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Vol. 1, No. 1, August 2018, pp. 29-37 
E-ISSN: 2621-6485 

  
 

Students’ Voice on Their English Teacher’s Teaching 

Techniques: A Case Study at A Private Indonesian 

Junior High School  

 
1
Bambang W. Pratolo, 

2
Ani  Susanti , 

3
Indriani 

English Education Department, Universitas Ahmad Dahlan 
1(Bambang.pratolo@pbi.uad.ac.id),2 (ani.susanti@pbi.uad.ac.id) 

 
Abstract 

This study is aimed to know the students’perception toward the English teacher’s 

teaching techniques. This study was conducted in grade eight of two EFL classes of a junior 

high school in Indonesia. The instruments to collect the data was a Likert-scale 

questionnaire with five options of strongly agree to strongly disagree, while to analyze the 

data the researcher used descriptive statistics by finding means, standard deviation and 

frequency. An in-depth interview was also conducted to nine out of 60 students to 

scrutinize the students’ voice on their English teachers’ performance. The result of the 

analysis showed that the teacher in this study performed all the three techniques, controlled, 

semi-controlled and free technique. The finding also showed that the most frequently used 

technique was controlled technique, followed by semi-controlled and free technique. 

Meanwhile most of the students have positive perception toward their English teacher’s 

teaching techniques. 

 

Keywords: students’ perception, controlled technique, semi-controlled technique, free 

technique 

How to Cite: Pratolo, B. W., Susanti, A., Indriani. (2018). Students’ Voice on Their English 

Teacher’s Teaching Techniques: A Case Study at A Private Indonesian Junior High School. 

English Language Teaching Educational Journal, 1(1), 29-37. 

 

INTRODUCTION 

Teaching is not only one way to transfer knowledge to learners, but it 

also a way to understand what they need, experience and feel and provide a 

necessary intervention to make them learn. When teachers teach a lesson to 

their students, they must use the ways to make interaction between them 

enjoyable. In the context of English language teaching and learning, English 

teachers need to make sure that the teaching techniques they use fit with their 

students learning need. Therefore, English teachers need to be creative in 

choosing their teaching techniques to assist, encourage and motivate the 

students as they are aware that not all the students have interest in English 

language. According to Effendi (2005) teaching means not only to show your 

acquaintance with English knowledge, but also your talent, experience and 

handiness of approaching your students to make the class enjoyable, relaxing, 

and interesting to them, so that, they will grasp the lesson excitedly and 

interactively. 

As a foreign language, English is not an easy subject to learn by most 

Indonesian students. Most of them consider English as a complicated language 

mailto:Bambang.pratolo@pbi.uad.ac.id
mailto:ani.susanti@pbi.uad.ac.id


 
 
 

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as the syntaxes, structures and the linguistic features are different. That is why 

although Indonesian students have learned English since junior high schools, 

some even started earlier (since elementary school), they still cannot use 

English as a means of communication. That is why basic error-usages of 

language are regularly found in communication among the Indonesian students. 

Some of them may understand English text, especially those who study at a 

university but when the text is long and complex, they give up. Their failure in 

reading comprehension test of TOEFL indicates their low English proficiency. 

In short, English language teaching in Indonesia cannot be considered a success 

(Mukhaiyar, 1994, Pratolo, 2015).  

To help students build their interest in English language, English teachers 

need to find teaching techniques which fit with the students’ learning needs. 

Students will enjoy learning activities if their teachers are creative, active, and 

use interesting techniques in teaching. Harmer (2007) stated that a good teacher 

is somebody who has an affinity with the students that he or she is teaching. It 

means that successful teachers are those people who can identify with the 

hopes, aspirations, and difficulties of their students while they are teaching 

them. Good teachers care more about their students’ learning that they do about 

their own teaching (Brown, 2001). So, teachers should know more about their 

students, characteristics of their students, students’ background life, culture, 

and what methods are suitable to teach foreign language in their teaching 

process. A good teacher always wants that his teaching should be effective. He 

wants that all the students of the class should properly attend, listen to him and 

try to grasp what he teaches in the class (Elizabeth, 2004). In short, a language 

teacher needs to choose the most appropriate teaching technique which meets 

students’ learning needs to present language materials.  

According to Anthony (1963) a technique is a strategy, contrivance or a 

trick that a teacher implements in the classroom to achieve the teaching goal. In 

short, he believes that a teaching technique is the way how a teacher performs 

in the classroom to meet the goal. Meanwhile Doff (1988) argues that there is a 

correlation between teaching technique with how learning activities are 

organized. Therefore, a teacher can change his technique if he believes that the 

new technique is more effective especially for the students. Furthermore, 

Brown (1995) asserts that teaching technique for a language teacher is the 

chosen way how the teacher presents language materials to learners and 

therefore it should match the students’ learning needs.  

This study was focused on looking at the teachers’ performance based on 

Brown’s taxonomy of language teaching techniques (2001). Brown classified 

technique into controlled, semi-controlled and free technique as he asserts that 

teaching technique always moves from manipulative to a free communication 

dimension. Controlled technique is the technique that is still under the 

supervision of a teacher and he can predict and direct what the students will do. 

Such activities as drilling, dictation, reading aloud belong to this classification. 

In a classroom communication where students have an opportunity to express 

their ideas in response to teachers’ questions, teachers have less control towards 

what the students will say. They can say something that even different from 



 
 

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Pratolo, Susanti, Indriani 

what the teachers expect. In this setting the students may communicate in a 

freer and spontaneous way. Therefore such activities like brainstorming, 

information gap, story-telling belong to the less-controlled activities. 

Meanwhile, free activities deal with the situation where students may act out 

activities or express ideas without the control from their teachers such as, role 

play, drama, discussion, problem solving, simulation etc. (Crookes & 

Chaudron, 1991). Table 1 below presents the characteristics of the three 

different techniques. 

 

Table 1.Types of language teaching techniques (Crookes & Chaudron, 1991). 

Controlled Semi-controlled Free 

Teacher-centered Use of language in a 

less restrictive way than 

the controlled but 

taking into account 

linguistic patterns 

already set up by the 

teacher. 

Student-centered 

Manipulative Communicative 

Structured Open-ended 

Predicted student 

response 

Unpredicted student 

response 

Pre-planned objectives 

Set curriculum 

Negotiated objectives 

Cooperative 

curriculum 

 

Perception, psychologically, is explained as a process where someone 

becomes aware toward everything which exists in her or his surroundings by 

means of the senses (Kartono & Gulo, 2003). Thus, the process of creating 

perception involves human being’s senses because perception is the 

interpretation of what are caught by the senses. Meanwhile, according to 

Rookes (2000), perception is a process which involves the recognition and 

interpretation of stimuli which register on our sense. In other words, perception 

is related to how we make sense of our environment and sensation refers to 

basic stimulation of the sense organs. 

 

RESEARCH METHOD 

This study was intended to investigate the teaching techniques used by 

the English teachers based on their students perceptions and how the students 

perceive their teachers’ teaching techniques. To get the answer for the first 

objectives, a questionnaire of what the teachers did in the classroom was 

utilized. Meanwhile, an in-depts semi structured interview was conducted to get 

the answer for the second objective. The subjects of the research were the 

eighth grade students Laskar Pelangi Junior High School, Yogyakarta, 

Indonesia. The number of the samples were 60 students distributed into two 

different classes, VIII A and VIII D. Eight students out of 60 were purposively 

selected to be invited for an in-depth interview. This number is ideal for an 

interview as Dornyei (2007) suggested. According to him the ideal number for 

an interview is between 6 to 10. 

To know the level of students’ perception, the writer used categorization 

which was made by referring to the normal distribution with the use of an ideal 

mean and an ideal standard deviation. The conversion criterion for deciding on 



 
 
 

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the standard of the ideal mean and the ideal standard deviation of English 

students’ perception toward the English teacher’s teaching techniques was 

presented in the following table: 

Table 2. Conversion criterion 

No. Scale Number Category 

1. Ideal mean + 1,5 (Ideal SD) Strongly Agree 

2. Ideal mean + 0,5 (Ideal SD) Agree 

3. Ideal mean - 0,5 (Ideal SD) Rather Agree 

4. Ideal mean - 1,5 (Ideal SD) Disagree 

5. < Ideal mean – 1,5 (Ideal SD) Strongly Disagree 

 

FINDING AND DISCUSSION 

Based on the score of the ideal mean and the ideal standard deviation, the 

following table presented the categorization which represented the standard of 

students’ perception toward the English teacher’s teaching techniques. 

 

Table 3. Conversion criterion of students’ perception toward the english 

teacher’s teaching techniques 

No. Scale Number  Score Interval Category 

1. Ideal mean + 1,5 (Ideal SD) 272.25 – 330 Strongly agree 

2. Ideal mean + 0,5 (Ideal SD) 222.75 – < 272.25 Agree 

3. Ideal mean - 0,5 (Ideal SD) 173.25 – < 222.75 Rather agree 

4. Ideal mean - 1,5 (Ideal SD) 123.75 – < 173.25 Disagree 

5. < Ideal mean – 1,5 (Ideal SD) < 123.75 Strongly 

disagree 

 

In order to ease the process of analyzing data, the researcher presented 

the score of students’ perception which was classified in a frequency 

distribution table. 

 

Table 4. The result of students’ answer frequency in controlled technique 

No Statement 5 4 3 2 1 Score Category 

1 The teacher gives some jokes, 

songs or games (warm up) 

20 22 23 1 0 259 Agree 

2 The teacher gives more 

explanation about grammar 

31 31 4 0 0 291 Strongly 

agree 

3 The teacher gives some 

questions based on the material 

12 37 16 1 0 255 Agree 

4 The teacher gives English text 

that you can read or learn 

25 34 5 2 0 281 Strongly 

agree 

         



 
 

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Pratolo, Susanti, Indriani 

No Statement 5 4 3 2 1 Score Category 

5 Repeat after the teacher says 21 31 14 0 0 269 Agree 

6 Translate English to Indonesian 

or Indonesian to English 

34 25 5 2 0 289 Strongly 

agree 

7 The teacher reads the text and 

the students write down the text 

8 33 18 7 0 233 Agree 

8 The teacher shows the text and 

the students write down the text 

10 38 17 1 0 247 Agree 

9 The teacher reviews previous 

lesson 

17 39 9 1 0 264 Agree 

10 The teacher gives short quizzes 11 32 13 9 1 232 Agree 

Average 262 Agree 

 

According to the table above, the average of controlled technique is 262 and the 

category is “Agree” because the average is in interval 222.75 – <272.25. It means that 

the controlled technique is categorized “Agree”. It implies that the teacher applied 

this technique in teaching. Out of the ten statements within the controlled technique, 

teacher’s teaching grammar is the most frequent activity, followed by translation 

activity in the classroom and assigning the students to read text. 

Table 5.The resultof students’ answer in semi controlled technique 

No Statement 5 4 3 2 1 Score Category 

11 The teacher assigns Group 

discussion 

6 24 27 8 1 224 Agree 

12 The teacher tells the story or 

intermezzo to make students 

happy 

17 26 22 1 0 256 Agree 

13 The teacher gives some 

questions to know your 

understanding 

12 40 13 1 0 260 Agree 

14 The teacher assigns 

conversation based on the text 

conversation given by teacher 

16 32 18 0 0 261 Agree 

15 The teacher assigns the 

students to describe the picture 

given by teacher 

4 22 20 2

0 

0 211 Rather 

agree 

16 The teacher assigns sharing 

with other friends 

6 32 17 1

1 

0 229 Agree 

17 The teacher gives summary 

about the lesson 

11 40 10 4 1 253 Agree 

Average 242 Agree 

 

 



 
 
 

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Based on the table above, the average of semi-controlled technique is 242and 

the category is “Agree” because the average is in interval 222.75 –<272.25.It means 

that the semi-controlled technique is categorized “Agree”. It implies that the teacher 

implemented this technique in the teaching and learning process in the classroom. 

Among seven activities of semi-controlled technique the teacher did in the 

classroom, the most frequently done activity was that the teacher assigns 

conversation based on a text given, followed by teacher’s giving question to check 

students’ understanding and teacher’s telling a story as an intermezzo to make the 

students happy. 

 

Table 6.The resultof students’ answer in free technique 

No Statement 5 4 3 2 1 Score Category 

18 The teacher assigns drama 

with theme and plot based 

on your creativity 

4 18 23 17 4 199 Rather 

agree 

19 The teacher uses vary 

activities and games 

24 20 15 5 2 257 Agree 

20 The teacher assigns writing 

project  

2 18 21 22 3 192 Rather 

agree 

21 The teacher gives some 

cases and you solve the 

cases with your friends 

10 22 21 9 4 223 Agree 

22 The teacher assigns 

simulation 

6 10 16 23 11 175 Rather 

agree 

23 The teacher assigns 

interview activity during the 

lesson 

2 19 27 14 4 199 Rather 

agree 

24 The teacher uses discussion 

method during the lesson 

5 24 28 6 3 220 Rather 

agree 

25 The teacher uses English 

when he talks to you in daily 

activity 

5 18 27 15 1 209 Rather 

agree 

Average 209.25 Rather 

agree 

 

Based on the table above, the average of free technique is 209.25 and the 

category is “Rather Agree” because the average is in interval 173.25 – < 

222.75. It means that the free technique is categorized “Rather Agree”. The 

table above also shows which teaching activities the English teacher used most 

frequently in the classroom to teach English. It shows that using vary activities 

and games in the classroom was the most frequently activity the teacher did 

within free teaching technique. Meanwhile, teacher’s assignment of giving 

cases to students to solve with their friends was less frequently activity used by 

the teacher followed by teacher’s use of discussion method during the lesson.  



 
 

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Pratolo, Susanti, Indriani 

 

Based on the results above, it is known that the English teacher’ use of 

controlled teaching techniques at this private junior high school obtained 262 

scores (37%), followed by semi-controlled technique with 242 scores (34%) 

and free technique with 209.25 scores (29%). Thus, it can be concluded that 

generally the teacher used all the three technique in teaching English although 

with different intensity. The most favored techniques by the teachers was 

controlled techniques, followed by semi-controlled techniques and free 

techniques. 

The interview towards the student participants indicated that most 

students enjoy their teachers’ teaching performance. They liked the way their 

teachers explain the materials and they said they felt the benefit of their 

teachers’ drilling them with pronunciation practice and vocabulary building. 

They also enjoyed the dialogue drill during the lesson as they felt they could 

really use the English language for “real” communication. In term of the semi-

controlled activities, the students expressed their positive reaction. They 

confessed that they enjoyed the story-telling very much; it is not only about the 

story they built but also about the opportunity the teacher gave to them to tell it 

to others. Many students also share positive perceptions toward their teachers’ 

choice of free activities. The most interesting activity the students enjoyed was 

games, followed by role play and discussion.  

DISCUSSION 

As can be seen in the finding, this current study identified that both the 

teachers under the investigation employed controlled technique most 

frequently. This finding is line with what Galindo (2008) found in his study. He 

found that both teachers he observed used controlled teaching technique for one 

semester. He added that in their teaching techniques the teachers employed 

activity-centered lessons to help guide students’ learning process.  He also 

found that the students spend most of their time to work on language activities 

which was intended to practice their language features. From the interview, we 

found that most students had positive perception toward their teachers’ teaching 

performance. They said that they enjoyed their teaching techniques and always 

had good time learning English with their teachers. This finding is similar to 

that discovered by Muhammad, Moslem and Sari (2017) that identified that 

most students had positive response toward their teacher’s way of teaching 

reading comprehension. Out of 28 student participants, only 6 of them had 

negative perceptions toward their teacher’s way of teaching. They assumed that 

their teacher could not help them, failed to motivate and attract them to study. 

They added that the classroom circumstances could not make them focus to 

study English properly. In general, however, most of the participants perceived 

their teacher as a successful teacher of reading comprehension. He could help 

the students, motivate and attract them to study English. 



 
 
 

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This current study also yielded similar result as Widayanti (2007) found 

in her study of   students’ perception toward teaching techniques of teaching 

reading. The student participants in her study had positive perception toward 

their teacher teaching technique of reading. They assumed that the teacher’s 

technique in pre-reading, whilst teaching and post reading stages were 

effective. Meanwhile, compared to the study of Hasan, Alias, Saleh and 

Halizah (2017), the teachers in this current study was better considering the 

students’ perceptions towards their teaching performance. Hasan, Alias, Saleh 

and Halizah (2017) found that students’ perception toward their teachers’ 

teaching performance was just slightly above average. Teachers’ task 

performance which was least developed among the three dimensions may be 

the cause of their performance, while their adaptability performance was the 

highest even though it is still less than excellent. In general, they suggested that 

the teachers need to improve themselves.  

CONCLUSION 

Based on the research findings and discussion in the previous section, it 

can be drawn some conclusion as follow. First, based on the students’ 

perception towards the teachers’ teaching performance, the teachers used 

controlled techniques most frequently followed by semi-controlled techniques, 

and free techniques. The students’ perception toward the teaching techniques is 

59.1 in “agree category”. It means that they have positive perception toward the 

English teacher’s teaching techniques at this private junior high school. The 

most and the least favored technique can be seen from the result of perception. 

The most dominant technique in students’ perception is controlled technique 

with frequency 262 into agree level. While the least dominant technique is free 

technique with frequency 209.25 into rather agree. The students of this private 

junior high school enjoyed the techniques applied by their teachers, that is why 

most of the students could learn English well, at least they were confident 

enough to show their skill in verbal English. Finally both of the teachers could 

maintain their teaching techniques as the students’ perception was positive. 

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