Probleming In Learning English

INTRODUCTION

A. RESEARCH BACKGROUND

Students can have various difficulties and problems in learning English. They can make
different mistakes in English pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary usage. Learning English
as second or foreign language has received a lot of attention, so teachers have to find some well-
planned and organized ways to facilitate the process of learning and teaching.

Regarding the issue of difficulties in speaking English among the students,

some studies had been conducted. Khan (2005) conducted a study to investigate

strategies in speaking difficulties. He asserted that the respondents had faced

pronunciation difficulty (accent and stress), phrase and idioms, communicative

sentence structures. The respondents even acknowledged that certain

psychological factors played important role when interacting in English. Yastutik

(2007) conducted a study at a high school in Malang. Her study was aimed to

describe students’ difficulties in speaking English and strategies they used to

overcome those difficulties. She found that the students lacked support and lacked

motivation.

B. RESEARCH QUESTION

1.What are the obstacles that make it difficult for students to learn English?

2.How to overcome the difficulties students experience in learning English?

C. THEORIES

Variable 1

The first variable is students can have various difficulties and problems in learning English. They
can make different mistakes in English pronunciation, grammar, orthography and vocabulary
usage. There is a connection between the native language of a learner and the particular
difficulties in learning and using English, and the kind of mistakes a learner typically makes in
English pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary as there is native language interference in
learning and using English.

Variable 2

Pronunciation skill and listening skill ;

The second variable : Listening comprehension and speaking in English are more difficult and
more important for learners to master than reading and writing. When reading and writing a text
a learner has more time for thinking and pauses than when listening and speaking in English in
daily living
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Title : Problem-Based Learning in English Language

Classroom Author : Normala Othman1 & Mohamed Ismail

Ahamad Shah2 Method : Qualitative

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the problem-based learning
approach (PBL) on students in language classes in two areas: course content and language
development.

Result : The overall results of the tests (cloze and written) show that the PBL group of the study
were able to handle learning without explicit instruction and performed just as well as those in
the traditional class. In terms of language, specifically in writing, students in the PBL group were
also able to present their arguments in a more critical manner in the post-test essays and provided
sufficient supporting material to illustrate their arguments.

(The Content)

Traditional programmes of education and training usually put tremendous emphasis on

content (Tan, 2003). In Malaysia, for example, it is a national pre-occupation to produce high-
achieving students with a string of A’s in national examinations. In addition, teachers must
adhere very closely to the standardised syllabus administered by the Ministry of Education. Due
to these factors, teachers would not think even remotely about switching approaches, especially
to one that completely does away with instruction such as the PBL. The focus of teaching is to
impart content knowledge, and teachers would perceive using extraordinary approaches as
compromising or even sacrificing this major learning outcome. Hence, the current study was
carried out to particularly investigate if acquisition of course content is indeed compromised
when the PBL approach is used. In addition, it will analyse if students’ proficiency may improve
as advocated by the approach and previous studies.

What sets PBL apart from other task-based methodology is that with PBL, the teacher does
not teach content. He or she gives out the problem first, followed by a brief explanation of the
problem. The teacher facilitates the students’ learning process and provides explanations which
gradually introduce the task according to the course syllabus. The students are then assigned into
groups, where they discuss and distribute research tasks to each other; these tasks often involve
extensive and intensive reading of various resources—library, internet (web-based sources),
books. The students may also opt to interview experts in the field. After a certain time, often a
week, the research output or the data collected from their readings are compiled and used to
solve the problem, which is often long, based on real-life situations, and created in a way that
would engage students’ curiosity to learn the subject matter in a meaningful manner (Tan, 2003).
 As a PBL course features minimal teaching, the teacher must be adept in handling PBL
classes, which may be a bit daunting at the beginning in formulating the problems, according to
George Watson of the Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education. (Note 1) However,
Allen, Duch & Groh (1996) earlier proposed that teachers could initially choose to have a mix of
teaching and PBL, that is, they could engage in teaching now and then in delivering the course
content. The idea is to encourage reluctant teachers to try out PBL rather than abandoning the
method totally. Creating ill-structured problems that would sustain students’ interest for a few
weeks is difficult and generally time-consuming, but PBL advocates argue that in the beginning,
the teacher will undoubtedly go through the laborious process of researching and creating their
problems. Copland (2001 p. 3) who teaches PBL courses in the Prospective Principals Program
in the School of Education at Stanford says, “the key thing in making [PBL] successful is the
amount of time and energy that goes into the creation of the project. Finding a problem that
really means something to the participants is absolutely critical”. The nature of ill-structured
problems, as suggested by Allen, Duch & Groh (1996) and Gallagher (1997), should:

 contain multiple solution paths

 change as new information is obtained
 contain content that is authentic to the discipline
 generate interest and controversy and cause the learner to ask questions
 prevent students from knowing that they have made the “right” decision
 require more information for understanding the problem than is initially available
 be open-ended and complex enough to require collaboration and thinking beyond
recall.
As mentioned, research in PBL in English language teaching is slowly emerging (Mardziah
Hayati, 2005 & Anton, 1990) and are more task-based and involves normal traditional teaching
(Huang, 2010; Toth, 2008;Eckerth & Siekmann, 2008). Despite the lack of research in the field
of language per se, PBL has its merits as it is a move toward professional training; it gets
students ready for the real world, as students are exposed to the following challenges and skills
(Tan, 2003):

 Teamwork
 Independent learning
 Communication skills
 Problem-solving skills
 Interdisciplinary learning
 Information-mining skills
 Higher-order thinking skills
Title : A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING VOCABULARY

Author : Rohmatillah

Method : Qualitative

Purpose : to find out kinds and factors of students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary.

Result : This study revealed that problems or difficulties faced by the students in vocabulary
learning were various. The difficulties faced by the students were almost all of the students have
difficulties in pronouncing the words, how to write and spell, the different grammatical form of a
word known as inflections was one of causes of students difficulties in learning vocabulary.

(The Content)

Learning a new language cannot be separated from vocabulary. Meaning that in learning a
new language people have to know its vocabulary. Vocabulary can be defined in various ways.
Experts have proposed some terms about vocabulary. According to Richards and Renandya
(2002: 255), vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the
basis for how learners speak, listen, read and write. Without an extensive vocabulary and
strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, learners often achieve their potential and may be
discouraged from making use of language learning opportunities around them such as listening
to the radio, listening to the native speaker, using language in different context, reading or
watching television.

Vocabulary learning is very important for people who learn English both as foreign
language and as second language. Tozcu and Coady (2004: 473) point out learning vocabulary
is an important aspect of language two and foreign language acquisition and academic
achievement and is vital to reading comprehension and proficiency, to which it is closely
linked. Moreover, Heubener (1965: 88) states that learning of vocabulary is based on the
formation of spesific habits. Since this involves the association of symbols and their meaning, it
is clear that an enrichment of the meaning of the word is as important as its frequent repetition.

Vocabulary learning is very important for people who learn English both as foreign
language and as second language. Tozcu and Coady (2004: 473) point out learning vocabulary
is an important aspect of language two and foreign language acquisition and academic
achievement and is vital to reading comprehension and proficiency, to which it is closely
linked. Moreover, Heubener (1965: 88) states that learning of vocabulary is based on the
formation of spesific habits. Since this involves the association of symbols and their meaning, it
is clear that an enrichment of the meaning of the word is as important as its frequent repetition.

Title : The Influence of Listening English Song to Improve Listening Skill in Listening Class

Author : Tri Listiyaningsih

Method : Qualitative

Purpose : To describe the influence of listening English song to improve listening skill,
especially in the listening class.

Result : Listening English song can improve the listening skill because song can be media to
improve listening skill.

(The Content)

When learn about English language, listening skill is skill that should comprehend. If
someone is not accustomed to listen, then when that person is in a class listening then that
person will be difficult to get the contents of what is in an existing text. Therefore, in order to
easily understand the existing text, someone needs to get used to train the ability to listen. The
ability to listen is very important to master especially in learning English because listening is
one skill that must be mastered in learning English. There are several ways that can increase the
ability to listen such as often try to do listening exercises, learn about pronunciation of the word,
try to listening, and listening to English song. One of the way to increase the listening ability is
listening to English song. Listening to English song can improve the ability to listening. When a
person listening English song, their ears will unconsciously accustomed to hearing so that when
it is in a class listening, someone who is already accustomed to listening song will be easier to
obtain the intent of what was spoken by the narrator.

When learning English language, especially in listening, there are many media to help learner to
improve the ability of listening skill such as video, movie, and song. Song as media that can
improve listening. Song can be the media to improve the listening skill because it is easy to get
song and it can train our ears to listen. From the interview to five people, they said that song can
be the media to improve the listening skill.

There are many medias used to improve listening skill, people can improve the listening
skill through song as media. People can listen the song and after listening the song, they can try
their ears to learn listening. To apply song as media to improve listening skill, the first that
should people do is search the English song that they like. People should search the English
song that like because if people who will improve the listening skill using the English song
which did not like, it will be difficult to learn the listening skill through that song. Song that like
every people are different, there are people like to listen song that slow, and there are people
like to listen song that fast song, and the genre of music that liked by someone with other
people are different too.

Listening English song can improve the pronunciation of words in English language. The
way to improve the pronunciation is when listen to English song, someone can imitate the
pronunciation of the word of English that said in the song. So, people who listen to the English
song can learn about pronunciation from the word of song that heard. The other way to learn
pronunciation from listening English song is the listener write the word that said in the song,
after that the listener search the right pronunciation word that written in dictionary and said the
pronunciation like in the dictionary said, it can help to learn the pronunciation.To measure the
improving pronunciation through listening English music, it can look at the score that had by
someone who do in speaking test. When someone do in speaking class, there are some aspect
that must mastered, such as fluently in speaking, intonation, the content, and pronunciation. In
this case, people who listening English music can get the better score in pronunciation than
before they do not learn the pronunciation through listening to English music. Before learning
the pronunciation using song, the score that they get in speaking test in pronunciation aspect is
medium or intermediate, but after learning the pronunciation through listening to English song,
the score that get in speaking test in pronunciation aspect is better (Interviewed Fatnia, 19
December 2016).
Method
The research was conducted to find out some of the problems or difficulties students
faced in learning English. Dezin and Lincoln (1994) define qualitative research :
Qualitative research is multi-method in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to
its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchs study things in their natural setting,
attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of meanings people bring them.
Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials
case study, personal experience, introspective, life story interview, observational, historical,
interactional and visual text-that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in
individuals’ lives.

Therefore the researcher use qualitative methods in order to obtain data in accordance
with the truth. In conducted this research so that the researcher use triangulation techniques, i.e.
the documentation, observation, and interview.
METHOD