CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Research Background

English has been known as global language of business. It is the language for doing

International busisness. As a consequency, companies need those employess who are in relation

with foreign clients or supplier to have the skills in English, whch enable them to do their work

effective (www.communicaid.com). There are many multinational companies are obligated

English as the common corporate language. To see this condition, ready or not, Indonesia as one

of develop country needs to pay attention to the skill of English which has been becoming the

global business language.

English is used in indonesia in business and education field, even though English has no

wide use in society, is not used as medium of communication in official domains like

Goverment, the Law Court and the education system (as Second Language) and it is not

accorded any special status in the country`s languagge Legistation, it is still seen as priority, as

the most important of the Foreign Language to be taught (Simatupag, 1999:64). According to

Braiane (2005: 71) to equip Indonesian with an ability to communicate at the International level,

English is the first foreign language officially taught to students from junior Secondary school.

In Indonesia, English has been a language offically taught from Junior high school for three

years, Senior high school for three years and some years at University level. There has also been

a growing tendency in many big cities to teach English from the lower grades of Primary school

even Kindergarten.

Eventhough English has been taught for around ten years from Primary to University but

the English competence of Indonesian students are still low. It is no doubt that there are several
components contributing to the failure and success in learning and teaching languages. Steven

(in Long and Richards, 1987, p.15-23) for example, mentioned four basic components the

community, the profession, the teacher, and the learner. In my opinion, teacher is the key

components because the teacher has a major influence in creating the learning to produce

qualified learners. The quality improvement in education then should start from a teacher. The

process of learning will be effective if the teacher plans the lessons carefully.

Lesson Planning and Learning Environment are signtficant elements of teaching

learning system. A lesson plan is a step-by-step guidance that provides a structure for en

essential learning. Making achievable lesson plan of teaching skill is different from teaching

knowledge. The methodology and the approach is totally different. The Objective of learning

language is to have Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing skill, in learning language, the

dominated skill that usually people recognize is speaking, as a competence. In order to make

people able to have English competence, they have to think the target language not to think in

their first language and translate it into the target language. They have to see things in English

and think in English.

The instructions on the lesson plan influence students` outcome. If the objective of

learning language is merely about how to know the meaning of words in first language,

understand grammar and practise simple sentences without interactional and the ability of

students producing the opinion from the way they think about something, it will not result to the

speaking but knowledge while today`s era has been a demanding to a higher thinking level. The

instructions to knowledge objectives don`t allow the students to think English and use it as their

tool to interact with others in English.

 The way to stimulate thinking target language is by giving pictures and seee them in

English words, stimulate them with challenging questions as the instructions during the teaching

and learning process. Target language challenging questions will lead the students into the

thinking skill. Teachers need to figure it out how to use challenging questions on their lesson

plan in order to develop students` thinking skill. But what hapened is that not many teachers

make the qualified and achieveable lesson plan. Some of them just copy the lesson plan from

the internet or making the lesson plan in first language rather than in target language.

Teachers have used questions to stimulate thinking in classroom. Appropriate questiosn

help teachers and students learn from one another (Latihan, 1957 as citied from Wood; Carol,

2001, Mehmet, 2006). Reviews of research findings on questioning reveal that it is an effective

skill “ to stimulate student interaction, thinking and learning” (Wilen, Isher, Hutchison”, and

Kindsvatte, 2000 as citied from Wood; Carol, 2001, Mehmet, 2006). Questioning should be

used to achieve well-defines goals. Teacher should ask questions that will require students to

use the thinking skills tht she or he is trying to develop.

Learning without thinking means learning without getting anything. Thinking is

concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it.(Jonathan. B, Thinking and

Deciding, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p 32). It is only by concentrating, sticking to the

question, being patient, letting all the parts of our mind come out and play, that I arrive at an

original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make association draw connections take me by

surprise (William Deressewich). Thingking is what we do when we do not know what to

choose, to desire or believe. One way to test the presciptive theory about thinking is to try to

improve it through instruction and then show some effect of the instruction on something else.

(Jonathan. B, Thinking and Deciding, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p 32).

 Learning is the consequence of thinking. (David Perkins, 1992, p. 31). In teaching and

learning process, teachers prepare what are they going to teach (content) and how they teach

through instructions. Making teachers instruction is one of ways of knowing that students doing

the thinking of the learning. One of essential techniques of classroom instruction is by using

question. The most comprehensive definition for question is suggested by Cotton (2001). He

believes that “A question is any sentence, which has an interrogative form or function”.

Moreover, he assert that “In classroom settings, teacher questions as defined as instructional

cues or stimuli that convey to students the content elements to be learned and direction fo what

they are to do and how they are to do it” (Cotton , 2001: 1)

According to Gattis (2002:41) a question is one of the most important tools in guiding

and extending students` learning. It an help the teachers to develop their own strategy to

enhance the students work and thinking. Therefore, it will be effective when it allows students

to become fully involed in the learning process. In tems of lesson planning, teachers signficantly

think aboout the types of questions for students. The teachers likewise need to clear the goals of

questioning to their students.. Therefore , through this process, lesson plan will help teachers to

plan good questions along with the effective answer session.

But most teachers fail to deliver achieveable lesson plan to the students due to the lack of

the competence and emotional intelligence. Teacher should realiase the essential of teaching and

learning process in the classroom takes three elements, they are teacher, content and the

student. Teacher needs to prepare the content and conduct it with varoius ways of method,

approach and technique or strategy in order to get the feedback and response from the students,

so that students get something from the learning. In this case.It is couraged that by preparing
achieveable lesson plan with quality questions and questioning strategy, it will develop students`

thinking skill.

According to Donad & Enggem through questions, teacher can engange students actively

in the lesson in hand ad challenging their thinking. Because most of the questions are provided

to get an answer, thus the used of teachers` questions wiill stimulate students to talk while

answering the questions. At individual level, questions can be use to build the students

confidence to speak.” Gathering information is a basic human activity. We use the information

to learn, to help us solve the problems, to make our decision aand others. Questioning is the key

to gaining more informataion and without it, interpersonal skill can fail. questioning is the

fundamental to successfull communication. We all are asked and ask questions when engange in

conversation. But it is not easy to drag students to response teachers questions, especially for

those who are shy and afraid of making mistakes. These kinds of students are having low

interpersonal communication skill in interacting with their friends or their teachers.

Harvey (2000:8) states that qustioning strategy is most effective when it allows pupils to

become fully involved in the learning oproess. He states that while the lesson is planning, i is

absolutely vital that teachers think about the types of questions will be asked to students. It

also needs to be clear on what the intendeded outcomes of the questions/ answer session should

be. It means that questioning technique will help the teacher to plan questions and answer

session efefctively when the teacher plays the questions effectively based on the students need

and the questions types to be fully students` interaction.

As has been mentioned earlier, beside learning material as written on Lesson Plan,

learning environment also play its important rule in teaching and learning process. Not only

teachers need to make achievable lesson plan with qualified questions but also students need to
give feedback as the response of teachers` questions as part of interacting in teaching ang

learming process. Rusman (2017) defines learning as a process of interaction toward all

situations that exist around the students. One of the activities as the implementation of the

interaction is interpersonal communication (Suranto, 2011).

Based on the description of the nature of learning, it can be concluded that the purpose of

learning will be achieved if there is an interaction between students and their environment. This

statement is also accordance with Low, Chong & Ellis’s opinion that critical component of

teaching is effective communication skills. If there is a mismatch between what was intended

to be conveyed and what is conveyed, then ineffective teaching outcomes even the best

teaching decisions can be brought out (Boztepe, 2017).

Interpersonal communication has many benefits, not only to support the success of

the students’ interaction in learning but also to establish and maintain good a relationship

between individuals, to help convey knowledge or information, to change attitudes and

behaviors, to help solve problems of human relationships, to improve self-image, and to

make the way to success (Suranto, 2011 ). While the benefits of interpersonal communication

according to Singh and Lairopuii (2014 ) are the capability to report and work with various

people, to handle conflict, to negotiate differences, to make an objective requests effectively and

efficiently, to be open to the ideas of others and willing to express their views on important

things in the process of solving the problem.

Based on the descr iption, it is known that the ability of interpersonal

communication has many benefits of conveniences in social relationships in school, community,

and work environments. The statement about the important ance of communication skill is

also in accordance with Howard’s opinion that one of the most important skills is having the
 ability to communicate properly within the workplace in order to ensure your ideas, wants, and

needs are heard (Boztepe, 2017).

Nevertheless, many students still have the interpersonal communications skills, which is

considered low. One of the learning models that can optimize the interpersonal

communication skills are the using teachers` questioning strategy in Content Based Instruction.

B. Identification of the Problem

Problems that are able to be indicated from the background above:

1. Indonesian Students don`t have the English competence, Speaking.

2. Public Schools and Cheap Private School teach English only as knowledge not a

competence. They teach by translating and understanding grammar.

3. The mismatch between curriculum and the teacher`s approach in making their lesson plan

fail to make students speaking and has the ability to think the target language rather than

first language

4. The quality of teachers in making lesson plan using quaified questions are still low and

doesn`t stimulate students to think target language and develop thinking skill.

5. The mistake of conductiong teaching and learning process to learn language, more about

teaching knowledge than competence.

6. Many students are not having cofident in speaking and have low interpersonal skill.

C. Limitation of the Problem

To focus on the research, the writer limit the problem into:

 1. The mismatch between curriculum and the teacher`s approach in making their lesson plan

fail to make students speaking and has the ability to think the target language rather than

first language

2. The quality of teachers in making lesson plan using quaified questions are still low and

doesn`t stimulate students to think target language and develop thinking skill.

3. The mistake of conductiong teaching and learning process to learn language, more about

teaching knowledge than competence.

4. Many students are not having cofident in speaking and have low interpersonal skill.

D. Formulation of the Problem

The writer formulate the problem into the influenfe of using teachers` questioning strategies and

interpersonal skill to develop students thinking skill.

E. Benefit of the Research

This research will benefit to :

1. Students, because they will be able to speak english naturally by using the method and

approach that researcher use in teaching them English as skill and also will able to

stimulate them into the thinking skill.

2. Teachers, because it will be easier for teachers to teach English as skill using this Lesson

plan.

3. Schools, because they will have qualified teachers in teaching English after implemeting

this lesson plan.

4. Parents, because they will have children who speak English and able to compete to the

work environment or other interest dealing with society.

 5. Society, because Indonesia will have students who speak English more if they have

qualified teachers who implement this method and approach on their lesson plan.

F. Hyphotesis

1. How does Teachers` Questioning Strategies infuence to develop students` thinking skill?

2. How does Content-Based Instruction effect and Teachers` Questioning Strategies to

develop students` thinking skill?