Indonesian EFL Learners’ Perceptions of Classroom Learning Environments in An EFL Context

A good learning environment will determine the students’ learning quality. Therefore, creating supporting classroom learning environment is really crucial. This study explored the students’ perceptions at an Indonesian senior high school of actual classroom learning environment in English teaching across gender and grade. What Is Happening In this Classroom (WIHIC) questionnaire was  applied  to see  the  participants’ perceptions of the language learning environment. As for data analysis procedure, the scores obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed and described qualitatively. The data was examined to see how how is the students perception of their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes across grade and gender. The result demonstrated similar perception indicated by five of the seven categories of the WIHIC questionnaire among grades. Across gender, four of the seven categories also indicated similar perception between male and female students where the categories get positively dominant result.


Introduction
Today, most of the teaching and learning process is centered in the classroom as the central organizing unit of almost all schools in the world (Goksu, 2015).The success of education in general will be determined by the success of teaching-learning which is done in the classroom.Schaper (2008) proposes that to support learning by allowing teachers and students to spend maximum amount of time with activities that result in learning is the purpose of organizing students into classes.Approximately 20,000 hours has been spent by university graduates in educational institutions classroom by the time they complete their university course (Fraser, 2001).That is the reason why students are really interested in what happens to them at shools and universities.Students perception of their learning environment and educational experiences are important.Classroom environment which is challenging but friendly and safe can improve performance and growth for every student.The possibility of learners' satisfaction is certainly increased by a learning environment conducive such outcomes (Jannati, 2015).According to Fraser cited in Jannati (2015), the focus of classroom learning environment research are four objectives: first, the relationships between students' learning outcomes and their perceptions of classroom environment.Second, the use of classroom environment dimensions as criterion variables.Third, exploration of whether students achieve better results when students learn in preferred environments.Fourth, making practical attempts to improve classroom environments.

Classroom Learning Environment
The education doers have recognized the importance of the classroom learning environment over the past 20 years (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999), or over the past 38 years by now.People have viewed schools as organisations, operating similarly to other social groups in that they have their own goals, rules and regulations, hierarchies of authority, roles, communication patterns, and forms of compliance as proposed by Dorman cited in Aldridge, Fraser, and Laugksch (2011).
Johnson & McClure cited in Jannati (2015) proposes that sometimes the classroom learning environment which is referred to as the educational environment or the classroom climate is the social atmosphere where teaching-learning happens.All variables that affect learning such as time, atmosphere, light, temperature, sound, etc are included.Every students has different learning style.Some students might enjoy learning through hearing, some through seeing, and some others through practicing or moving.And learning environment will give a big impact to the students' convenience in learning.Supporting learning environment will help teachers to persuade students to pay more attention to the lesson.Aldridge, et al. (2011) did a research in science classrooms in South Africa about the associations between the school-level and classroom-level environment.They examined students' perceptions of their classroom learning environment as a means of monitoring and guiding changes towards outcomes-based education.It was administered to 2,638 grade 8 science students from 50 classes in 50 secondary schools in Limpopo province.The teachers of each of the 50 classes responded to a questionnaire which is developed to examine factors in the school-level environment.Some interesting tentative relationships between specific school and classroom environment dimensions are revealed by this study.However, the research showed that overall school environment was not a strong influence on what happens in classrooms.Moreover, the results of this research suggests that what happens at the classroom level could be largely insulated against changes at the school level.Kahyalar (2016) investigated students' feedback about the effectiveness of the Blended Learning (BL) environmenta combination of classical in-class instruction with online learning componentsin learning English at the School of Foreign Languages at University of Çukurova.The problems also tried to be found out by the research, the students came across related to the BL environment and to present their suggestions to make it more beneficial.The data were taken from 65 respondents through a questionnaire.The study showed that the BL environment might have been unnatural for the students who were accustomed to a traditional teaching-learning format.Another possible reason for these results might have been students' low computer literacy skills.Students who were not familiar with computers and new technology might have been unprepared to benefit from such a learning environment, which might have caused their dissatisfaction.Although most of the respondents could use the website without getting any help, the most frequent suggestion that was made about how to make the BL environment more beneficial and give more advantages was to arrange a regular scheduled lab hour to do the activities with their instructors.In short, how much students benefit from a BL environment is strongly related to the characteristics of the learners.Some students may be satisfied with face-to-face education only and they may refuse to believe that a BL environment would be beneficial in any context.Goksu (2015) examined the differences among grades in the perception of high school students on their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes, and wether the difference between genders in the perception of high school students on their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes is exist or not.The study was done on 166 high school students from different grades.The data were gathered by conducting WIHIC questionnaire, classroom observations, and interviews.They analysed data quantitatively and qualitatively.The results indicated that all participants had positive perceptions on their learning environment in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes.The findings also revealed that there were no differences among grades in students' perceptions of actual learning environment on six out of the seven dimensions in WIHIC.Moreover, in general there was not statistically significant difference between genders.
Classroom learning environment that will affect the teaching-learning process is categorized into two: physical and and non-physical.However, Pappas (1990) cited in Goksu (2015) stated that the two kinds of environments are included in the four key elements of what he calls the psychological environment: (1) spatial behavior, (2) physical characteristics (light, temperature, noise, decoration, and furniture arrangements), (3) the role of tradition, and (4) the affective experience i.e. the way a person anticipates and responds to a learning setting.

Teaching English and Classroom Learning Environment
According to Marcellino (n.d.) in Indonesia the linguistic conditions and situations are quite complex by their own natures as more than seven hundred vernaculars with their various dialects from a great number of ethnic groups have been used as media of communication in the country.Accordingly, English teaching success in Indonesia cannot be separated from the students beliefs, cultural backgrounds, customs and values as well as the political stand point of the government toward foreign language.English language teaching curriculum has changed more than four times since the countrys independence and seems that it does not give significant impact upon the learning outcomes.Some problems are faced in teaching English in Indonesia as also faced by other countries where English is a foreign language in which English is only used in the class.Building a supporting learning environment that will support learning is necessary.It does not just magically appear, but it should be created.It needs commitment, time, and belief in students and teachers.Ghorbani (n.d.) says that L1 must be taken care of carefully, it is always be considered as one of the language classroom factors.Because it will influence the development of foreign language mastery of learners.
In Indonesia, Tantra (2013) conducted a research that aims to describe and overview the existence of teaching English in Indonesia.The materials were collected through reading, comprehending a number of references related to teaching.The review was conducted descriptively.The result shows that the success of teaching English depends on internal and external factors, namely: 1) verbal, numerical and reasoning abilities, 2) motivation, attitude, interest, aptitude, self esteem, perception and memory), 3) curriculum, personal and interpersonal interactions, 4) ability to adverse weakness into strength and constraint into opportunity, 5) spatial and socio-emotional setting, participant, end, act, channel, intention, norm and genre, 6) practice, enthusiasm and learning styles.

Research on Classroom Learning Environment in Indonesia
Research about classroom learning environment in Indonesia seems very limited.Meanwhile, this field is really important to be studied.One of the few available studies was conducted by Putra (2001) which is intended to know how young language learners (YLLs) teachers of English comprehend the concept "positive English language teaching and learning environment" and to observe the efforts of YLLs teachers of English in establishing such environment in the classroom setting.This research mainly utilized a qualitative research design with a purposive sampling assignment in which one first grade of state elementary school classroom and two different kindergarten classrooms were chosen to be observed purposively.The respondents of the study were a kindergarten teacher, English teacher of first grade of elementary school, and an early childhood education expert.Observation and interview were used to gain the data.The findings shows that YLLs English teachers were actually aware of the importance of the existence of a positive English language teaching and learning environment to support the success of English learning in the EYL clasroom setting.Furthermore, it was also found that such environment could be created by the influence of YLLs teachers' teaching style, the physical environment of the classroom and the consideration of the use of their learners' native language in class.

Research Methodology
The research questions were: how is the students perception of their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes across grades?how is the students perception of their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes across genders?The participants were 60 students.They were English as a Foreign Language learners at 10th, 11th, and 12th grades (Male: 30, Female: 30) from a senior high school in Bukittinggi, Indonesia.They were all in the range of 15 to 18 years old.Gender was considered as a variable for this study.The data for the study were collected from three EFL classes each of which involved 20 students (Male: 10, Female:10).
The writer applied What Is Happening In this Classroom (WIHIC) questionnaire as the instrument to measure students' perceptions of their classroom environment which was translated into Bahasa Indonesia.WIHIC was developed by Fraser, McRobbie, and Fisher (1996) to bring parsimony to the field of learning environments by combining the most salients scales from existing questionnaires with new dimensions of contemporary relevance to assess the following seven dimensions of learning environment: 1).Student cohesiveness (extent to which students know, help, and supportive of one another), 2).Teacher support (extent to which the teacher helps, be friends, trusts, and showed interest in students), 3).Involvement (extent to which students have attentive interest, participate in discussions, perform additional work, and enjoy the class), 4).Investigation (emphasis on the skills and processes of inquiry and their use in problem solving and investigation), 5).Task orientation (extent to which it is important to complete activities planned and stay on the subject matter), 6).Cooperation (extent to which students cooperate rather than compete with one another on learning task), 7).Equity (extent to which students are treated equally by the teacher).
WIHIC questionnaire was used to gather data from the respondents.As for data analysis procedure, the scores obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed and described qualitatively.The data was examined to see how how is the students perception of their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes across grade and gender.
The score of each scale in the questionnaire was obtained by calculating the number of students for each statement.Then the score is divided by the total number of students in each grade and multiplied by 100% to get the percentage.The percentage of each scale for each statement is sum up and divided by the total number of statement for each category to get the mean of percentage.There are five scales used in the questionnaire; almost never, seldom, sometimes, often, and almost always.However, negative scale as shown in the following table is the combination of almost never and seldom, somewhat consist of sometimes result, and positive consist of often and almost always scales.

Result Across Gender
Table 5 shows the result of female students' perception toward learning environment.It shows that student cohesiveness, task orientation, and equity categories get positively dominant result (respectively; 67%, 76%, 67%).%).In between, teacher support category shares equal result either positively or negatively dominant (39%:35%).However, involvement and cooperation categories do not show either negative or positive response from the students.They get neutral result (respectively; 48%, 40%).While investigation category gets equal result either neutrally or positively dominant (37%:42%).
Category 1 (student cohesiveness) gets positively dominant result among either male or female respondents (respectively; 67%, 67%).Six of eight statements in this category show positively dominant response from both male and female respondents; statement 1 (I make friendships easily among students in this class) ; 80%: 78%, statement 2 (I know all students in this class) ; 84%:90%, , statement 4 (members of the class are my friends) ; 94%:96%, statement 5 (I work well with all the class members) ; 66%:60%, statement 7 (students in this class like me) ; 50%:60 , statement 8 (in this class, I get help from other students) ; 57%:74%.Statement 6 (I help other class members who have trouble with their work) also shares equal results between male and female respondents (respectively, 43%, 57%).However, statement 3 (I am friendly to members of this class) shows different responses from both groups.It gets positively dominant result from male respondents (73%), while the female ones give equal result between neutral and positive responses (50%:50%).
Category 2 (teacher support) gets different result among respondents from the two groups.The table shows that male respondents share equal result in all three scales (37%, 29%, 34%).While female respondents share equal result either negatively or positively dominant (39%:35%).Both goups of respondents share equal result on statement 9 (the teacher takes a personal interest in me), and statement 10 (the teacher goes out of his/her way to help me), statement 11 (the teacher considers my feelings), statement 12 (the teacher helps me, when I have trouble with the work), statement 13 (the teacher talks with me) , and statement 16 (the teacher's questions help me to understand).In either male or female respondents, statement 9 and 10 get negatively dominant result (respectively; 77%:97%, 60%:87%), statement 11 shares equal result between neutral and positive scale (respectively; 40%:40%, 40%:37%), and statements 12, 13, and 16 share equal positively dominant result (respectively; 63%:87%, 64%:77%, 60%:57%).However, statements 14 (the teacher is interested in my problems) and statement 15 (the teacher moves about the class to talk with me) get different response.Those statements get negatively dominant result from male respondents (statement 14 50%, statement 15 56%).While female respondents gave equal dominant responses between negative and neutral results to statement 14 (47%:47%), and neutrally dominant result to statement 15 (43%).
In category 3 (involvement), there are only three statements which show equal responses between male and female respondents; statement 18 (I give my opinions during class discussion), 20 (my ideas and suggestions are used during class discussions), 23 (Students discuss with me how to go about solving problems  Goksu (2015) in Iran, that is there are no differences among grades in students' perceptions of actual learning environment on six out of the seven dimensions in WIHIC.Across gender, there was not statistically significant difference.
In current study, generally the students show their positive responses to the learning environment they have.However, teacher support category gets different responses across either grades or gender.In general, most of the respondents show negative responses to this category.This of course could potentially influence the success of the learning oitcomes.Supporting environment including teacher support is one of the success key for language teaching and learning as shown by the result of the research conducted by Putra (2001) to EFL teachers of young language learners.They were actually aware of the importance of the existence of a positive English language teaching and learning environment to support the success of English learning.It was also found that such environment could be created by the influence of YLLs teachers' teaching style, the physical environment of the classroom and the consideration of the use of their learners' native language in class.Result of a research conducted by Tantra (2013) also suggests almost similar idea.It proposes that the success of teaching English depends on internal and external factors.Teacher support is a crucial factor which determines EFL teaching and learning success.

Conclusion
Table 1, 2, and 3 demonstrate the trend of the students' perception of their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes across grade.Similar perception is indicated by five of the seven categories of WIHIC questionnaire where the participants share positive response to students cohesiveness, task orientation, cooperation, and equity categories.They also share similar neutral response to involvement category.While teacher support and investigation categories indicate different students' perception of all grades.
Table 4 and 5 show the trend of the students perception of their actual classroom learning environment in EFL classes across gender.Four of the seven categories of WIHIC questionnaire result indicate similar perception among male and female learners where the categories get positively dominant result.Those are student cohesiveness, involvement, task orientation, and equity categories.However, another three categories; teacher support, investigation, and cooperation show different perception between male and female students.
To develop EFL teaching and learning outcomes, it is recommended to EFL teachers to take this finding into account especially to the aspects that get less possitive responses from the students such as teacher support.It is also for the school principal and all stake holders to support teachers as the practitioners in the field of education to be creative and innovative.Furthermore, standardized infrastructures and facilities also should be available to support teaching-learning process.The absence of good facilities will impede the education development in this modern and globalization era.

Table 3
shows the result of students' perception toward learning environment in the 12th grade.It shows that student cohesiveness, task orientation, cooperation, and equity categories get positively dominant result (respectively: 65%, 82,5%, 66%, 56%).Teacher support and investigation categories share almost equal result among three scales (35%:29%35%).While involvement category get neutrally dominant result (44%).Category 1 (students cohesiveness) gets positively dominant result in all grades (respectively; 10th grade 69%, 11th grade 70%, 12th grade 65%).Most students from all grades choose often and almost always (positive) to respond to all statements in this category.Seven of eight statements are responded positively by 10th and 12th grades students; statement 1 (I make friendships easily among students in this three of them show positively dominant result; statement 12 (the teacher helps me, when I have trouble with the work) respectively; 70%:75%:80% , statement 13 (the teacher talks with me) respectively; 60%:85%:65%, statement 16 (the teacher's

Table 5
Across grade, similar perception is indicated by five of the seven categories of WIHIC questionnaire where the participants share positive response to students cohesiveness, task orientation, cooperation, and equity categories.They also share similar neutral response to involvement category.While teacher support and investigation categories indicate different students' perception of all grades.Across gender, four of the seven categories of WIHIC questionnaire result indicate similar perception among male and female learners where the categories get positively dominant result.Those are student cohesiveness, involvement, task orientation, and equity categories.However, another three categories; teacher support, investigation, and cooperation show different perception between male and female students.It is almost similar with the result of the study conducted by