Nowadays, in response to the needs of developing human resources in Indonesia, learning English is a vital skill. It will facilitate your children accomplish their comprehensive potential in later life. Once they have this initial comprehension of English in the primary school, they will have a strong foundation which will be a benefit in their later studies. As a result there are many kindergartens starting to introduce English to the learners. Introducing English to kindergarten students as young learners will help to lay the foundations for primary education. It is because they are still in a period that is possible for them to learn language easily. It is expected that after obtaining the English course, the students will be able to apply English in any kind of test. Not only this, they are also expected to be able to use English in their job later. Nevertheless, when the students come to English classes, several students feel that learning English is difficult. As a result, they are lazy to study English in the class. Even worse is that they cannot pass school grade that is important to continue their study later. This condition is definitely not estimated to happen. There are several aspects that may cause these problems in learning English, three of which are frequently happen: the quality of the teachers, the habit of the students, and the participation of parents.
The first problem is the shoddy quality of the teachers. The tuition for English for Young Learners includes “Insuring teacher quality”. This means that young learners’ teachers are those who are well-prepared and eligible people. Evidence demonstrates that the teachers of young learners necessitate being able to understand their linguistics and other needs, provide suitable tutoring, and they are also capable of assessing how well students figure out what has been taught. Beside that, those teachers should have adequate experiences in handling the students from various language and cultural backgrounds. Not only that, teachers also can ask the parents about the kind of literary work that their children usually read, what topics or subjects that is usually enjoyable discussed by the learners with their family, what tradition the learners and their family belong to, or other learners’ interest at home. This information gathering would be very useful to be integrated into classroom instruction, such as: designing thematic units that the learners have been familiar with, or doing literary practice as the learners usually do at their home. By applying this kind of context which values the students’ home languages and their own culture, the classroom will provide the learners enriched knowledge of English with the basic of their own language and culture. This means that the quality of the teachers will increase not only because of their basic skill but also their interaction with the students and their parents.
Not only the quality of the teachers, the mischievous habit of the students also constitutes the second challenge in learning English. As general, young learners are inquisitive, outspoken, like to move around, are interested in exploration, inquisitive nature, and energetic. Specifically, the students in 7 years and fewer are still acquiring the language structure of their first language. These children have a short attention span so that they easily get bored with the lesson. Then, 8-12 years children like playing with their imagination and creativity. In addition, the students in 13 years and up will be very less motivated and they are very self-conscious. In other words, their language is not fully developed, so that they have a weak base to learn a new language, which is English. They may not know certain grammatical structures, vocabularies, or other language features of their own language before they learn English. They face a lot of difficulties in learning English. The only treatment is the application of the right techniques for every level of age. Without a doubt, the role of the teachers is severely needed. They may teach in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere with plenty of encouragement. This means that if the students find something amusing, they will want to do it over and over again.
The third problem in learning English is the lack participation of parents. The challenge from the perspectives of the parents is the least collaboration with the teachers to share about the standards, curriculum, and instructional material methods that are applied in their children’s class. The parents still do not have access to the job of encouraging and educating their children. Even some of them have the paradigm that the responsibility of educating belongs to the teachers in the school. The parents feel that they have already carried out their duty to send their children to the school. Consequently, they do not feel that they have the same responsibility as the teachers to educate their children at home. It can be seen from Indonesian society that most parents do not support their children by setting up the habit of using English in their home. They assume that English is just a “school language”. As we are knowledgeable, English can be used for communication in daily life among the members of society without pass away their native language. This will lead to the ignorance of English to be means of communication that will impact to the English teaching in the class. In the end, it is expected the contribution of parents will affect the escalation of capability in English of the students in their class.
From the elucidation above, we can construe that teaching English for young learners essentially confronts several problems over those pointed out above. However, three aspects of which are stated, are essential to find the solution earlier. This is since these problems frequently happen in the society. By reviewing the problems happen in teaching English for young learners which are the quality of the teacher, the habit of the students, and the participation of parents. Regarding the essential of learning English for young learners, all of the parties should oblige to solve these problems. It can start from the students themselves to the major parties of the country to make them care about the importance of learning English for young learners.
Sources:
Suryo, Arif. 2009. Suggestopedia as a Method for Teaching Speaking for Young Learners in a Second Language Classroom. Semarang
Hasselgreen, Angela. 2005. Assessing the Language of Young Learners. The University of Bergen. 27 Jan.2009 (http:// www.eslkidstuff.com/Articles.htm)
Written by
Bila Nastiti T
109221424143
No comments:
Post a Comment