Lecturer’s Strategies to Face Reticence among Freshmen of English

Education Study Program in the Introduction to Linguistics Class

(A Case Study in English Education of Suryakancana University)

1
Fauziah Fujiyanti

Fauziahfujiyanti15@gmail.com
2
Triska Nur Wulandari

triskanurwulandari@gmail.com
12
Universitas Suryakancana

Abstract

Reticence is a common problem faced by ESL/EFL teachers in classrooms. To deal with

students’ reticence that commonly happen in the classrooms, the teacher should have a strategy.
This study aims at find out the interaction strategies that used by a lecturer in facing reticence
among freshmen. This study was conducted in the first grade of English education study program
of Suryakancana University with a lecturer and 26 students in Introduction to Linguistics class.
The method of this study was qualitative method. The data was collected by recording the
learning process and to analyze the data the video was transcribed.

Key words: Reticence, teacher’s strategies, freshmen

1. Introduction 1.2 Research Question

1.1 Background 1.2.1 What strategies that
Reticence is a common problem lecturer applied to face
faced by ESL/EFL teachers in students’ reticence in the
classrooms. To deal with classroom?
students’ reticence that 1.2.2 What is the students’
commonly happen in the respond towards lecturer
classrooms, the teacher should strategies?
have a strategy that should be
applied to reduce those reticence. 1.3 Aims and Significance
So the teacher-students exchange This study aims at
will be increased. enlightening lecturer’s strategies
in facing students’ reticence in
the classroom and finding out the
 students’ responses towards
lecturer’s strategies in the first
grade of English Education Study
Program of Suryakancana
University in Introduction to
Linguistics class.
It is hoped that the research
finding of this study will help the
lecturers to deal with the
students’ reticence in English
class.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Reticence
‘Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary of Current English’
illustrated reticence as the
condition of not revealing one’s
thoughts or feelings readily
(Crowther, 2000) cited from
Chowdhury (2015)
2.2 The cause of Reticence
According to Irwanti (2017),
there are several reasons that
caused students reticence.
1. Anxiety
One of the greatest
contributor to students’
reticence. Many students kept
quiet because they felt
nervous when speaking.
Anxiety made the students
unwilling and afraid to speak
up in the classroom.
2. Being underprepared
It is regarded as one of the
main reasons for students in
the English classroom.
3. Fear of making mistakes and
being laugh at
Some students choose to
remain silent in the classroom
because of their fear of
committing mistakes or
errors and it will make the
others students laughing at
the mistakes.
4. Lacking confidence in
oneself
Another reason of students’
reluctance to participate in the
English Classroom was the
lack of confidence in using
English as a vehicle for spoken
communication because of the
lack of confident speaking in
front of class while the
classroom discussion occurred.
5. Low English proficiency
Low English proficiency was
one of the main reasons that
lead to reticence in English
classroom. The students keep
being reticent because of Poor
English proficiency. The
students felt worried about
their English proficiency when
speaking English. They tended
to be unconfident about their
vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation.
6. Unfamiliarity with the topics
or materials
Students choose to be reticent
because they are not familiar
with the topics or materials.
They do not have many ideas for
discussion. The students only
have little knowledge about it.
7. Personality
Personality was another
important factor for students’
reticence in English language
lessons. Some students kept
quiet in class because they
were too shy or introverted to
speak to others. Some just
didn’t like to speak to others.
8. Comparison to peers
Many students believed
strongly and probably
correctly that there was a great
difference in English ability
between them and their peers.
They felt anxious,
“uncomfortable,” and
“envious” because of these
perceived differences.
9. Being lazy
Being lazy was also a factor
that causes students’
reluctance to participate in the
classroom.
10. Fear of being the focus of
attention
Another reason that makes
students are unwilling to speak
English in front of the whole
class was because they feel
afraid that they will be the
focus of attention.
11. Classroom arrangement
Classroom arrangement was
also one of the factors
mentioned as influencing
students’ participation. The
students like to sit at the
middle and back rows. They
thought that sitting at the
middle and back rows are the
most comfortable place.
2.3 Lecturer’s Strategies towards
Students’ Reticence
Types of teacher interaction strategy
according to Cullen (2002) cited in
Lee & Ng (2009).
1. Teacher-fronted strategy
Teacher-fronted strategy is a controlled
interaction device used to facilitate a
smooth flowing classroom discourse to
ensure efficiency and smooth lesson
progress. Teachers adopting this
strategy usually use a controlled and
structural manner to interact with
learners. They talk most of the time and
initiate most of the teacher–student
exchanges by non-communicative
display questions, resulting in a teacher-
dominated, rigid, and restricted
interaction pattern. The IRF pattern
(teacher initiation/student
response/teacher follow-up) is
associated with a teacher-centred
classroom methodology, pedagogically
oriented lessons, and teacher-fronted
activities. In spite of this, this strategy
appears to be popular among teachers.
It is found that ‘teachers instinctively
adopt an IRF mode of instruction
because it is perceived, perhaps
unconsciously, to be a powerful
pedagogical device for transmitting and
constructing knowledge. The following
is an example of the teacher-dominated
IRF interaction pattern induced by this
strategy.
Example 1 :
Purpose: checking understanding of
vocabulary.
Teacher: What’s this? (teacher’s
initiation—a display question)
Student: A tower. (learner’s response—
a short reply)
Teacher: Good, yes, a tower. (teacher
follow-up—comment)
The reasons for the popularity of this
strategy could include factors such as
teachers’ beliefs about their roles,
cultural backgrounds, teaching styles,
pedagogical goals of the lesson, and the
learners’ proficiency, motivation, and
attitude. It seems that it is unrealistic to
expect this strategy to disappear
completely from classrooms. None the
less, an element of communication
could be incorporated into this strategy,
so that both pedagogical and
communicative needs could be taken
care of.
2. Facilitator-oriented strategy
Facilitator-oriented strategy is a set of
facilitative interaction devices used by a
teacher to facilitate interaction with
his/her students in classrooms, and it
includes personalizing a topic, use of
referential questions, reformulation,
elaboration, comment, repetition, and
use of backchannels, giving content
focused feedback and longer wait time.
This set of strategies enables teachers to
create ‘authentic’ dialogues with learners
throughout the interaction process.
When interacting with learners, the
teacher adopts a more ‘let-go’ and
‘meaning-focused’ approach that breaks
from the IRF interaction pattern,
resulting in learners’ greater
participation rights. For example,
referential questions are used, and the
wait time is longer. The right of turn
allocation is returned to learners, and
non-verbal expressions such as
backchannels are used to show teacher
support/approval. In addition, the
feedback given is content focused rather
than form focused. As a result, learners
are empowered to take more initiative
and responsibility for learning. One
special feature about these strategies is
that they are also practicable in
pedagogically oriented classrooms.
Communicative talk can be integrated
into a focus-on-form talk if a teacher is
willing to open space for learners to
make personal comments, indicating that
with the use of an effective strategy such
as personalizing the topic, focus-on-form
talk and focus-on-meaning talk are not
mutually exclusive. The directed IRF
interaction exchanges commonly found
in teacher-fronted classrooms could be
made more learner directed and
communicative if the Follow-up Move
(F-move), the third part of a chain of
IRF (initiate–respond– follow-up),
carries discourse (content-focused)
rather than evaluative (form-focused)
functions. This implies that
pedagogically teacher-fronted
classrooms are not necessarily form
focused and non-communicative. The
example below illustrates this argument.
Example 2
Purpose: teaching past tense.
Teacher: How did you spend your Xmas
holiday? (Initiating move—use of a
referential question)
S1: mm . . .. (pause for more than two
seconds) . . . Bored . . . I sleep every day.
(Response move—expressing opinions)
Teacher: Oh, what a shame. Your
holiday was boring. You slept the whole
day.
(Follow-up move—reformulation to
show correct expression +showing
sympathy)
Why didn’t you go out? (Initiating
move—asking another referential
question to create a rapport with the
student)
S1: No, no money. (The whole class
laughs.) (Response move—expressing
opinions)
Teacher: Yeah. (Follow-up move—
backchannel showing understanding)
S2: No, he had money. (Student 2 self-
selects and joins in)
S1: How you know I had money?
(Expressing opinion and using the
correct past tense verb form)
3. Learner-oriented strategy
A learner-oriented strategy is a non-
intervening interaction device that offers
learners full opportunities to speak in
classrooms. The teacher uses a complete
hands-off approach to let learners
interact among themselves to work on a
task, resulting in a very learner-directed
classroom interaction pattern known as
student–student interaction. The whole
interaction is basically learner initiated,
and the teacher will not intervene except
at the time when learners come across
difficulties. Thus, participation rights are
open to all learners who have access to
the ‘discursive resources’ of self-
selection, topic initiation, topic
development, and topic shift. This
strategy is believed to be able to benefit
passive or reticent learners as their
motivation to participate.
Teacher has to be careful when engaging
learners in student–student interactions,
as without a language model,
fossilization of errors may result. Some
students view learning on their own as a
form of teacher neglect. Thus, in order to
ensure that learners can engage
comfortably and confidently in a
student–student interaction, a facilitator-
oriented strategy can be used to scaffold
learners throughout their interaction
process. The following example
illustrates how a facilitator-oriented
strategy complements the learner-
oriented strategy to help Student 3, a low
proficiency learner, to participate in the
discussion.
Example 3
Purpose: practicing discussion skills.
Teacher: Get yourselves into groups of
three, and discuss who’s your favorite
singer and give reasons for your choice.
(Task setting by a teacher)
S1: My favorite singer is Lesley Cheung
. . . he die. I feel very . . . very sad.
(Expressing opinions)
S2: Did you cry when . . .mmm. . . he
was died? (Asking for information)
S1: I was not believe it first but . . . um .
. . it was true . . . I cried. (Giving
information)
S2: Now who you like? (Asking for
more information)
S1: Mum . . . No, no . . . only like Lesley
Cheung.
[Student 3 keeps quiet and does not
participate, and so the teacher
intervenes]
Teacher: (Uses body language to signal
she is going to intervene—facilitator
oriented strategy) . . . right, John, how
about you? Do you like Lesley Cheung?
S3: (Looks very shy) . . . mum . . .
(shakes his head)
Teacher: Ok . . . Do you mean you don’t
like him? (Says this very slowly and
clearly—confirming)
S3: (Shakes his head) . . . don’t like him.
(Imitates the teacher’s speaking)
S2: Why?
S3: . . . (thinking) . . . I like Leon.
(Expresses opinion)
Teacher: Ah. . . You like Leon more
than Lesley. Is that right? (Confirming
and reformulating the expression)
S3: Yeah . . . yeah . . . (looks very
happy)
3 Research Methodology
This research is categorized into
descriptive qualitative research. This
type of research is the most suitable
method to be applied. It provides the
description of the phenomena or a fact in
event of a life. Furthermore, Bogdan and
Biklen (2007) in Prabowo (2018)
mention that qualitative approach brings
about the descriptive data in the form of
written or oral data from the subjects of
the research. The sources of this research
are the learning process video of
Introduction to Linguistics class.
4 Result
3.1 Research site and Participants
This study was conducted in the
first grade of English Education
Study Program in Suryakancana
University. This study was
involved Mr. Jauhar Helmie as
the lecturer of introduction to
linguistics subject and 26
students in Introduction to
linguistic class.
3.2 Research Instrument
The research instrument that had
been used in this study was
observation through the video
that had been recorded.
3.3 Data Collection
The qualitative data of this study
was collected from all the
utterances that spoken by the
lecturer and the students in the
classroom. The researcher record
the learning process to gathered
the data and transcript all the
utterances to analyze the
collected data.
3.4 Data Analysis
The collected data was analyzed
by content analysis technique.
The content analysis is used to
analyze social life by interpreting
words and images from
documents, film, art, music and
other cultural products and
media.
After the data was analyze, it can be
found that the interaction strategy that
used by the lecturer in the classroom was
teacher fronted strategy. Because when
the lecturer deals with students’
reticence, the lecturer controlled the
classroom and resulting a teacher-
dominated, rigid, and restricted
interaction pattern.
A brief summary of the teacher strategy
presented below:
1. T : masih ingat anda apa itu
morphology? Morphology is.. apa itu
morphology? (Pointing a student)
2. T : so, you know about the
morpheme, free morpheme is
morpheme.. (pointing a student)
3. T : stand alone by itself. Bound
morpheme? (Pointing a student)
4. T : morpheme that cannot stand
alone by itself (corrected the s2's
answer). Derivational morpheme?
(Pointing a student)
5. T : change word class category and
meaning, that is derivational
 morpheme (completed s3'a answer).
Give the example of derivational
morpheme. Examples of derivational
morpheme (look around to the rest of
students in the class)
6. T : -ing to the word eat become?
(giving a clue)
7. T : Listen is verb, listener is noun. So
it changes the word class category
and meaning. Listen it means you
listen to something, listener is
someone who listen to. What else?
Apa lagi? (pointing a student)
8. S3 : -es to the word…
T : -es to the word?
S3 : (thinking/reticence)
T : friend? (giving clue)
9. T: ya betul. Yang ketiga? The
teacher is too old to marry
(reticence) (teacher pointing a
student)
10. T: peluang yang muncul apa saja
disitu? (Pointing a student) Fuji
pemaknaanya apa?
S4: guru itu sudah tua masih belum
menikah
T: ga laku gitu ya? (Students
laughing) the lamb is too hot to eat?
(Pointing a student, and come closer
to the student) come on (reticence)
pakai bahasa indonesia boleh
menjelaskannya.
S5: yang pertama terlalu panas untuk
dimakan, yang kedua kambing itu
terlalu bagus sayang untuk dimakan.
The lecturer’s strategy that deals
with the students’ reticence in the
classroom is successfully carried out.
The lecturer is able to force the
students to speak up and it causes the
decrease of students’ reticence in the
classroom. The students gave
positive respond towards lecturer’s
strategy and make the teacher-
students exchange run well.

5 References

Chowdhury, R. F. (2015). REASONS OF RETICENCE IN SPEAKING ENGLISH AMONG

THE FRESHMEN IN PORT CITY INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY; CHITTAGONG,
BANGLADESH: A CASE STUDY. ELK ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF SOCIAL
SCIENCES, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.16962/EAPJSS/issn.2394-9392/2014
Irwanti, E. M. I. (2017). THE REASONS OF STUDENTS ’ RETICENCE IN ENGLISH
EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM.
Lee, W., & Ng, S. (2009). Reducing student reticence through teacher interaction strategy. ELT
Journal, 64(3), 302–313. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccp080
Prabowo, W. (2018). LINGUISTIC FORMS AND IMPLICATURE ANALYSIS OF
ADVERTISING SLOGANS FOUND IN TIME MAGAZINE. 688–693.