English Book on Environmental Caring: Enhancing Students’ Achievement and Environmental Caring Awareness

Abstract

This study attempts to reveal whether or not the teaching material on the environmental caring English book developed by the researchers could enhance the students’ English competence as well as the environmental caring awareness. The design of this research was R & D (Research and Development) and in the field of testing phase, the researchers tried out the teaching material to a large scale of population, one hundred and seventy one (171) students from seven (7) schools of junior high schools in Semarang city. However, before the teaching material was used knowing teachers’ perception was needed in order to find out whether or not it fulfilled their needs viewed from its content, the performance/presentation and language use. The questionnaire contained the aspects of the content appropriateness, the performance/presentation, and the language used. Based on the teachers’ perception it shows that the content appropriateness got score of 67, 21% which belongs to a good category and 19,67 % of excellent; the performance/presentation got score of 62,63% (good) and 7,69% (excellent); and the language used got 73,38% (good) and 9,52% (excellent). So based on teachers’ perception, the book developed was in the category of good and excellent. After that to know students’ English competence before and after using the environmental caring English book, the researchers gave the pre-test, treatments, and post-test to the respondents. The results of post-test from seven (7) junior high schools were various. The result showed that the mean score of the pre-test from all seven junior high schools was 67, 17 and it was categorized as average category. The mean score of post-test from all seven junior high schools was 76, 37 and it was categorized as good category. Besides, the interview was also conducted to find out the students’ awareness of the environmental caring.. Based on the interview, it showed that the students’ awareness towards the environmental caring was increasingly better than ever before. Students did some activities such as throwing the garbage to the provided dustbin in or outside the classroom, watering the plants at the school particularly in front of their classroom, growing plants using the polybags, switching off the electricity and the air conditioner in the classroom, etc.

Key words: appropriateness, environmental caring, English book, awareness

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/63-07

Publication date: December 31^st 2019