Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
select and organize the material to be learned); (2) Guiding and directing learning; and (3)
Evaluation to know how well he has done as a teacher and how well his students have learned.
One important element, besides the teacher, is the students that also play many significant roles. In
the language classroom, the students can be positioned as object; but sometime they have to put
themselves as subject. It means that they are not only as receiver but also as an independent one
who can speak up, give ideas, and contribute to language in the classroom. As Chaudron's opinion
(1998 : 9) learners have their own initiative, productivity, and strategies in classroom learning rather
than passive absorption of the teachers' information of precise adherence to the performance of
classroom activities.
In the speaking classroom, the teacher and the students have significant roles to the process of
teaching and learning. These elements (teacher and students) constantly interact one another in
which the teacher and the students are the main subjects. In speaking class, the teacher is not
allowed to dominate the class where he keeps talking or giving more question. Each element has as
much to contribute as very other participant in determining the direction and outcome of the
interaction.
Interaction simply means communication which implies more than one person. The importance of
interaction is explained by Rivers (1981 : 160-162) : "Through interaction, students can increase
their language store as they listen to or read authentic material, or even the output of their fellow
students in discussion, skits, joint problem solving tasks, or dialogue journals. In interaction, students
can use all they possess of the language -all they have learned or casually absorbed - in real-life
exchange. Even at an elementary stage, they learn in this way to exploit the elasticity of language"
(Brown, 1994 : 159).
Ellis (1988 : 94) states the role of interaction into following points : (1) when learners are addressed
by fully component speakers of language, the latter adjust both the formal and discourse levels of
the language they use. Learners also employ certain strategies to enable communication to take
place; (2) there is insufficient evidence to decide whether these interactional modifications are
responsible for the route learners follow in Foreign Language Development (FLD) or Second
Language Development (SLD), although it would seem unlikely that those are the major determining
factors. There is an evidence to suggest that the types of learners' interactions developed by the
influence of the rate progress; and (3) Interaction contributes to development because it is the
means by which the learner is able to crack the code.
In the speaking classroom, interaction should be encouraged. In other words, it is the teacher's
responsibility to promote the interactive language teaching in the class. In the interaction, however,
teacher should not dominate the class, instead facilitate students in practicing speaking as much as
they possibly can. As Rivers says :
"For the genuine interaction language learning requires, however, individuals (teachers as well as
students) must appreciate the uniqueness of other individuals with their special needs - not
manipulating or directing or deciding how they can or will learn, but encouraging them and drawing
them out (educating), and building up their confidence and enjoyment in what they are doing".
(1987 : 9)
From the explanation above, we know that interaction in the language classroom is very important in
the process of teaching and learning. In the speaking classroom, how the teaching-learning process
run well also depends on the interaction between the teacher and the students. Therefore,
understanding the interaction happening in the speaking classroom is also very important. Based on
the description above, the writer is interested to study the interaction in a language classroom especially speaking - of the tenth grade in the Senior High School.