ORAL PROFICIENCY IN PAKPAK LANGUAGE: AN ISSUE IN MAINTAINING PAKPAK LANGUAGE

Abstract

Students’ low proficiency speaking in their mother language has attracted the attention of previous researchers for decades. This study was conducted in one Primary School in Desa Bintang, Sidikalang, Dairi District, North Sumatera Province. Fifteen students of primary school, year 4 -6, were involved as the participants. They were native speakers of Pakpak language just like their parents. The students were asked to describe a picture on celebrating Indonesian Independence Day in their mother language. As the generic structure of descriptive text includes identification and description, the study focuses on the students’ proficiency in these two parts. The research question is: How do the primary students describe the picture in their mother language? The results show that: a) In the identification part, no student (0%) shows speaking proficiency in Pakpaknese; Five 5 students (33.4%) spoke the identification part by mixing Indonesian and Pakpaknese. For example, ‘Kalak en sedang kibaen kerejo (they were working); and the majority, ten students (66.7%), speak in Indonesian only. b) In description part, the students produce 66 verbs/verb phrases which only 17 (25.7%) verbs/verbs phrases were produced in Pakpaknese and 49 verbs/verbs phrases (74.3%) were Indonesian verbs/verb phrases. In terms of consistency, only 1 (6.6%) student was consistent in using Pakpak verb vocabularies, and the majority 14 students (93.4%) was inconsistent, i.e some verbs/verb phrases were produced in Pakpaknese and some in Indonesian. Only 1 student could say ‘kipajekken’ (menaikkan) for ‘bendera’ which implies the potential loss of the vocabulary. c) There were 130 nouns/noun phrases produced by the students which only 26 (20%) nouns/noun phrases were in Pakpaknese and the majority 104 nouns/noun phrases (80%) were in Indonesian. In terms of consistency, none (0%) of the students could produce nouns/noun phrases consistently. d) In the production of adjectives, there were 29 adjectives were used and only one adjectives were in Pakpaknese which was ‘bagak’ means ‘good’. It implies that adjectives are the most difficult vocabulary for the students to think of. Only 12 students (80%) produced adjectives in their description and 3 students did not use any adjectives at all. From the 80% students, only 1 student (6.7%) produced it in Pakpaknese. The results imply that the students do not show good oral proficiency when speaking in their mother language. It is suggested for curriculum designers at schools and book writers to make use of the data to ensure the exposure of the vocabularies to the students to help reverse the language shift and maintain Pakpak Language.