Establishing Close Student...(Suryanto)

ESTABLISHING CLOSE STUDENTS-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE SUCCESS OF STUDENT LEARNING

Suryanto, S.Pd., M.H.Sc TESL

University of Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta

mas_surya@yahoo.com

Abstract

In tertiary education in Indonesia, teaching English faces complicated problems. Besides English being a foreign language, there are many other aspects to consider, including: place of study (public or private university), lecturers, students, methods of teaching, relationships between lecturers and students, curriculum, classroom atmosphere, and facilities. These are inter-related, creating dynamic barriers against the successful study of English. It is common knowledge in Indonesia that the vast array of private universities has second-level students because the first level students tend to choose public universities as their preferred place of study. Such a different background of the students causes private universities to face tougher obstacles in educating their students. This is most pronounced in the teaching of English.

Dealing with teaching and learning process, English language teaching will never successfully take place without any willingness to learn from the students (Govindasamy, 2003).To nurture the learning success, Establishing proximate relationship between the teacher and the students that leads to closer working relationships, preference or readiness for warm, close, and communicative interaction with others (Mc Adams, 1990 in Larsen and Buss, 2002, p.242), can be one of the key factors for the success in solving these problems. Referring to the arguments, this research is aimed at studying the ability of teachers to create a proximity that encourages closer working relationships with their students, and its effects on their success in learning English. The researcher reveals that when lecturers and teachers understand the nature of their students and can create closer working relationships between themselves and the students; this will significantly support the success of studying English in tertiary education.

Introduction

English language learners in Indonesia should solve their own contextual problems to master English well. The fact that English is a foreign language puts them in harsh condition to build atmosphere to practice the lessons learned in the classroom. Tiring lessons conducted in the class cannot be well printed in their mind as they do not use the language in their daily lives. Instead of speaking English outside the class, they speak totally different languages: Indonesian, Javanese, or other hundred types of local languages.

Besides finding problems in creating supported environmental atmosphere to practice the language, they may have to deal with their own perceptions toward English. Many students state that English language is a difficult subject. This perception hampers them to be motivated students to learn it. Consequently, whenever English is on the schedule, they tend to find the way out of the scary face, English lesson. One student says that he preferred to keep silent or follow the crowd in whatever conditions of the lessons are. If the teacher eagerly explains, he pretends to listen attentively to the teachers. He will mumble as most friends responds to the stimulated questions from the teachers and will close his mouth tightly when the teacher wants to find a right student who answers correctly his question.

Still, many learners also feel traumatic having uncooperative teachers in the early period of learning. The learners then tend to dislike the teacher with which the effect is clear that they then don’t like the lesson. Such a circumstance sometimes is still accidentally taken along through their higher education. This creates another problem in their further study because in whatever colleges or universities they study, they must learn English due to the Indonesian government has decreed that English is one of the compulsory subjects in tertiary education.

Without ignoring the roles of inputs, the context in learning English and other related matters, this paper takes focus in discerning the close-relationship between the students and teachers/lecturers, how such relationship is built, and what the impacts of the relationship are. To get vivid elaboration, it will be developed through subsections: Introduction, methods, the characteristic of the Indonesian learners, the nature of the teachers or lectures, how to build a close-relationship, the impact of close student-teacher relationship to their success of studying.

Methods

This paper is based on the years of observation at Language Training Center, University of Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The subjects are the instructors and the students in the centers

Characteristics of the Indonesia Learners

The natures of the Indonesian learners can be categorized into some categories. In terms of the students’ attitude toward the lesson, they can be divided into:

a. active students

Active students always strive to get new information by doing something with it. They are fond to attempt and experiment with new information. They ask questions when they find any trouble in learning and usually are eager to work in group to discuss the subjects learned.

b. passive students

Passsive students, on the other hand, tend to keep silent. They rarely participate well in the discussion and don’t ask questions when not comprending the lesson appropriately.

In regard to their prerequisite knowledge they have, the students can be differentiated into at least three different types (Brown, 2001:101):

a. low (novice) proficient students

learners in novice level is charactezed by the ability to communicate using the learned material in a minimum way.

b. medium (intermediate) proficient students

Students in this stage are able to create combination and recombination of the learned materials to express what are in their mind. To some degree, they can do basic commication tasks through ask and answer systems.

c. high proficient students

high (advanced) proficient students are characterised by their ability to converse in a clear way, to perform a wide variety of tasks. They can even narrate and describe a complex discourse.

In light of their preference to the type of material presented in classroom teaching and learning processes, the students may be classified into:

a. auditory learners

they tend to listen to the teachers’ verbal instruction rather than written ones. They will enjoy listening to music on listening subjects. When verbal information is given, they will attentively listen to get the point.

b. visual learners

Visual learners learns much through visual media. They prefer seeing, reading and visualising every lesson in the class. Besides, they are also able to read formula and understand them better. If proposed spoken direction to go somewhere, they usually are eager to write them down in the form of direction map.

c. kinesthetic learners

Kinesthetic learners combines moving, touching, writing, and doing something to grasp the lessons. To facilitate understanding, they will clarify it by writing them down and manipulate it into formula. They enjoy moving asking from one group to another to ask the needed information to give him full comprehension on the subjects. Their hands are generally skillful and keen to work on the lab classes.

The teachers/Lecturers

Going through educational processes, almost all teachers are aiming to be the perfect educators. Through some observations for some times, Indonesian teachers have taken their roles in the instructional process mentioned by Hammer in McDonough and Shaw (2003: 254) as controller, organizer, assessor, prompter, participant, tutors, and observer.

As a controller, teacher is responsible for what goes on in the classroom while as organizer; he should organize a range of activities that support the success of achieving the teaching-learning objectives. As assessor, prompter, and participant, a teacher respectively plays roles in giving regular feedback, encouraging the support-need students, and becoming the colleagues to practice the language. Meanwhile, as resource, tutor and observer, a teacher understands his function as a language informant, a facilitator in groups or individuals discussions, and an evaluator for the materials and methods

Bartram and Walton in McDonough and Shaw (2003: 255) give more examples of the roles of teacher as social organizer, encourager, timekeeper, counselor, educator, and language arbiter. In addition, Tudor still in McDonough and Shaw (2003: 255) discusses teacher roles in respect to the notions of the learner-centered classroom. Because of the changing roles of the teacher from teacher-centered to leaner-centered classroom, teachers should understand their new roles to prepare learners, analyze learner needs, select materials, transfer responsibility, and involve learner. When teachers understand their roles as listed above, they will be able to establish close-working relationship with students.

How to build close-students teacher relationship

In one want to make a relationship, there must be conditions that support. In other words, some requirements should be fistly fulfilled to make sure the smoth running of the relationship. In oder to ease the process of creating close relations between teacher and students, there should be:

1. Small class

Small class refers to a classrom within which the number of the students are less than 30. Having such number in every class will help the teachers to share his time to give attention to every individual. As a result, the teachers can communicate to them leading to close relationship.

2. Encouraging environment

Easily-rearranged chairs facilitate completely the teacher to move and stay close to students in need. Fixed and unmovable arrangements of chairs may hamper grouping and discussion that can create warm atmophrere to build the relationship.

3. Teacher willingness

Teacher willingness to create good relationship with students is the ultimate factor for the succes of the relationship. In some cultures, teachers as elderly should stay in distance persuming that elderly should be respected and being in a distance is assumed as being respected.

Through observations, most of the English instructors of Language Training Center, University of Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (LTC, UMY) are sucessfull in establish close students-teachers relationship. They own various ways to stay close to the students. Some prominent ways than are frequently used by them are outlined below:

a. First meeting in the semester

As a kind of regulation, every first meeting is used for introduction and so does the lecturers of LTC, UMY. The teachers use the first meeting to tell the students what to do in the semester, discuss the rule and regulations that they are going to obey, ask an introduction to every member of the class. Once the teachers are adept to run first introduction, they have made good beginning and the next steps depend on them.

b. Memorise the students’ name

Memorizing the students’ name seems like a useless effort, yet this provides significant impact to the relationship. Through my observations, students who were called by name by the lecturers respond in very good attitude. They feel respected, and honored since the teachers know his name among other friends.

c. Chatting outside the class

Chatting outside class grants informal impression. The students and teachers can relaxedly talk light topics rather than heavy load of the material in the class. Asking about the students’ boarding houses, daily routines and other light topics encourage close relation to emerge.

d. Using joke

Humor is said to be the best physical exercise that can bring about relaxing all facial muscles, recieving more oxygen in the body, and deepening the breath automatically.

e. Say hello every time meeting the students

f. Sending Email.

g. Providing certain consultation time.

The impacts of close student teacher relationship on the success of studying

Martin and Dowson (2009: 344) state taht relationships are a vital underpinning of student motivation and achievement. They further elaborate that having good relationship with the teachers, students feel the senses of supports like being liked, respected, and valued by the teachers. These can predict their expectancies for success and valuing of subject matter. The students who believe that their teacher pay attention to them will learn more (Teven and Mc Chroskey, 1997 in Martin and Dowson 2009:344). This will have good impacts on the success of the study.

Bibliography

Brown, H. Douglas. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York : Longman Inc.

Brown, H. Douglas. (2001). Teaching by Principles. New York: Longman Inc.

Martin, Andrew J. And Dowson, Martin, (2009). Interpersonal Relationship, Motivation, Engagement, and Achievement: Yeilds for Theory, Current issues, and Educational Practice. Review of Educational Research. Vol 79. 327-365.

McDonough, Jo and Shaw, Chriptopher. (2003). Materials and Methods in ELT. Oxford: Blackwell publishing Ltd.

Richards, Jack C. (2002). Curriculum Development in Language Teaching.

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