International Language Studies Bali

TEFL in schools : discrepancy persists between curriculum and classroom teaching

A. Budairy — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:21:34 +0000

The teaching of English in schools in Indonesia have taken different discourses as Natonal Curriculum keeps changing over time. However, those changes do not necessarily have any impact whatsoever on the way teachers deliver their lessons in the classroom. The governement seems to be too much preoccupied with a ‘label’ or a ‘grand concept’ such as ‘KBK’ or until recently ‘KSP’ but has repeatedly failed to shed light on how a concept can be translated into day-to-day classroom methods and techniques. Teachers in general lack the knowledge of how such concept as ‘communicative’, ’student-centered’, ‘ life skills’ or even ‘fun /enjoyble’ can be transformed into real classroom-based activities. Sadly speaking, this issue has never been seriously addressed by the government or those concerned with education. Although there have been numerous workshops and seminars designated for teachers, teachers are still at lost. Why ? Because those workshops very often serve nothing more as ‘formality’ , meant to ‘meet the agenda’. They often center around issues which do not contribute at all to the very practical and fundamental problems in classroom teaching such as ” How can I make my teaching focus on students instead of me as a teacher? , ” How can I engage my students in a ‘life-skill’ activity? How can I design teaching materials which would make my students speak English naturally and at the same time have fun doing it ? ”

It is no wonder that not much has changed as far as TEFL in schools is concerned. The teaching of English in school still bears the old characteristics: “dry”, ” teacher-centered”, “grammar focused” and ‘far from being fun”. Teachers would normally start with a grammatical label, its structure/form, and meaning using Indonesian translation, then move on to excercises in the book or at best ask students to recite a dialogue from the book. A particular structure is usually introduced without the presence of a meaningful context. Students would sit back and listen to their teacher explaining at great length. Then they would be asked to do excercises afterwards. As a result, this kind of teaching has been successful in making students have their minds fully stuffed with all kinds of grammatical labels but without the competence to recognize its funtions and let alone use them in real life situations. This is because students tend to learn more “about English” instead of learning “how to use/speak English” . There is a big discrepancy between what has been taught or what is expected by the curriculum and what level of competence students can really achieve. Whereas the teaching of English should allow students as much time as possible to practice communicating in English and at the same time to learn with maximum comfort and ease.

ILS has long worked on practical issues related to classroom teaching and would be very pleased to share ideas with school teachers. We are planning to hold a “real” workshop on classroom teaching to offer you a breakthrough to your reccurrent problems of how to translate some noble concepts in teaching English as suggested by National Curriculum, into day-to-day real classroom techniques and activities. Contact us at 0361 811763 if you are in Bali or 0353 884282 if you are in Bojonegoro.

Learning a Language: What Makes Listening Difficult?

A. Budairy — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:17:52 +0000

Of the four basic English language skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening, the most difficult to acquire is listening comprehension. It is also the one skill which cannot be “taught”.

In evaluations that university English and foreign language institute EFL students must take at least three times a semester, the area which is most critical and the one in which they experience the greatest difficulty is listening comprehension.

What makes Listening Difficult?

There are four clusters of factors which can affect the difficulty of language listening tasks. Here is what they are and how they affect listening comprehension skills.

The SPEAKER

• How many are there?

Is one person speaking at a time? Are there a number of speakers? Do some of them speak at the same time?

• How quickly they speak

Does the pace of the speaker allow sufficient “time” for mental processing of the speech by the listener? Does the language of the speaker flow at a faster or slower rate than the listener is accustomed to?

• What types of accent they have

Does the speaker (or do the speakers) have an unfamiliar accent or manner of speaking that is less comprehensible to the listener? Is the listener accustomed to variable accents and speech types?

The LISTENER

• The role of the listener

What is the listener’s purpose in listening? General comprehension? Specific information? Pleasure? Business? Extraction of critical data?

• The level of response required

What does the listener have to do in response to the speech? Act? Respond? Think? Enjoy? Nothing?

• The interest in the content or subject

Is the listener involved in the content or subject matter? Is it something they want to, need to, or must know?

The CONTENT

• Grammar

Is the grammar and structure in use familiar to the listener? Is the listener able to use or assimilate the grammar – structure used in this context?

• Vocabulary

Is vocabulary or lexis that is new to the listener being used in the speech? Is the quantity of new words substantial? Noted linguistics author Scott Thornbury says, “Count 100 words of a passage. If more than 10 of the words are unknown, the text has less than a 90% vocabulary recognition rate. It is therefore, unreadable.” The same holds true for a listening comprehension passage.

• Information structure

Is the information or material being presented by the speech in a form that is clear and understandable to the listener? Is the presentation order logical, progressive, have redundancies or is presented non-sequentially?

• Background knowledge assumed

In comprehension of the speech, is prior knowledge required? Is any prior knowledge required substantial, highly specialized or technical in nature?

SUPPORT

What kind of support, if any, is available? Support in this context refers to whether there are pictures, diagrams or other visual aids to support the text.

While there are a number of approaches that can be utilized to improve listening comprehension, one important key is regular and consistent practice. An EFL or ESL teacher may also provide a measure of guided practice in developing key listening comprehension skills. Taking these other factors into account, listening comprehension segments can be identified which may tend to cause problems for learners or that have a sufficient number of suitable aspects to make them practical and useable.

Welcome to ILS Bali and Jawa

A. Budairy — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:15:41 +0000