An analysis on the difference between native speaker and non native speaker in providing verbal input and interacting in the classroom

Many people believe that native speaker could teach English better than non-native speaker because they have English as their mother tongue. Interested in investigating this issue, the writer would like to conduct this study. She would like to analyze further about the language input provided by native and non- native speaker. In terms of language learning, Krashen states that the language input provided must be easy and understandable especially for young learners, while Amy Tsui Bik-may proposes the Seventeen Category System of series of exchanges between teacher and pupils in the classroom interaction. This system is used to help in identifying the verbal interaction pattern which comes in many shapes and fashions, such as repeating, recapitulating, informing, answering questions. To obtain the information, the writer chose one native speaker and one non-native speaker who teach in the same group of students. They were the students of grade 3b in Ciputra Elementary School. The interaction during the activities in the classroom was recorded in some cassettes and mini DV. The data from both research instruments were then transcribed and analyzed by using the Seventeen-Category System that has a slight modification with Indonesian utterance proposed by Lanawati Widjojo who did the previous similar study. After analyzing the data, the writer found that the verbal input provided by both native and non-native speaker did not give larger portion for the students to involve in the classroom interaction. The classroom interaction was dominated by teacher’s giving information and asking questions which then, the pupils directly answer. In her study, the writer also found an interesting finding that the native speaker has a tendency to simplify his language input. On the other side, the non-native speaker has a tendency to use more repetition than simplification. From her study, the writer concludes that the teaching to young learners require more hardworking efforts in creating a lively and interactive atmosphere which enables the learners to acquire the target language more effectively. In addition, the teaching to young learners should be focused on the comprehensible language input since the English proficiency of the learners is still low