THE USE OF INSTRUCTIONAL MEDIA IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AT MAN BANGIL

ABSTRACT Megawati, Fika. 2010. The Use of Instructional Media in the Teaching of English at MAN Bangil. Thesis, Department of English, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Nur Hayati, S.Pd., M.Ed. Key Words: instructional media, teaching English Media are considered important to assist the instruction and facilitate the students' achievement of instructional objectives. By using media, the materials can be more understandable, learning activities become more interesting, and the teachers can use various methods in their instruction. Instructional media are also very beneficial in English Language Teaching. However, English teachers seem to find difficulties in conducting the teaching process by using media effectively and efficiently. Looking at this situation, this study is interested to describe the use of instructional media in the teaching of English at MAN Bangil. This study is a descriptive qualitative research. The subjects of the studywere the English teacher and 73 students of XI IPA, consisting of 42 regular students and 31 "special students". These "special students" are those who plan to continue their study in the university. To get the data, three kinds of instruments were used: observation sheets, questionnaires, and interview guide. Having been collected, the data were then analyzed through three stages: familiarization and organization, coding and recoding, and summarizing and interpreting. The findings of the study on the use of instructional media in the two different programs at MAN Bangil are presented as follows. First, the media selection was based on the instructional objectives, the materials, class condition, and the availability of media. Second, the instructional media used in conducting English instruction varied from conventional to electronic-based media, and mostly the media implemented in the class were pictures. The teacher also used the media for many kinds of class activities. Besides individual work, the teacher used media for pair and group work. Third, the problems faced by the teacher during the use of instructional media were in the preparation and evaluation. Fourth, the media gave positive contribution to the students' attitude in the class activities. The students liked the situation of the classes since the media made the materials more understandable and stimulated the students to be active in the learning process. Based on the findings, some suggestions are given to a number of parties. First of all, the school management needs to improve the maintenance of the facilities in the language laboratory and in the classroom of special program because some of the headsets in the rooms were found to be broken, and this kind of problem obviously hinders the learning activities. Secondly, it is suggested that the English teacher make good preparation before implementing certain media to avoid waste of time and efforts in class and uses the facilities available in the special class (ICT-based media) more optimally, not only for listening activities, but also for other language skills. English teachers in general may also take benefits from this study by taking the positive points and learn from any problems discovered to improve the use of media in their English instruction. Finally, it is expected that other researchers use this research as a reference for similar studies with different subjects and broader scope.