Focus on Form in 2013 Junior High School Curriculum
FOCUS ON FORM IN 2013 JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM
Windya Firdayani Ariza
English Education, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Surabaya
Win_dya_chub2y@yahoo.com
Ahmad Munir
English Education, Faculty of Languages and Art, State University of Surabaya
Munstkip@yahoo.com
Abstrak
Kurikulum 2013 adalah kurikulum yang saat ini dilaksanakan di Indonesia. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk
menggambarkan fokus guru dalam mengajar tata bahasa apakah itu berfokus pada bentuk atau makna dan
menggambarkan perasaan siswa dalam belajar tata bahasa apakah mereka merasa belajar atau tidak.
Penelitian ini adalah kualitatif. Para peserta penelitian ini adalah seorang guru bahasa Inggris dan siswa
kelas pertama SMPN 1 Gresik. Dua instrumen yang digunakan untuk mengumpulkan data yaitu: observasi
dalam bentuk rekaman video guru dan kegiatan siswa di kelas dan merekam video dari diskusi kelompok.
Ini digunakan untuk merekam cara guru dalam menggabungkan tata bahasa pada kurikulum 2013 dan
kegiatan siswa. Rekaman video dari diskusi kelompok digunakan untuk merekam perasaan siswa.
Ditemukan bahwa guru fokus pada bentuk. Dia menekankan pada aturan tata bahasa. Ditemukan pula
bahwa siswa merasa belajar tata bahasa oleh guru. Kesimpulannya, guru menerapkan focus pada bentuk di
kurikulum 2013. Itu terjadi di kelas dimana peneliti mengamat, bahwa guru menjelaskan materi yang lebih
jelas kepada siswa berdasarkan konstruk bahasa dan aturan tata bahasa. Kesimpulan lain adalah bahwa
guru tidak mengikuti aturan kurikulum 2013. Pada 2013 kurikulum adalah fokus pada makna.
Kata Kunci: Fokus pada bentuk, tata bahasa, kurikulum 2013
Abstract
The 2013 curriculum is the current curriculum that was implemented in Indonesia. This study focused its
goal to describe the teacher’s focus in teaching grammar whether it focuses on form or on meaning and
describe the students’ feeling in learning grammar whether they experienced or not. This study was
qualitative. The participants of this study were an English teacher and the first graders of SMPN 1 Gresik.
Two instruments were used to collect data namely: Observation in the form of video recording of teacher
and students’ activities in classroom and video recording of focused group discussion. It used to record the
teacher’s way in incorporating grammar in 2013 curriculum and the students’ activities. Video recording of
focused group discussion used to record the feeling of students. It was found that teacher focused on form.
She concerned on grammatical rule. It was also found that the student experienced to learn grammar by the
teacher. In conclusion, the teacher interpreted grammar in 2013 curriculum by focusing on form. It
happened in the classroom which the researcher observed, that the teacher explained the materials more
clearly to the students based on the construct of language and grammatical rule. Another conclusion is that
the teacher did not follow the rule of 2013 curriculum. In 2013 curriculum is focus on meaning..
Keywords: Focus on Form, grammar, 2013 curriculum
For English, especially grammar the point in Kompetensi
Dasar is in the third. It is Memahami fungsi social,
struktur teks dan unsur kebahasaan (Kemendikbud,
2013a). It means that the students have to achieve those
three things to make them competence in English.
According to curriculum 2006, there are three important
aspects considered when people think of language. They
are context, text and language. The purpose of social
function is the reason why we speak or write in the
context. Organization structure of the text or generic
structure is the text organization or text arrangement.
Language features or lexical that is such things as the
grammar vocabulary and connectors that we use.
INTRODUCTION
2013 Curriculum is the current curriculum that is released
on July 13th 2013 by the government in Indonesia. This
curriculum is a continuation of KBK (Kurikulum Berbasis
Kompetensi) that was released at 2004 that cover attitude,
knowledge and skill competence integrated.
2013 curriculum has four Kompetensi Inti. Kompetensi
Inti is applicable to all the subjects. It is as the bond of all
students’ competencies that are produced in each subject.
The contents are the same between English and other
subjects, but the differences are on the Kompetensi Dasar
for each Kompetensi Inti.
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Social function, organization structure and
language feature above are associated with Genre Based
Approach. Genre Based Approach is recommended
approach that is based on curriculum. Genre Based
Approach is used to conduct the classroom activity.
According to Yan (2005), this approach has become
popular since the 1980s along with the notion that
students writers could benefit from studying different
types of written text. In Genre Based Approach, teaching
and learning focuses on the understanding and production
of selected genres of texts (Lin, 2006). Learning around
texts genres has been increasingly influential in main
stream ELT in a number of situations, including primary,
secondary, tertiary, professional and community teaching
context involving native speaker of English as well as
ESL and EFL learners. It shows that Genre Based
Approach is powerful response to the deficit of process
models (Gao, 2007). Genre Based Approach starts with
the whole text as the unit in focus, rather than the
sentence. The focus on the whole implies that there is
higher level of order and patterning in language than just
in sentence-grammar at the level of discourse organization
and meta-patterning of grammatical features.
In Indonesia, according to curriculum 2006
Genre Based Approach is conducted in two cycles; they
are spoken and written cycle. It is because at the end of
spoken cycles, students are expected to be able to produce
monologue in the same of genre that they are learning.
Similarly, at the end of written cycle every students must
be able to produce written text of genre that they are
learning (Astaman, 2010). For instance, if the genre is
narrative, at the end of written cycle every student must be
able to write a narrative text or to tell a narrative story. It
is also strengthened by Callaghan(1988), that genre is
should be classified to be two aspects. First, genre is
classified as spoken genre and the second genre is
classified as written genre. It means that genre as spoken
has the reason as language is said to be functional,
because its organization quite fundamentally reveals the
purpose for which any natural language came. Meanwhile
genre as written has reason as language is to be
understood as text, any meaningful passage of language
that serves some social purpose.
Grammar commonly taught based on focus on
form and focus on meaning. Focus on form means the
students have to aware on grammatical form of the
language. According to Long (1997) Focus on form is a
method for composing sentence based on the right pattern.
It promotes the acquisition of specific language form such
as grammar and the meaning of words in the meaningbased second language activity. Doughty & Williams
(1999) state that state that a focus on the form (FonF) of
the language consists of drawing the learner's attention to
the linguistic features of the language. Thus, a focus on
form approach would allow for the second language (L2)
learners to concentrate on the grammatical rules and
construct of the language. For example, a student is given
a text in the L2. He or she would focus on form if they
were asked to analyze the text in terms of how it
represents the rules of the language. Other reason, she
wants to develop the language knowledge and language
acquisition. This condition proves the theory from Long &
Robinson (1999) that focus on form as an occasional shift
of attention to linguistic code features by the teacher
and/or one or more students triggered by perceived
problems with comprehension or production. He also
states that Focus on form is a basis of Interaction
Hypothesis and it emphases the importance of interaction
between learners and other speakers in order to develop
their language knowledge. It has to depend on the
structure. Focus on meaning would be concerned with
getting L2 learner to concentrate solely on understanding
the message being conveyed. Focus on meaning means
emphasize on the meaning of a language. It is limited to
focus on meaning with no attention paid to form at all. It
means that it excludes attention to the formal elements of
the language (Doughty & Williams, 1999). Thus, focus on
meaning would be concerned with getting the L2 learners
to concentrate solely on understanding the message being
conveyed. It does not allow for any attention whatsoever
to the linguistic code of the L2.
According to Kemendikbud (2013b), the
scientific approach include the finding of meaning,
organization and structure of an idea or ideas, so that the
student learners gradually learn how to organize and
conduct research. Scientific approach emphasizes
students' ability in discovering knowledge based on
experiential learning, laws, principles and generalizations,
so it provides an opportunity for the development of
higher order thinking skills. Thus students more
empowered learners as a subject of study that should play
an active role in hunting down the information from the
various sources of learning, and teacher educators more as
an organizer and facilitator of learning. As a result,
grammar should be taught by focusing on meaning.
In the 2013 curriculum, the teaching learning
process uses scientific approach which has activities such
as observing, questioning, experimenting, associating and
communicating. It has connection with Genre Based
Approach. The materials in 2013 curriculum use Genre
Based Approach as a learning focus through
understanding of the social function, the text structure
elements - linguistic elements based on the level of
difficulty, from the simple to the complex. Text structure
refers to the ways that authors organize information in
text. It can be descriptive text, narrative text and etc.
Focus on Form in 2013 Junior High School Curriculum
linguistic elements can be defined as grammatical rule or
structure. Grammar here is in the stage of modeling of
text. It is included in Based Approach in activity to do
presentation and practice activities relating to the
grammatical feature of the text. It can be concluded that
scientific approach and genre based approach interrelated
each other to implement teaching learning process in 2013
curriculum.
In 2013 curriculum, people are curious about
how the teacher implement grammar teaching in
classroom. It is the current curriculum, so people have not
understood yet how the rule and the system of the
curriculum, whether those are the same or not. So, teacher
faces burden to determine when and how grammar will be
taught. As there as has been no study on this problem, this
study attempts to fill in this gap. It was aimed to
investigate and to discover how teacher incorporates
grammar in following 2013 Curriculum.
Based on the background of the study above, the
questions of the problem are formulated as follows:
1. Is this incorporation considered focus on form or
focus on meaning?
2. Through this kind of incorporation, do the
students feel that they have learned English
grammar?
in the picture. They are instructed to make sentences with
the correct grammatical construction. For example, they
had to know about introductory ‘there’, present tense and
present continuous tense. The teacher did not explain
generic structure of descriptive text, but she concerned on
making sentences based on grammatical rule.
The first data was the teacher and student’s action in
the classroom. It was done by using video recording that
recorded what the teacher and the students did in the
classroom. It recorded teacher and student’s activities,
what materials that the teacher taught and how the
teacher’s way in teaching grammar to the students
whether it is focused on meaning or focused on form. It
was held on November, 18, 25 and 27 2013 in SMPN 1
Gresik. The video was taken during an hour. After taking
video recording, the data was analysed by transcribing it
into the words.
The second data were the student’s experience in the
classroom whether they feel learned grammar or not. The
data was collected by doing focused group discussion. It
was taken use video recording. The duration was not more
than two minutes. Focused group discussion here means
that the researcher divided the students into group. There
were thirty students in the classroom. The researcher
divided them into four groups and each group consist of
eight students. The member of group was taken randomly,
which is male and female students were mixed. After
dividing groups, the researcher began to ask some
questions. The questions were semi structured. There were
three questions as a foundation, and there were some
complement questions to develop the information from
the students. The questions are: (1) Kalian tau apa itu
grammar? (2) Selama ini sudah belajar grammar? (3)
Grammar apa saja? (4) Menurut kalian grammar itu
susah atau gampang? (5) Diterangkan langsung atau
diterangkan jika kalian ada kesalahan?
After collecting the data, the analysis of the data
was carried out. The first data was from teacher and
students’ action. The teacher’s way of teaching was
identified in this study. It was described in the form of
transcribes of observation recording. The thing that will
be underline was when she incorporates grammar in the
class based on 2013 curriculum. To make the process of
identification was easier, the area of shows the teacher
incorporates grammar was underlined. First, describing.
Here, was describe about what teacher did in the
classroom, classified what she did into focus on form and
or focus on meaning and described the learners did in the
classroom when teacher were explaining the material.
Second, analyzing and interpreting. The teacher did in the
classroom will be analyzed and interpreted here. Besides,
it was also include what the learners experienced in the
classroom when the lesson was running. Last, is drawing
METHODS
In this research, qualitative design was used for some
reasons. First, researcher wanted to describe the research
with words than numbers. The researcher wanted to know
how the teacher interpreted grammar in 2013 curriculum
whether it was focus on form or focus on meaning. The
researcher also wanted to investigate the feeling of the
students, they experienced to learn grammar or not.
The subjects of the research were an English teacher
and the first graders of SMPN 1 Gresik. There are six
English teachers there. The researcher observed one of
them and the teacher that the researcher observed was a
female teacher. She was chosen as the reason she teaches
in the first grade that implement 2013 curriculum. There,
there are eight classes of the first grade. The class that the
researcher was observed were G and H class. Each class
consist of thirty three students. These subjects were
chosen under the consideration that the researcher
followed the schedule of the teacher and the materials that
were she taught. There was no certain choice of class. The
most important was the first graders. In SMPN 1 Gresik,
2013 curriculum is now implemented and the teacher has
been trained in facing 2013 curriculum. Therefore, the
teacher and the first graders were chosen.
The material that was observed was descriptive text
about things around. The students had to describe things
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conclusion. It focuses on teacher’s focus of teaching.
Whether focus on for and or focus meaning. Whether or
not the learners feel learnt.
The second data was student’s feeling of experienced
in learning grammar or not. The students’ feeling of
learned grammar data which were obtained from focused
group discussion were analyzed by some procedures.
First, transcribing the video recording. It was from the
verbation of the students. In other words, it was from
students’ utterances when answer the researcher’s
question. Second, is coding the data. Here, the researcher
coded the data from the transcription. The thing that was
underlined was the student’s answer about their feeling in
learning grammar whether they feel learned or not. Last,
is interpreting the data. The students’ utterances that
shown the student’s feeling were interpreted and those are
combined with the result of observation.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
It was found that the teacher interpret teaching
grammar in the focus on form. These are the examples of
sentences that shows focus on form:
“Jadi kalau misalnya eraser, window, book, and other
we can call the noun”.
“So, in this chapter and meeting we will learn about
noun, adjective and verbs”.
“So, bagaimana cara bertanya, mendeskripsikan
benda itu yang akan kita pelajari. Misalnya, Feli I see
you have new watch”.
“Ok. Umbrella. I have my colorful umbrella. Satu
lagi. I love my pink bag. It has beautiful garden. Bisa
dilihat disini bagaimana mendeskripsikan things,
bagaimana menempatkan adjective”.
“Structurenya masih salah ini. Yang benar adalah I
love my full color shoes”.
“There are many children in a playground. Ok? And
there are many people in the market, but in my house
there is one person. Ok ya? Paham?”.
From three times observations, the teacher was
consistent in focused on form. Focus on form means that
the students have to aware on grammatical form of the
language. It can be as like composing sentences based on
the right pattern. It was proven in the explanation above
that the teacher gave more explanations about the pattern
of present continuous tense, composing sentence based on
the right structure about subject, plural and singular, verb
and also noun and introductory there. The teacher gave
some example of pattern and structure of some grammar
to the students. She repeated several times about what she
wanted to explain until she thought that the students
understand the materials. It also can be seen from the
teacher’s activities in the classroom that she walked
around the class to check students’ works and explained
something that the students did not understand. It showed
that the teacher wanted to make students comprehend the
pattern based on the grammatical rule. In other word, the
teacher interprets grammar teaching by focusing on form.
It is found that what the teacher did in the classroom
showed that she was interpreting grammar in classroom
by focusing on form. It is proven in the result of
observation that the teacher teaches grammar by giving
the grammatical rule that contains the structure and
pattern to compose a sentence. She explained the
grammatical rule to the students. The teacher applied it in
the classroom maybe as the reason she wants to make the
students focus on grammatical rule that can make them
compose the sentences in the right pattern.
It is in line with the theory of Long (1997) that Focus
on form is a method for composing sentence based on the
right pattern. It promotes the acquisition of specific
language form such as grammar and the meaning of words
in the meaning-based second language activity. Doughty
& Williams (1999) state that a focus on the form (FonF)
of the language consists of drawing the learner's attention
to the linguistic features of the language. Thus, a focus on
form approach would allow for the second language (L2)
learners to concentrate on the grammatical rules and
construct of the language. For example, a student is given
a text in the L2. He or she would focus on form if they
were asked to analyze the text in terms of how it
represents the rules of the language. Other reason, she
wants to develop the language knowledge and language
acquisition. This condition proves the theory from Long &
Robinson (1999) that focus on form as an occasional shift
of attention to linguistic code features by the teacher
and/or one or more students triggered by perceived
problems with comprehension or production. He also
states that Focus on form is a basis of Interaction
Hypothesis and it emphases the importance of interaction
between learners and other speakers in order to develop
their language knowledge.
In the classroom, the students feel something about
what they got. For getting the information about what they
feel about what they learnt, the researcher make focused
group discussion. In the classroom, there are thirty three
students. The researcher divided the students into four
groups. Each group consists of about eight students. The
members of groups were taken randomly. Male and
female students were mixed. It depends on the students
Focus on Form in 2013 Junior High School Curriculum
“Alhamdulillah gampang. The last group said “gampanggampang susah”. So, it can be concluded that they feel
easy to learn grammar and there is no difficulties to
received materials.
It was also found from focused group discussion that
the students feel learned grammar during this semester.
The result showed that almost all of students experienced
it. They also said that during this semester, they have been
taught grammar by the teacher. It is proven in the
discussions.
“Jadi pernah diajarkan grammar sama Bu Shofa?”
“pernah”
itself. After dividing groups, the writer began to ask some
questions. The questions were semi structured. There were
three questions as a foundation, but there were some
complement questions to develop the information from
the students. The conversation did not take long time. It
was not more than two minutes length. The questions are:
(1) Kalian tau apa itu grammar? (2) Selama ini sudah
belajar grammar? (3) Grammar apa saja? (4) Menurut
kalian grammar itu susah atau gampang? (5)
Diterangkan langsung atau diterangkan jika kalian ada
kesalahan?.
From focused group discussion, it can be concluded
that not all of students understand what grammar is. From
four groups, two groups showed that the members did not
know the meaning of grammar and two groups showed
that the members know the meaning of it. It is proven in
the answer of the second group “Grammar itu apa bu? ak
taunya gamer”. The answer of the fourth group is
“Pernah denger grammar, tapi gak tau artinya itu apa”.
It showed that they have not understood the meaning of
grammar. When researcher asked the second question,
which is “Selama ini sudah belajar grammar?” the result
showed that almost all of students experienced it. They
also said that during this semester, they have been taught
grammar by the teacher. It is proven in the discussions.
“Jadi pernah diajarkan grammar sama Bu Shofa?”
“pernah”
“Waktu ngajarnya itu Bu shofa langsung diterangkan
di depan papan tulis atau berdasarkan kalian baca-baca
buku?”
“Langsung diterangkan di papan tulis”.
But in the third group, there are different answers from
members. Some members said that they have been taught
grammar, and some members said that they have not been
taught grammar yet by the teacher.
When the researcher asked what kind of grammar that
they have received in this semester, the result showed that
during this semester they got some grammar explanations
from the teacher. The first group said that they have been
taught adjective, pronoun and verb. The second group said
that they have been taught Irregular verb. The third group
said that they have been taught present tense and
continuous tense. The last group feel be taught subject,
verb and object. So, it can be concluded that they have
been received simple present tense and present continuous
tense.
After receiving those kinds of materials, they
concluded that grammar is easy. It is proven in the result
of discussion that each group felt grammar is easy to be
learnt.
“Menurut kalian, grammar itu gampang apa susah?”
The first group said “Gampang”. The second group
goup said “Lumayan gampang”. The third group said
The result is in line with the theory of Sinclair
(2000)’s statement that grammar is easy to understand. He
also affirms that grammar is superficially easy to observe.
Collins et.al (2009) argue that grammar can be easy and
difficult. It depends on input that is received by students.
In summary, the result showed that teacher interpreted
grammar teaching by focusing on form. It can be seen
from the teacher activities in the classroom when the
lesson was running. The teacher explained it clearly and
concerned on grammatical rule. Long (1991) strengthens
this condition by stating that focus on form concern on
structures, notions and lexical items where language is
treated primarily as an object to be studied and practiced.
By seeing the teacher’s activities, it showed that students
experienced learned grammar by the teacher. It also can
be seen from focused group discussion result.
CONCLUSIONS
Based on results and discussion, it can be
concluded that the teacher interpreted grammar in 2013
curriculum by focusing on form. Focus on form means the
students have to aware on grammatical form of the
language. It happened in the classroom which the
researcher observed, that the teacher explained the
materials more clearly to the students based on the
construct of language and grammatical rule. She
demanded the students to acquired grammar naturally
attention on the specific language. It is based on the
theory of Long (1991) that it refers the traditional teaching
that concern on structures, notions, and lexical items
where language is treated primarily as an object to be
studied and practiced. The teacher implemented focus on
form in grammar teaching probably as a reason she
wanted to make her students can compose the sentences
with the right pattern. Besides, by interpreting focus on
form she expected that her students can develop language
knowledge and language acquisition.
Another conclusion is that the teacher did not
follow the rule of 2013 curriculum. In 2013 curriculum,
the approach of teaching learning process is
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Communicative Language Teaching. Communicative
language teaching is an approach to language teaching
that emphasize interaction as both the means and the
ultimate goal of study. It can be focus on form or focus on
meaning. But in 2013 curriculum, it is focus on meaning.
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