Paulina Pay Pengarang SEBASTIANUS FERNANDEZ Dosen Pembimbing 1 MARCELINUS YERI FERNANDEZ AKOLI Dosen Pembimbing 2 Sebastianus Fernandez Penguji 1 Marcelinus Yeri Fernandez Akoli Penguji 2 Dewi I N Bili Bora Ketua Penguji

Everyone needs the appropriate language to communicate to each other. In theschool community, teachers and students should choose an appropriate language to create a good interaction atmosphere. Therefore, language choice is essential for the interaction between students and teachers in the school. This study aims at describing: 1) the language that students and teachers chose when did interaction at school; 2) the students and teachers’ reasons to chose a language to communicate at school; 3) language attitudes of students and teachers toward Bahasa Indonesia or Kupang Malay language. This study used a descriptive analysis method. The writer used the questionnaires to collect the data from respondents of this writing. The subject was 50 respondents consisting of 30 students of the eighth-grade and 20 teachers at SMP N 16, Kupang, Indonesia. The subject was selected by purposive sampling technique. Then, the data were descriptively analyzed using Tripps’ theory about language choice and Hymes’s theory about language attitude. The result showed that (1) there was a significant difference between teachers’ and students’ language choices. Teachers chose Bahasa Indonesia, and students chose Kupang Malay. However, teachers and students consented to speak Bahasa Indonesia for function. (2) there was a significant similarity between teachers’ and students’ language attitudes toward Bahasa Indonesia and Kupang Malay language. (3) language ability played an essential role in determining teachers’ and students’ language attitudes. Keywords: Language Choice, Language Attitude, Students, Teachers, Interaction