English for Elementary Schools

In response to the needs of developing human resources, the teaching English as a foreign language has been extended to reach the elementary school level. This means that students learn English much earlier as they are young learners. The hope is that students will get more exposure to English and as a consequence, the expectation to get a better learning is more open. But, it is not easy to realize that teaching program. English teaching for elementary schools has encountered numerous problems, three of which are important: the issue of exposure to English use in everyday life, the English writing system, and the misconception about how children learn language.

The first problem is the issue of exposure to English in everyday life, which has been a serious concern to many people in Indonesia. This is one of the challenges that children learning English at elementary schools may come across with. As we know in Indonesia, as an implication of positioning English as a foreign language, English is just learned in classrooms, not widely used as a means of communication by people across the regions. This lack of exposure makes children difficult to see English learning as being functional and useful for them. For example, children who learn English in their school but never use it in their everyday life will think that English is not useful and only a lesson in class. The problem above should prevent by giving information to the children that English is so useful in next day in their future to face up the globalization era.

The second problem is the English writing, as we know words in English are written differently as opposed to the way they are pronounced. Different to English, Bahasa Indonesia has the phonetic writing system wherein the writings clearly reflect consistently the sounds. Children learning English would find English writing system confusing considering the fact that there is no direct one-to-one correspondence between the pronunciation of a word and its spelling. For example, the word “apple” is pronounced 'æpl, it is different to Indonesian pronounce. Children may find this problem when they try to read or write a word by dictation in English. But this problem can be solved by the time they are learning.

The third problem, there has been a misleading misconception about how children learn language. Children have been wrongly assumed as being “a miniature of adults”, in which the way they learn a foreign language (including English) exactly the same as the way adults do. It resulted in a far-reaching problem. That is, teachers tend to approach the teaching-learning process in the same way as they would teach adults. This will impact what methods and techniques they use in the classroom. By using right method in teaching English in elementary school, teach them as young learner should be solved the problem.

In conclusion, there are three problems that are necessary to solve or avoid for realizing English for elementary school program, they are: the issue of exposure to English use in everyday life, the English writing system, and the misconception about how children learn language. By using right method in teaching English in elementary school, it should be an effective way to get optimum consequence of the program.

 Biyantiko Galih