BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCH
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language learning of English. By using this approach, it enables the language learners to use a target language in ways which are familiar to them
—authentic, purposeful, and functional Feez and Joice, 2002, p. 7.
In Indonesia, Vocational High School VHS is one of the educational institutions which emphasizes the practical use of learning materials. The students of
this educational institution are oriented to have a job after they graduate. According to this regulation, the subjects taught in Vocational High School are practical. In
English lesson, the practical involves the productive skills which are spoken and written. Therefore, they are expected to be able to produce those skills. One of the
productive skills is producing the text. For the teaching material, the text taught is supposed to be based on the
learners’ needs. It can be meant that the teaching material should be relevant to the students’ experience, background, and affective needs Graves, 2000, p. 156. Brown
1995, p. 23 also declares that in deciding the approaches, syllabuses, techniques, and exercises, it should always be focused on the individuals who are on particular
circumstances. Besides, a strategy in determining the students’ needs, learning objectives, tests, teaching approach, program evaluation, and material should be all
associated one another. Consequently, the choice of the materials used are effected by what is learnt from each of the other components mentioned previously and to whom
the materials taught. In vocational high school, text-based approach is implemented as one of the
approaches during English teaching and learning process. Learning English by using this approach, then becoming the students’ lived experience through their studies.
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This is because the students have spent their times learning texts during the English lesson. From the first until the third grade, they are gradually taught by these kind of
texts. Since learning texts has taken a part for students, it is assumed that text-based approach has the essential meaning for them. Hence, the researcher attempts to look
forward about this phenomenon. In our lives, there is a lived experience that contains of memorable and
meaningful experience. Hence, this research adopts hermeneutics phenomenology as the method. Phenomenology tries to seek people’s lived experience about certain
phenomenon Moustakas, 1994, p. 9. This research focuses on the past experience when the students were taught by using text-based approach. The students who are
chosen as the participants derived from different majors of their studies. Previously, researches related to lived experience and text-based approach
have been done by several researchers. Haryanta 2010 discusses the students’ lived experience in learning English at vocational high school. In his research, he found
that learning English in vocational school had various influences. Besides, the research about lived experience was done by Pamela J. Hickey 2012. She
investigated the lived experience of students in learning English. Another research about text-based approach was done by Qian Tingting. Her research entitled A
Comparison between the Text-Based Approach and the Dictionary-Based Approach of Vocabulary Learning in a Chinese University was completed in 2011.
This current research is focused on the text-based approach. The text learnt by the students is estimated can support them to work effectively and efficiently in their
job fields’ future. However, as the vocational school students who put their attention
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to their majors, they may find difficulties or even complicated problems dealing with learning text in English. Having spent their years of learning English does not
guarantee that they can master it. Though, learning English especially text has involved in their lives, whether it is a good or bad experience. Therefore, the
researcher has desire to do the research entitled Learning English through Text-Based Approach on Vocational High School: Students’ Lived Experience.