DESIGNING APPROPRIATE ENGLISH LEARNING MATERIALS FOR GRADE VIII STUDENTS IN THE SECOND SEMESTER AT MTs ALI MAKSUM YOGYAKARTA

Abstract

The  objectives  of  this  study  are:  (1)  To   identify  the  target  and learning needs of grade VIII students in the second semester at MTs Ali Maksum Yogyakarta and (2) To design appropriate English learning materials for grade VIII students in the second semester at MTs Ali Maksum Yogyakarta. This research is classified into Research and Development (R&D). The subjects of the research were the English club members. This research was conducted through the following steps i.e.; (1) conducting the needs analysis, (2) writing course grid, (3) writing the first draft, (4) getting expert judgment, and (5) writing  the  final draft.  The  instruments used  in this research were  the  needs analysis questionnaire to identify the students’ target needs and learning needs, and the expert evaluation questionnaire used to assess the appropriateness of the developed materials. The data from the needs analysis were analyzed quantitatively using frequency and percentage and the data obtained  from  the  materials  evaluation  were  analyzed  through  descriptive statistics. There were three units designed for this research consisted of 17 activities. They are 'Daily Activities’, ‘She Is Really Tall’, and ‘She Is Really Tall But I Am Taller’. Each unit consisted of four parts of learning activities i.e. 'Let's Observe', 'Let's Study', 'Let's Practice' and 'Let's Review'. Based on the expert judgment result, the mean score of all aspects of the three units was 3.39 categorized as "very good". This suggests that the developed materials were appropriate to be used for MTs Ali Maksum Yogyakarta.

Keywords:     Task-Based Learning Materials, Religion-based Junior High School, Appropriate Learning Materials