TEACHERS’ SCAFFOLDING TALKS

TEACHERS’ SCAFFOLDING TALKS AT TRITUNGGAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN SEMARANG

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Language is required as a medium to communicate, to interact with others. Based on Horronsby’s statement (1995: 663), language is the system of sound and word used by human to express their thought and feeling. There are many kinds of languages which one of them is English, an international language. It is taught in every country like Indonesia with a purpose to make the students literate. It means that they can participate in the communication events either spoken or written in various contexts. In that way, teachers have important roles to achieve this literacy purpose.

Literacy purpose is related to children’s development to communicate. Children’s development will be mostly determined the social environment, by looking at real examples of language in use which is in line with Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory saying that learning and development of children take place in social contexts. Children first learn with other people to do things and language helps in various ways. The social environment where one is grown up will establish his or her language and cognitive development. In line with the statement, the writer thinks that classroom activities can be a medium to create and offer opportunities to students for learning processes with the teachers as the experts. That is why, the writer chose learning-studying activities in a class as the data of this research.

According to Lipman’s suggestion (1970), a teacher is not simply the instructor or facilitator of the learning of a large and disparate set of individuals, but rather is a potential of a ‘community of enquiry’ in a classroom, in which individual students can take a shared, active and reflective role in the development of their own understanding. Learning activities created by the teachers should provide for students to be active in social interaction in the classroom discourse. Language accompanying teachers’ action or scaffolding talk in the interaction play very important role for students in learning process and development. Scafffolding helps a learner to accomplish a task which they would not have been able to do on their own. In line with the statement about the importance of supports provided by English teachers through their language, the writer conducted this study.

The writer chose immersion class at Tritunggal Elementary School as the object of this research. It is on Semarang Indah street and was opened in 2006/2007. Its headmaster is from America. There are still three levels in this school in which each class is taught by two teachers. Not only the teachers but also the students have to use English one to another everyday. Although this school is not an international school, but national school, it has applied English as the first language there, for the purpose to arise education quality and prepare the graduates to face global competition nowadays. That is why, the writer was interested in this school as the object of this research. In this study, the writer described the types of scaffolding talks produced by the teachers. Also, the writer would like to describe the speech functions performed in their scaffolding talks.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The questions can be formulated as follows:

1. What kinds of scaffolding talks are produced by the teachers at Tritunggal Elementary School?
2. What are the functions of the teachers’ scaffolding talks at Tritunggal Elementary School?
3. What types of speech functions are performed in the teachers’ scaffolding talks at Tritunggal Elementary School?

1.3 Scope of the Study

The writer limited the area of this research. The research covered the following things:

1. Kinds of teachers’ scaffolding talks at Tritunggal Elementary School suggested by Turney et al. (1983). They are reinforcement, basic questioning, advanced questioning, explaining, and introductory procedures and closures.
2. Functions of the teachers’ scaffolding talks at Tritunggal Elementary School.
3. Types of speech funtions in the teachers’ scaffolding talks at Tritunggal Elementary School. There are four types of speech functions, they are offer, command, statement, and question.

1.4 Objective of the Study

Based on the statement of the problem, the purpose of the study is to identify kinds of scaffolding talks and speech functions produced by teachers at Tritunggal Elementary School.

1.5 Significance of the Study

The results of the study are hoped to be useful:

1. For the writer

The writer composes this thesis as a requirement in taking the subject of thesis. The writer hopes that this thesis will give more experiences in analyzing scaffolding talks and speech functions. Besides, it is also hoped that it can increase the writer’s knowledge about them.

 2. For university

The writer composed this thesis with a wish to give a valuable contribution to the university, especially to the faculty of languages and letters.

3. For the readers

The writer has a wish that the readers will get more information in composing thesis and especially for every English language learners can understand about scaffolding talks and speech functions when they are going to study about them. The writer also hopes that the results of this research can give knowledge for teachers and people who want to be teachers about using scaffolding talks and speech functions which are very important.

1.6 Thesis Organization

This thesis consists of five chapters in which each chapter is divided into some sub-chapters.

The first chapter is about Introduction. It contains background of the study, statement of the problem, scope of the study, objective of the study, significance of the study, and thesis organization.

The next chapter is about Review of Related Literature. It consists of teaching English, literacy in teaching English, zone of proximal development, scaffolding talks in foreign language education, teachers’ scaffolding talks in classroom discourse, and speech functions.

The third chapter is about Research Method. It contains research design, unit of analysis, source of data, technique of data collection, and technique of data analysis.

The next chapter is about Data Analysis. It presents the kinds of scaffolding talks produced by the teachers and the types of speech functions performed in the teachers’ scaffolding talks.

The last chapter is about Conclusion and Suggestion. This chapter presents the conclusion of the research and offers suggestion for further research about scaffolding talks.

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