Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter is the first chapter in which the writer would like to discuss the background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, statements of the problems, objectives of the study, statement of the hypothesis, significance of the study and outline of the report.

1.1. Background of the Study

Nowadays, all of us face a globalization era, in which everything demands competitive ability in technology, management, human resource, and almost every aspect of human life. We, whether we like or not, need to have a competitive competence reached through the high international standard level of knowledgeable and skillful of human resource in order to develop ourselves and compete in this changing era. It goes without saying that globalization era requires change in every aspect of life. It impacts on the role of English as the most important international language all over the world to communicate. Harmer 2003:1 states that “English has become a lingua franca”. According to Harmer 2003:1, “a lingua franca can be defined as a language widely adopted for communication between two speakers whose native languages are diferent from each other’s and where one or both speakers are using it as a ‘second language’.” The use of English language in both English and non-English countries in International economical, socio- political, scientific contacts, and commerce as well, proves the significance of this language. Moreover, English is also applied as a foreign language or the second language in most of countries in the world. Regarding to the fact that English is the international language most often used, people from various non-English speaking countries, including Indonesia, try to learn English. It is English that is the first foreign language taught in formal educational institutions in Indonesia. It becomes a compulsory subject in Senior High Schools, Junior High Schools, and even in Elementary Schools. It, however, is used primarily as an object of study rather than as a means of communication. Consequentially, the Indonesian students have less chance and exposure to use English naturally outside the classroom. It means that the students are not emotionally involved for the need of English since there is little or even no use of English in their environment. Meanwhile, this language is the most important language in this competitive era. Therefore, good and appropriate strategy is needed to achieve the success in teaching and learning English in Indonesia. The improvement of human resource quality is one of the requirements needed for surviving in this globalization. It, actually, is greatly related and depended on the quality of education in a country, the better educational quality of a country the greater quality of human resource will be. Thus, the Indonesian government has set up curriculum as a fundamental principle for teaching English in avoiding the failure in the teaching and learning process. Curriculum is a set of planning, strategy, and rules about the goals, contents, materials, and strategy as the principle to hold teaching and learning process to achieve a specific educational purpose. The system of teaching English in Indonesia as the first foreign language has changed from time to time based on what curriculum used. Since 2006, the government has applied a new curriculum known as School- Based Curriculum Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan in improving the quality of education in Indonesia. In the School-Based Curriculum, English is understood as a tool which is used to communicate either in spoken or written forms Depdiknas, 2006: 307. Based on the curriculum, the language components vocabulary, pronunciation, structure, and sound system are taught communicatively in order to improve the four language skills; they are: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Writing as one of the skills that the students have to master is sometimes difficult to be taught. As Brown 2001:335 states that “the process of writing requires an entirely different set of competencies.” Therefore, “written products are often the result of thinking, drafting, and revising procedures that requires specialized skills, skills that not every speaker develops naturally.” It means that writing is not a simple task, needs the process of building the idea and constructing a text. Moreover, Heaton 1974:138 also states that “writing skills are more complex and difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgement.” As the result, the students get difficulty and face some problems in the writing process. The students often get difficulty in building the idea since they do not know what they have to write and construct. Moreover, the students are confused to write based on rhetorical structures of a text . Sometimes they are unaware of the linguistic and rhetorical structures of a text. And in addition, the students are confused to write a text in English grammatical system appropriately. Therefore, the students need a lot of practice in order to improve their writing ability. In facilitating the students to master the four language skills, English teachers should also provide materials that are appropriate with the curriculum and find suitable methods in teaching and learning process. Thus, media are to solve those problems. Media are important in teaching and learning English since they help both of the teacher and the students. They are assumed as the gate between the teacher and learners in tranferring the materials being taught more easily during teaching learning process. Media are clearly to help the teacher to convey and deliver the material being taught more easily and effectively. And not to mention, media are also able to gain students’ motivation and encourage them to take part actively in teaching and learning process. Teaching media such as audio-visual aids, media that provide both of sound and pictures, are important in providing sources for teaching learning foreign language. Documentary films are audio visual media that can be used in teaching-learning process. Documentary films in VCD, for instance, can be extremely useful and effective teaching tools since they can especially present real life as it is and can motivate students in developing the idea to construct the meaningful written report texts. Thus, in this study, the writer attempts to investigate the use of documentary films in BBC VCD as media in teaching writing report text.

1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic