Surtiati, 2201504008 (2008) TEACHER’S SCAFFOLDING TALK IN ENGLISH CLASS AT SENIOUR HIGH SCHOOL. Masters thesis, Universitas Negeri Semarang.

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Abstract

From literacy perspective for foreign language learning in classroom context, the teacher should facilitate the students with more learning experiences involving meaningful communication through classroom interaction. Teachers as the most capable persons in the teaching learning process should be able to provide the students’ learning by using scaffolding talks in Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD for short. In the ZPD it is hoped very much that the students will get their potential level of development. This study is a discourse study on teachers’ scaffolding talks in classroom interaction. It is qualitative study with three English teachers at SMA Negeri 01 Losari-Brebes who teach the eleventh grade up to the twelfth grade. The data of this study were taken from spoken interaction in classroom context between teachers and students. I recorded twice for each teacher so there are six recordings of teachers’ talks. The data were analyzed qualitatively through several stages, that is (1) data transcription, (2) data classification, (3) data analysis to find types of scaffolding talks performed, the linguistic features characterizing the scaffolding talks and speech functions used by the teacher, and (4) data interpretations. Types of scaffolding talks were analyzed based on Afda Walqui, Wood, Bruner, Turney et al. etc. for instance stating the goal, giving attention, prompting, modeling, giving clear direction, explaining, inviting students’ participation, questioning, clarifying students’ understanding, developing students’ understanding, reinforcing, making emphasis, making links, reviewing, evaluating, and showing desired solution. The linguistic features characterizing the teacher’s scaffolding talks were analyzed following the classification suggested by Gerot and Wignel(1995). While the speech functions performed by the teachers were analyzed by using the categories adopted from Halliday(1995) and Slade and Eggins (1997). The first result shows that the teacher applies scaffolding talks in the teaching learning process with IRE pattern of interaction needing short responses.. The three English teachers perform similar types of scaffolding talks in the classroom discourse suggested by the linguists above. Teacher A in the first and the second data analysis does not perform “stating, gaining attention, prompting, making emphasis, making links, reviewing and evaluating”. The teachers tend to speak Indonesian and local language than English because their English communicative competences are poor. Those poor competences trigger the use of certain speech functions in their scaffolding talks. The explanation is the biggest amount of frequency of the teacher’s scaffolding talks. It means that the teachers dominate the classroom and just little opportunity given to the students. The class is silent. Except one class in which teacher C teaches in the first turn is rather responsive. They are not considered as good model as they are not capable to speak English well and they can not construe the teaching material well. The second finding shows that the linguistic features characterizing teachers’ scaffolding talks mostly are identifying process and the least is attributive as mentioned by Gerot and Wignel (1995). Mood types are dominated by declaratives and the least is Yes/No questions for the first until the fifth data. While for the sixth data the least is imperative. The third finding shows that the speech functions used by the teachers are statement, question, command and offer. Statement has the biggest amount of speech functions and offer is the least. Dealing with the result above I want to give some suggestions as follows: The English teachers, teachers’ trainers and students’ of English education make an effort not to dominate the class because the teachers are considered as the most capable persons in the class. They should try hard to speak English while they are teaching in order that the students listen English utterances every time their teachers teach them. They should be able to encourage the students to be able to take part in the classroom discourse actively. They should not make the students scared. They should be able to provide more variation of questions from the easiest one to the most difficult ones. They should be patient to wait for the students response and avoid answering their own questions by using various techniques such as giving enough waiting-time to think of the possible answer, prompting, giving clues, or redirecting to give equal opportunities for the students’ participation. Teachers in front of the class are models as good models they should have good ability to speak English by practicing speaking continuously, willing to read more, to write and to master the basic skills of teaching. In an attempt to improve their performance and also professionalism, they are able to join various kinds of teacher training programs, seminars, symposiums, upgradings, workshops dealing with English teaching. Relating to the linguistic features characterizing scaffolding talks they had better give more variation in using process types not only identifying process and there are some mood types they can use. For speech functions they are able to vary questions with full interrogative instead of the elliptical ones and with command of polar interrogative, declarative or wh-interrogative to give the example to the students.

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