A study on English communication strategy used by Horse Lessors in Bromo mountain territory

ABSTRACT

Indonesia is well known in almost all parts of the world for its valuable and beautiful nature. Bromo is one of the famous mountain range places in East Java. This tourism resort has remarkable attractive scenery, colorful flowers, birds and a unique traditional culture such as, Karo and Kasada ceremony that offer fresh and unforgettable image to the visitors. It has attracted visitors’ attention coming from many different countries all over the world for years.

To this condition people who live around Bromo have attempted to be able to communicate with foreign visitors, especially people who work daily in tourism resort area like horse lessors. The horse lessors learn to gain competence of a foreign language to attract visitor’s attention renting their horses. In connection with English, which is mostly used by many people all over the world, the horse lessors initially learn to speak English via natural exposure to English in everyday communication with English-speaking tourists. Surprisingly, most of horse lessors are able to speak English easily although most of them have low level of education.

This study is a descriptive-qualitative research because it attempts to describe how English is communicated by horse lessors with visitors in Bromo mountain territory in offering their horse to English-speaking tourists. The aspects of English analyzed in this study are the strategy of communication they used, the problems they face during the interaction with foreign customers and the ways they generally use to cope with those problems.

This research is done at Cemoro Lawang village in Tengger Probolinggo. The researcher interviewed 6 of horse lessors as her informants. The researcher thought, they have better English communication skill, more capable and more representative than the others in giving much information to the researcher. In gaining the data, researcher observed and recorded the conversation between the horse lessors and their foreign customers. Interview was used after conducting the observation to get the detail information related to the problems being studied. While interviewing those informants, researcher noted the information given by them to be analyzed.

In analyzing the data, the writer classified and identified words, sentences, and symbols of nonverbal communication to get the meaning, the problems which deal with the purpose of the study. After writing down the data, researcher described the data based on the research problems and the last was drawing conclusion of the data gained.

Another process that the writer used as a test of validity is triangulation. In this case the writer collected the data from a variety of informants and a variety of setting under variety of conditions. Here, the writer attempted to apply structures and unstructured interview that has several advantages for obtaining complete data.

From the data gained by researcher, she found several communication strategies that were used by horse lessors to communicate with foreign customers. The researcher classified verbal communication data into simple sentences, simplification and incomplete sentences. Through interview’and record the horse lessors’ utterances, researcher found them using simple and incomplete sentences dominating their utterances. Nonverbal communication like gesture, body movement also used by horse lessors when they faced difficulty in expressing their message to customers.

In accordance with the language they used, the horse lessors still have problems in using the target language. The problems that they faced in using English when they had just become horse lessors because at that time they had lack of English knowledge. They also had problems when they communicated with non English- speaking tourists like Chinese, Japanese and so on. To overcome that problems the horse lessors commonly offered their horse by establishing a warm and friendly atmosphere, and smile when they interact with foreign customers and also by acting and persuading the tourists the best they could. To convince the foreign visitors the horse lessors often used gestures together with English when they communicated with non English-speaking foreigners. Solving the problems of communication the horse lessors then attempted to learn another language than English to support their success of renting horse.

The result of this study gives evidence that although the horse lessors have low educational background they can master communicating skill in English, with some weaknesses in their utterances. So far it can be convenient examples for the students who are studying English to learn English harder and apply in their everyday communication, and for English’ teachers to embody adequate English environment for the students to improve and practice their English more often.

Finally, the writer suggests that the horse lessors improve their English skill in order they can achieve more perfect English for everyday communication. Good performance in English will enable them to attract visitors’ attention in renting their horse successfully.