A STUDY OF CLASSROOM INTERACTION CHARACTERISTICS IN A GEOGRAPHY CLASS CONDUCTED IN ENGLISH: THE CASE AT YEAR TEN OF AN IMMERSION CLASS IN SMA N 2 SEMARANG

Abstract

An immersion Class is a special program intended for junior (SMP) and senior high schools (SMA) in which seven subjects (Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, History and Geography) are delivered to the students in English. For these reasons, the interactions in the immersion classes are supposed to be different from the general ones. This condition motivates the writer to focus the study on the classroom interaction. The objectives of this study are to explore the classroom interaction characteristics and to find out whether or not the English classroom activities as used to teach at year ten of Immersion Class at SMAN 2 Semarang have met Walberg’s teaching effectiveness. The subject of the study was 30 students and one teacher at year ten of immersion class at SMAN 2 Semarang. The observation used three instruments to analyze the data; Flanders Interaction Analysis (FIA) to identify the classroom interactions, teaching effectiveness elements based on the Walberg’s theory, and Likert Scale to measure the students’ opinion results from questionnaire. The results of the analysis showed that the most dominant characteristic in immersion classroom interaction was the content cross. It reflected that most of the teaching-learning time was devoted to questions and lectures by the teacher. The teacher spent 57.43% of the teaching-learning time, while the students spent 22.20% of the teaching-learning time. It showed that the students were active enough in the classroom interaction. The interaction in this immersion classroom was in three-way communication; there were interaction between teacher-students, students-teacher, and students-students. The immersion classroom interaction also met the requirements of teaching effectiveness elements made by Walberg (1986). The teaching effectiveness elements used in the classroom were in the form of; academic learning time, use of reinforcement, cues and feedback, co-operative learning, classroom atmosphere, higher order questions, advance organizers, direct instruction, indirect teaching, and the democratic classroom. Based on the students’ opinion, the teaching-learning process in the classroom was good enough, however some students felt uncomfortable with the classroom atmosphere and the teacher’s discipline of time.