THE ROLE OF ENGLISH COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE TOWARD STAR HOTEL STAFFS’ WORKING ACHIEVEMENT IN PALEMBANG

Considering the implementation of ASEAN Economic Community and Asian Games 2018, potential hotels are urged to prepare qualified and competitive human resource. Language is believed as a means of communication among people involved in these international events. People around the world would stay at certain hotel, and English communication competence might relate the hotel guests and the employees as service provider agent. This study aims to excavate the role of English communication competence toward employees’ working achievement. About three hundred and fifty-three employes from forty-four different star hotels in Palembang were involved as the sample. The data was collected by administering two kinds of instruments, namely speaking test (to obtain the condition of their communication competence) and questionnaires concerning superior’s judgement on employees’ working achievement. The results were obtained through the descriptive, percentage, and statistical analysis which was aimed to find out the significant influence of English communication competence toward employee achievement. The findings showed that there was positive influence of English communication competence toward employees’ achievement.

Working achievement is designed as the result of efforts determined by personal characteristic competence as well as the perception toward the role of the work itself (Sutrisno 2011). Then, according to Mangkunegara (2009), working achievement is the result of work achieved qualitatively and quantitatively by an employee in conducting their function respoinsibly. Working achievement could also mean the result of work which is assigned considering their proficiency, experience, sincerity, and time (Hasibuan 2008).
It can be concluded that working achievement is the result of employee's effort and sincerity in responsibly conducting the assigned function considering their proficiency, experience, sincerity, and time.
Indonesia as a part of the Association of South East Asian nations (ASEAN) was about welcome the new integration program of ASEAN namely ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2015. Members of ASEAN agreed to implement AEC 2015 as the creation of single market and production which enables free flows of goods, services, investment, capital and people to increase the stability of political and economic systems as well as the social cultural exchange. According to Choomthong (2013), the fields that would be firstly affected were construction, business, and medical services. Human resource capacity might be the main concern of taking on this event since the ASEAN members had different language use and social culture condition. Therefore, in the ASEAN Secretariat (2008b) English was chosen as the language of administration for ASEAN and is often the language that users across ASEAN have in common. Dulyadaweesid (2003) stated that education is seen as a key factor in preparing the citizens of the Member States for the increased integration and resulting competitiveness. English language education is seen as a necessity to prepare human resources to compete effectively and make use of technical, business, and negotiation skills areas. Specifically for business area, Didiot-Cook at al. (2000) conducted a survey on language needs in business for European multinational companies. It was found that companies expect to recruit employees with at least an advanced level of English competence. Viewed from the four English language skills, oral skills which involve listening and speaking are considered far more important than written ones. It is regarded so since business communication mostly covers the setting of meetings, negotiations, and problem solving context. Thus, the demanded English competency of AEC context is in accordance with the needs of business setting.
An international event of Asian Games 2018 would be upcomingly held in Jakarta and Palembang. Afterward, it was believed that this opportunity grabbed the attention of hotel employers. About 9.704 athletes from 45 countries in Asia continent would come over and the star hotels might be in their list to stay. Hence, it was important for the hotel employers to set up a good preparation in terms of public service and human resources readiness. Hotel staffs should have good communication skill to interact with the foreign visitors by using English as the international language. Thereof, considering the requirement of setting up good preparation toward the need of having good communication skills, this study focused on digging up the role of English communication competence toward star hotel staffs' working achievement by formulating two research problems namely finding out the English communication competence level of the star hotel staffs and significant influence of English communication competence toward star hotel staffs' working achievement. It was expected that this study would be useful for the writers, hotel staffs and employers, and future researchers.
Previous study was investigated by Nurlaila (2003) entitled "The Correlation between English Language Competence and Employees Performance in PT. Elang Express Surabaya". This cross sectional analysis research aimed to examine the correlation between English language competence and working performance. By implementing total population method, forty-seven employees were involved as the sample from a shipping and forwarding company of PT. Elang Express. In addition, this study used several instruments such as English written test, attitude, behavior and performance scale questionnaire, as well as interview to obtain the data. It was found out that language knowledge is not the only factor of attitude former and attitude des not directly expres attitude. Better attitude of speaking English is caused by working demand and better performance is mostly influenced by good compensation system. This study proposed the issue of English language training effectiveness and efficiency in working environment since company spend higher cost for executing this program.

Research Method
This study involved two variables namely independent and dependent variables. The independent variable explained and influenced other variable (Supomo dan Indriantoro 2002), which was the English Communication Competence. Meanwhile, the dependent variable was influenced by independent variable, namely working achievement.
The population of this study was the employees of star hotels in Palembang. Meanwhile, the sample was population element as measurement subject of research unit which represented the information of the population itself (Cooper dan Schindler 2001). The sample of this study were selected by implementing proportional cluster random sampling method, where the population was grouped based on working place. Then simple random sampling method (Sekaran 2000) was executed to select the 30% of the total employess from particular hotel. The proportion of the sample is illustrated as follows: The instruments of this study were adopted from previous researches, thus writers simply ensured the content validity. Data collection was performed by the use of the following instruments: To collect the data on employees' English communication competence, a speaking test was designed and recorded to be analyzed by qualified raters. The speaking test was evaluated using CSRS (Conversational Skills Rating Scale) scoring rubric.
Working achievement is the achieved result in performing the assigned task responsibly based o experience and sincerity (Nasution 2002). The writer evaluated the content validity by examining the plan and the procedures used in constructing the instrument. Content validity is the extent to which the questions on the instrument and the scores of these questions are representative of all the possible questions that a researcher could ask about the content or skills (Cresswell 2005). Since both the CSRS Scoring Rubric and Working Achievement Questionnaire are ready-made instruments which have been used in previous studies, the writers in this study were not required to conduct the validity and reliability test. Furthermore, no modification was made during the implementation of these instruments, so the items were originally used to find out the information related to both the independent and dependent variables.

Tabel 2. Variable Working Achievement
This research used a Simple linear regression. In this study, this test aimed to find out corelation between independent variable (X) namely English comunicaton competence and dependent variable (Y) namely working achievement.

Figure 1. Research Model 3. Result and Discussion
To obtain rational and reliable research findings, the following steps are described : Based on the study done to 353 star hotel employees in Palembang, the followings are the identification of them:  Table 3 indicates that there were 211 male employees (60%) and 142 female (40%) involved in this study. Male employees mostly handled the technical work in the hotel and had bigger opportunity to deal with the hotel guests. Unlike the male staffs, female staffs were usually placed as back office staffs which lessened their opportunity to interact directly with the hotel guests.   Table 4 illustrates three different categories of respondents' age namely 20 -27 years old (162 people with the percentage of 46%), 28 -35 years old (134 people with the percentage of 38%), and more than 35 years old (57 people with the percentage of 16%). Most respondents were still in productive period to work. The data shows that there were 14 respondents (4%) graduated from Senior High School, 127 respondents (36%) were from Diploma III, 205 respondents (58%) had Bachelor degree, and 7 respondents (2%) had a Master degree.  Table 6 shows that the working period of respondents varied from less than a year to more than five years. It was found that most respondents had been working for 2 to 3 years with the total of 240 employees (68% of the total sample of this study).  Table 7 shows that the respondents of this study were mostly dominated by single employees with the percentage of 64%. Single employees were assumed to provide bigger advantage for the company. They might focus on the working assignment since they id not set the time limit and certain responsibility toward the family.  The questionnaire result indicated that most of the respondents were dominated by male instead of female. Male employees mostly handled the technical work in the hotel and had bigger opportunity to deal with the hotel guests. Unlike the male staffs, female staffs were usually placed as back office staffs which lessen their opportunity to interact directly with the hotel guests. Viewed form the age, respondents were about 20 -27 years old. In this time, employees were still in the productive age. Several other information of respondent profile were also obtained in the beginning part of the questionnaire such as educational background, working period, and marital status.
The normality test implies that the data obtained was distributed normally since Kolmogorov-Smirnov test shows that the significance (2-tailed) was 0.089. R 2 value described by model summary in table 8 was 0.132 (13.2%) which means working achievement variable was explained by english comunication competence variable. While the rest 86.8% of working achievement variable could be explained by other undefined variable. Table 7 shows that English comunication competence variable obtained was t value of 2.702 which was higher than the t table 2.011. This implies that the independent variable influenced the dependent variable. Viewed from the significant value, it was obtained that the value (0.009) was lower than 0.05 which means English comunication competence positively and significantly influenced working achievement variable. The standard coefficient value of regression model showed that the constants value was 23.463 and English comunication competence's coefficient value was 0.367. Definitely, it could be implied that English comunication competence positively influenced working achievement..

Conclusion
Based on the formulation of problems, data processing, result, and discussion of this study, it could be concluded that: Firstly, this study showed that there was significant influence of English ccommunication competence towards Palembang star hotel staffs' working achievement which was indicated by r 2 value. R 2 value described by model summary in table 8 was 0.132 (13.2%) which means working achievement variable was explained by english comunication competence variable. While the rest 86.8% of working achievement variable could be explained by other undefined variable. Secondly, English Comunication Competence variable obtained was t value (2.702) while the t table value was 2.011 with the significance level of 0.009 < 0.05. This means English Comunication Competence positively and significantly influenced Palembang star hotel employees' working achievement.
Several suggestions are addressed considering the findings of this study. First, it is hoped that hotel employers should consider the development of employees' English communication competence in order to improve the working achievement. Second, reflecting the necessity of hotel employees language competence development, training advancement program might be taken into account. Implementing additional regulations in hotel environment such as English p-1412-3789 www.journalmabis.org e-2477-1783 9 speaking day program is optional to facilitate and support employees' language development toward encoutering international event in Palembang (Asian Games 2018). Third, it is expected that future researchers might develop this research issue by involving other variables which might contribute to the working achievement variable.
Several limitations were drawn as the following: This study required language competence data in the form of employees' speaking activity recording which was restricted in particular big hotels. The hotel management argued that data collection required by writers was time consuming regarding the employees shifting schedule. Second, since the data collection allocated longer time for recording, respondents did not accurately complete the questionnaire's items.