Background of Study INTRODUCTION
offers a chance for advancement in their professional lives. They will get better job with two languages than if they only know their mother tongue. English has a
special position here since it becomes international language of communication. The third is target language community. Some language students find themselves
living in a target language community. The students would need to learn English to survive in that community. The next is English for specific purpose, the term
has been applied to situations where students have some specific reasons for wanting to learn the language. Then culture, some students study a foreign
language because they are attracted to the culture of one of the TLCs. They learn the language because they want to know more about the people who speak it, the
places where it is spoken and in some cases the writing which it has produced. While the last is miscellaneous, some people learn the foreign language just for
fun or want to be tourists where that language is spoken or because all their friends are learning the language.
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In our country, English is a compulsory subject since junior high school level to university level, but it has been taugth or introduced in kindergarten and
elementary level as a local content subject. In Indonesia, there are so many institutions that teach English, although the learners learn it as a foreign language,
but the schools in Indonesia included English as one of the subjects that determines the graduation of their students in high school level.
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According to Lie, learning English in primary and secondary grades 1-12 schools serves two purposes. First, students need to be prepared to read
English texts in their college years. Second, competence in the English language is still used as a determining factor in securing a favorable position
and remuneration in the job market. Many job advertisements list a good
2
Jeremy Harmer, The practice of English language Teaching, New York: Longman, 1991, pp.1-2
3
http:blog.unnes.ac.idkristinapgsd20110505pentingnya-mata-pelajaran-bahasa-inggris- bagi-siswa-sd
command of English as one of the top requirements, hence the popularity of private English courses or school.
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By learn English, the students learn how to develop their skills in language use of English. School as one of the institutions where the students learn
English, is hoped to improve their skills to produce the graduators who can communicate and write English in the certain level, like what stated in the 2004
curriculum, that the objectives of English instruction in junior and senior high schools are:
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a. Developing communicative competence in spoken and written English which
comprises listening, speaking, reading, and writing. b.
Raising awareness regarding the nature and importance of English as a foreign language and as the major means for learning.
c. Developing understanding of the interrelation of language and culture as well
as cross-cultural understanding. In fact the result of their study is not satisfying yet, especially in the
second year of SMP Islam Raden Patah Depok. According to the result of the semester examination which held in last December 2010, the score of 10
students were still under the Minimal Mastery CriterionKriteria Ketuntasan Minimum KKM the minimum score of English in second year of SMP Islam
Raden Patah Depok is 65. Another example is the results of daily examinations are still under the expectation.
Based on the interview to the English teacher, the students have some problems in learn English, such as the less enthusiasm of the students when
teaching-learning process, it could be seen from the low level of students respond to the teacher explanation, the low of students initiative to give opinion and ask
questions when they are not understand about the material. It caused some effects,
4
Anita Lie. Education Policy and EFL Curriculum in Indonesia: Between the Commitment to Competence and the Quest for Higher Test Scores. TEFLIN Journal, v. XVIII, Number 1, February
2007, p. 3
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Ibid p. 6
like the lack of interaction between students and teacher, the students learn passively, even some students felt bored with English. Another problem is the
complexity of the materials in English subject because the students learn many things, there are four language skills; reading, listening, writing and speaking.
They learn another sub skills also such as; vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, phonology etc. According to their opinion grammar and writing are difficult skills
and confusing, because in writing, they learn how to make good sentences, paragraphs even discourse, while in grammar, they learn how to make sentence
correctly, so they must know about tenses, part of speech and so on which are not too familiar for the most of them. The problem of pronoun especially personal
pronoun may be not too noticed by the teacher. Personal pronoun is important material, because if the problem is not give more attention, the students will
always make wrong sentence or can make confuse the readers. The problem about pronoun is related to Standard Competence in writing
skill, that is to express the meaning in the functional written text and simple short essay in the form of recount and narrative text to make interaction to the around
environment, and to the Base Competence is to express the meaning and rhetorical step in simple short essay by using vary written language accurately,
fluent and accepted to make interaction to the around environment in the form of recount and narrative text.
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While the objective of teaching pronoun in the second year of junior high school is to help the students in understanding the sentences and texts that they
read and in order the students can make simple sentences correctly. The conclusion is, the students need a method or approach which easier to
understand, so they can catch the material faster and they can maintain what they have learnt in memory longer, because the personal pronoun have important role
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http:www.docstoc.comdocs23119786silabus-kelas-8-bahasa-inggris
when one make good sentences, so the sentences could be understood by the readers.
Based on the problem above, the writer feels that the most suitable method is contextual teaching learning. Because the method pursues the teacher
and the students to make connections between what they are learning and how that knowledge will be used.
The students need to understand the concepts as they relate to the workplace and to the larger society in which they will live and work.
Muslich wrote that this approach Contextual Teaching Learning is suitable to Competence Based Curriculum and KTSP which is has been using nowadays.
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Contextual learning theory focuses on the multiple aspects of any learning environments, by it students will discover meaningful relationship between
abstract ideas and practical application in the context of the real world, and the concepts are internalized through the process of discovering, reinforcing and
relating. Contextual teaching and learning CTL is a concept that helps
teachers relate subject matter to re-real world situation. CTL motivates learners to take charge of their own learning and to make connections and its
applications to the various contexts of their live as family members, as citizens and as workers. It provides a conceptual framework for unifying a
constellation of education theories and practices and represents one approach to improving teacher education.
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For the writer, CTL is a good method for the student, because this method make students to make connection between their lesson and their daily life, so it
make them feel what they have learnt will be useful in their real life, so they not just learn the theories without use it in their real life.
Johnson explained that the teachers have a task to help the students to transfer information from the working memory to long-term memory. Such a
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Masnur Muslich, KTSP: Pembelajaran Berbasis Kompetensi dan Kontekstual, Jakarta: Bumi Aksara 2009, p. 41
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Susan Sears, Contextual Teaching and Learning, Bloomington: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 2002, p. 2
transfer may occur if the brain understands what it studies. It will certainly occur, if the brain finds meaning in what it studies.
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Students think creatively when they use academic knowledge to increase collegiality among the
members of their class, when they formulate step to accomplish a school project or assemble and assess information bearing on a community
problem.
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Because of the problem, the writer would like to discuss about how to improve student
s’ ability in using personal pronoun correctly, so the title of this research is “Improving Students Ability in Using Personal Pronoun through
Contextual Teaching Learning ”