10 EEJ 6 (2) (2016) English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej CLASSROOM INTERACTION PATTERNS IN HIGHER EDUCATION Dini Setiananingrum& Mursid Saleh English Language Education Postgraduate Program Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia. Article Info ________________ Article History: Received 10 August 2016 Accepted 15September 2016 Published 20 November 2016 ________________ Keywords: Classroom Interaction Pattern, Flanders’ Interaction Analysis Categories System, Interaction Analysis ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ This study was a classroom interaction analysis in English classes at Politeknik STTT Bandung. The classroom interaction was analyzed to find the patterns of classroom interaction. It is an observational research of TeknologidanBisnisGarmen students (S) and English teachers (T) in the 1st semester of Academic Year 2014/2015. The data were collected quantitatively with the Flanders‟ Interaction Analysis Categories System. Then, the data findings were analyzed by interpreting them in order to find the patterns of classroom interaction. As the finding of this study, there were four basicpatterns of classroom interaction found in English classes at Politeknik STTT Bandung. They were (1) Teacher-Students (T – S), (2) Teacher-Student-Teacher (T – S – T), (3) Teacher- Student-Student (T – S – S), and (4) Student-Teacher (S – T) pattern. By using the interaction analysis, the writer could observe the patterns of classroom interaction, so the teacher would know the classroom atmosphere and develop his teaching skill and method. It was done in order to create the teaching and learning process more effective. © 2016 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Correspondence: E-mail: dsetiananingrum@yahoo.com Kampus Unnes Bendan Ngisor, Semarang, 50233 p-ISSN 2087-0108 e-ISSN 2502-4566 Dini Setiananingrum & Mursid Saleh/English Education Journal 6(2) (2016) 11 INTRODUCTION Higher education has become part of a global shift to a new way of creating and using knowledge. The higher education level has the way of considerations in choosing what kind of education units in which they will attend. The new way is focused on solving problems and sensitive to customer needs. Being competitive on world markets means we must invest in higher education. One of the higher education units is polytechnic. The polytechnic usually refers to a education unit which is focused on the vocational education. It aims to prepare students to become members of the community who have the professional ability in implementing, developing and spreading science and technology as well as strive to use it. To achieve this purpose, the polytechnic provide a learning experience and adequate training to form a professional capability in the field of science and technology. Therefore, a process of teaching and learning happens specifically. It is the same with the other schoollevels, the process of teaching and learning in a higher education involves three phases, namely the planning process, the implementing process and the evaluating process. In other words, the teacher plans, implements the plans, and finally evaluates the success of the learning activity. These phases are a cyclical procedure in every classroom to make an effective classroom teaching. By this account, the teacher is steered by some repetitive activities. Therefore, one thing that should be in every teacher‟s hand is a lesson plan. One component of the lesson plan is the account of the learning activities that will be done by the teacher and the students in the classroom. Basically, during English language lesson, the teacher is only involved with three phases: presenting, practicingand testing a new material. Lessons should be planned and executed so that new language material is soundly integrated with the old. Like a stream, a good lesson flows more rapidly over the shallower sections and more slowly over the deeper. (Broughton, et al., 1980: 46) When we are talking about the English classroom, we deal with the process of the second language acquisition. The input will be a language exposure and the output is knowledge of language gained. During its process, the teacher and student will be involved in the interaction process in the classroom. According to Cole and Chan in Babelan and Kia (2010: 55), „interaction in teaching is a basic element and it has the fundamental role in efficient teaching and in principal, recognition between being weak or strong in teaching lies behind the way teacher interacts with the student‟. The interaction has been defined as an essential part of teaching learning process whereby two or more people engaged in reciprocal actions. This action may be verbal or nonverbal. These repetitive activities will create patterns classroom interaction. The pattern occurs in the classroom means the repetitive activities done by both teacher and students. These activities reflect on the interaction between the teacher and the students inside the classroom. One of the ways of finding out the patterns of interaction is an interaction analysis. Flanders (1960s) designed a method of analyzing classroom interaction namely Flanders Interaction Analysis Categories System (FIACS). This system is a widely used coding system to analyze and improve the teaching process. The coding system is designed to categorize the type and quantity of verbal dialogue in the classroom on a matrix so that it could be analyzed. The data produced are in the form of quantitative data. By these data,they can be interpreted qualitatively and given a picture classroom interaction patterns. Bailey (1974) carried out a research to determine whether interaction patterns demonstrated during student teaching changed or were modified significantly after two years of independent classroom experience. The observational tools were the Interaction Analysis System and the Nebraska Skill Analysis System. The findings were significantly changing of the interaction patterns of the nine teachers. After two years of classroom experience, the teachers Dini Setiananingrum & Mursid Saleh/English Education Journal 6(2) (2016) 12 revealed significant increases in positive reinforcement, accepting and using student ideas, questioning and direction giving. Teacher lecture or information giving exhibited a significant decrease in frequency. Inamullah (2005) observed the pattern of classroom interaction at different educational levels, the secondary and tertiary levels in the North Frontier Province of Pakistan using Flanders Interaction Analysis System. The finding was the two-third rules of classroom talking time happened in the classes. In 2010, Nurmasitah conducted a research that focused on the classroom interactions of Immersion Class. The observation used three instruments to analyze the data: Flanders Interaction Analysis (FIA) to identify the classroom interactions, teaching effectiveness elements based on the Walberg‟s theory, and Likert Scale to measure the students‟ opinion that results from questionnaire. The results of the analysis showed that the most dominant characteristic in immersion classroom interaction was the content cross. It reflected that most of the teaching-learning time was devoted to questions and lectures by the teacher. The core of interaction between teacher and student is liveliness in the classroom. It may not occur if only one active participant who is active both verbal and non-verbal attitude. There are various kinds of teaching and learning activities. One of them is activity that is dominated by the teacher, such as lecturing, giving instruction, asking question, and so on. Also, it is the activity that is carried out independently by the students, such as, answering teacher‟s question, following instruction, doing tasks, and so on. There are five basic patterns of interaction in the learning process carried out between teachers and students, such as: (1) Teacher to Students Pattern, (2) Teacher-Students-Teacher Pattern, (3) Teacher-Student-Student Pattern (4) Multidirectional Pattern, (5) Circular Pattern. They refer to directional pattern when teacher and student are interacting with each other. Gurney (2007: 91) suggests that there are five key factors that provide a good teaching. First, it is teacher knowledge, enthusiasm and responsibility for learning. Second, it is classroom activities that encourage learning. Next are assessment activities that encourage learning through experience. Then, it is the effective feedback that establishes the learning processes in the classroom. The last but the most important is effective interaction between the teacher and the students, creating an environment that respects, encourages and stimulates learning through experience. The effective teacher will be one who engages with the students in the class in a way that highlights mutual respect acknowledgement of the learning process. The engagement between the teacher and the student is closely related with their role in the classroom. This study is aimed at the classroom interaction of the TeknologidanBisnisGarmen students and English teachers in the 1st semester of Academic Year 2014/2015 at Politeknik STTT Bandung. METHODOLOGY The study identified the patterns of classroom interaction by exploratory-quantitative- interpretive study. It means it was non- experimental research so it only involves the process of observing the situation.Politeknik STTT Bandung is located in Jl. Jakarta No 31 Bandung. It is one of the higher education schools under the Ministry of Industry. Four of fourteen meetings in that semester were used to collect the data. Then, the data yielded by the research is quantitative. It has to do with the Flanders‟ Interaction Analysis Categories System (Table 1). It included categorizing the interaction and putting them into matrix. It is interpretive in analyzing the data. It is used to give an interpretation about the patterns of the interaction. Dini Setiananingrum & Mursid Saleh/English Education Journal 6(2) (2016) 13 Table 1.Flanders‟ Categories of Interaction Analysis The data were in the form of transcriptions of the classroom interaction. There were five data sheets for each class. So, totally twenty five data sheets were analyzed in order to identify the patterns of classroom interaction. The transcriptions were analyzed by using FIACS procedures. First step is classifying the data. This process involved coding the classroom interaction based on the categorization in Table 1 and plotting the coded data into a 10 x 10 matrix. Then, they were interpreted in order to find what patterns of classroom interaction found in the English classes for Teknologidan Bisnis Garmen students of Politeknik STTT Bandung in the 1st semester of Academic Year 2014/2015. The identification of the classroom interaction patterns used the five basic interaction patterns. Also, it was open for other pattern if it is found in the observed classroom interaction. RESULT AND DISCUSSION The finding of the classroom interaction patterns begin with applying the procedure of the Flanders‟ Interaction Categories System in four classroom interactions. First is classifying the data by giving the code for each transcription. The complete transcriptions of the interactions are enclosed in appendices. From the data collection, this research recorded four meetings of classroom interactions. Each meeting was observed in 5 minutes length. The coded transcriptions were plotted the coded data into a 10x10 matrix. The coding results of class interactions were tabulated in the 10 x 10 matrix below: Table 2.The 10 x 10 Matrix It can be seen in the matrices above that there are 420 data points distributed to ten categories. The data points imply that there are 105 pairs of interaction happened in each class. The pairs of interaction were used to indicate the patterns of interaction. So that, the patterns of classroom interaction were identified through an interpretation of the category pairs found by Flanders‟ Interaction Analysis Categories System. The patterns identification was done by presenting the process of classifying each category. Each category is explained and given some interaction extracts from four classes. After getting the pairs patterns, they are intepreted into the classroom interaction patterns in which recognized by the speakers of the interaction. The first pattern of classroom interactions found in the English classes at Politeknik STTT Bandung is T – S pattern is also reflected through the pairs of interaction, 4-8, 6-8 and 7-8. The teacher asks the student and the student gives response by answering the question. Then, it may also be found when the teacher gives the direction; the students make the response by answering the direction or directly doing as mentioned by the teacher. When the teacher criticizes/justifies authority, the students make the response, too. The other interaction pairs that show this pattern are 4-10, 6-10 and 7-10. When the teacher asks question or gives directions or criticizes/justifies authority to which a student is expected to answer, the student kept silence. The second pattern found is Teacher- Student-Teacher (T – S – T) pattern. This pattern Dini Setiananingrum & Mursid Saleh/English Education Journal 6(2) (2016) 14 involves two ways communication between the teacher and students. There is response from the students but no interaction among students. This interaction pattern is usually happened in the question and answer session.In this pattern, the teacher‟s position as a source of knowledge is not absolute. He is not just feeding the material to the students but also directing the student to explore the material themselves. Also, he provides actions that stimulate student to conduct reaction. So, the students are able to communicate and raise the initiative responses to solve the problem. There is a reciprocal relationship between teacher and students. The reciprocal relationship is expressed by 4-8-2, 4-8- 3, 4-8-7, 4-10-2,5-9-3, 6-8-2, 6-8-3, 6-8-7 and 7-8- 3 in which after the teacher‟s initiation, the student gave response, it is continued with the teacher‟s praising/encouraging the student, accepting student‟s idea and criticizing/justifying authority. The next pattern is Teacher-Student- Student (T – S – S) pattern that involves three ways communication, namely the teacher to the student, the student to the teacher and the student to the student. It means that there is not only the interaction between teacher and student, but also the interaction among students. The interaction pairs that show this pattern are 6-8-8. This interaction pattern happened when the teacher ordered the students to work in pair and assigned them to make a conversation. Student-Teacher (S–T) pattern are divided into two kinds of pattern that happened as the students‟ initiation and actuallyas the continuation response of the teacher‟s initiation.The students‟ initiation indicated that they express their own ideas and initiate a new topic in 9-1 and 9-7. While the continuation response of the teacher‟s initiation, they express their responses in 8-2, 8-3, 8-7, 8-8, and 8-7-2. This study focused on the relation between the patterns of classroom interaction and the review of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in the higher education. When we are talking about the English classroom, we deal with the process of the foreign language acquisition. By operating in a foreign language, then, we face the world from slightly different standpoint and structure it in slightly difference conceptual patterns. The boarder aims behind foreign language teaching are rarely something of which the learner is aware and fashionable demands for learner- selected goals are not without danger to the fundamental processes of education. Those intentions are then expressed through the interaction between the teacher and the students in the classroom. The interaction of the teacher and the student in the classroom is a reciprocal activity. Both of them should be active in playing their roles in the classroom interaction. The identified classroom interaction patterns were used to portray the process of teaching and learning whether it was effective or not. By knowing the effectiveness, the teacher himself could evaluate his way of teaching. Since it is a higher education level, the teacher should evoke thought about past experiences in the students‟ life to help them build new knowledge upon those experiences and apply them to benefit the students in their journey of learning. He might also evoke feelings or motivation from the students to bring them to appoint where they see subject as important to know more about. He must also facilitate the learning, and then encourage verbally or sometimes even physically along the way. The example is praising the student when they have demonstrated excellent work. Also by encouraging, the teacher will help them know if they have an excellent manner or correct answer. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS There are four basicpatterns of classroom interaction found in English classes at Politeknik STTT Bandung. They are (1) Teacher-Students (T – S), (2) Teacher-Student-Teacher (T – S – T), (3) Teacher-Student-Student (T – S – S), (4) Student-Teacher (S – T) pattern. The T – S and S – T pattern refers to a one-way communication between teacher and student. A teacher talk as initiation is followed by the student‟s response in the former pattern, and a student‟s initiation is Dini Setiananingrum & Mursid Saleh/English Education Journal 6(2) (2016) 15 followed by the teacher talk in the latter. There is no further feedback or response from them. The T – S – T and T – S – S pattern are defined as two-ways communication between the teacher and students. After a teacher talk as initiation that is followed by the students‟ response, there is a teacher‟s feedback in the former and another student‟s response in the latter. However, as the result of the interaction mapping, it is found that there are four teacher talks considered as the most talk stimulation. They are asking question, lecturing, giving direction and criticizing/justifying authority. Then, the student‟s response may vary from the specific student response to silence response. Furthermore, there are other teacher talks found that are reckoned as the teacher‟s feedback, namely, praising/encouraging the students and accepting/using the student‟s ideas. The kinds of the interaction patterns that are used are definitely related with the variation of the teaching and learning process. The more patterns used will create the more viable teaching and learning process. After identifying the classroom interaction patterns, some activities can be recommended in order to create more effective teaching and learning process. Both the teacher and the students create a comfortable classroom situation so the students can initiate an interaction using English. The teacher needs to be more frequent using English in class. The teachers‟ encouragement to the students‟ progress need to be improved. The encouragement can motivate the students to be more active in learning.Politeknik STTT Bandung, as a higher education, is expected to be more developed in their way of teaching and learning process. The requirements of teaching and learning process should be fulfilled as a system of interaction. The teaching and learning goal is clearly formulated; the teaching and learning material is selected and adapted to conditions of students‟ ability; the teaching and learning method is effectively used to achieve the intended goal and the teaching and learning tools are used to help the teacher deliver the teaching material.As the only one higher education which conducted a vocational course, textile technology, Politeknik STTT Bandung isexpected to create the graduate who mastering the textile technology. By this expectation, the teaching and learning goal has to be formulated that it must involve the textile technology mastery. Also, it includes English course to fulfill the working world need. The teaching and learning material should be selected and adapted to the conditions of students‟ ability. As a higher education, it is expected that the students already have basic knowledge of English. Therefore, it should be adjusted based on the students‟ general ability or gave the repetition or review of the Basic English lesson. Politeknik STTT Bandung chooses to give repetition or review of the Basic English in order to strengthen the students‟ mastery in English.The teacher-students interaction is a well-prepared interaction with specific goal and material, active students and facilitating teacher, discipline by time and ended by the evaluation.Use of the various kinds of activities and interactions must be carried out by the teacher in order to liven up the class and get rid of boredom for the sake of success in achieving educational goals. Theuse of teaching and learning tool, such as, board, graph, picture, is considered in order to achieve learning objectives. REFERENCES Allwright, D. 2014. Observation in the language classroom. New York: Routledge. Babelan, A. Z. and Kia, M. 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