WOMEN’S LANGUAGE FEATURES USED BY ENGLISH TEACHER CANDIDATES

ELTR Journal, e-ISSN2579-8235, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 2018, pp. 91-98 English Language Teaching and Research Journal http://apspbi.or.id/eltr English Language Education Study Program Association, Indonesia WOMEN’S LANGUAGE FEATURES USED BY ENGLISH TEACHER CANDIDATES Elisabeth Wulan Wahyuningtyas Sanata Dharma University https://doi.org/10.37147/eltr.v2i2.99 Received 23 April 2018; accepted 29 June 2018 Abstract This paper discussed women’s language features used by female students in English Language Education Study Program (ELESP) as English teacher within teaching learning practices in micro-teaching class. The study aimed to investigate the frequency of the women’s language features and the possible reason of using the features by female students. The writer assumed that women have characteristics in speaking, including female English teacher candidates. Unconsciously, female English teacher candidates use some or all of women’s language features when they are doing teaching practice in Micro Teaching class. These features indicate that actually, if a woman or a female English teacher candidate uses most of the features, that she is not really sure about what she is uttering to the pupils in English learning activities. Besides that, a teacher should be confident in delivering materials or teaching the pupils. Those features have been discussed by Robin Lakoff in one of her books entitled Language and Woman’s place. In that book, she writes about ten language features which are usually used by the women when they are speaking. Therefore, it encouraged the writer to conduct a paper about women’s language used by female students in ELESP as English teacher candidates. This paper was a qualitative research whichthe writer used discourse analysis to conduct this paper. Keywords: micro teaching, English teacher candidate, women’s language feature Introduction Language is a part of communication system which implies regularity and rules of order. Language is controlled by some rules, like grammar, to make that language easy to be understood. According to Joseph (2004) that is cited by Edwards (2009): the early 1980s saw the appearance of important studies focusing on linguistic aspects of identity. It means that one of the ways to learn language in communities is by studying linguistics and one of linguistic aspects is sociolinguistics. In sociolinguistic, there is a topic about language and gender which is about men’s and women’s language. The matter of gender differences here is about the language used by men and women. Although men and women, from given social class, belong to the same speech community, they may use different forms of linguistics. Women are usually considered that they use weak language and excessive politeness 91 ELTR Journal, e-ISSN2579-8235, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 2018, pp. 91-98 language. According to Lakoff as cited in Talbot (2010, p. 36), typical of women’s speech is lack of confidence, weakness, and excessive politeness. They are demanded to speak as a ‘lady’ and they should speak softly and politely. Then, women tend to use Standard English more than men do. Another perspectiveabout women’s language is that women are more likely to make speech or sentences which boost listeners’ response and more actively engaged in insuring interaction than men (Fishman, 1978, p. 12). English Language Education Study Program (ELESP) students have Micro Teaching Class to develop their teaching practice and to prepare professional teacher candidates who master English language. In that course, ELESP students have to try to deliver materials to pupils correctly and confidently. It is because the way of delivering the materials will influence information that will be caught by the pupils unconsciously and it is to prepare the students to be better teacherfor the future. When teachers teach correctly but unconfidently, they will use the features more than one feature because they may feel that they need to clarify the information whether it is correct or not, or whether that information can be understood well or not by the pupils. That issue encouraged the writer to conduct a research about women’s language, especially women’s language features (Lakoff, 1973), that is used by female students of ELESP. Why female students or female teacher candidates? Based on Chudger and Sanker (2008), “being in a female teacher’s classroom is advantageous for language learning” (as cited in Robert, et al., 2013, p. 122). It is because the women are more communicative in speaking so that the language course might be interesting to be learned if the materials are given by female teachers. So, the writer chose the female students of Micro Teaching class because the possibilities in using women’s language used by female students are more than male students. It is also because based on the theory, female will have lack of confident more than male students in teaching practice and possibilities of using the features may be higher. In this paper, the writer would like to discuss further about women’s language features used by female students in ELESP as English teacher candidates. This study aims to investigate women’s language features, the frequency of the features and the possible reason of using the features by female students. The following research problems are formulated. First, what are the women’s language features in female ELESP students’ utterances as Englishteacher candidates? Second, what are possible reasons of using the features by female ELESP students’? Literature Review In the literature review, the writer provides the theoretical review related to the topic of this research. There are three parts of this section. Those are the related theories of micro teaching, women’s language, and women’s language features. 92 ELTR Journal, e-ISSN2579-8235, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 2018, pp. 91-98 Micro Teaching According to McLaughlin and Moulton (1971), Micro Teaching is a performance training method designed to isolate the component part of teaching process. The students or the trainees are trained to be good teacher by having simulation in teaching process in the classroom before they have real one in the future. Then, step by step, they will be able to develop and improve their teaching abilities to be skillful teachers. So, Micro teaching class in ELESP is also to train the students to be professional teachers. Women’s Language Language that is used by men and women are different, especially when they are speaking. Edwards states that “the eternal stereotypes of women are weak, changeable and unreliable, endlessly, talkative” (2009, p. 127). Those stereotypes affect the language that be used by women. According to Scherer and Giles (1979) as cited in Edwards (2009, p. 134) “findings within a speech community reveal that women’s speech tends to use standard language.” “Women are disempowered by being constrained to use “powerless” language, ways of speaking that simply are n (...truncated)