ENGLISH LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT
(A case study of the tenth grade students of SMA N X )
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
English is an important language. It becomes the international communication
language. In Indonesia, English is the first foreign language. Because English is
an important position, it is taught from the fourth grade of elementary school in
some schools as an alternative subject and from the first grade of junior high
school (SMP) up to third grade of senior high school (SMA) as one of the
compulsory subjects. The students of SMP and SMA are hoped to have enough
competence in English because it becomes a subject tested in UAN (Ujian Akhir
Nasional). The result of UAN has been satisfactory. This is supported by the fact
that UAN English score of SMP and SMA are successful. According to Bambang
as quoted from http://www.depdiknas.go.id (2006) explains that average score of
UAN in English is 7.54. It is higher than UAN standard which is 4.5. It means that
the score is satisfactory, but improvement is still needed to achieve the best result.
In order to reach the goal above, many experts of education try to reveal
the problems of English learning. To overcome the problems, they try to carry out
different attempts to improve English teaching learning processes. The
curriculum, approach, method, and technique of English teaching are always
revised and improved in order to meet the goals of the teaching learning process.
Sofiah (1998: 5) states that the success of the English teaching learning
processes at schools depends on the teachers for they are key figures in the classroom. It is considered that if the teachers do not have good competence in the
teaching learning process, the students will not achieve the objectives. In addition,
Sofiah states that the source of the problems is not the teacher, but also the
institution related to education. It is assumed that this institution is also
responsible to the results of teaching learning processes since its output is related
to the results of teaching learning processes.
Citrawati (2002: 8) states that there is another factor that may influence the
students' achievement: students' factor. The students as subjects in the learning
process have different characteristics. Each student differs in intelligence, sex,
socioeconomic background, motivation, attitude, and learning strategies.
Based on this view, the writer is interested in knowing what factors that
actually influence in learning English. This time, the focus of the study is on
students’ creativity. Creativity can be defined as thinking ability in managing a
problem referring to his experiences or knowledge. Creativity will make the
students sensitive to the problem they have, looking for the solutions and giving
the ideas to solve the problems in learning. For example, in English learning, the
students always find the difficulties although the teacher has explained the subject
and given information has been completed. The students having high creativity
tend to find the difficulty they have and look for the solution. The creative
students will have many alternatives in solving the difficulties in English learning.
The writer predicts that the students having high creativity are able to get better
achievement in English learning
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