lass=MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst align=center style=’margin-left:.75in; mso-add-space:auto;text-align:center;text-indent:-.5in;line-height:150%; mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3′>I. - A. Background of the study
Teachers are one of the crucial elements in conducting success for students in learning English as a Foreign Language. Teachers play some roles as a controller, prompter, participant, resource and tutor in facilitate learning (Harmer, 2007b). Harmer also stated that a good teacher is someone who recognize, listen and respect students to build intrinsic motivation of the students.
Teachers’ background can be a factor that influences students’ motivation in learning English. Their background can be as a native English speaker teacher or non native English speaker teacher. Every student has different perception and preference in learning with native or non-native speaker teacher.
In recent years, the issue of native speaker / non-native speaker teachers has become the focus of professional attention. It is common to hear the students’ preference between native speaker and non-native speaker in teaching English. Madrid (2004) claimed that students’ preference for the native teacher increases when they are advance on to higher grades. It means that most of students on the higher grades prefer to involve in interaction or real communication with native speakers. Hence, in some schools, students visit a certain place to meet native speakers and practice their English with the native speakers.
So far, in Indonesia there are not many schools are able to hire native speaker teachers. Only some private schools recruit native speaker as a teacher. Based on the observation, some primary and secondary schools often invite their students to visit English native speaker in order to give a chance for students to practice their English. Most students enjoy the activity and eager to improve their English ability. The role of native-speaker has taken an important part in helping students learning English that makes some schools want to hire native speaker teachers.
Many studies about native speaker teachers and non-native speaker teachers have been conducted by some researchers (Davies: 1991, Medgyes:1992, Cook:1999, Madrid:2004, Sahin:2005, Sung:2010). Native and nonnative teachers have become a topic of discussion in some countries. Advantages and disadvantages, students’ preference and perspective, native and non-native speaker in EFL and ESL are some topics that have been investigated by some researchers. A study funded by Sahin (2005) investigated a correlation between attitudes toward native speaker teacher and students’ achievement. He found positive attitudes bring a good achievement of learning English and vice versa. Thus, native speaker teachers influence students’ attitudes and motivation in learning English. Then, according to Harmer (2007a), students’ motivation consists of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from within individual; by contrast, extrinsic motivation is the result of any number of outside factors. Both of motivations lead students into success.
Here, this study will report students’ attitudes and motivation toward native speaker teachers in learning English based on questionnaires and interview of some university students in an English club. The study will cover what students’ attitudes and perception toward native speaker teachers is? And what is students’ motivation in learning English with native speaker teachers?
B. Research Questions
Based on the explanation above, this study was conducted to answer the following research questions.
- What are the attitudes of students’ toward native-speaker teacher?
- From the perspective of the students, what are their motivations toward native speaker teacher in learning Englis
- C. Purpose of the study
The research is aimed to:
- Give explanation about students’ motivation in learning English.
- Provide students’ perception on native speaker in teaching English.
- D. Significance of the study
With regard to the significant of the study, this study has the potential to the theory, education and professional practices. Theoretically, this study will be a consideration for language educator to recruit native speaker as a teacher in a school or educational institution, this study is expected to be a literature on students’ motivation toward native speaker teacher. Practically, the result of the study can be a guide in developing students’ motivation in learning English.
E. Classification of term
Motivation is a key to learn. It is an inner source, desire, emotion, reason, needs, impulse or purpose that moves a person to particular action. (Chalak & Kassaian, 2010)
“Attitudes, like all aspects of the development of cognition and affect in human beings, develop early in childhood and are the result of parents’ and peers’ attitudes, contact with people who are different in any number of ways.” (Brown,2000)
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Students’ Motivation
Theoretical study about motivation has been developed by many researchers. There are many opinions in building definition of motivation. As stated in Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary (2000), motivation is 1) a reason why somebody does something or behaves in a particular way, 2) Making somebody want to do something, especially something that involves hard work and effort. Then, from behavior perspective, motivation is the anticipation of reinforcement. In other side of cognitive perception, motivation is illustrated in drive theory, hierarchy of needs and self-control (Brown: 2001).
Furthermore, Brown stated two kind human motivations: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation (ibid.76). Edward Deci claimed that intrinsically motivated activities are ones for which there is no apparent reward except the activity itself. (cited in Brown, 2000). Extrinsically, on the other hand, motivation was carried out in anticipation of reward from outside and beyond the self. Typically extrinsic rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types of positive feedback (ibid).
Moreover, Gardner (1972) cited in Narayanan (2006), highlights different types of motivation: instrumental motivation and integrative motivation. Instrumental motivation is the desire to learn a language because it would fulfill certain utilitarian goals, such as getting a job, passing examination, etc. Besides that, integrative motivation is the desire to learn language in order to communicate with people from another culture who speak that language; the desire is also there to identify closely with the target language group. The Gardner study claimed that integrative motivation was more strongly linked to success in learning language than instrumental motivation.
B. Students’ Attitudes
Not only motivation, attitudes also affect language learning. Before come to effect of students’ attitudes, let’s begin with the term of attitudes. In principles of language teaching, Brown (2000) stated that “Attitudes, like all aspects of the development of cognition and affect in human beings, develop early in childhood and are the result of parents’ and peers’ attitudes, contact with people who are different in any number of ways.” Brown (2001) added that attitude is characterized by large proportion of emotional involvement such as feelings, self, relationship in community. It seems that many stimulants lead individual to positive and negative attitudes.
Motivation and attitudes are important thing lead students into success in learning English. One of motivation and attitudes toward teacher determine students’ progress in learning. Some students are motivated to learn because of their native speaker teacher. Hence, they want to be like native speaker too in communicating.
C. Native speaker teacher
So far, who are native speaker and non-native speaker is still difficult to define. Some people claimed that English native speakers are people who come from English speaking countries and the rest is non-native. Researchers have discussed and defined who native speakers of English are and who are not. Davies (1991) in linguistic study, points out that native speaker has at least three meaning (1) being a speaker of one own idiolect, (2) being a speaker of an uncodified dialect, (3) being part of a group adhering to codified norm in standard language. He also said that the first language a human being learns to speak is his native language. Moreover, Cook (1999) claims the indisputable element in the definition of native speaker is that a person who is a native speaker of the language learnt first; the other characteristics are incidental; and describing how well an individual uses the language. Thus, based on a user of language, native speaker is a person who uses language as their first language in childhood.
D. Related Research Report
There are many studies that have been done in the field native speaker teacher in language teaching. Madrid (2004) investigated teacher and student preferences of native and nonnative foreign language teachers. He found that students and teachers have their own reasons to believe native or nonnative speaker teacher. The result of finding reported characteristics of native speakers that native speaker taught foreign language with greater ease; native speaker were difficult to understand in the early grades; native speaker could obtain better outcomes in oral communication. In contrary, the characteristics of non-native speakers are they were better at explaining grammar; they were better understood when they speak foreign language; they were preferred at lower levels; with proper training they could be preferable to native teachers.
In a study conducted by Sahin (2005), finding showed a significant correlation between contribution of native speaker teachers to students’ attitude and achievement. The study was administered by two groups: the first group consisted of the students who have been exposed to a native speaker teacher and the second group consisted of students who haven’t been exposed to native speaker. Native speaker teachers contributed to students’ forming positive attitudes, which is assumed to result better achievement in language learning. The result also investigated that there was a significant difference between male and female students in performance. Female are more successful than males in foreign language learning and female students have more positives languages attitudes which is assumed have effect on language proficiency.
Another study done by Sung (2010), he investigated Hong Kong students’ perfective about native or non-native speaker teacher. He distributed a questionnaire to 81 participants who were studying in secondary 4 and were aged between 15 and 16. He found that native speaker teachers were preferred in teaching method because they used more interesting and wide-ranging methods in teaching English and prepared more attractive materials. Then, students also impressed that native speakers were better in teaching pronunciation and speaking. So, native speakers encouraged students to speak more. In other hand, students preferred non-native speaker teachers because it was easy to understand their instruction, they cared about students and they were good in teaching grammar than native speaker teachers.
In Indonesia, a study about native speaker teacher has been conducted by Iriyanti (2012). She investigated teaching strategies used by native speaker teacher in speaking class. She found that there were some strategies applied in teaching speaking for Indonesian students. They were leveled questions, modeled in talk, games, vocabulary processing and total physical response. The teacher combined these strategies. So, students had more opportunities to explore their ability in English communication skill. However, there were some problems for students because they were forced to always speak English and also a problem for native speaker teacher because Indonesian students spoke incorrect phases and put Indonesian filler e.g ah, mah, yah, lah, kan into English words.
E. Synthesis
Based on the relevant theories, attitudes and motivation are crucial elements to determine success in learning English Foreign Language. Native speaker teacher can be an extrinsic motivation that also can build students’ intrinsic motivation. Then, the native teacher also may be a stimulant to lead positive or negative attitudes.
From the fact above, some studies about native speaker teacher have been conducted in some countries. Most studies were administered in non-English speaking countries, such as Hong Kong, Turkey, India, but not many studies conducted in Indonesia. In Indonesia, there are some classes also taught by English native speaker teacher, but we do not really know how the effect of native speaker for students.
III. METHODOLOGY
A. Design
This study was designed in qualitative research. Qualitative research is concerned with nonstatistical method of inquiry and analysis of social phenomena. McRoy (1995) states that qualitative research uses detailed descriptions from the perspective of the research participants themselves as a means of examining specific issues and problems under study. The samples are usually small and are often purposively selected. In qualitative research, there is no preconceived hypothesis to be tested. McRoy added that hypotheses emerge from the observation and interpretation of human behavior, leading to further observations and the generation of new hypotheses for exploration.
The descriptive method was used to describe the data found during the research and then tabulated. This method seems suitable to present the fact found during the study and to interpret of how the facts related to the problem under investigation (read Gay, 1987). Nasir (1983) stated that the characteristics of descriptive method are focused on the concentration how to solve the actual problems (cited in Haris, 2012). The collected data of the research will be concluded in percentage. Then, the data will be analyzed and discussed in detail in order to answer the research questions.
B. Data Collection
Participants of this study consisted of 25 students: 10 students in the first class and 15 students in the second class. The students are university students in English speaking club in American corner. The university students were chosen to represent students in the higher level. It is a line with Madrid (2004) claimed that native teachers are preferred in the higher grades than early grades. The students come from different major study, and no one of them is English department students. The classes were headed by one volunteer teacher who is native speaker from USA. The reasons choosing this class as research subject were native speaker as teacher in the class and availability for everyone to join the class. Thus, there was no big problem in doing this research.
The data in this study were collected through questionnaire and interview. The period of data collection were happened from 5th until 10th November 2012.
1. Questionnaire
In this study, a questionnaire was used to give information in form of written respond. As a general guideline, a questionnaire should be attractive, brief, and easy to respond to. The questionnaire was adopted from Gardner and Lambert,cited in Sahin (2005), which consisted of 32 items. 20 items were designed to measure the attitudes students toward native speaker teachers and 12 items to measure attitudes toward English language and lessons. This questionnaire used likert scales as measurement. Likert scales required an individual to respond to a series of statements by indicating whether he or she strongly agree (SA), agrees (A), undecided (U), disagrees (D) or strongly disagrees (SD). However, in this research, the writer adopted Likert scale just into four categories: SA, A, D, SD. Each response was assigned one point value, and an individual’s score was determined by adding the point values of all the statements. 1 point indicated SD, 2 = D, 3 = A, 4 = SA which score 3 and 4 indicated positive attitudes and score 1 and 2 indicated negative attitudes.(Gay et.al., 2009)
On 5th November, questionnaire was given to students in the first class at the end of discussion. They consisted of 4 females and 6 males. Then, on 6th November, questionnaire was distributed to the second class. They were 6 females and 9 males. The students did it for 10 until 15 minutes. There were no problems in distributing questionnaire. The students and teacher were very cooperative.
2. Interview
Gray et.al 2009, 370) mentions that interview is a purposeful interaction in which one person obtains information from another. Genesee (1996) mentions that by doing an interview, a researcher can probe the respondents for additional information in response to interesting or important answer that arise unexpectedly from the planed questions (cited in Haris,2007). Thus, the interview was done to get participants’ response in depth and to examine attitudes, interesting and feelings.
The interview was done by using e-mail interview to three participants. Increasing education environment which provide e-mail and internet access will lead the researcher to interview participants using e-mail (Gay et.al.,2009). Gay added that one advantages in using e-mail interview is researchers do not have to transcript the interview because it will have been done by participants.
The interview focused on five points that is related with some statements in questionnaire (see appendix 3). It was done to confirm more explanation based on the one in questionnaire.
C. Data Analysis
Data analyses in this study were conducted over the class of the research program. Analyses and interpretation were based on data in questionnaire and interview. The data in questionnaire were scored. The scoring was dealing with counting on how many people answer each item in questionnaire. It consisted of 40 statements. 20 statements for part I and 20 statements for part II. The highest score for each part was 80. After the data had been got, the average could be known by using the following formula:
Mean score (average grade) = The sum of respondents’ grade
Number of respondents
IV. FINDING AND DISCUSSION
A. Data from Questionnaires
1. Students’ attitudes toward native speaker teacher in learning English
The questionnaires were distributed in order to better understand of the students’ opinion towards native speaker teacher. The data from questionnaire part I (see appendix 1) is presented to answer the research question, what is students’ attitudes toward native speaker teacher in learning English.
The questionnaire part I showed students’ attitudes toward their native speaker teacher who represent the community of native speakers. Based on the data, from twenty five students, 60 % of students strongly agreed that native speakers are interesting. The rest of them agreed about it. This case shows a positive perception toward native speakers. It could be seen from student’s response, “I found that native speakers are expressive and fun”.
Then, most students thought that native speakers are not prejudiced. 68% students disagreed about that, and 24% strongly disagreed. Only 8 % of students agreed that native speakers are prejudiced. They thought that their teacher were not prejudiced which represented community of native speakers.
In responding to the next statement, native speaker is handsome, only 12 % students strongly disagreed and the rest agreed about that. It can be assumed that most of community of native speaker are handsome, beautiful and look like different from non-native teachers.
Moreover, most of students agreed and strongly agreed that native speakers are brave, honest, intelligent, sincere, nice and polite. More than 50% students agreed native speakers are brave, honest and sincere. The rest were strongly agreed. They could see these characters in their teacher who are native speaker. Besides that, more than 50% students strongly agreed that native speakers are intelligent, nice and polite.
For the next eleven statements, number 10 until 20, more than 74% students had positive attitudes (agree and strongly agree). In the statements number twelve, 12% students disagreed that native speakers are permissive. Then, in the statement that native speaker are popular, 16% students disagreed about that. Most of students agreed that native speakers are mature, but only 4% students strongly disagreed about that.
From the questionnaire, it can be concluded that 12.7 students’ average are agreed all of the statements about native speaker teachers. It means that they had positive attitudes toward native speakers. Then, 10,4 students are strongly agreed. It can be concluded only 2.1 students disagreed of the statements and most of students showed positive attitudes toward native speaker teacher who represented the characteristic of native speaker community. David in Harmer (2007a) also states that native speaker teachers are often – but not always- seen in a positive light by their students.
2. Students’ motivation toward native speaker teachers in learning English
Then, in the next questionnaire (see appendix 2), the item contains students’ attitude and motivation toward native speaker and learning English.
In the first statements in questionnaire part II, being able to speak English makes people more literate and popular, 60 % students agreed that English will lead them popular and literate and 32% of them strongly agreed about the statement. The statement reflected an extrinsic motivation for students. As stated by Brown (2001), extrinsically motivated behaviors are carried out in anticipation of a reward from outside, like money, prize, grades, and certain types of positive feedback. Thus, more popular and literate can be one of students’ extrinsic motivations. However, there are 8 % students did not agree about that.
Then, if you knew more than one foreign language and if you met someone knowing the same languages with you, you would prefer speaking English, 44% students agreed and 28 % disagreed. The statement closely related to integrative motivation which is a desire to know and become friendly to speakers of the language. Some experts claimed that integrative motivation is better to lead success.
Moreover, most students believe that English is important, so it should become compulsory in all schools. All students gave positive attitudes toward this statement: 52% students agreed and the rest of them strongly agreed. Students though that English is important and has been a mark of education, so all of students’ level should learn English even they are in kindergarten.
Students’ intrinsic motivation also could be seen in students’ responses for statements number 6 and 8. You would learn English even if it weren’t compulsory. All of students gave positive attitudes about that. Next statement is If you knew more than one foreign language and if you were to read a book written in these languages, you would choose the one written in English to read, 80 % students agree about that. It shows that more than 80% students have good intrinsic motivation to learn English. They thought that English is important for them however it is not a compulsory. Students also had eager to learn more by reading more texts in English.
For English lesson, most of students had positive attitudes. As in statement number 3, learning English is very interesting,52% students agreed and 48% students disagreed. Then, in statement number 7, when you were assigned homework for English lesson and for the others, you would do your homework for English lesson first. Here 56% students agreed and 42% students disagreed about that. In statement number 9 still tells about attitudes toward learning English. You can keep your attention from beginning to the end in English lesson, 68% students agreed and 20% students disagreed.
Furthermore, the statement number 10, 11, 12 tell about students’ attitudes toward native speaker teacher. In the point number 10, you would prefer native English speaking teacher if you had the chance to choose, 76% students strongly agreed and 24% students agreed. In this case, all of them have positive attitudes. In the next statement, it is necessary to hire native English speaking teachers for state schools, there are 8 % students did not agree, 48% students agreed and 44% students strongly disagreed. For the last statement, native English speaking teacher shouldn’t only teach English but also give cultural information in order to introduce his country, 72% students strongly agreed and 28% students agreed. As cited in students response that “I can improve my speaking and listening ability in an interesting way and I also may know other cultures and share the cultures with native English teacher”.
B. Data from interview
Some questions in interview were adopted from questionnaire. The interview was used only to clarify if the data from the questionnaire were valid and reliable. After being checked, the result of interviewing from three participants showed supported result of the questionnaire.
The data from interview were about students’ attitude in learning English and attitudes toward native speaker teacher. The data will be concluded here.
- Students’ motivation in learning English
Students believed that English is important because it was a global or international language. Most of students learnt English to be able communicate with other people around the world. Some students learned English to make easier in finding job.
“.. I have to be able to practice English since it was used everywhere, beside bahasa Indonesia. I think if I can understand English well it would be easier for me in seeking for job.”
- Students’ attitude in learning English.
Students did some activities to improve their English ability, such as watching movies, browsing internet, taking English course, watching English TV programs, listening music, reading articles and books writing in English, etc.
“ I learn from a course, school, etc. Reading articles or books in English and watching film with English language.”
- Students attitudes toward native-speaker teacher
- a. Native speaker teacher gave good abilities in pronunciation, spelling and phrases. Students prefer learn with them to improve their speaking and listening.
A student response that “native speaker have abilities in pronunciation, spelling and phrases. It is better if we can learn from native speaker directly”.
Similar finding is reported by Sung (2010), most students shared the impression that native English speaker teacher speak better than non-native teacher. A majority of the students thought that native speaker teacher speak more ‘standard’ English and their pronunciation more accurate (ibid).
- Students preferred native speaker teacher because they can learn how to speak constantly and directly. Then, they were forced to always speak English in the classroom because their teacher did not understand students’ native language.
- Native speakers were confident in teaching that makes students enjoyed speaking English. Harmer (2007a) claimed that native speaker often have the advantages of a linguistic confidence about their language in the classroom.
Then, students were interested to learn other culture from native speaker teacher. They might share cultures each other. This response confirmed the statement number 12 in questionnaire, and all of students gave positive response about that. It means that interview support students response in questionnaire and students gave their response honestly
C. Conclusion and Recommendation
This study was supposed to find out students attitudes and motivation toward native speaker teacher, support by findings of Madrid (2004) and Sahin (2005). In the study, students held positive attitudes and good motivation toward native speaker teacher. The result indicated that students prefer to learn English with native speaker and it made them have higher motivation to improve their English ability.
This study has implication for one of English institution in Indonesia. There were not many studies about native speaker teacher that held in Indonesia. It was caused by less of native speakers teach English in education institution especially in state school. Actually, it is better for students in the higher level to learn English directly with native speaker, in order to motivate them and improve their English.
There are some recommendations that are suggested. First, the next study can be developed in the regular class for primary and secondary level of English because this study only use English speaking club as the subject study. Second, this study used questionnaire and interview as research instrument, so the next study should add some instruments to make the data more valid. Third, there is no control group in this study. Therefore, the next study can use control group to make the result more general.
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Ghaida Fakihah 