FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO STUDENTS SILENCE IN INTEGRATED COURSE CLASSES THESIS. Submitted in Partial Fulfillment. of the Requirements for the Degree of

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO STUDENTS SILENCE IN INTEGRATED COURSE CLASSES THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi 112008002 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY SALATIGA 2013

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO STUDENTS SILENCE IN INTEGRATED COURSE CLASSES THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi 112008002 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY SALATIGA 2013 i

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COPYRIGHT STATEMENT This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due references is made in the text. Copyrigth@2012. Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi and Nugrahenny T. Zacharias, Ph.D All right reserved. No part of this thesis may be produced by any means without the prior permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Indonesia. Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi : ( ) iii

PUBLICATION AGREEMENT DECLARATION As a member of the (SWCU) Satya Wacana Christian University academic community, I verify that: Name : Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi Student ID Number : 112008002 Study Program : English Faculty : Language and Literature Kind of Work : Undergraduate Thesis In developing my knowledge, I agree to provide SWCU with a non-exclusive royalty free right for my intellectual property and the contents therein entitled: Factors Contributing to Students Silence in Integrated Course Classes along with any pertinent equipment. With this non-exclusive royalty free right, SWCU maintains the right to copy, reproduce, print, publish, post, display, incorporate, store in or scan into a retrieval system or database, transmit, broadcast, barter or sell my intellectual property, in whole or in part without my express written permission, as long as my name is still included as the writer. This declaration is made according to the best of my knowledge. Made in : Salatiga Date : June 14 th, 2013 Verified by signee, Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi Approved by Thesis Supervisor Thesis Examiner Nugrahenny T. Zacharias, Ph.D Anita Kurniawati, M. Hum iv

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO STUDENTS SILENCE IN INTEGRATED COURSE (IC) CLASSES Priscilla Renata Candra Dewi Abstract Having seen many peers were in silence during the Integrated Course (IC) class (ED 101), this study aims to explore factors that contribute to students silence. Twenty English Department s IC students from class year 2012 of Satya Wacana Christian University participated in this study. In-depth interview was the chosen method of the data collection to explore the factors that contribute to students silence. To analyze the findings, a descriptive qualitative methodology was used. From the interview, it was found that there were six major influential factors that contribute to the students silence in IC classes. Those factors were: students background knowledge, students lack of interest, the role of dominating peers, students language proficiency, students preparedness, and the existence of grading rewards. The result indicated that teachers needed to create conducive situation to maximize the students potentials in the learning process. This could be done by giving intensive encouragement for the students to be active in class through giving some participation points. Due to the limitation of this study, further researches need to be done to find out other factors, which contribute to the students silence, in not only IC classes but also other classes. By having so many literatures about students silence, it is expected that further solution can be found to avoid silence problems in EFL classrooms. Key words: silence, silent, participation, Integrated Course. Introduction The purpose of this study is to find out the factors that contribute to students silence in Integrated Course classes of English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University. To start with, I would like to make a flash back to show how my background experiences brought an idea to conduct this research. Having experienced taking IC class in my first semester in English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University, I felt that I could be categorized as a silent student. The reason why I kept silent was because I thought that my English proficiency was not as good as my friends. The limited exposure of English when I was in high school compared with the 1

maximum used of English in IC class made me felt inferior, especially when I found that peers around me spoke English fluently and had better English proficiency than me. As Liu (2005) says, learners in English as Foreign Language (EFL) class were found to be silent while studying the target language and chose not to use it most of the time. I kept silent during the class because I believed that silence is an effective face saving strategy as Tatar (2005) confirmed. Tatar (2005) further describes the face saving strategy as a strategy that the students use to save their own face by keeping their silence in the classroom, since they have fear of making mistakes and being laughed at. Tatar s statement really described my feeling as a new comer in this faculty. Students that are categorized as silent students are those who have orientation on themselves, do a little talk or participation (Gonzales, 2010). According to Gonzales, they are not socializing, so, expressing their opinions in doubt and backseats was the most comfortable place for them. In addition, Zhang and Head (2010) supported that students who remain silent are very reluctant to speak in class and would try to sit at the back of the classroom. When the teacher encourages them to voice their ideas on a topic, they either give limited responses or avoid eye contact with the teacher. Furthermore, Liu (2005) defines silent students as students who are rarely respond to teachers questions, or rarely take part actively in classroom discussions. In short, students who are categorized as silent are they who do not answer the teacher s questions or do not give their response or opinion when the teacher asks. In addition, I also experienced in my IC class that there were two types of peers participation behaviors in the class. They were active and silent peers. Some teachers often complained about the students behavior in my class when the students were busy with themselves, did not participate, and started to ignore the teacher. This condition could be so frustrating for both the teachers and the students that sometimes led to 2

failure in language teaching classroom as what Xie (2009) states. Silent students participated hesitantly in classroom activities; they were reluctant to do voluntary replies, reticence to answer, let alone initiate questions, even if they answer, they give brief replies; they seldom speak up about their opinions even if they have one; and they hold back from expressing their views (Xie, 2009). This case also happened during my IC class. Seeing some peers and myself were busy with mobile phones, sometimes copying other friends answers, drawing pictures on the modules, speaking other topics with peers, and even day dreaming during the teaching and learning process, showed that students did not really care towards the material delivered. The case of students silence and low participation happened not only in certain days but almost in every IC class meeting. In contrary, there were also active students in my class, as Gonzales (2010) explains, active students are those who are willing to participate in all classroom activities and seeking attention from teachers and peers. I found that those kinds of students wanted to perform well and received appreciation from their friends and teacher. These students also participated in discussions and other co-curricular activities. Although there were no rewards or participation points given to the active students, some of my peers did a lot of participation. They liked to attract teacher s attention, spoke so many things related to the course, and even dominate the discussion. However, the number of active students was still much lower than the number of silent students. Therefore, this problem attracts my awareness and curiosity on the causes of students silence and on the possible solutions to avoid it. Student silence is not just a recent case like what I experienced as a new student, but it usually happened in many of EFL classes. As Cheng (2000) says that students of English as a second/foreign language have a big tendency to remain silent in 3

the classroom, either because they are silence learners or because of other reasons. It means that many EFL students feel reluctant to perform their ability to speak English and prefer to remain silent and only listen to what their teachers or classmates say during the lesson as part of their learning strategy. Furthermore, Kumaravadivelu (2003) states that one of the characteristics of Asian EFL students is that they do not like to participate in classroom interaction. This may also happen in IC (ED 101) classrooms. Furthermore, Liu (2005) finds that especially Asian learners, have often been observed to be quiet in language classrooms. Like what has been stated earlier, facing students with low participation is likely to be a universal problem that may be faced by many teachers. Donald (2010) supports that statement by saying that students silence in English, as a second language classroom is a phenomenon that occurs almost in all contexts, regardless of setting. Liu and Jackson (2009) also prove that students silence in foreign language classes has long been a challenge for both the teachers and the students themselves. Students with low participation sometimes made the teacher confused and unwilling to continue the teaching. It happened because the teaching and learning process was merely a one-way communication, where the students just listened to what the teacher explained. This situation was just the same as what Ping (2010) says that teachers may face a range of negative feelings such as anxiety, depression, inferiority and loss of confidence associated with low level of participation when dealing with some silent students, and that often make teacher feels upset and frustrated. Thus, it becomes clearer that students silence is truly a problem that should be solved immediately in the EFL classrooms. The first step to solve the problem is to find out what is the cause of student silence. 4

Many experts have been studying the issue of students silence. To note one of them, I found that Tatar (2005) examined about classroom participation of international students, which investigated four Turkish students who studied at a United States (U.S) University. One of the important findings of that study stated that the classroom climate was a major determinant in participants experiences of classroom participation besides other factors such as cultural differences, students preparedness, and the role of peers whether they are dominating peers or supportive peers (Tatar, 2005). It means that supportive classroom environments facilitated active oral participation, whereas high-anxiety atmospheres increased feelings of isolation that might hinder the students to participate. However, Tatar s study presented about the participation of international non-native students at a US university, where was dominated by native students. Therefore, I want to know whether the same thing also happen in a context where all of the students are non-native speakers of English, such as in English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University. Based on the backgrounds stated above, I want to conduct a research to answer a research question what are the factors contribute to students silence in IC classes? By answering this research question, I hope that this study could be beneficial for the field of EFL classroom in the future, in a way that it could be used as references to find out the underlying factors of students silence, so that possible solution to avoid those silence could be found. Another purpose of conducting this research is to set students minds so that they could participate actively in the target language so that they can be successful learners at the end of the course. In addition, it is also expected that this study could be used to help the teachers to maintain the classes so that students can participate actively as well as to reduce silence and anxiety during the teaching and learning process. 5

Theoretical Framework Having learned about what students silence is from the previous chapter, now we will focus on the reason why students keep silent during the teaching and learning process. Reasons behind the Students Silence Many experts say that there were several issues that make the students feel reluctant to participate actively in the classroom. However, only six are discussed in this study. a. Lack of language proficiency and speaking ability Liu (2002) mentions the first theme. She finds that the major cause of students silence is due to their inability to speak up in class. Liu also mentions that speaking inability is closely related to linguistic factors (e.g. proficiency in the target language, communicative competence, or accent). When students do not have the linguistic factors that are sufficient enough to make them confident to perform in the classroom, they may feel reluctant to participate. This idea is also supported by Flowerdew, Miller, and Li (2000) who find that students lack of language proficiency make them silent during the class. Then, Tsui (1996) finds that students lack of language proficiency leads to students inability to respond teacher s questions. In addition, Liu (2005) also finds that one of the reasons that make the students remain silent is due to their low target language proficiency, which makes them have low confidence to speak up. As a result, like what Zhang and Head (2010) say, reticence to participate in class activities prevents the learners from making progress and achieving the outcomes intended for the course. It means that this low participation provide drawbacks for the students themselves as well as the language teaching and learning process as a whole. Allwright 6

and Bailey (1991) also support that less proficient learners worry that their lack of ability to use the language might be viewed as incompetence to them. This feeling makes the students do not have enough confidence to speak, so they prefer to be silent for the fear of being judged by their peers and teacher as incompetent. This idea will be explained further in the second theme. b. Fear of making mistakes The second theme is the fear of making mistake for it may cause humiliation. Students silence in EFL classroom could be triggered by the fear of public failure or the fear of making mistakes as Dwyer and Heller-Murphy (1996) conclude. Silent learners in the classroom are often caused by their own worrisome that their lecturers or teachers may judge that their English is poor so that they are afraid of making mistake as Flowerdew et al. (2000) argue. Furthermore, Liu (2005) finds that the unwillingness to involve in class discussion was because of students fear of making mistakes, being laughed at and being embarrassed in front of their peers. Students remain silent because of the high risk of making mistakes and appearing foolish (Xiuqin, 2006, p. 36). As a result, students avoided participating in the classroom because they are afraid of making mistakes and avoid any embarrassing situation that could damage their public image (Tanveer, 2007). This silence is preferable than being ashamed in front of their peers. c. The topic of the lesson The third factor is discussion topic. Liu (2005) states that task difficulty, lack of practice and their inability to understand the material concepts made students reluctant to speak up. In addition, unfamiliarity with the subject matter caused students to stay silence (Liu 2002). She finds that less understanding of content knowledge also 7

contribute to students silence. From this expert s views, when students feel that the topic being discussed in the classroom is something that they do not know or have little knowledge about, they will feel reluctant to participate actively in the classroom. They prefer to stay silent, to listen to what their teacher or friends say so that they could add more knowledge to participate in the later discussion or merely stay quiet as a strategy to avoid mistakes or humiliation. d. The role of dominating peers The fourth factor is the role of dominating peers. Differentiation in opinions or concepts from their peers made students usually keep quiet to avoid direct confrontation (Liu 2005). The fear of dominant peers negative evaluation also makes students reluctant to participate (Liu, Zang, & Lu, 2011). In other words, students participation in the classroom is highly influenced by their personalities. Those who are brave enough to face challenges and direct confrontation during the teaching and learning process will have no hesitancy to state or even justify their opinion. However, those who do not have enough courage to take risk will maintain their silence as a saving strategy to learn. When it comes to English proficiency, students at a higher level behave more actively than those at a lower level, in various classroom activities and tasks (Liu, 2005). The experts views above are also illustrated in Tatar (2005) who finds that the existence of active students in the classroom, who usually are less in numbers, will make their majority peers become silent since they are afraid of being attacked by the active students. Furthermore, she adds that silent students feel inferior to the active students since they are afraid if the response that they provide may be less qualified or even incorrect. Lastly, Tatar (2005) also mentions that students silence is also 8

triggered by the lateness of asking and answering the questions since the active students seems to be quicker in responding to the teacher. Therefore, the existence of dominating peers plays a very big role in contributing to students silence. e. The existence of grading rewards The seventh factor is reward existence. Liu (2002) finds that pedagogical factors (e.g. participation as a course requirement) contribute to students participation in the classroom. In her research, she says that some students only participate in the discussion to meet the requirements set by the teacher. On the other hand, students will not participate or will not answer questions in class when there is no participation point or grade. From those six factors, we can conclude that there are inner factors as well as outer factors that contribute to the students silence. Most of them are the inner factors such as students speaking ability, students fear of making mistakes, students unfamiliarity with the topics, and students preparation. The two others such as the role of the dominating peers and the reward existence can be included as the outer factors. The Study Context of the study The setting of the study is in Faculty of Language and Literature or English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU). It is located in Salatiga, a small town near Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. The subjects of this study were twenty students who were taking Integrated Course (IC/ED 101) in English Department. IC was one of prerequisite subject with the largest credit to take, eight credits, among the other English Department subjects. This course was intended for the 9

new comers (first year students) as the basic course. According to ED Student Handbook 2008-2009, IC class was aimed to give students a strong foundation in basic language skills to prepare them for higher-level courses. The course materials covered language components; i.e. structure, which was enhanced in the speaking, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing sections. Students performance in structure, writing, reading comprehension and vocabulary were assessed three times throughout the semester. The intensity of IC classes (four times in a week) might also contribute to students boredom that made them remain silent. Besides, IC could also be considered the most difficult one because there was a regulation that said that students who have to repeat IC more than twice must be dropped out. From the explanations above, the writer had enough reasons to choose IC classes rather than other classes in the English Department. Methodology This research was a descriptive qualitative research. The reason why I employed a descriptive qualitative research was because the research question was broad and need a depth analysis so that the data could be obtained through an interview in which an open-ended question and answer session could be done (Tatar, 2005). Moreover, this research was intended to give a better insight, discovery, and interpretation rather than to test a hypothesis, so that a descriptive qualitative approach was considered better to be implied (Merriam, 2001 as cited in Tatar, 2005). Participants The participants of this study were twenty new students from academic year 2012/2013 who obligated to take IC class in their first semester. There were four groups of IC subject with total population of 120 students. However, due to the limited time of 10

the study as well as the accessibility of the researcher to do the interview in a comfortable manner, a sample convenience was used (Mc Kay, 2006). Finally, 20 students were selected randomly from the four groups. In addition, from those 20 participants, 9 participants were male and 11 were female. Pseudonyms were used instead of the real names in order to avoid negative judgment. IC students were selected by reason that they were new students. They needed to adapt with the new situation, teachers, friends, and materials. They were chosen instead of older class year by meant that older class year had already accustomed by the teaching style in English Department. The new comers might experience very different teaching styles in their high school compared to the one they had in English Department, so the adaptation moment might cause silence. In addition, IC subject covered all of the basic skills like reading, writing, speaking, and grammar. Not all of students had the same ability on those basic skills, so it might cause silence when they faced the skills that they were lack of ability. Based on those many factors that made them kept on silence, the writer chose these IC students. Data collection instrument & procedures This study used interview to collect the data. The focus of this interview was to know deeper why the participants kept silent during the class. These interviews were done once per participants. It was around 10 questions for 15-20 minutes for each participants. The method used were in-depth one on one, semi-structured interview with open-ended questions to get as much information as needed, as well as find reasons of what factors contributed to their silence in IC courses. Also, richer data was gathered for data analysis since semi-structured interview s flexibility provided more chance for 11

the interviewer to ask more questions (follow up questions) to the interviewees. The interview processes were recorded and transcribed for data analysis. Procedures of data analysis In analyzing the data, the first step was reading all the transcripts collected from the interview sessions twice. In this step, the statements from each participant during the interview were presented. Then, content analysis according to McKay (2006) was used to analyze and identify the emerging themes (interpreted factors contributing to students silence in IC courses from interview results). Hsieh and Shannon (2005) proofed that content analysis data was a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns. McKay (2006) stated overall goal is to arrive at a list of categories that developed data from the data and capture the ideas in the data (p. 57). After I categorized the data, I was able to identify the main idea in the data. By looking at the data, the following themes emerged: students background knowledge, students lack of interest, the role of dominating peers, students language proficiency, students preparedness, and the existence of grading rewards. Therefore, the statements would not be mixed and could be divided neatly according to the themes. Findings and Discussion After reading and listening to the interview transcription, there were six factors (themes) emerged on why the students kept silent during the IC classes. Those factors were students background knowledge, students lack of interest, students language proficiency, students preparedness, the role of dominating peers, and the existence of grading rewards. We will discuss and analyze each of the topics as follow. 12

a. Students background knowledge Six participants, Esterly, Barbie, Mels, Rudy, Tanosapoetro, and Immanuel (pseudonyms) answered that background knowledge was important when they wanted to participate. Their lack of background knowledge in class made them felt embarrassed, especially if they were asked to give response or opinions. They did not want to talk too much in class with non-sense ideas. The idea could be seen as revealed in the extract below: I would participate if I already understood about the topic being discussed. Honestly, I liked to share and discussed my ideas, opinions, and knowledge with my teachers and friends. However, if I did not know about the topic, it was better for me to keep silent rather than talking about non-sense ideas. In addition, if the materials were difficult to understand, it made me reluctant to participate. (Esterly s answer, my translation) From those statements stated by one of the students above, we could notice that even a student who was willing to participate might step back if he/she did not have any background knowledge about the topic being discussed. It proved that active students could suddenly turn silent if they felt that their knowledge about the lesson being presented in the classroom was not sufficient. In addition, another student, Freddy, said that he often found some difficult part but he did not have courage to ask the teacher so he chose to keep silent. He sometimes felt empty and did not know what to do so he was reluctant to participate. Students inability to understand concepts that the teacher taught can make them silent in class. This idea was supported by Liu s (2005). In line with Liu, Bacha, Bahous, and Nabhani (2011) also said that, motivating EFL students to develop in the target language is quite complex. In many cases, these students face difficulties in learning English and 13

are often demotivated to learn. In conclusion, the discussion topics really influence on students participations. As what Lee and Ng (2009) stated, situational variables such as certain topic in which the students were less or more knowledgeable, might influence students participation in the classroom. Particularly, silent students would tend to step back and remain unseen from the teacher and their peers. b. Students lack of interest Other factors related to the cause of students silence is students lack of interest in the topic discussed in the classroom. Interesting topic can make students want to understand and participate more. Freddy, Eisari, Kevin and Nunung (pseudonyms) believed that interesting topic could attract students to pay attention and participate more. However, they would keep silent when the topic did not make them interested. Below are comments from Nunung to illustrate how interesting topics really influenced him to participate: If I am interested in the topic being discussed, I would involve in the discussion. Interesting topic made me want to know deeper. So, I would ask some questions to my friends or my teacher to answer my curiosity. Also, I felt enthusiasic in doing the activities related to the topic. On the contrary, when I found a boring or repeated topic, I choose to keep silent or focus on others (for example, playing in my mobile phone or laptop, drawing on handbook or talking with friends, etc) (Nunung s answer, my translation) From the participants statements above, it could be concluded that students silence was also triggered by their low interest toward the topic. They remained silent if they could not find something interesting to make them involved in the discussion. Nunung said that his teacher usually delivered a topic in the same way, through 14

lecturing, so he was easy to get bored. Students boredom, which was caused by the low level of interest they had toward certain topic made them perform non academically, such as playing with mobile phones, doodling on the paper, or chatting with friends. From the explanation above, we can see that not every student who is quiet in class can be categorized as silent students. A situational condition may influence the students participation in the classroom, such as their interest toward particular topic or lesson. Another noteworthy statement that could be derived from the student s extract above was about the teacher s way of teaching that might influence the level of interest that they had in the particular class. In this sense, avoiding repeated topic and using the different teaching method for the whole meeting in one intended course could also be seen as a way to prevent students silence. From the first theme and the second theme above, we can see that the topic presented in the classroom played important roles in students participation. As Tatar (2005) explained, positive attitude could be developed when the students already understood the topic, which means that the students are familiar with and have sufficient background about the topic, so that they can participate more actively in the classroom. Furthermore, Tatar also supports that lack of understanding of the materials could make them silent because when students participated they might think that their ideas were irrelevant. In addition, interesting topic can also improve student s participation in class. Thus, from the first two themes above, we can conclude that students familiarity, background knowledge, and interest toward whatever presented in the classroom have a very big contribution to students participation. 15

c. Students language proficiency In this theme, two students were found being silent because of their language proficiency problems. Liu and Kuo (1996) who states, Spoken English proficiency and knowledge of subject matters were the most influential factors contributing to a student s speaking up in class, support it. Liu (2005) also found as same as Liu and Kuo (1996) as students remain silent in class, especially the students with low English proficiency. They fear of making mistakes and being laughed at, and lack of familiarity with partners and the environment, For those reasons, Ielha and Jemmy (pseudonym) said that they were reluctant to participant since they believe that their English speaking ability was not good. They explained that they were not so fluent in speaking English, but they understood enough basic vocabularies, singular and plural, nouns, animals, colors, family members, etc. Jemmy and Ielha s answers below described why they kept silent during the class: Having awareness that my English was not as good as my friends, silence was the best way to save my face. I did not take any participation because I was shy and afraid of my friends mocking at me when I made mistakes. It was very embarrassing to me. Therefore, I think that to keep on silence was the best conditions for me rather than to have my friends laugh at my bad English. (Ielha s answer, my translation) Jackson (2002) also supports the finding of the study; Liu and Littlewood (1997) who found that lack of English proficiency and confidence caused low participation of the students in the classroom. Furthermore, Liu (2005) also proved that students with low proficiency were also lack of confidence. Ielha remembered her experience when her friends mocked her because of her wrong answer. From those bad experiences, she chose to keep silent rather than to embarras herself. Hence, it is 16

obvious that students at lower level English proficiency behaved more passively than the higher level in various classroom activities, as Xie (2009) found. From this finding, it could be concluded that if the students kept their beliefs that efforts to participate should be decreased for the reason of their fear toward humiliation, students with low proficiency would not develop as rapidly as those with high proficiency. Having known this situation, students with low proficiency had to change their beliefs and participated more actively to achieve higher proficiency levels. d. Students preparedness The next theme was students preparedness. Preparedness before the class also played an important role when the students wanted to participate. Tatar (2005) explained that reading the assigned materials, preparing notes and questions relevant to the next day s material were included in preparation. Preparation before the class made the students felt confidence when they wanted to ask questions and answer teacher s questions. She also wrote that preparation helped student to reduce anxiety. The same as Tatar, Liu (2005) also stated that, It was also found that incomprehensible input and lack of preparation before coming to the class contributed to the students reticence in the classroom. Diamond (pseudonym), stated that preparation really affected her participation. She chose to keep silent when she did not prepare anything for the class. Below is the comment by Diamond to express her feeling when she did not do any preparation before the class: If I did not prepare the materials for the next day s class, for example I did not do the exercises, read the passages, search in the dictionary for the difficult words, or answer some comprehensive questions, and have no 17

background knowledge about the materials, I would just kept on silent in class. In addition, preparation made me ready to answer and confidence enough anytime the teacher pointed me to answer a question. The teacher may felt that I paid attention to the discussion when my answer was right. (Diamond s answer, my translation) Furthermore, Diamond explained that when she came to class without sufficient preparation she would easily lost her concentration. Sometimes, in her opinion, the teacher discussed the material too fast. Preparation made her felt that she was not left behind. Then, preparedness made her ready to answer whenever teacher pointed her. It was support by Tatar (2005), who said that preparation took important roles, for both learning process and students self-confidence. She added that the students did not feel comfortable enough when expressing their ideas without doing careful thinking and preparation to assess their content value in advance. Therefore, for some students like Diamond, preparation was important since it gave them better self-confidence to participate actively in the classroom activities. From the extract above, we could see that students initial preparation before the class could give additional background knowledge to the students about what would be taught in the classroom. When the students felt that their preparation was adequate, they felt ready with all possibilities that might happen in the classroom, such as answering the teacher s questions, presenting opinions about certain topics, etc. It could be concluded that the students initial preparation had a close relationship with the first factor presented in this discussion- students background knowledge- which could enhance the confidence and the readiness of the students, not only to participate actively in the class activities, but also to receive the whole lesson effectively. 18

e. The role of dominating peers When the first four themes discussed about the inner factors from the students that might contribute to their silence in the class, the last two themes dealt with the outer factors. The fifth theme was the existence of dominating peers that influenced students participation. Mawar, Ani, and Ordinary Boy (pseudonym) felt afraid of being attacked and insulted by clever, active, and dominant peers. They also did not want their peers considered them as showed off when they replied those active peers answer (Jackson, 2002 and Miller & Aldred, 2000). Tatar (2005) in her research found that students tended to keep quiet while facing the other students who were more active and aggressive in participation behavior. The participants had the same idea about their dominant peers. The dominant peers were usually sat down in the front rows, with their groups (the same active students) and dominated the discussion. They also felt that teacher s attention only focused on them. As a result, they thought that it was useless to try to become active since they had a feeling that the teacher would ignore their effort. Mawar (pseudonym) confessed that she was a passive student. She did not like to participate in any class. She did not have enough confidence to express her opinion. However, she felt that the teacher only focused his/her attention towards active students who usually sat in the front rows. She said that a teacher had to be fair to all of his/her students. As she mentioned, one day she intended to participate in the class discussion and sat in back seat. Unfortunately, when she tried to answer by raising her hand, the teacher did not see her. As the result, she was a little disappointed not only with the active students (who did not give chances to the other friends) but also with the teacher who she thought was not fair to other students. The comment below was Mawar illustration on how peers influence students silence in IC class: 19

I was quite uncomfortable with the existence of dominating peers. When I felt one of my friend was clever or active one, I thought he/she liked to be heard and did not want to listen to the other friends opinion. I thought she/he always tried to attract teacher s attention all the time. As a result, the teacher also only focused on him/her and ignored other students. I also felt and found that that kind of friend did not like other friend participate actively. I thought keep silent was the best way for me. (Mawar, my translation) Similar with Mawar, Ani also felt uncomfortable with the active peers existence. She usually checked the class condition first before she decided to participate. She experienced if there was active peers in class, they liked to cut off, question, or argue other s students respond. Ani felt that they did not want other friends participate actively and it seemed that they could not appreciate different point of views. They wanted to be the one and only active student to attract the teacher s attention. What Ani stated in her opinion about the existence of active peers was written as follow: If my peers already dominated the discussion, I would not take any participation. I would keep on silence because I was afraid of being attacked or debated by her. Although she was a clever student, it was too arrogant to attack other friends answer. However, if my friends had the same intelligence as me, maybe I would give some opinions. (Ani, my translation) It proved that some students tended to measure their ability fist and then compared to their friends abilities before they participated in the classroom discussion. They considered it as a saver strategy rather than simply participated in the discussion, since they tended to avoid direct confrontation with their peers. Ani s explanation 20

supports Morgenstern (1992) who also found so many chances for students to participate actively, but only certain students domination found in the discussion supports their feeling. Meanwhile, Ordinary Boy (pseudonym) also said that if there was already active member who participated in class, he chooses to keep silent. Although he liked to participate actively in group or pair discussion, he liked being silent rather than being seen that he wanted to compete with the active friends, like he added below : I found out if there was already peer who dominate my class, I choose to keep silent. But if there is no friends who are active in class, I try to be active by answering my teacher s questions and giving my opinion. However, I only participated some times, not every time like active student usually did. (Ordinary Boy s answer, my translation) What Mawar, Ani, and Ordinary Boy feeling was supported by Tartar (2005) who described active students as talkative, usually spoke and delivered their personal opinions without considering the others existence. Dominating peers did not seem to give a chance to other friends to involve in the discussion. The participants often found that their dominating peers tended to cut off other speakers so the teacher s attention returned to them. Jackson (2002); Liu and Littlewood (1997) also found that lack of opportunity to use English for communicative purposes could cause students silence. Therefore, to avoid social contact or confrontation with such students, become silent is common as the best strategy used by the participants, like what Tatar (2005) proofed. f. The existence of grading rewards Besides the roles of dominating peers, rewards existence also influenced the students silence. In this context, grading rewards meant additional grade given to the 21

students when they participated actively in the classroom, such as when students answered the teachers questions, presented opinions, or even asked questions to the teacher. Debora (pseudonym) argued that teacher should give a grading reward to student who participated actively or answered the teacher s questions. Tatar (2005) on her research also said that some of the instructor found the advantageous in grading participation in terms of forcing students to prepare and participate. As it was found from Debora s comments below : As far as I know, there was no participation point in IC class. Therefore, there was no obligation to participate so that some students felt that they did not need to participate in class. If there were participation point, I would involve in discussion. I felt that without extra points, there was no difference between active and passive students. In my point of view, participation without participation grade was useless. (Debora s answer, my translation) The excerpt above showed how grading rewards existence really motivated the students participation. Students felt that their preparation, ability, and effort were appreciated with the participation point s existence. The existence of grading rewards could improve student s participation, enthusiasm, and attention during the teaching learning process. Participation grade also gave chances to students to get a better mark beside from the examination grades alone. As Tatar (2005) that supported it, stated that grading oral participation might be less threatening and more motivating to provide extra credit for oral participation. When students knew that their participation was appreciated in the form of extra grade or points, they would use this as an opportunity. Even, competition among students could be encouraged and students would be willing to state their opinions and participate in the discussion. This would create a more alive classroom atmosphere and gave opportunity for the less proficient students to both 22

improve themselves and get better grades. As the final analysis, reward existence was really needed to increase student s participations and to reduce anxiety during the learning process. Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication To summarize the whole findings and to answer the research questions on what factors contribute to students silence in IC classes? this section presented the findings on factors that contribute to students silence in Integrated Course (ED 101) in English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University. This study found that there were six major factors contributing to students silence, they were: students background knowledge, students lack of interest, students language proficiency, students preparedness, the role of dominating peers, and the existence of grading rewards. Brief summary of the six findings were described as follow. First, the level of background knowledge that the students had toward certain topics or lessons being presented in the classroom (whether they have sufficient, more, or less amount of knowledge) gave a contribution on why they kept silent during the teaching and learning process. Lack of understanding toward the materials could be a factor that contributes to students silence because they did not have confidence to participate. Facing unfamiliar topic or materials made them thought that their ideas might be irrelevant. Students were reluctant to participate when they did not have background knowledge about the learning materials. Second, students also felt that lack of interest to the topics, materials, or the lessons presented also made them sluggish to contribute. They preferred to perform other activities rather than following the teaching and learning process, such as chatting, playing with their gadgets, doodling on the modules, or chatting with friends. 23

On the other hand, participants believed that interesting topic could attract students to pay attention and participate more during their learning process (Tatar, 2005). One noteworthy finding that was found related to the students lack of interest was the fact that even an active students would feel reluctant to participate if the they had no interest toward the topics, materials, or the whole lesson. Therefore, it could be said that students lack of interest was a situational factor that might influence certain students to keep silent. Third, students silence was also the result of students low level of language proficiency. It was because students English proficiency was one of the most influential factors contributing to students silence (Liu and Kuo, 1996). Having low proficiency made the not too fluent English speakers felt reluctant to express their ideas. As a result, they feared of losing face, afraid of being mocked and laughed at, especially when they made grammatical errors. They also feared that others would contempt their bad English. Therefore, they chose to keep silent rather than embarrassed themselves. It was a face saving strategy, which they used in the classroom (Tatar, 2005). Fourth, students preparedness before the class also played an important role when the students wanted to participate. Tatar (2005) explained that reading the assigned materials, preparing notes and questions relevant to the next day s material were included in preparation. In this study, it was found that preparation in advance made the students felt confidence when they wanted to ask questions or answered the teacher s questions. In addition, preparation also helped the student to reduce anxiety since they felt that they were ready to participate in any activities happened during the teaching and learning process. It was also found that most students with insufficient amount of initial preparation before the class tended to remain silent. 24

The first four findings above were included as the inner factors that contribute to the existence of students silence. The last two findings below indicated the opposite, which were the outer factors that contributed to students silence. Fifth, the role of dominating peers also contributed to the low level of students participation. It was found that students felt afraid of being attacked, ignored and insulted by certain friends who were considered as clever or active students, those who tended to be dominant. One important finding under this theme was the result that showed how the teacher s role also contributed in the existence of dominating peers since the teacher had tendencies to only focus his/her attention toward active students who usually sat in the front rows. This condition made some students remained silent because they felt that no matter how big their effort was to participate, the teacher would not pay attention to them. The silent students also tried to avoid social confrontation with the dominating peers since they were considered cleverer and more knowledgeable so, the silent students feared of the confrontation. The last finding stated that the inexistence of grading rewards made the students felt reluctant to participate in the classroom. They felt that it was useless for them for there was no difference whether they participate of not. Tatar (2005) stated that the presence of grading rewards was advantageous to encourage participation. Students felt that their preparation, ability, and effort were appreciated. Grading rewards were proved to improve student s participation, enthusiasm, and attention during the teaching learning process. From all of the findings presented above, it showed that the existence of students silence in English classroom was caused by many factors. It was not only influenced by students inner factors such as students background knowledge, students lack of interest, students language proficiency, and students lack of initial preparation, 25