12 combine some thoughts into one, and that become a challenge in doing group work
Participant 6 By looking at the statement given by some students above, we can see that interaction
among students student inside the group had been concerned by some students who took Indonesian to English classes. When students worked with friends whom they are not
accustomed to work with, they felt that actually it gives negative impacts. The impact may varied from difficulties in working together, longer time needed to finish a task and
challenges in combining ideas. Furthermore, this will probably lead to what is defined by Morris an
d Hayes 1997 as “the free-rider problem” in group work activities. It has been defined as follows: “The problem of the non-performing group member who reaps the
benefits of the accomplishments of the remaining group members with little or no cost to himh
erself‟‟. In this “free-rider” problem, students will rely on “smarter” student to finish the assignment in group and heshe decide not to participate in the discussion, but still later
they get the mark or grade based on their group performance . This problem was experienced by some interviewees, who stated that
“The problems may arise when we work with friends who are passive, which mean, in their mind they thought, this is a group work and there are more capable friends, and
because they are more capable they should be the one who finished it, they rely on others.”
Participant 3 “…in a group maybe there will be student who is too lazy to finish hisher work. It’s
difficult for us too, because if we don’t engage him in the group, we’ll feel bad, since it’s a group work. So then, we decide to do our worktask. The one who are too lazy need to follow
the others “Participant 7
13 This problem had been discussed by Davies 2009, who stated that this problem was
actually caused by lack of motivation from the student itself. And he also noticed that student‟s participation to be one of the most serious problems in group work this will later
discussed in “student’s participation during group work”. He adds that this problem can be solved by carefully considering the kind of task given to students, so that later task can
maximize each student‟s contribution and also teacher need to recognize and notice student‟s effort in doing the group work activities.
C. Student’s feeling toward Group Work activities.
After talking over some understandings about group work and the effects for students especially in translation class, this section will discuss about students feeling about group
work. As it was mentioned before, there are some advantages and disadvantages from doing translation in group work that student can get. When comes to their feeling about group work,
students who were interviewed shared a slight similar opinion. “Happy, because we can work together…” Participant 8
“Group work is helpful Especially if I work with friends whom I have known well before since they can give new ideas “Participant 4
“As I told before, if I work with someone I like, I mean their personality and characters are similar with me, the group work activity will be smooth…” Participant 6
Above statements show that students have same positive view about group work. Most of them said that they were happy to do group work for several reasons. Most of them
mentioned that the reasons were because they can share ideas and get a better understanding from certain topic when they do something in group. Then, when it comes to group
discussion, students will be able to interact and communicate with hisher friend which will be useful to improve their social skills, since sometimes student will need to work with
someone whom heshe doesn‟t know before. They also can reduce the amount of task that
14 needs to do, for example in Translation class in which students who worked in group will be
able to divide the assignment which consists of many paragraphs. Nevertheless, in relation with statements above, in the beginning of each Indonesian
to English Translation class, students of this program from some classes were asked to choose whether they wanted to do translation in group or individually by the teacher. From
all the interviewee, although they share a rather similar understanding and have same positive view about group work, when they were asked which one they preferred, they gave different
opinions. Participant 1, who previously gave his understanding about group work, stated that he
preferred doing translation assignment individually. He said …I tend to choose to work individually, because in translation I think the way
peoplestudent translate something is different. There are some students whose tr
anslation is still sound Indonesian but they think that their translation is right… Another interviewee, Participant 11 added,
I am Happy to do group work, because we can work together, but after all I’m prefer doing the assignment individually, because when I work alone, I can be more focus on
only one thought. While Participant 6 said that
I prefer doing translation individually, it doesn’t mean I’m exclusive or something like that, but if I work individually, the assignment can be finished faster. Because for
example if I do the translation, I use this sentence pattern and if I do it in group, I need to discuss it first, and it takes more time.
As it mentioned before, doing translation is a combination process between reading combination, grammar use, an
d translation itself. And because of the difference in student‟s reading and grammar competence, it would also affect their performance in doing group
15 translation. Newark 1988 shared his view about this problem. He said translation is actually
a difficult process and he defined it as an “endless” procedure, especially for linguistically
difficult passage because they can always be improved to get greater meaning. And for some students who were interviewed, they also concern about it. For them who had higher
translation competence will think they need to read the translation texts more than once to get better understanding while others think it isn‟t necessary. So when it comes to group
translation, in which students divide the text into several parts to be done by the members of the group, there will be a difference in meaning and also style of language. Furthermore, the
problem with style of language of each student can lead to another problem when the group needs to combine all the works from their members into one coherence text which also need
to have consistency in the style of language. This is one reason for students to choose working individually rather than doing in group translation. Other reason is that by doing
translation individually, students can be more focused since they don‟t need to discuss it with
their friend, and of course the assignment can finish faster. After all, despite the fact some students find that doing translation individually is
more advantageous for them, other interviewee still chose to work their translation assignment in group.
I prefer Group, because if the text is long, we can divide it into several parts, and it can save time, since in my experience usually the text is quite long 2 pages, but
sometimes I find difference in style of language, so after we compile the work, it will be checked together to make the translation consistent, and after that we read it.
Participant 4 It can be seen from the statement above that the differences in style of language also become
an important thing to consider in doing translation in group. Similar view about the style of language was shared by Participant 8
