Language Teaching Methodology: Self-Development and Exploration

taken from: www.theguardian.com

It is impossible to develop our national education without developing the quality of the teachers. As the new globalization era has emerged, the new problems in teaching English as a foreign language appear continually to be more difficult and complex. Therefore, one way to overcome this challenge is enhancing teacher quality. Teachers themselves must become the primary shapers of their own development. Several factors affect teacher self-development.

First, there is no doubt that development takes time. It takes time to observe interaction in our own classrooms and to visit each other teachers’ classes, as well as to write in journal and to talk to others about teaching. Pre-service teachers have an advantage in that the time factor is built into the teacher education program. Teachers in in-service programs or those working independently on their development have less time. Nonetheless, teachers do believe that development is important need to make a commitment to devote time to their development.

Second, development requires an ongoing commitment. Development teaching is not something to do only in a teacher education program or at the beginning of a teaching career. Rather, even the most experienced teacher can learn new things about teaching, and development is enhanced when the teacher makes a commitment to ongoing development. For example, a teacher continues to think about creating more learner-centered classroom that engages students in learning to be communicatively competent in English.

Third, development is enhanced through problem solving. When teachers recognize problems and work at solving them, they can discover new ways to teach and discover more about their role as a teacher. For example, a teacher finds out that applying jigsaw technique gets students to use more English in class and he does not know about it before. It indicates that he continues to generate ways to solve perceived problems in his teaching.

Fourth, development is also enhanced through exploration for exploration’s sake. Teachers can, indeed, discover much by exploring simply to explore, not just to solve a problem. Such exploration ca be based on pure interest-for example, trying an approach that is opposite of one you love simply to see what happens, or trying a new approach/technique simply because it sounds interesting.

Fifth, development is enhanced by paying attention to and reviewing the basics of ESL/EFL teaching. An EFL/ESL teacher is supposed to know the basics of ESL/EFL teaching. By doing so, a teacher is supposed to continue to study ways to create opportunities for students to interact in English; ways to manage classroom behaviour; materials and media used to teach EFL. In addition, he undoubtly will consider ways to teach different skills, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Sixth, development is enhanced by searching out opportunities to develop. For examples, a teacher will turn out that he talks with other teachers about teaching; he reads about teaching; he attends seminars and workshops; and he participates in other activities that give him chances to reflect on his teaching and see new teaching possibilities. Consequently, the more we experience related to teaching, and the more questions and answers we can come up with through this ongoing process, the more chances we develop our teaching beliefs and practices.

The last, self-development of teaching beliefs and practices requires cooperation of others. It takes others who are willing to observe us, listen to us, and talk with us about our teaching. We need administrators, students, other teachers, and friends to help us succeed with our development. Without their cooperation, self-development is very difficult as there is neither any source for feedback nor any stimulus for ideas.

In conclusion, teacher’s commitment to devote themselves to development may be the prominent way to face the new era of language learning and teaching. Hopefully, Indonesian teachers fully realize the importance of self-development and exploration for the brighter future of their nation.

Reference:

Gebhard, Jerry G. (2009). Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language: a teacher self-development and methodology guide (Second Edition). USA: The University of Michigan Press

Language Teaching Methodology: Professional Goals of Language Teachers (review)

One of the most invigorating things about teaching is that we never stop learning. The complexity of the dynamic interaction among teachers, students and subject matter continually gives birth to an endless number of questions to answer, problems to solve, issues to ponder. Every time we walk into a classroom to teach we face some of those issues, and if we are growing teacher, we learn something. We will find out how well a technique works, how a student processes language, how classroom interaction can be improved, how to assess a student’s competence, how emotions enter into learning, or how our teaching styles affects learners. One way to discover them is only by learning on and on for a life time. Consequently, as we step into this profession, we need to know some of our major professional goals (Pennington, 1990: 150 as cited in Brown, 2001: 426) as follows:

1. A knowledge, of the theoretical foundations of language learning and language teaching.
2. The analytical skills necessary for assessing different teaching contexts and classroom conditions.
3. An awareness, of alternative teaching techniques and the ability to put these into practice,
4. The confidence and skill to alter our teaching techniques as needed.
5. Practical experience with different teaching techniques.
6. Informal knowledge of ourselves and our students.
7. Interpersonal communication skills.
8. Attitudes of flexibility and openness to change.

These eight different goals can provide continuing career growth for many, many years as we strive to do a better and better job of teaching. But we must be patient! Don’t expect to become a “master” teacher overnight. Right now as we begin our teaching career, set some realistic and practical goals that we can focus on without being overwhelmed by everything you have to attend to when we teach. Be consistent with what we have set! Good Luck Teachers!

Reference:

Brown, H.Douglas. 2001. Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs:  Prentice Hall.

Teaching Reading: Purposes, Principles, and Activities

taken from: www.bookriot.com

PURPOSES

1. Extensive – reading for pleasure, refers to reading which students do often, away from the classroom – novels, web pages, newspapers, magazines, students should choose what they want to read, be encouraged to read by the teacher, share their reading experiences

2. Intensive – reading texts, study activities, look for meaning, grammar, and vocabulary. (SCAN – find a bit of information – name, phone number, small detail vs SKIM – get a general idea of what the article is about, read for detailed comprehension)

PRINCIPLES

1. Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible.
2. Students need to be engaged with what they are reading.
3. Encourage students to respond to the content of a text (and explore their feelings about it), not just concentrate on its construction.
4. Prediction is a major factor in reading. (book covers, photographs, headlines, web page banner) 
5. Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts – the activity is important!
   *For preparation – brainstorm, discuss visuals, headlines, phrases, students predict;
   *For Skimming – identify main ideas, match subtitles with paragraphs, create titles or headlines;
   *For Scanning – pre-set questions, chart filling, lists of elements for students to find;  
   *For intensive – vocabulary, answer detailed questions, answer inferential questions.
6. Exploit reading texts to the fullest extent … activities, feedback, further tasks!

ACTIVITIES

1. Guided reading – teacher supports students to become better readers. The teacher provides support for small groups of readers as they learn to use various reading strategies (context clues, letter and sound relationships, word structure, and so forth). How?

    a. Students should be divided into small groups (4-6 students). The younger the student, the
        smaller the group.
    b. Guided reading lessons are to be about 15-20 minutes in duration.
    c. Appropriately leveled reading materials must be selected for the group and each student should
        have his/her own copy of the literature.
    d. Pre-Reading: The teacher establishes a purpose for reading through making predictions,
        vocabulary introduction, or discussing ideas that will provide the readers with the background
        knowledge required for the text.   
    e. Reading: The teacher observes the students as they read the text softly or silently to themselves,
        provides guidance and coaching to individuals based on her/his observations by providing
        prompts, asking questions, and encouraging attempts at reading strategy application.
    f. Post Reading: The teacher asks questions to ensure that the text has been comprehended by the
        readers and praises their efforts. Further, the teacher may observe gaps in strategy application
        and address these gaps following the reading in a mini-lesson format.

2. Jigsaw reading – students read different texts and share what they have found out.

3. Reading puzzles – reassembling text, out of sequence stories or dialogs, mix up two stories.

4. Newspapers – match articles with headlines or pictures, reading for opinion, read ads, reply to the letters written to the editor.

5. Fishbowl fun – students write questions about a story they’ve read on a small slip of paper, drop it in a bowl, let students fish for questions from the bowl and attempt to answer them.

6. Following instructions – put instructions in the right order, follow recipes.

7. Poetry – reassemble poems, find similarities and differences in poems, leave blanks in poems for students to fill in
 
8. Play extracts – read and act – thinking about how lines are said, concentrating on stress, intonation, speed
 
9. Predicting from words and pictures – given a number of words, students predict what the story tells then compare with the original text or given phrases – write the story or given pictures … do the same.
 
10. Different responses – answer comprehension questions, T/F, find words, put information into graphs, tables, diagrams, describe the people in the text, guess the endings of stories
 
11. Reading Activities Center - song and poetry cards, big books, other book type reading materials are at a centre so that students may browse and read as time permits.
 
12. Write the Room - students copy any print they see anywhere in the room, even if they can't read everything they write. Beginning writers draw pictures to help them remember the words.
 
13. Read the Room - reading anything that is posted in the room
 
14. Rainbow Spelling - Post the week's spelling words on a half sheet of chart paper, students write them 3 times each with colored pencils
 
15. Spelling Activity Center - using their word lists create tongues twisters, sentences, stories, word scrambles
 
16. Stamp a Word - take a tub with rubber alphabet stamps, stamp pads, and large sheets of paper to a work area and stamp any words they want to stamp (use potatoes as the stamp)
 
17. Book Bins - independent, silent, or small group reading
 
18. Star Authors - A place to read student created work
 
19. Listening Centers - Record the books you read to the class. Have parents help out - have students record for others. How nice to hear your friend, mom, dad, sister or brother read a story at center time!
 
20. Word Wall – place a list of common words on a wall, each week add vocabulary or have students add words
 
21. Making Words Centers - Throughout the week students can go up to a pocket chart when they have a few minutes and try to make words out of the scrambled Mystery Word. On Fridays - students share all of the words that they came up with and decode the mystery word. It's a great activity for your average and high students.
 
22. Bookmaking Center -place numerous materials in a basket (writing utensils, colored pens, markers, crayons, stickers, etc.), a tablet of story paper and a stapler. Encourage students to make books about topics that interest them.
 
23. Overhead Journals - Have one student write their journal entry on the overhead. The student reads the journal and gives the class permission to edit the entry. The student gets to correct the errors and the class rereads it out loud.
 
24. Puzzle Center - Find copies of appropriate word searches, laminate them, and let the students write on them with washable markers. When done, they use towels to clean them off.
 
25. Making Greeting Cards - have samples of greeting card verses, titles, etc - cut them up for students to refer to for ideas. Add anything from yarn, wiggly eyes, letter and picture stencils, etc....Encourage students to make cards for their family, teachers around the building, and students within the room.
 
26. Game Center - think word games - Scrabble, Story Scramble, Silly Sentences (cards)
 
27. Computer Center - reading of living books or student created e-books
 
28. Message Centers/Student Post Office - for writing to each other on special occasions
 
29. Dramatic Play – have students act out very simple plays - need costumes & props, give students mood cards (jealousy, silliness, fear) and have them make up a short skit or play of their own
 
30. Word Hunt - kids get a letter or digraph and see how many words they can find that start with or contain it.
 
31. Browsing Box - Take interesting writing and place in a box. Have a special privilege for a student to choose from the box and read to the entire class.
 
32. Literature Circle - A group of students will read a literature selection together and discuss their favourite part. Once they are comfortable with this process, they can map the story on large chart paper, make puppets and put on a play for the class, etc. This allows children to own literature.
 
33. Buddy Reading - The students can read with a partner, this can be familiar or unfamiliar texts. Then they work with their buddy to draw or write about their favourite part.  

34. Journal Writing - Give students content related pictures or journal prompts.
 
35. Absurd Sentences – read absurd sentences to students and have them make the corrections (The room was hot, so Jim decided to open a football. For our vacation we drove across the country in a wastebasket.)
 
36. Hidden clues – read sentences and find the hidden clues or inferences (Mr. Dobbs took the rake from the cellar and walked out to the lawn. What time of year was this? John came in from the barn and took off his dirty chaps. Where does John live?
 
37. Reactions – read sentences and have students write down how they would feel if this happened to them. (Tony spent hours building a snowman on the front lawn. When he went inside, a big branch broke and fell on the snowman, smashing it to pieces.)
 
38. Comics – cut off the last frame in a cartoon, have students draw or write to complete what they think happened
 
39. What if it happened?– read sentences to students and have them decide how they would feel …. e.g., If they heard a strange sound in the night I ... or If I received something I wanted for my birthday or If I tried and tried to do something and couldn’t.
 
40. Zodiac signs – have students read their horoscope, discuss their qualities and characteristics, decide on the sign of a character in the book you are reading, surmise about others.

How to Teach English?

There are various methods or techniques that are applicable in English language teaching. Here, the following methods are mostly used by teachers. Let us review them briefly!

1. Grammar-translation method – present students with short grammar rules and word lists and then translation exercises in which they make use of the rules. It teaches people about language but doesn’t really help them to communicate effectively with it.

2. Direct Method – while teaching, no use of the mother tongue is permitted (the teacher does not need to know the students’ native language). Actions and pictures are used to make meanings clear. Grammar and target culture is learned inductively. Literary texts are read for pleasure and are not analyzed grammatically. More importantly, the teacher must be a native speaker or have a native-like proficiency in the target language.

3. Audiolingualism – describe the grammatical patterns of English to students, have them repeat and learn them. Habit-forming behaviourist approach – perform the correct response to a stimulus so that a reward is given. Drilling (choral and individual repetition and cue-response drilling) is still considered useful – especially with low-level students.

4. Total Physical Response – before teaching speaking, student should learn much vocabulary earlier. In this case, students learn vocabulary through observing actions (performed by teacher) as well as performing the actions themselves. To teach the words “walk” and “run”, teacher should explain them through actions so that students can differentiate both of the words. This methods are suitable for young learners.

5. PPP – Presentation, Practice and Production – the teacher presents the context and situation for the language (describe someone’s holiday plans) and both explains and demonstrates the meaning and form of the new language (eg. “Going to” …. He’s going to visit the Hermitage Museum.) Students then practice sentences with “Going to” … This is called controlled practice. Teachers can use drilling to teach pronunciation and allow students to speak more freely about themselves, e.g… next week I am going to ….

6. CLT – Communicative Language Teaching – involves language functions such as inviting, agreeing, disagreeing, suggesting, etc. Teaches appropriacy when talking and writing to people (formal, informal, tentative, technical, etc.) This method assumes that if students get enough exposure to language and opportunities for language use and if they are motivated then language learning will happen! Focus on allowing students to communicate real message and engage in communicative activities where they use all and any language they know to communicate.

7. TBL - Task-Based Learning – emphasizes tasks rather than the language. Students perform real-life tasks such as timetables, schedules, presentations. Students are given a pre-task (introduced to the topic), which is followed by a task cycles (students plan the task, gather language and information) and produce an outcome (writing, oral performance, etc.)

Which method is best? Use a combination of all! Depends on the situation. Depends on the level of student!.

References:
Harmer, Jeremy. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited

Murcia, Marianne-Celce. (2001). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (third edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Setiyadi, Ag. Bambang. (2006). Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Yogyakarta: Graha Ilmu.

Affective Factors in Language Learning

After discussing the importance of character in learning, it is crucial to understand the most fundamental side of human behavior that is affective factor. Some considerable factors such as attitude, interest and motivation, anxiety, self-efficacy, and independency in language learning will be described briefly.

the first term which is important to consider is attitude. Attitude brings numerous definitions according to many references. Consequently, these might lead to the various focus and instrument concerning this field of study. Attitude might refer to the base part of motivation (Gardner and Lambert, 1972:134). Meanwhile, Cook (1969) defined attitude, value, and personality shape “motive constructions” which determine human behavior. Attitude is considered important language learning,  particularly in second language acquisition. From this perspective, it may result that learners who have positive attitude towards second language may have a better progress in mastering the language rather than those who posses the negative one.

Besides, motivation bears different meaning from attitude. Motivation is often defined as “something which trigger individuals”. Motivation is one of important factors in language learning since in learning, motivation might refer to the energy that arouses a student to learn and that gives direction or focus to learning (Seifert, 1999). Moreover, in relation to the learning process, Wlodkowski (1986: 12-13) established that motivation sequences an order which may be illustrated as follows: “the student who possesses an ability to act (energy) makes a choice (volition) which leads to the certain purposes (direction) and if this process lasts longer (involvement), he will get an attainment (completion).

Another factor which is reasonable to consider is anxiety. The construct of anxiety plays a major role in second language acquisition. Anxiety is the subjective feeling of worry, nervousness, and self-doubt in associated with inadequate capacity to know the result of a phenomenon. For instances, the students are sometimes very anxious when they are asked to read a poem in front of the classroom since they will get embarrassed due to their inability to play an intonation well. This temporary feeling is called state anxiety because it happens in particular event or phenomenon. Meanwhile, there is a case where the students always feel anxious to face the normal situation of learning. This permanent predisposition is called trait anxiety. It is important for teachers to try to determine whether a student’s anxiety stems from a global trait or whether it comes from a particular situation at the moment.

Furthermore, self-efficacy refers to the concept where a person feels he or she is capable of doing certain  tasks or achieving results suitable with what it is expected. In relation to the language learning, a belief of capability is very specific. For examples, a students feels he is capable to read heroic poem in front of the class or he feels he is able to write a formal letter in writing competition. Therefore, it is assumed that a learner who feels he or she is capable of carrying out a given task with an appropriate degree of effort may be devoted to achieving success. Conversely, a learner with low self-efficacy may quite easily attribute failure in learning process.

In addition, the last affective factor to consider in language learning is independency. An independency in learning might refer to personal capabilities that enable students to be independent learners and develop a core of resiliency (Alderman, 1999). In relation to the motivation, the student tends to be motivated intrinsically if he or she believes he has a choice and independency to make a decision (Corno and Rohrkemper, 1985; Decy, 1992; Deci and Ryan, 1992). In other words, the student who does not have independency are less motivated and creative.

Reference:

Suherdi, Didi. (2012). Rekonstruksi Pendidikan Bahasa: Sebuah Keniscayaan bagi Keunggulan Bangsa. Bandung: Celtics Press

Establishing Religiousity Approach: A Critical-Strategic Alternative

An Issue

Every generation is looking forward to the better future generation. That is why we are developing education and school system as well as teaching our children an adequate knowledge and moral value.  The succeeding generation is expected to have knowledge, skill, and wisdom which lead them to their successful life in the future. In relation to this, English language teaching is one of the ways and means to accommodate the national expectation.

Every Indonesian children are dreaming of being able to speak English well. Many of them are wishing to study abroad or to work at international company to pursue the better future through learning English. Nevertheless, the dream of theirs, for most of them, turn out to be traumatic experience since they are not succeeding in learning English. There are some reasonable considerations regarding the causes of this failure.

Firstly, English is likely to be the one of difficult subjects at school.  It is reasonable since there is a systematical mistakes caused by many sides. Naturally, humans are destined to speak language. Therefore, English should not be difficult to learn. There might be fundamental mistakes occurred in the implementation of English education.

Moreover, the failure of English teaching becomes excusable. In reality, parents quite easily excuse their children’s failure who get  low mark of English. In addition, it becomes such an ‘inevitable result’  so that society has little consideration of this phenomenon. Hopefully, this is only a ‘temporary paralysis’ for English education in Indonesia.

Actually, the phenomena above have been long apprehensively recognized.  A number of effort have been made by many sides involving the government (with its policies through general directorate and PMPTK), community college (through many studies and innovative programs), and many experts (with their works and scientific projects)  to offer the solution to this problem. Despite the socialization of new curriculum model and standard, the teachers are reluctant to leave behind the practical teaching which is in fact, ineffective and useless. Hopefully, this problem also leads us to reconstruct our belief (the teacher’s belief) regarding “how to do the best way to teach our students”.

Furthermore, in order to solve the problem above, it is necessary to refine and reorganize the teacher professionalism through the development of quality management system (QMS) as an alternative way. Recently, such program is urgently required by the educational system. The certain approach should be established  to give contribution to the language education.

RELIGIOUSITY AS A BASIS OF LANGUAGE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Many teacher training development programs did not result in successful improvement. This might have been  caused by ‘teacher’s resistance’ to the new paradigm offered by government. Teachers tend to keep the ‘old practice’ running all the way as it is since they already feel comfortable and ignore the failure of English teaching they have done.

However, the problem always comes up with the solution. One of the ways to make teachers realize the importance of their professionalism is by establishing professional religiousity approach. This approach holds four principles as its fundamental base; they are Amanah, Rahmah, Taadubah, and Sillah (ARTS).

Amanah refers to the view in which a teaching process is regarded as a ‘service’ which will be totally counted in after life. In other words, teachers are supposed to do their best in administering teaching-learning process.  Rahmah is associated with teacher’s affection and patience towards the learning process. Meanwhile, taadubah deals with the teacher’s effort to develop students’ moral excellence. At last, sillah refers to teacher’s ability to plan and develop networking and collaboration among individuals in the classroom.

By implementing those principles, teachers are expected to build real-life competence. ARTS also leads the teachers to do some obligatory phases in teaching-learning process: (1) The teachers are obliged to do modeling as clear as possible, (2) The teachers are obliged to give complete guidance, (3) The teachers are obliged to give students opportunities to perform naturally, and (4)The teachers are obliged to put amanah (trust) on each student.

In conclusion, English may not be the only factor that determine the glorious future of nation but we realize the importance and significance of English well. Therefore, I order to reconstruct English education we need to implement a new paradigm offered by religiosity professional approach. Hopefully, the implementation of this approach will lead our next generation to the brighter future.

Reference:

Suherdi, Didi. (2012). Rekonstruksi Pendidikan Bahasa: Sebuah Keniscayaan bagi Keunggulan Bangsa. Bandung: Celtics Press

The Importance of Student's Character Building

THE NATURE AND ROLE OF CHARACTER IN LIFE

In order to promote the advancement of our language education in the basis of national excellence, we need to take account of character building. Character means personality in certain ways. However, we do not focus on making clear distinctive of those terms but we considerably put them as the backbone of our education. Without a good character building, an education will collapse like a human without backbone. Likewise, language education may not result in goodness and beneficence if students’ character building are not settled firmly. Therefore,  teachers are supposed to value moral excellence in learning activity.  Students are taught how to do every single activity honestly and responsibly. Then, they have to always bring righteousness and objectivity in making decision of their life. As a result, generating such individuals will lead our nation to achieve the noble and supreme goal which is glory and prosperity for every people.

BUILDING STUDENTS’ CHARACTER THROUGH SCHOOL EDUCATION

Building character requires comprehensive and ongoing efforts that demand the highest participation from the entire school member, educational institution, and the society. Practically, in the school level, the principal and school boards are responsible to provide a conducive environment for the emergence of positive character of the entire school member. For example, the school principal generates the regulations which rules the way members should dress; the way members communicate to each others; the procedure of using school facilities, etc. On the other hand, the classroom teachers bring forth classroom regulations such as establishing classroom management which concerns the cleanliness and neatness of the classroom. Then, the teachers promote character building aspects through the learning process for each subjects. In addition, school should ensure that the entire curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular activities run very well. At last, such activities will create a leading and religious generation.

BUILDING STUDENTS’ CHARACTER THROUGH LANGUAGE EDUCATION

As we know that students have different needs and character. Language teachers are supposed to teach any subject matters well in any classroom circumstances. It might be easy to teach a class which comprises a conducive learning process.  Then, it is challenging for language teachers to discuss how to deal with “a noisy class” and put moral values within the classroom.

A successful model of language teaching done by Suherdi (2009)  gives us an insight into the way we face different kind of classroom circumstance through a series of phase. In this case, he tried to teach descriptive text which is illustrated briefly as follows:

• The class was begun by performing a small talk about tourism places around West Java. This step had successfully arouse students’ interest since the topic was related to their own culture.
• The grammatical errors and irrelevant answers were neglected temporary in this process. In fact, this strategy had successfully fostered students’ participation. Moreover, the students who usually caused disturbance had no opportunity to interrupt the classroom activity.
• While performing dialogue with students, certain model of expressions were written on the white board to give them guidance to develop their own descriptive text.
• Students were not directly asked to share their work in front of the class. In this case, the teacher is not supposed to force students’ verbally or non-verbally to do that. A model of descriptive text should be given earlier by the teacher instead. This phase created comfortable atmosphere of learning in which the students gained confidence to perform their task voluntarily.
• Students were asked to work together in group and made a role play in which a tour guide explained some tourism places to the tourists. All of them now, had a same opportunity to share their works each other.

CHARACTER BUILDING ANALYSIS

Through the series of the phase above, the classroom interaction and students’ participation were successfully fostered. Individual task given helped them to be independent and honest. Meanwhile, group-work task raised students’ character of creativity, confidence, and visionary. Despite the ignorance of grammatical errors, the conducive learning process was created and this atmosphere will lead to the better process in the future time.

Reference:

Suherdi, Didi. (2009). Teaching Oral Descriptive Texts in Senior High School. A video-recording on the teaching of a descriptive text in an SMA in Bandung.

Suherdi, Didi. (2012). Rekonstruksi Pendidikan Bahasa: Sebuah Keniscayaan bagi Keunggulan Bangsa. Bandung: Celtics Press