Meaning

  opinion ) to be given.

  typically a request was performed sometimes in imperative. It was indirect speech act which did not contain any performative verb of request. The act that might be expected was the teacher’s opinion about the student’s English mastery. The student believes that the teacher’s opinion about her English had not been got yet. She believed that the teacher was able to give an opinion about her English mastery. She also believed that the teacher performed the action (giving an opinion) for her. Finally, the student also wanted an action (giving an

  me”(S-136) meant requesting because

  The utterance “your opinion to

  138 S4 >Me<

  134 S4 Sometime I feel afraid because I don’t have good English. 135 T You have, so what’s your question. 136 S4 About e::: your opinion to me 137 T You ask me about you and your friend about the speaking test or about your English..

  (1)

2. Representative (a) Affirmative Form and Representative Meaning

  “I think it is a big problem”

  67 T Ok::If you want to go to school you have to go by motorcycle , if you don’t have any motorcycle will you wait your father’s motorcycle ?

  45 S4 So, you mean, we must make opera

  44 T Kiki as Gary, thirty six years old, male, a truck driver, you like football and beer and you hate with children. Now. You gather, what kind of character you have to think over, about plot. Which one will be antagonist, protagonist or something like that You think it over, make a kind of story after that you presented here

  (d) Imperative Form and Representative Meaning

  . S7 prevented himself from being innocent by giving the reason why he came late to the class. This speech acts did not give any acts to hearer unless accepting the explanation.

  explaining

  of negative sentence and had representative meaning namely

  motorcycle” (II/S-160) was in the form

  The utterance “There is no

  .

  68 S7 =No, I don’t think that today my motorcycle is used by somebody, it’s uncommon day

  66 S7 =There is no< motor cycle>, and I wait for mine.

  was affirmative form and did not give direct response because it was representative of “worrying” of the speaker’s believes. The speaker believed that finding five similarities and three differences among friends was not easy.

  65 T Waalaikumussalam , =what do you think guys :: nice?

  (c) Negative Form and Representative Meaning 64 ((A student came too late)).

  confirming, accepting, stating, concluding, explaining , and etc.

  of interrogative and had representative meaning namely question. It was a real question since S3 did not know the truth about number of questions permitted, and S3 wanted to know the truth about the number of questions. Besides, she also believed that H was able to supply the information about the number of questions that S3 wanted. The other function of representative occurred were:

  questions?” (I/S-13), was in the form

  The utterance “How many

  14 T =Just one::> two minutes< . for example: Sifa you may ask about:::and you may ask based on your experience or your imagination. Ok>

  13 S3 How many questions ?

  May about girlfriend:: boyfriend> if it is about J-club, you may ask about their idea:: job. something like that. If the card about diamond you may ask them about their hobbies. The last, if you got spades?: you may ask about their family. >Ok< Now if you got for example:: >diamond< ok. in this case you will ask about someone heart. You may choose whoever you want to ask >Sifa: about Sifa heart.. if you get a joker you may ask anything here only to me: only if you got joker, so ask anything.

  12 T If it is about heart, you may ask your friend , whatever they love.

  (b) Interrogative Form and Representative Meaning

  46 T No, not like that, you just to try to link with those characters and what kind of setting you set up, for example, you think that better if they have..this kind of… what is it… favourite..it is better if you set it up in a kind of board, saloon, among of you. It’s up to you. What kind of problems which come up with your among yours, so

  Just think it over . You have these characters and have to think about… what is it… plot or something like that..who will be protagonist, antagonist, so up to you.

  Commissive meaning occurred in affirmative, imperative and passive voice sentences such as the utterances;

  Defly uttered incompletely. If, Defly completed the answer, it might sound “yes it is true that I never crying”. Here she tried to convincing her teacher about her condition.

  Never” was communicative although

  The student’s response “Yes…

  207 Defly Yes… never

  4. Expressive (a) Negative Form and Expressive Meaning 206 T Is it true that you never crying

  172) was imperative in form but the meaning was hope. It was commissive since the speech acts commit to some future action. Moreover, the word “to be” indicated future action.

  husband can work by himself..” (I/T-

  The utterance “I want my

  I want my husband can work by himself, I mean he doesn’t depend on other people.

  171 T =Now, tell me about an ideal boyfriend. 172 S4 Ok… my ideal husband to be: the first of course, he is smarter than me. Because in :every activity we need money.

  There is one item of this kind of form and meaning found from the students’ response.

  (b) Imperative Form and Commissive meaning

  “We’ll wait until the rain stop..” , and “You said that you will build base camp” . From the felicity condition, they had functions as promise.

  Ok.. let me have yours. Ss No…no… (objection).

  The utterance “So, you mean, we must make opera” (S-45) had

  It doesn’t give any changing (means the score or the representative of the speaking score).

  Five minutes (means the time is almost up). Ok… you have to say all or you better to see what your friend work is first.

  You may ask some questions one to another. Ask some questions one to another.

  Ok (clap the hands). Finished.

  So you have to mention those things or perhaps the way you handle the problems and so on.

  T How many things. Maybe the hair or the way how you… what it is… dress up or some things.

  S4 Yes.

  T (pointing a student opinion). Adit… do you have some comment with in him, have many things.

  ungrammatical but if we look at the contexts and the situation we explicitly understand what the meaning of them was.

  accepting , objecting and understanding . These acts sounded

  The other students’ response were “yes” (II/S-17), “no …no” (II/S- 19) or “oooh…” which meant

  (e) Expression Form and Representative Meaning

  representative meaning (confirming) although the utterance was in the form of imperative. The speaker just wanted to convey their understanding about the teacher’ speech. There was not any act occurred then.

3. Commissive (a) Affirmative Form and Commissive Meaning

  (b) Expression Form and Expressive Meaning

  Expression forms often occurred in the beginning of the class as students gave response to routine activity such as greeting, “ Good

  morning”, fine and you ; closing “see you and Wassalamualaikum”(

  III/T- 157). These speech acts had functions to begin interactions or to acknowledge the presence of others. The primary goal of stating these routine greeting was a social interaction, a part of closing and leave taking in speech acts.

  The Students’ Dominant Speech Acts

  Although the students’ speech acts (269) were not as much as the teacher’s. but, here the writer found representative meaning (110 or 41 percents) and expression (105 or 38 percents) had the highest level in use. Therefore, there was a tendency that the utterances used were mostly in these form and meaning types. The students’ speech acts were still under average or less than fifty percent from all the interactions. Representative was the second great (87 or 32 percents), commissive was only 19 or 7 percents, and directive meaning reached the smallest items (5 or 1.8 percents). It seemed that the students were very careful in using directive at the time they were having interaction with the teacher or whoever they assumed to have higher social rank or someone who is older then they are. There was L1 culture, especially about the politeness of communicating to the teacher. Their speech acts occurred in formal request in order to minimize unfavorable behavior or to increase favorable consequences toward the hearer.

  SUMMARY

  The result of total acts showed that the speaker and the hearer performed fifty speech acts during classroom interaction. They occurred in five linguistic forms and five types of speech acts (affirmative, interrogative, negative, imperative and expression; directives, representative, commissives, expressives and declarations).

  From the data transcript revealed that, there were 269 students’ speech acts out of 798 utterances. Although the teacher functioned as a means of facilitator but the role of teacher’s utterances was still considered to be important. At functioned as guide, as a model and a motivator to encourage students’ thinking. Even, sometimes, teacher was also regarded as judge who gave the students right directions.

  The types of perlocutionary acts were identified from the types of actions performed by the hearer while he or she was performing the conversation using some indicators of possible actions. These actions were obtained from the five meaning of illocutionary act utterances. Among the five forms, the students’ speech acts were dominated by expression of form and representative meaning.

  In terms of perlocutionary acts, the types of effectiveness of perlocutionary acts were classified into effective and ineffective perlocutionary. Effective perlocutionary refers to the utterances that might have direct effect of his or her feelings, thoughts and actions. Meanwhile, ineffective perlocutionary refers to the one which did not have any direct action to what the speaker mentioned or uttered. The number of perlocutionary acts with effective types was 310 items or 58 percents, and the effective of perlocutionary acts were dominated by interrogative either in the form of WH- Question, or yes-no question and imperative form. Rohmah, Z. 2006. Verbal Disagreeing

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