Exploring the Practices of English Club at a Private Islamic School in

Pontianak

Aunurrahman

, Dayang Darmila

, Ageung Darajat

, Maliqul Hafis

and Sahrawi

English Education Department, IKIP PGRI Pontianak, Jalan Ampera No. 88, Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Keywords: English Club, Joyful Teaching Activities, English Language Teaching, Interesting Traditional and Digital

Media.

Abstract: This case study aimed to explore how the English club with an integration of traditional and digital media

was implemented at an Islamic private senior high school in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The

school is located in Northern Pontianak, Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The case study utilized

participant observations and interviews to gather the data involving five selected students using purposeful

sampling to gain rich and relevant data. The field notes of the observations and transcripts of the interviews

were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results of the data analysis were then triangulated to provide valid

findings of this study. Two tools are sufficient to have a successful triangulation. The results of the data

analysis reveal that the English club, with its three phases, a variety of joyful teaching activities, interesting

traditional, and digital media could help build the students’ motivation and capacity for speaking and

vocabulary mastery even though the English club was conducted after school. Public and private schools are

recommended to have an English club with an integration of interesting traditional and digital media to help

build the students’ motivation and capacity in the English language in an exciting way.

1 INTRODUCTION

English subject is a compulsory subject at the

secondary educational level. The government

established this to allow Indonesian people to

communicate with foreign people and to compete

globally, considering that English is an international

language used to communicate worldwide. However,

learning at school with limited practice duration and

limited used of interesting digital media is insufficient

(Andersen, Humlum, & Nandrup, 2016; Chan,

Churchill, & Chiu, 2017). Students need English

tutoring outside school to master and improve their

English skills. To cope with this issue, the researchers

established a new extracurricular activity at an

Islamic senior high school in Pontianak, namely the

English club. The English club activities could

include reading, writing, listening, speaking, and

vocabulary activities. The interactions between

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7561-2579

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8433-6040

members could be practicing English by learning

vocabularies, discussing phenomena, and expressing

themselves. Then, the joyful English Club activities

could include games and interesting digital media,

such as relevant videos, slideshows, and songs from

the internet and traditional media, such as colored

paper that the students' needs (Cronqvist, 2021;

Ekawati&Muhroji, 2017; Malu & Smedley, 2016).

Some research about English club had been done.

For example, a study about English club that

succeeded to build motivation and improving the

English proficiency of the students in the context of a

senior high school in Rokan Hulu (Donal &Niati,

2018). In the same context, another study revealed

that the students had positive perceptions towards

English club where they could learn speaking skills in

a joyful manner (Melviza, Ys, &Erdiana, 2017).

Similar studies in higher education also showed that

the English club could help the students learn

Aunurrahman, ., Darmila, D., Darajat, A., Haﬁs, M. and Sahrawi, S.

Exploring the Practices of English Club at a Private Islamic School in Pontianak.

DOI: 10.5220/0012230300003738

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Innovation in Education (ICoIE 4 2022) - Digital Era Education After the Pandemic, pages 415-419

ISBN: 978-989-758-669-9; ISSN: 2975-9676

415

speaking skills in a joyful manner as well (Abdala,

2021; Eni Suriyah&Mazulfah, 2022). Unlike these

previous studies, the researchers would like to initiate

an English club in a different context, an Islamic

private senior high school in Pontianak, West

Kalimantan, Indonesia where English was not a

priority and the implementation of traditional and

digital media need improvement. Accordingly, this

study would like to explore how the English club with

an integration of interesting traditional and digital

media was implemented at an Islamic private senior

high school in Pontianak, West Kalimantan,

Indonesia. Hopefully, this study could be a reference

to develop a better English club in Pontianak, West

Kalimantan, Indonesia.

2 METHODOLOGY

This is a case study that investigates a certain

phenomenon that occurs in a case (Creswell, 2012;

Yin, 2018). Up to this point, this study explored a

single case, an Islamic private senior high school.

Using purposeful sampling, the researchers selected

the school as it is an Islamic private senior high

school, which has made this study different from the

previous studies. Another important point is that the

school has a partnership program with the

researchers’ institution, that is, IKIP PGRI Pontianak,

which would allow the researchers to gain approval

and support from the school to initiate an English

club. The school is located in Northern Pontianak,

Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. A feature of

a case study is using multiple tools to gather data

(Yin, 2018).

To do so, this case study used participant

observations and semi-structured interviews. The first

tool is participant observations that allow the

researchers to observe and participate in the teaching

sessions along with the students who participated in

the English club (see Brancati, 2018). Here, the main

researcher acted as the tutor who taught the English

club for five sessions from August to September

2022. The teaching sessions were recorded and

written on the field notes to be analyzed. To reduce

bias, the main researcher involved a teacher, Ms.

Maja (alias), from the school as a collaborator to

provide a second perspective during the observations.

The second tool is a semi-structured interview where

the researchers provided a few questions to be

answered by the students and, if needed, generated

specific questions during the interviews

(Magaldi&Berler, 2020). A pilot study was

conducted at another school to ensure the questions

were understandable before reaching the study

participants. Completed the pilot study, the

researchers conducted the interviews. Five students

who could provide rich data about English club were

selected purposefully. Another teacher from the

school, Mr. Sama (alias), monitored the interview

sessions to ensure the interview was done properly.

The interview sessions were recorded and transcribed

to be analyzed.

The researchers used thematic analysis to analyze

the textual data from the field notes and interview

transcripts. The data were coded and categorized

under major themes that were identified inductively

from the texts of the field notes and interview

transcripts (Nowell, Norris, White, & Moules, 2017).

The researchers then triangulated the results of the

data analysis from the two tools to provide valid

findings to be presented further in the following

section. To be noted, two tools are sufficient for a

successful triangulation (Flick, 2018; Fusch, Fusch,

& Ness, 2018).

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

This section will elaborate the findings of how the

implementation of the English club at an Islamic

private senior high school in Pontianak, West

Kalimantan, Indonesia was. The findings are

presented based on the results of the data analysis of

the field notes of the participant observations and the

transcripts of the interviews. Here, the exploration of

the implementation of the English club is divided into

three phases: the planning, teaching, and evaluation.

3.1 Planning Phase

The planning phase is an initial phase of the English

club. Here, the main researcher along with other

tutors conducted pre-observations to identify the

students’ needs and found that the students had

limited capacity in English language. As a result, the

main researcher along with the other tutors initiated

an English club as an extracurricular activity under

the school permission to help the students to learn

English language outside the school hours.

In this phase, the main researcher also planned the

English club activities, including lesson plans,

traditional and digital media, and joyful teaching

activities to help build the students’ motivation and

capacity in English. Certainly, the tutors and the

participants paid attention to health protocols to avoid

unnecessary issues during the pandemic of Covid-19.

ICoIE 4 2022 - The Fourth International Conference on Innovation in Education

416

3.2 Teaching Phase

The main researcher with the other tutors carried out

the practices of the English Club after school from

10.00 - 11.00 WIB. The implementation of the

English Club was conducted in five meetings, namely

the first meeting on Friday, 6 August 2021, second

meeting on Saturday, 7 August 2021, the third

meeting on Wednesday, 18 August 2021, the fourth

meeting on Saturday, 4 September 2021, and the fifth

meeting on Saturday 11 September 2021. In brief, the

implementation of the English club commonly began

with praying and saying greetings. Then, the tutor

built the students’ knowledge related to the material

that will be given and discussed the material that had

been given in the previous meeting.

The tutor continued the teaching activity by

presenting the material by using interesting

traditional media such as colored paper and digital

media such as videos, slideshows, and songs to help

the students’ learning. During the teaching activity,

the tutors also utilized games so that students would

not feel bored. Next, the tutor closed the teaching

activity by giving a quiz that had been prepared in an

oral or written form. After implementing the English

Club, the main researcher carried out an evaluation

related to the implementation of the English Club as

a benchmark to find out the shortcomings of the

implementation of the English Club.

3.3 Evaluation Phase

An evaluation phase is a phase to see the results of the

implementation of the English club that include the

obstacles and the views of the students who

participated in the English club. The main researcher

interviewed five students from class 10 about the

obstacles they faced while participating in the English

Club. The responses will be presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Obstacles in the implementation of the English

club.

Participants Responses

The materials and media used were difficul

for me

I find learning and understanding Englis

challenging because sometimes the tutors

give the material via laptop, so I cannot see

clearly. This activity is held after school, so

sometimes I do not focus on studying

anymore.

Table 1 shows the obstacles encountered by the

tutors in the implementation of the English club. The

first obstacle is the students found the materials and

media used by the tutors were difficult to be

understood. This is a common obstacle since English

language had not been the students’ favorite subject

and, surely, the students had difficulties to cope with

the teaching activities and media used, in this case,

digital media that is presented on a laptop as these

experiences and media were rarely used. The second

obstacle was the schedule of the English club, which

took place after school where the students felt unease

about learning further. Having another extra activity

after school could be a problem for the students as

they had to change their habits to learn for another

round. To deal with the second obstacle, the main

researcher and other tutors already planned joyful

teaching activities, such as games, quizzes,

interesting traditional and digital media, to build the

students’ motivation and capacity in English.

Nevertheless, the English club benefited the

students. This is indicated by the students’ responses

to the interview sessions presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Perceptions of the students regarding the

implementation of the English club.

Participants Responses

English Club is a valuable activity because it

can help students learn English outside of

school hours.

I became more daring to speak in English

because at the English Club, we are allowed

to speak in English without fear of making

mistakes.

We are allowed to speak English in front of

the class, free to ask questions about English,

so I feel that this English club, although short,

can provide motivation and improve my

English skills,especially speaking in English

(speaking).

My vocabulary increased after joining the

English Club. Previously I did not know the

names of animals, colors, and occupations in

English. Now I know and memorize them.

Table 2 reveals that the English club could be

considered a valuable activity that allowed the

students to learn English after school. The English

club also allowed the students learned English

without fear of making mistakes, providing

motivation for the students to learn English and, at the

same time, building the students’ capacity in speaking

skills and vocabulary mastery. In brief, the

researchers believe that it is reasonable for the

English club to be implemented at this private Islamic

school as it brings more benefits for the students, in

this case, to build motivation and English proficiency

Exploring the Practices of English Club at a Private Islamic School in Pontianak

417

where the learning took place after school with a

variety of activities and interesting traditional and

digital media to help the students joyfully learning the

English language.

3.4 Discussions

This study found that the implementation of the

English club could be considered successful to a

certain degree. This could be seen from the students’

perceptions regarding the English club where the

English club with its joyful teaching activities and

interesting traditional and digital media, and the

guidance from the tutors could help the students learn

English language mainly in the capacity of

vocabulary mastery and speaking skills. At the same

time, English club could also build the students’

motivation to help them learn the English language.

Motivation is important as motivation could be a

booster for the students to learn the English language

that could be beneficial for their life even after the

students completed their studies (Muslim, Hamied, &

Sukyadi, 2020; Rodríguez & Cobos, 2021). This

finding is in line with the previous studies that found

out that English club could build motivation and

proficiency of the students in the context of a senior

high school (Donal&Niati, 2018) and in the context

of higher education (Abdala, 2021; Eni

Suriyah&Mazulfah, 2022). The difference with the

previous studies is that this study investigated the

implementation of the English club with an

integration of interesting traditional and digital media

at a private Islamic school in Northern Pontianak,

Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia where

similar studies were still limited. Nevertheless, this

study also had a limitation where this study only

based its findings from participant observations and

interviews without having consideration from other

tools such as tests and questionnaires.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This study aimed to explore how the English club

with an integration of interesting traditional and

digital media was implemented at an Islamic private

senior high school in Pontianak, West Kalimantan,

Indonesia. The results of the data analysis reveal that

the English club with its three phases, interesting

traditional and digital media, and joyful teaching

activities could help build the students’ motivation to

learn the English language and capacity in vocabulary

mastery and speaking skills. The researchers

suggested that public and private senior high schools

should initiate an English club with an integration of

interesting traditional and digital media to help their

students learn the English language without being

afraid of making mistakes or having low grades. A

further study should add a proficiency test to provide

solid evidence to see the effectiveness of the

implementation of the English club regarding the

students’ English proficiency.

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