INTEGRATING CHARACTER BUILDING INTO ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING PRACTICE IN INDONESIAN CLASSROOM

Indonesian government has just made great changes in its national curriculum. One of its changes is the emphasis on character building. For Indonesian teachers, this new policy is quite a challenge. In previous curriculum, character building was treated as a hidden curriculum and not explicitly part of scoring system. The new curriculum explicitly states the characters which must be developed by teachers. Finding the basis to perform teaching process to achieve the improvement of language knowledge, skills and characters is indeed needed. An action research was then conducted. In one cycle, the research proved that the implementation of actions integrating character building into teaching and learning process could significantly improve not only students‟ attitude but also their knowledge and skill on expressing things happening in English. It means that teachers can work on the three important aspects; namely attitude, knowledge and skill together. In other words, teachers could kill two birds with one stone.


INTRODUCTION
This paper is about a model of teaching practice implemented at a junior high school by integrating character building and teaching knowledge and skill. This is done to cope with the problem of teaching characters in English learning. As known widely that Indonesian 2013 curriculum considers character building is as important as teaching knowledge and skill. Students" performance in characters is part of the scoring system. Therefore, teachers are responsible of conducting teaching activities which cover the three aspects in education. Integrating the three aspects is an alternative. It means that learning activities should reflects the multiple purposes of teaching; namely guiding the students to possess good characters, master the knowledge, and perform the targeted skills. Thus, a model of teaching which is designed based on the educational philosophy is indeed needed.
This study then was conducted to find the principle bases for integrated teaching practice in English classroom as well as trying to find whether this model could show a satisfactory result. A classroom consisting of 39 students in a school implementing 2013 curriculum located in Bogor Regency was chosen as the object of the study. They understand the requirements of curriculum but they do not know how to behave so as to meet those targeted characters.
The following parts present the related literature review, research methodology, findings, discussion, and conclusion.

LITERATURE REVIEW
This study is mainly talking about English language teaching; however, it is related also to education in general. In formal education context, teachers are not only responsible for teaching a subject but they must also lead the students of having good characters.
In Indonesian context, there are eight characters that should be possessed by junior high school students; they are discipline, honest, care, responsible, respect others, self confident, team work, and love peace. Therefore, this part discusses some theories related to the issues of the study; they are theory of learning, language learning theory, character education, and integrating character building in English teaching and learning.

Theory of Learning
The theory of learning adopted in the curriculum is derived from the concept of learning proposed by Bruner, Piaget, dan Vygotsky. Bruner"s theory is also called discovery learning (Legge, 2000, p.31) which proposed four primary concepts for learning. It is said that an individual could learn and develop their thought using their mind. By developing his mind he will get an intelectual satisfaction which then becomes an intrinsic motivation. Therefore, an opportunity to learn is very important. In this way his memory retention is reinforced.
Based on Piaget in Legge (2000, p. 11), learning is related to the formation and development of schemata. Using schema, an individual adapt himself intelectually to his surroundings. Schema are developing using process called assimilation and accomodation.
Vygotsky ( Legge, 2000, p. 15) proposed that learning takes place when an individual is trying to accomplish learning tasks which are still in his capacity area which is called zone of proximal development. People around who have greater competences would help the learners reach the higher rank of his capability.
Based on the three concepts, it can be stated that learning situation is very important. It really affects the learning achievement. The situation of learning should provide learners with all necessary conditions that the process in mind is operating. In other words it should be challenging, dynamic, but still in the grasp of learners" capability.

Language Learning Theory
There have been many theories proposed dealing with how language is learnt. One of the important theories is communicative approach. Littlewood (1981, p. x) emphasizes what characterizes this approach is considering language not only in term of structure but also communicative function that it performs. Thus learners should be given a lot of opportunity to use the language for communicative purposes. It should be task based activities, the real life communication, and oriented on the meaningful purposes of communication.
This approach is usually related to communicative competence. The practice of teaching and learning is meant to develop learners" communicative competence. Based on Celce-Murcia"s model on communicative competence ( 1995, p.10 ), it is called discourse competence which comprises of four supporting components; namely linguistic , social cultural, actional, and strategic competences. Based on the concept, language teaching practice should be designed as to invite students to use pragmatic, authentic, functional, and meaningful language. The accuracy on grammar and pronunciation is seen as the completion of the technique of communication. Learners are reinforced to use productive and acceptable language in spontaneous and natural context.
Meanwhile, based on Larsen-Freeman (1986), the goal of language learning using communicative approach is developing the oral and written communicative competences. Based on the theories, language learning should reinforce interaction. Classroom activities should be based on students" real life experiences so that they can talk about themselves using the acceptable forms of language.

Character Education
Character is very important in education. The Indonesian Education Laws no 20 year 2003 states explicitly that education should make learners have good characters. It should pursue individuals to believe in God, have good characters, be creative and autonomous. Not only that, the importance of character is also stated explicitly in four pillars of education based on UNESCO. The four pillars are Learning to know, learning to do, learning to be , and learning to live together. It means that human beings are educated to be able to master not only knowledge -Learning to know and skills -learning to do but also characterslearning to be , and learning to live together.
Thus character education should be the main issue in learning, especially in formal education. The main education activity in schools takes place in the classrooms. Teachers must pay a very important role. Classroom activities then should reflect teachers" effort to stimulate students" development in knowledge, skill, and characters.
However, among the three aspects of learning, character should be the priority. As mentioned by Gregoire (2015) that Dr. Arthur Poropat (1991) from Griffith University's School of Applied Psychology stated, "And a student with the most helpful personality will score a full grade higher than an average student in this regard." It means that good character would trigger off students" learning mastery. Poropat also said, " And since personality may be more malleable than intellectual capability, helping struggling students to cultivate beneficial personality traits -particularly intellectual curiosity and a strong work ethic --may be a powerful means of improving academic performance." Based on that, the learning activities should be oriented on the improvement of personality traits. Having good characters would make the learners learn better. Based on Simonson & Maushak (2001, p. 10), in Miller "mediated instruction does contribute to desired attitudinal outcomes in learners, especially when the instruction is designed specifically to produce certain attitudes or attitude changes". It means that teachers could create an instructional design to cultivate certain personality traits.
Further, Simonson & Maushak as stated by Miller also suggested that the instruction should be realistic, relevant, stimulizing, presenting new information, inviting students" emotion in a planned ways, and giving students" chances to participate through discussion and critics. Still in Miller, Smith and Ragan (1999) emphasizes the character teaching on three approaches; namely demonstrating, practicing, and reinforcement; while Zimbardo & Leippe ( 1991 ) also admit that positive attitude should be reinforced unless the learners would not make any changes.
Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues (Brown: 143), stated that there are five processes needed to cultivate the personality traits. They are receiving, responding, valuing, organization of values into a system of belief, characterizing by value. It means that teaching characters should be performed continuously and it needs long process. It progresses through stages. Teachers may refer to some theoretical bases in their teaching practice dealing with personality traits. Some theoretical bases were resumed by Miller as follows. Learning at a given level depends on prior learning at lower levels In this study, the writer takes those theories in practice. There are three important actions implemented in this study; they are habit formation, relating lesson materials and living values, and reflecting on learners" own character. The implementation of habit formation is based on behavioral theory which suggests the intervention could be in the form of having learners act out behaviors consistent with desired attitude and provide positive reinforcement. Relating lesson material to living values gives learners opportunity to give judgment, acceptance or rejection, and selection of choices. Since it is done in a discussion, it gives learners" understanding that certain values are accepted within a community. This is in line with the cognitive and social based theory of learning. The third implementation is reflecting. This is in line with the functional base theory of learning. Simonson and Maushak (2001, p.996), as stated by Miller, mentioned that there are not many researches on characters. "It is obvious that attitude study is not an area of interest or importance in mainstream instructional technology research. Of the hundreds of studies published in the literature of educational communications since [1979] less than 5% examined attitude variables as a major area of interest".

Relevant Studies
It also happens in Indonesian context. This study reviewed two related previous studies. First is conducted by Rusmulyadi and his collages (2010). He wanted to explain how the educational and communicative system could affect the learners" characters in a female boarding school. The study was conducted at an Islamic boarding school using qualitative descriptive method. The study found that communication system is very important in an institution to make its members have certain characters. The study emphasized that the learners" good deeds is not by chance but it is built through any systematic activities pursued in the institution. Islamic boarding school had some models. Those models had proved to succeed the character building.
Other study was conducted by Eny Purwandari and Purwati. They investigated how the impact of character building to learners" emotional quotient.They took ten to twelve year respondents. The data was picturing how the children in controlled and experimental class got different treatment on the values education in the program. Analyzed using "signal test" proposed by Wilcoxon and test "u" proposed by Mann Whiney, the study found out that education values proved to improve learners" intelligent quotient.
This study is different from the previous studies reviewed above. As a teacher, the writer is concerned on finding the ways to achieve the three aspects of teaching at once. Those aspects are how to improve students" personality traits, language knowledge and skill. Thus this study is trying to try a teaching design which integrate the three aspects . Not only that, this study also tries to find out whether integrating character building into English teaching would not only improve students" character but also their knowledge and skill in English.

METHOD
This action research is qualitative descriptive research. Based on Cohen and Manion (1985), action research is characterized as situational, collaborative, participatory, and evaluative. It is conducted to add "the practitioner"s functional knowledge of the phenomena he deals with" (Cohen and Manion, 1985 p. 208-9). The data could be in the forms of observational and behavioral data ( ibid, p. 215).
The study was conducted at a classroom of a junior high school in Bogor Regency in which the teaching of character was emphasized. There are 39 students in the class. Based on the pre observation, the students understand the requirements of the curriculum which demand them to perform the targeted characters however they did not show the intended characters yet, for example, there are still many students forget to bring their text books, and other learning instrument, greet each other, finish the task on time, and many others.
The procedures of the research were first, giving learners pre test on the material both for language knowledge and skill and questionnaires on reflecting their values understanding and practice. Then, some actions were implemented based on the theoretical review. There were three meetings not including the pre test and post test. In every meeting, the class was given certain treatments as designed in the lesson plan and was observed. Post test was administered after the third meeting. All of the information were used as the data to explain how to integrate character building in English learning and how effective it is to succeed the achievement of the three aspects of teaching; namely personality trait, knowledge and skill.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
There are two kinds of data in this study. First data is the qualitative data taken from observation on the classroom process. Second data is the quantitative data on students" character improvement, language knowledge and language skill.
Integrating Character Building into English Teaching and Learning Practice in Indonesian Classroom (Nanik Retnowati) 29 There are three important principles applied in integrating character building and teaching and learning English. First is habit formation. Second is relating material to values. Third is reflection. There are some activities that the learners do for habit formation, namely saying prayer, showing care, greeting each other, asking permission, and actively participating in the classroom activities. When discussing the material, the students were invited to always relate the material to some aspects of personality. For reflection, students were asked to remark on their own attitude and their friends". Each student was asked to notice the attitude"s performance of three students in the classroom. This was done by putting score rated 1-5 in column informing certain personality traits.
The classroom activities in each meeting were conducted based on the following procedures: teacher entered the classroom, students greeted, prayed, then prepared the learning instrument. Teacher reminded students to show their care on the cleanliness of the classroom, students picked up litter found around their seat. One student checked the students" learning instrument and noted those who did not bring the books.
Teacher explained the target of learning not only on knowledge and skill, but also the characters that the students should perform that day. The teacher gave students character scoring sheet for friends and themselves so that in every meeting they can make reflection on their own behavior as well as those performed by their friends. This is aimed to make them always aware that good character performance is something which is not apart from other aspects of teaching and learning activities. Next activity was introducing learning materials. Teacher persuaded the students to take part in this activity. Teacher noted students who were participating during the lesson discussion.
The following table shows students" behavior based on the observation When entering the classroom, there are still some plastics and cut paper on the floor When entering the classroom, the floor is already clean but some students still litter in the drawer When entering the classroom the floor is already clean and no litter in the drawer Responsibility Three students did not bring the text book, only five students bring dictionary All students bring text book, ten students bring dictionary All students bring textbook and 20 students bring dictionary Discipline Five students accomplish the task on time Ten students accomplish the task on time More than twenty students accomplish the task on time Self confidence There were only some students participating in the classroom There were more students participating in the classroom There were many students participating in the classroom The following is the result of students" pre test and post test on their own character reflection and their friends", English knowledge and skill. The characters being developed are politeness, care, honesty, discipline, responsibility, team work, and love peace. The highest score was on responsibility especially the completeness of bringing the school instrument. The lowest was honesty, especially admitting students" weaknesses in studying. The data shows that in average the students" character reflection on their own and their friends" is increased up to 12%.
The following is the data on students" achievement on their knowledge. There are three criteria for scoring; namely knowledge on vocabulary, text structure, and grammatical accuracy. The table shows that in average students make improvement both on knowledge and skill. Students" knowledge improves up to 12% and 19% for skill.
Besides those findings, this study also identifies that students can describe the personality more detail. Given opportunity to make free reflection on the characters that they have learnt so far, they can explain the kinds of characters and the examples that represent the characters they mentioned. For example, they claimed to have learnt care, they mention what they have done to show care such as looking the cleanliness of their surroundings, paying attention to their friends, helping their friends, etc.

Discussion
The implementation of character building is indeed very challenging. Based on Anderson, L.W. dan Krathwohl, D.R. ( 2001), there were five stages in the development of affective domain; namely receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and characterizing values. The behaviors performed in receiving stage is following, taking, the behaviors in responding stage is agreeing, contributing, enjoying and feeling contented with the values. In valuing stage, learners may be assuming, believing, clarifying, emphasizing, and contributing through many different activities in regards to the values learnt. In this way, learners may come to the next stages; recognizing and characterizing values. In this study, it is believed that teachers can interfere the process in three stages. It means that all of treatment could be oriented to follow the three stages. Thus, habit formation process was assumed to give benefit to learners" understanding on character building. In the first stage, learners are guided to know and like certain characters. Therefore, learners are made accustomed to performing positive characters by asking them to do certain activities continuously. On the second stage, learners are guided to love, enjoy, select, and perform the characters. Therefore, they are exposed to the material related to some aspects of character. It means that when they are discussing the material, they should always be made aware of how such things related to values introduced to them. On the third stage, learners are guided to clarify and believe on the values. Thus, they are asked to make reflection on the values that they have already taken in themselves and those that have been performed by their friends.
Based on the reasons, there are three principles in integrating three aspects of teaching; they are habit formation, relating character values to lesson materials, and making reflection of learners" own characters and of their friends".

Habit Formation
There are some activities that the learners guided to perform every meeting; they are praying, giving attention to classroom cleanliness, greetings, saying thanks and sorry, getting attention, participating in the classroom, and asking permission. The students should use English in performing that action.
In this way, there are two benefits that they can get. First, their English fluency got improved. They are accustomed to using the daily expression for natural communication. Second, they are accustomed to having good manners. They could be aware of the rules of communication. They know that in a certain situation they should behave in acceptable manner. Based on the observation, the learners showed improvement on their seriousness in praying in the third and fourth meeting after some advice and reflection on the first and second meeting. They feeling care of the cleanliness of the classroom also improved. On the first meeting, teacher should remind students to look around and find some trash then put it away. On the second meeting, teacher just looked around and gave smile to students with some trash around their desk. On the third and forth meeting, the classroom was already clean and no trash found when the teacher entered the classroom.
During class activities students are always persuaded to follow the rules that have been informed to them. The rules for asking questions, answering questions, leaving the classroom for any business, getting attention first before talking with friends, asking permission when using their friends" belongings, saying thanks after given something and saying sorry after making some mistakes.
Habit formation was also created by asking students to actively participate in the classroom discussion. They were motivated to ask questions if they did not understand, and answered the questions if they could. Some rewards directed to them by giving some points and applauses really made them motivated.
The character habit formation could actually improve the three competences at once. When they performed all the suggested manners, they must have performed the good characters. Since it was performed in English, they actually have the good condition for practicing English. In other words, they are actually functioning all of their capability to perform interpersonal communication.
The learners would find the suitable expressions used given certain kind of condition. They would also learn that certain language forms may be appropriate to be used in certain context.

Relating Lesson Materials and Learnt Values
The basic competence stated in the curriculum mentioned eight characters that should be built, they are honest, care, discipline, responsible, respectful, self confident, team work, and love peace.
In this study, the values that can be related to the lesson material are honest, care, discipline, respectful, and team work. The primary material in this study was on describing things that people are doing. To make the learners receive the values they were exposed to some pictures illustrating some people doing something. First they were guided to tell what the people are doing using appropriate word choices, text structure, grammatical features, and social function. In this activity, learners learnt the knowledge and skills. Then, the activity could be continued by asking the learners to give opinion on the people"s behavior. They could mention some characters that they have learnt. Given a picture about a child who is eating and littering surrounding, the learners gave their opinions. Some mentioned that the child did not care, some others said that the child was not discipline and responsible. In this way, they did not only learn to describe what people are doing but also the values implied in those actions.
This activity was not only exposed in the whole class discussion but also in small group discussion both in oral and written forms. Thus the learners were engaged in three affective processes. First they noticed the action. This is receiving stage. Next, they observed the action closely. This is responding process. Then they put values on the action. This is valuing process. When they are guided to have this process, they must be accustomed to valuing things around. It is expected that they organize the values and characterize them in to their value system.

Reflection on their own Characters and of their Friends'
Learners were not only guided to discuss the values but should also make reflections on whether those characters have been there in themselves and in their friends. For this, they should put score ranged 1-5 point for their own attitude and their friends". This is to make them always aware that their performance is monitored by themselves and their friends. This will help them control negative behavior. Reflection on honesty was done during test. They should be honest to admit their honesty by putting their honesty score on their answer sheet.
All of the actions implemented have proved to succeed to control students" behavior in the classroom. They showed good attitude performance reflecting their care, discipline, responsibility, honesty, self confidence, respect, teamwork, and love peace. The quantitative data also shows respectable improvement on knowledge (12%), skill (19(%), and attitude(12%). This study also calculated statistically using T-test. The improvement for knowledge is significant based on F count 8.038 and F table 2.29 with significant degree 5%. The improvement of skill is proved based on F count 2.130 and F table 2.12 with significant degree 5%. The improvement for self reflection is significant based on F count 2,590 and F table 2.08 with significant degree 5%.
This study had showed that character building is very important in learning. It contributed the improvement of other aspects; namely knowledge and skill. This is in line with what is sated by Dr. Arthur Poropat of Griffith University's School of Applied Psychology, "And a student with the most helpful personality will score a full grade higher than an average student in this regard.". Further he also said, " And since personality may be more malleable than intellectual capability, helping struggling students to cultivate beneficial personality traits --particularly intellectual curiosity and a strong work ethic --may be a powerful means of improving academic performance". It means that teachers could start from character building to get the improvement on knowledge and skill. However, this study also notes that character building could not be a short time program. It should be maintained and taken care of continuously in order that it comes as learners" value system. There must be other supporting conditions to help a classroom teacher reaches good achievement in character building.
They are teachers" consistencies, students" cooperation, other teachers" cooperation, school environment, sustainability, and value acculturation.
Teachers should be consistent and persistent in setting up the classroom regulation. They should remind the students of the existence of the values, giving appreciation to the appearance of positive attitudes that the students are trying to perform. This is done through good cooperation with the students. Students should be made aware that their good character performance is also the target of successful learning. They should be made accustomed to performing and appreciating positive attitudes.
School environment is also an important factor. There should be good situation created in other rooms such as library, staff room, canteen, sport room, and teacher room. All of the school members should go to the same direction. They must be aware that good attitude is something very valuable in school daily life. They must also agree upon what is meant by good characters which are appropriate to the norms and tradition accepted by people around.

CONCLUSION
This study concludes that integrating character building in English language learning can be done in three main activities; they are habit formation, relating characters and lesson materials, and reflection on learners" own character performance and their friends". The implementation of these actions proved to succeed improving students" English language knowledge and skill. Building good attitude is a continuous process and need other supporting conditions. Teachers" consistencies, students" and other subject teachers" cooperation, school environment, sustainability, and value acculturation are also the factors affecting character building in school environment.
Teachers play important roles in the classroom. They are responsible to guide students to possess qualified characters. Therefore, they should also possess and consistently perform certain quality in character that would become the model that students could refer to. Teachers should work together with other subject teachers and all people in school environments to create good environment for character building. In this way students would find that characters such as honesty, discipline, responsibility, honesty, self confidence, team work, and love peace are very valuable and should be maintained to have peaceful life. When it is performed together and hand in hand by all of education stake holders, it surely gives a great contribution to the success of education. The success in education is when education process could bring students reach optimal achievement on their cognitive, psychomotor, and affective aspects.