purpose to achieving certain knowledge. English as a foreign language is taught and used in formal or non formal institution, and thus, schools play a major role in
regulating language as capital and mediating access to it. Consequently, English language has to be mastered by any individual in
this world in order to preserve their existence technologically, economically and socio-culturally, as well as to achieve self-actualization and self-fulfillment.
English is needed as a medium of communication by any individual to prepare himherself to participant in building a better future world.
3. Learning and Teaching Interaction
Interaction is an important word for language teachers. In the era of communicative language teaching, interaction is, in fact, the heart of
communication and this is also what communication is all about. Interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more
people, resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other Brown, 2001:165. Theories of communicative competence emphasize the importance of interaction as human
beings use language in various contexts to “negotiate” meaning, or simply stated, to get an idea out of one person’s head and into the head of another person and
vice versa.
From the very beginning of language study, classrooms should be interactive. Wilga Rivers quoted by Brown, 2001: 165 said about interaction:
“Through interaction, students can increase their language store as they listen or read authentic linguistic material, or even the output of their
fellow students in discussions, skits, joint problem solving tasks, or dialogue journals. In interaction, students can use all they possess of the
language-all they have learned or casually absorbed-in real-life exchanges. Even at an elementary stage, they learn in this way to exploit the elasticity
of language”.
The development and success of a class depend on to a greater extent the interactions between the teacher and learners. Therefore, interaction is an
important concept for English language teachers. Interaction facilitates acquisition because of the conversational and linguistic modifications that occur in such
discourse and that provide learners with the input they need. Through the interaction, learners have opportunities to understand and use the language that
was incomprehensible. Additionally, they could get more input and more opportunities for output Yanfen and Zao, 2010: 76.
Allwright and Breen as quoted by Sita Nurmasitah 2010:13 stated that interaction is viewed as significant because it is argued that: a only through
interaction, the learner can decompose the target language structures and derive meaning from classroom events. b Interaction gives learners the opportunities to
incorporate target language structures into their own speech the scaffolding principles and c The meaningfulness for learners of classroom events of any
kind, whether thought of as interactive or not will depend on the extent to which communication has been jointly constructed between the teacher and learners.
Moreover, Allwright and Bailey as quoted by Rod Ellis, 2003: 574 stated that through interaction, the plan produces outcomes input, practice
opportunities, and receptivity. The teacher has to plan what he intends to teach syllabus, method, and atmosphere. So, the classroom interaction has important
role in teaching and learning process. It can be seen from the next figure.
Figure 2.1: The relationship between plans and outcomes
Since most English foreign language learners learn the target language in their own culture, practice is available only in the classroom. Thus, the key factor
in second language of foreign language development is the opportunity given to learners to speak in the language promoting interaction Shumin, 2002: 209.
A possible way of motivating learners to talk might be to provide them with opportunities to use the language. So, teachers should integrate strategy
instruction into interactive activities, providing a wealth of information about communicative strategies to raise learners’ awareness about their own learning
styles so that they can tailor their strategies to the requirements of learning tasks. In designing activities, “teachers should consider all the skills conjointly as
they interact with each other in natural behavior, for in real as in the classroom….” Shumin, 2002: 209. Effective interactive activities should be
manipulative, meaningful and communicative, involving learners in using English for a variety of communicative purposes, they should be based on 1 authentic or
naturalistic source materials, 2 enable learners to manipulate and practice specific features of language, 3 allow learners to rehearse in class,
Planned Aspect Lesson
Co-Produced Outcomes
Syllabus Input
Method Practice
Atmosphere Receptivity
Classroom interaction
communicative skills they need in the real world; and 4 activate psycholinguistic processes of learning” Richard and Renandya, 2001:209
In an interactive English classroom, the learners are exposed to authentic materials and encouraged to get involved in it. This means that the atmosphere of
the classroom is relaxed enough that the learners feel no prohibition or discouragement of spoken response or learners-initiated contribution. The
authentic materials include teacher talk if the teacher is fluent in English. When the teacher cannot provide this input, the teacher can make the best use of various
media such as audio- and videotapes, newspaper, maps, menus, brochures, etc or various kinds of text for example poetry and short stories. These materials can be
used in a variety of productive activities; discussions, role-play, drama, or debate. The most basic issue here is the learners’ involvement in the teaching learning
process. In order to maintain learners’ involvement in the process of learning, the
teacher should provide the learners with comprehensible input by taking into account the learners present knowledge and find suitable materials and approaches
that are a bit more advanced. Michael Long’s interaction hypothesis suggests that comprehensible input is most effective when it is modified through negotiation of
meaning constructed in social interaction Ellis, 1997. Interaction enables learners to learn more than one source, i.e. the teacher. In fact, their friends,
books, technology, and tools can help them to accomplish more if they all can provide meaningful input to the learners. Scaffolding from more capable peers
and other resources accompanied with collaboration is indeed a critical to social aspects of learning.
It is mentioned earlier that in an interactive classroom the concern is more on the language functions rather than the forms. However, it does not mean that
grammatical forms are neglected. Interaction does not preclude the learning of grammatical system of the language. In fact, the learners can perform better if
they understand and express nuances of meaning that require careful syntactic choice. However, learning grammatical items is not listening to long explanation
of rules but rather inductively developing rules from living language material Rivers, 1987. This process should also be interactive with learners internalizing
the rules through experience of using the expressions in certain context. Testing too should be interactive and proficiency oriented Rivers, 1987.
Learners can be actively involved when their task is not restricted to providing the one and only correct answer. Instead, the test items can be lively exchanges of
stimulating ideas, opinions, impressions, reactions, positions, and attitudes. Many people may argue that teachers prefer using discrete-point testing like truefalse,
multiple-choice and completion because they are convenient, easy to score, and be assessed more objectively than freer, global testing. However, the basic issue is
not the test formats. Rather, the content of the test items that should reflect learners’ knowledge and communicative performance, or learners’ demonstration
of the knowledge in concrete situation. Teachers should carefully prepare the test considering the backwash of it
to the teaching orientation. Schulz in Mueller 1987 points out that testing
determines the manner in which the learners learn and the teachers teach. If we wish, after all, that our learners get full benefits from interactive teaching, then we
also should provide them with interactive testing that offer learners broader opportunity to demonstrate both their competence and their ability to perform in
the target language. The roles a teacher plays in a classroom will color the atmosphere in it. An
interactive teacher should be able to see what role to play dependent on the class proficiency level on one hand and maintaining the interactive situation on the
other. Brown 2001, 167-168 lists some roles of the teachers on the continuum of directive to nondirective teaching: firstly, the teacher as controller, the role as a
controller does not mean that the teacher always in charge of every moment in the classroom. However, for interaction to take place, the teacher must create a
climate in which the learners are given freedom to express themselves. Nevertheless, some control on the teacher part is important element to carry out
interactive techniques. Secondly, the teacher as director, as the learners involved in spontaneous
language performance, the teacher should be able to keep the process flowing smoothly and efficiently. The ultimate motive of such direction must always be to
enable learners to engage in the real-life drama of improvisation of communicative events. Thirdly, the teacher as manager, this is the role of the
teacher as one who plans the lessons, modules, and courses; who structures the larger, longer segments of classroom time; as well as the one who allows each
individual learner to be active and creative. In making those decisions, negotiation with the learners would prove that the teacher is a wise manager in the classroom.
Fourthly, the teacher as facilitator, facilitating the process of learning makes learning easier to learners, and helping them when communication
blocked. A facilitator capitalizes the principle of intrinsic motivation by allowing learners to discover language through using it pragmatically rather than telling
them about the language. The last, the teacher as resource, when the learners see the teacher as the resource, they would come to himher for advice and counsel on
their own initiative. This role should not be misinterpreted as the only resource in the teaching learning process.
In fact, as Brown 2001 points out, it should be the least directive role by seeing the learners’ initiative to seek help, advice, and counsel when they need
them. There are appropriate times when teacher can literally take a back seat and allow the learners to proceed with their own linguistic development.
4. Interactive Principles
