Lately, bilingual education in RSBI has been a very nice topic to be discussed in many chances. Actually, what is bilingual education? Based on www.proenglish.org/issues/, ”Bilingual education is the practice of teaching non-English speaking students core subjects in their native language as they learn English.” In Indonesia, bilingual education is commonly implemeted in RSBI (Rintisan Sekolah Berstandar Internasional). RSBI should be well-designed to implicate the bilingual education program in order to make the students have a good quality. Well-designed means the schools should have good requirements. In my opinion, there are several things that the RSBI must have, three of which are the skillful students, the appropriate teachers, and the facilities of the school.
The first requirement is the skillful students who are clever and have good personality. The students should be given some tests before they are admitted in RSBI. The test should be divided in two kinds. The first test is psychology test which aim is to knowing the students personality. The second test is the test which includes the materials of lessons. The material of the tests can be the lessons such as mathematics, physics, economics, etc. Not only that, the school must provide the TOEFL test. The students who are admitted in that school are the students who pass the tests and have at least 400 points in TOEFL test. For instance, the school which implements that kind of TOEFL test is SMA 1 Medan. The headmaster of this school, Rebekka Girsang says, “The students who want to be received in RSBI must have at least 400 points in TOEFL test.” Thus, the students who have all of those requirements will easily absorb the lessons which are given by the teachers in their classes without any difficulties especially about English.
The second requirement is the appropriate teachers who master the subjects they teach and English as well. The teachers of RSBI who only master their subjects without understanding English well will not teach the students well too. They will not make the quality of their students become better. Moreover, they will cause a serious danger. Simon Marcus says:
An example from a Jakarta school illustrates the point. An ambitious decision was made to teach some physics theory in English. It was not long, though, before this attempt had to be abandoned because the students were simply finding it too difficult to follow the theory and their first language had to be resorted to so as to clarify, and resolve misunderstandings.
Thus, the teachers who teach bilingual education at least master the subjects they teach and English as well. Besides that, the teachers should study abroad to get more knowledge of their subjects and English if it is possible. When, they come back to the school, they will teach the students better. One of the schools which send their teachers abroad is also SMA 1 Medan. Rebekka Girsang says, “We make a good cooperation with Cambridge University in order to improve the ability of the teachers especially in English.”
The third requirement is the facilities in RSBI schools that need to be complete. As we know that the students who are studying in RSBI schools should have good knowledge. Because of that, the school should have complete facilities. The facilities of that school can be the form of buildings and its infrastructures. The school should have many kinds of buildings and infrastructures which help the students elaborate their ability to use bilingual language, for instance, the library which provides many kinds of books. The books of the lessons are not only in Indonesian but also in English so the students will easily improve their knowledge in certain subjects of lessons and their English as well. Not only the library, the school should have a language laboratory, too. Then, students will use it to improve their ability in speaking English by using the facilities in that laboratory.
Based on the explanations above, we can conclude that not all bilingual education in RSBI can be implemented well. The schools which implement this program should have the skillful students, the appropriate teachers, and the facilities of school. If the school has those requirements, it will make the quality of the students be better. It is recommended to the headmaster of RSBI to improve the quality of the school by considering those three things.
Sources:
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Mega Astya
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