ABSTRACT
This research aims: (1) to describe teacher and students talk (who talk? about what? how much and when?) of classroom interaction in the SMP N 1 Jatiyoso in 2012/2013 academic year; (2) to find out the percentage of teacher and students talk in classroom interaction of the VIII-B students of SMP N I Jatiyoso in 2012/2013 academic year; and (3) to find the problems occuring in the classroom interaction of SMP N 1 Jatiyoso in 2012/2013 academic year.
The method used in this research is descriptive study. The research was carried out to the eighth grade students of SMP N 1 Jatiyoso Karanganyar in the beginning of May 2012 up to July 2012. From the subject of the research, there were 34 students, consisting of 17 boys and 17 girls. Classroom observation, interview, and document analysis are used to collect the data. Then, the data in this research were analyzed by using interactive model of analysis involving collecting the data, reducing the data, presenting the data and drawing conclusion.
The research concludes that the teaching and learning English in SMP N 1 Jatiyoso was dominated by the teacher. It can be seen from the proportion of teacher talk which was higher than students talk. The students took small part of the classroom interaction. They did not play an active role in building a good communication with their teacher. They placed themselves in passive position as receivers, waiting for the questions from the teacher and then giving short response. Students were not able to balance teacher’s talk; most of their talk tended to be one word or clause and less in length. The classroom activity seemed to be monologue (one side from the teacher), not dialogue.
This study shows that the most dominant characteristic in the classroom interaction was content cross. Most of the teaching and learning time was used for asking questions and lecturing by the teacher. The teacher usually asked questions about the content for students’ responses, and lecturing means giving facts, opinion and knowledge about the content with her own ideas. So, the classroom activities were still in the teacher’s dominantion. She spent most of her talking time in explaining the material to the students.  The teacher explained in English then sometimes the teacher had to translate into Indonesian.
There were many problems in the classroom interaction found such as: 1) teacher did not give enough opportunity to the students, 2) the teacher used monotonous teaching technique, 3) students did not want to take risk, 4) students did not have strong motivation, and 5) students had low vocabulary mastery.
Keywords: teacher and students talk, classroom interaction, case study.