54 https://jurnal.unigal.ac.id/index.php/jall/index ISSN: 2598-8530 February 2019, Vol. 3 No. 1 English Education Program Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Received: Accepted: Published: December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 STUDENTS’ BACKGROUND TOWARDS LEARNING ENGLISH OUT OF CLASSROOM SETTING Luthfiyatun Thoyyibah luthfiyatun20@gmail.com Galuh University ABSTRACT There have been many facts showed that senior high school students in Indonesia faced some problems in learning English at school. Because of that, students try to seek a solution which offered outside the class, commonly known as independent language learning. Because there are limited studies elaborated activity of learning English out of school context, thus this paper aims to explore what kind of activity that the senior high school students choose for learning English out of the school context. This study employed qualitative descriptive study. Data were drawn from questionnaires that were disseminated to 40 students of state and private senior high schools, in order to respond with their own views. Based on the findings of this study, activity of learning English that mostly conducted by students from state school is attending extra course while most of students from private school prefer individual learning. According to the findings, this study recommends the further study of the similar field involving a bigger number of respondents and enrichment of the theory. Keywords: state school, private school, independent learning, extra course INTRODUCTION As we know that Indonesia has now implemented the 2013 curriculum after being suspended by the new educational government, it became a big deal because it was just being implemented for one semester or around six months. Many teaching components were incomplete, such as guidance book for teachers and students, seminar or any explanation event in implementing the 2013 curriculum for teachers, etc. It affects the https://jurnal.unigal.ac.id/index.php/jall/index mailto:luthfiyatun20@gmail.com 55 teaching English practice in the classroom, unexceptionally for senior high school students. Teachers of English in Indonesia probably did not get the same impact of this situation because they faced different characters of students. Even though they had different characteristics of students, the red thread affected by teachers here is that they had a problem with the curriculum. The problem that teachers of English encountered related to the implementation of 2013 Curriculum, then, affects their teaching quality in the classroom. Therefore, students did not get the maximum learning outcome. They got confused at learning English in the classroom. As the consequence to that problem, one of the ways to pass the problem, many parents of high school students sent their children to extra course of English to get a better understanding, one at a time they hoped their children to pass the final examination with satisfactory scores. It has been a public secret that learning English in Indonesia, where English is placed as foreign language, becomes a big issue for teachers and students. It is often required of having good English for getting a job or even entering the higher level of education since many students have not aware yet to this thing or perhaps they ignore this point (Riley, 1997). Thus, English is considered to be acquired well. Many recent studies have revealed that few of the nation's high school students are gaining the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in college and work. A relatively new research report found an important explanation for this phenomenon: the states do not expect their graduates to take courses that truly reflect the real-world demands of life after high school (Cohen, 2004). Another problem emerged is from teacher competence. As cited in Cohen (2004): “Toto blamed his high school English teacher for failing to encourage him. He likened his teacher to a robot. “He said the same sentences every time he entered the classroom,” Toto recalled. “Open your textbook. Read the text. Good -- those were the words that came out of his mouth.” An English teaching expert said Toto's experience was quite common here. “English classes in the country are considered rather boring, certainly they don't inspire a love of the language,” said Arief Rachman at a seminar held by the Indonesian International Education Foundation (IIEF) recently. The fact showed a student did not satisfy with the teacher who taught in the classroom. Even though the student studies English twice a week in classroom setting, the student does not fall in love with the language. That situation is perhaps quite familiar for students or everyone who experienced that situation when we were at the senior high school. 56 Another problem is that the teachers are required to focus on preparing students to pass and get success in the national examinations (Lie, 2007). Yet, the required attention to the critical analysis toward the materials conveyed in the classroom seems neglected. The choice of activity for learning English could be influenced by students’ school background whether it is public or private school. It can be seen that there are differences between public and private senior high school in Indonesia. Public schools must accept all students within their jurisdiction with few exceptions. Behavior is one of those exceptions, really bad behavior which must be well-documented over time. A private school, on the other hand, accepts any student it wishes according to its academic and other standards. It is not required to give a reason why it has refused to admit anyone. Its decision is final (Kennedy, 2015). In terms of the number of the students, there is an obvious distinction between public and private school. A class of public school is usually denser than in a private school. According to the aforementioned problems, many factors could help learners in learning a language, it can be by additional activities after school. The term of independent language learning, especially for secondary level or exactly at senior high school level is quite unfamiliar in develop countries like Indonesia. Independent language learning is related to western context at tertiary educational setting (Lamb, 2004). Meanwhile, in recent times, it is observable that some pupils in Indonesia return from school at night. Many of them are usually leave home as early as 6:00am and return home at 18:00GMT. As they hastily leave for school, they will get tell kind of punishment that awaits a person for not attending extra classes (Torgbol, 2013). This situation leaves them with virtually no time for house chores and even much time to review their school notes. In one hand, in 2008 in the city that the research is conducted, there were emerging extra courses to facilitate students’ obstacles in learning, included English. Moreover, English is the obligatory subject and also tested in the final examination that the students have to pass the minimum score. On the other hand, independent learning is something related to tertiary level and with western context. But there is evidence about the rise of a number of successful independent learning, especially for English, by students in Asian various contexts like in Hong Kong. (Spart et al. , 2002 cited in Lamb, 2004). Considering problems above and as a contribution towards what kind of activity in learning English outside the classroom conducted by senior high students, it is seemed beneficial to investigate thoroughly the experience of higher secondary students as they 57 interpreted the success of learning English language. The very basic level of this study relates with how students define success of learning English. METHOD The emphasis of this study was to explore learners’ choice of activity or ways in learning English outside their school based on their school background. This study employed a qualitative descriptive study. A survey design provides a quantitative description of a population by studying a sample of that population, to generalize about the population (Cresswell, 2009, p. 145). This present study was involving 45 students from senior high school on 10th graders in Banjar. It is taken from Banjar because a number of public schools is dominated. Those 45 students were selected randomly on the basis of their willingness involved in this study. I This present study used questionnaire of data collection. This study adapted impartiality on getting data from questionnaire. The practice of impartiality was in place through the process of anonymizing responses to questionnaire (Kunnan, 2015). The questionnaires were disseminated to all respondents. The questionnaire is focused on the students’ choice on activity towards their school background. The study was designed to elicit answers to the following questions: 1. What kind of activity that students from public school prefer? 2. What kind of activity that students from private school prefer? The data from questionnaires were collected, categorized and presented in the form of table and chart in order to give a clear description of different kind of activity chosen by the students come from different school background. In calculating the data, this study adopted the Chi-square as (Hatch & Farhady, 1982), in order to calculate the relationship between students’ school background with activity they prefer in learning English outside the school FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This present study intends to know whether school background, the independent variable, has any relationship to dependent variable, choice of activity of learning English 58 outside the school. After collecting the data, it can be summarized them in the form of table. Students’ School Background Total Public School Private School 27 18 45 The Hypotheses to this study are: Ho; There is no relationship between students’ school background and their way of learning English outside the school. Ha; There is relationship between students’ school background and their way of learning English outside the school. After disseminating the questionnaire, the observed data can be drawn on table form. Observed Table Public School Private School Total Extra course 25 10 35 Individual learning 2 8 10 Total 27 18 45 After calculating the expected frequency for each of the four cells, the data can be seen on the form of table below. Variable X Variable Y a B a+b c D c+d a+c b+d Expected Table X1 X2 Y1 42,52 14 Y2 4,67 8,10 As can be seen from the expected table, the scores are not the same but the differences are not enough for making the real differences of the groups. By performing the X2 test, it is assumed that the test can answer the difference. The X2 test is done by summarizing the data to show the observed values, the expected values and the differences between them for each cell. After computation of X2, it is found that X2 observed is 0,18. The critical value of X2 with d.f 1 and α = 0,05 is 3,84146. Since observed value is not greater than 3,84, it 59 can reject the null hypothesis and conclude that there is no relationship between students’ school background and their way of learning English outside the school. The result of this study is in line with the related study conducted by (Cohen, 2004) which referred to the no tendency of students’ school background in attending extra courses. It is also in line with (Lamb, 2004) who argued that there are a great number of individual learners which come from various school backgrounds which emerges in ASIA context. Meanwhile, the finding of this study is contrast with the study conducted by (Torgbol, 2013) which students of public school tend to join the extra courses because they afraid of punishment from school. CONCLUSIONS From the results and discussions in the previous session, it can be inferred that the null hypothesis should be accepted. Thus, it arrives on the conclusion that there is no relationship between students’ school background and their way of learning English outside the school. Students’ different level of achievement and grade should be paid more attention in conducting research concerning the similar field. It is also recommended to enrich the related theories since there is limited study conducted in this area. REFERENCES Cohen, M. (2004). The Expectations Gap-A 50 - State Review of High School Graduation Requirements. Retrieved at 31th December2015 from http://www.achieve.org/ExpectationsGap2004. Cresswell, J. W. (2009). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed-Method Approaches. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publication,Inc. Hatch , & Farhady. (1982). Research Design and Statistics for Applied Linguistics. USA: Newbury House Publishers. Kennedy, R. (2015). Comparison of Private and Public Schools. Retrieved at 3rd January 2016 from http://privateschool.about.com/od/choosingaschool/qt/comparison.htm. Kunnan, A. J. (2015). Developing Indigenous Models of English Language Teaching and Assessment. Assessing The Quality of Large-Scale Assessments: The Case for Fairness and Justice Approach. Bali: Udayana University Press. Lamb, M. (2004). 'It Depends on the Students Themselves': Independent Language Learning at an Indonesian State School Language Culture and Curriculum 17 (3),pp. 229-245 ISSN 0790-8318. Retrieved at 2nd January 2016 from http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1662/1/lambm2.pdf. http://www.achieve.org/ExpectationsGap2004 http://www.achieve.org/ExpectationsGap2004 http://privateschool.about.com/od/choosingaschool/qt/comparison.htm http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1662/1/lambm2.pdf http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1662/1/lambm2.pdf 60 Riley, R. W. (1997). National Center for Education Statistics. Public and Private School: How Do They Differ? Washington: US Department of Education. Retrieved at 1st January 2016 from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97983.pdf. Torgbol, G. O. (2013). Extra Classes: A Boon or A Burden? USA: Retrieved at 2nd January 2016 from http://www.voicesofyouth.org/posts/extra-classes-a-boon-or- a-burden. White, C. (2001). Independent Language Learning: Building on Experience, Seeking New Perspective. Inside Independent Learning: Old and New Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Retrieved at 1st January 2016 from https://books.google.co.id/books?id=5ZNwM9xXPgMC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16 &dq=independent+language+learning+by+senior+high+students&source=bl&o t s=ixK5POfUP6&sig=- SFkKP62RRgONy73qGoZlOwj9OU&hl=en&sa=X&v. APPENDIX The computation of expected frequency of each cell. Ecell 1.1 = 1. 𝑛1 = 27 . 35 = 945 = 42,52 𝑁 45 45 Ecell 1.2 = 2. 𝑛1 = 18 . 35 = 630 = 14 𝑁 45 45 Ecell 2.1 = 1. 𝑛2 = 27 . 10 = 210 = 4,67 𝑁 45 45 Ecell 2.2 = 2. 𝑛2 = 18 . 10 = 180 = 8,10 𝑁 45 45 The computation of X2 𝑁 ��(|��−��|− )2 X2 = 2 (�+�)(�+�)(�+�)(�+�) = 45 ( | 42 , 52𝑥 8, 10 −14 𝑥 4, 67 |− 45 /2) 2 (42,52+14)(4,67+8,10)(42,52+4,67)(14+8,10) = 45 ( | 344 ,41 − 65 ,38 |− 45 / 2)2 (56,52)(12,77)(47,19)(22,1) = 45 ( | 279, 03 |− 22 ,5) 2 752.723,2 = 45 ( 256 , 53 ) 2 752.723,2 (11.543,85)2 = 752.723,2 = 133 . 260 , 47 752.723,2 = 0,18 http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97983.pdf http://www.voicesofyouth.org/posts/extra-classes-a-boon-or-