EFFECTIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING & ASSESSMENT

In the second week of teaching assistance activity in SMA IT NURUL FIKRI Depok, I was assigned by teacher to teach the XB class. I had to explain you that this is an integrated Islamic high school, they separated the class between male and female students. XB is a female student class, it consist of 29 students in the class. After one week of observing and becoming teacher assistance, I had been given a chance by my master teacher to teach English in her class. Fortunately, the class that I used to teach consisted of smart students, they were so confident to speak in English eventhough it was broken English. Based on my observation in the previous week, I assumed that the female classes tend to be handled easier than male classes. Female classes also paid more attention to the teacher explanation than in male classes.

I prepared my lesson plan four days before I taught the class. Procedure text was a topic which I used to teach in the class. My master teacher told me that almost of the students were joined to the private course after school, they already learned about pattern, language feature, and form of procedure text in their course. She suggested me not to develop the lesson which focused on the grammar only because they already had learned it before for many times either in group and in the class. Actually I was inspired by Mr. Iwan who developed a lesson by combining Jigsaw and Role playing in the class as he gave it in Multiple Intelligence workshop in SSE campus. I thought it will be effective to practice their speaking and reading.

I assigned the students to work in groups and they would hold certain rules on their group, they would develop a poster from the scattered text and pictures also they will explain the poster in walking galleries activity. They would act as logistic, manager, recorder, encourager, and expert. My master teacher suggested me to give reward and punishment in my activity. She told me that if I gave them reward and punishment, they would feel that they were on duty to do the task as well. By giving them a certain role, they were responsible to their role which had a certain obligation on their group.

I promised them to give Juragan and Babu Award to the class. Juragan Award would be given if one of the groups finished the poster faster than other and it was easy to be understood also they presented the poster clearly to the class. In the other hand, Babu Award would be given for the students that interrupt the class such as: did not help the group to finish the poster, sleeping in the class, and also make a crowd in the class. By giving the reward and punishment, it was so effective for them to develop the posters seriously. It affected the students to work intensively and collaboratively in their group. However, I had to give them extra time to finish the poster because 20 minutes that I had given to them at the beginning was not enough. I learn that sometime the lesson plan can be flexible and longer from the target. This activity would be held effectively, if the teacher explains the role of the students clearly and also teacher had to avoid giving ambiguous instructions but give the instructions clearly and systematically.

I had a problem when I brought this activity to the class, it was difficult for me to assess their speaking by doing Jigsaw like in walking galleries because it was so hard for me to watch and listen all of them at the same time. In walking galleries it was also difficult to assess the other member of the group because expert is the only one who will talk in this part.  I think to assess the student from walking galleries activity teacher should have more partners to assess them in the same time, it would be better if they explained it one by one in front of the class. Actually, applying Jigsaw and Role playing as I explained above is very effective to assess student’s affective manner like participation to work collaboratively in group and assess their reading of the text to follow the written instructions. However, it was a bit difficult to assess their speaking skill because of any distractions would be happened when they were doing presentation while some students were paying attention to it and the other got busy to moving around and looking for the gallery that they were like to come also a crowd was potentially happen in this time.

PETA
By: Yani

In the second week, I think my master teacher still used the same methodology with the first week. By learning from my experience in the first week, now I will not only tell about the effective and ineffective about the classroom leaning. But also more information about the background of school and the students that I think it is very influence in the classroom leaning.

SMAN 43 Jakarta has 681 students and 18 classes. It consists of IPA and IPS students. In that school provides some technologies, such as computers in language laboratory and LCD. Here, I was focus in XI IPS classes because my master teacher just teaches in those classes. Every class has 36 up to 40 students. They have differences of background, culture and economy. Based on my observation, the students have law motivation to study English. In addition, based on my interview last time, some of students have lost their motivation because they did not feel comfortable in their classroom, bored, strained, and they have difficulty to accept the materials that have delivered by teacher.

From the background above, I will try to analyze the influences between what the students felt with some ineffective about the classroom learning that I found. Such as, teacher just used one of models of learning. It is reception model that teacher just deliver the materials from teacher as a centered. For instance, at that time, in XI IPS2 teacher delivered the material about genre of text. Teacher just read the materials from the textbook and asked the students to read it by themselves. Teacher did not use technology in her classes, because she is a “digital immigrant” who is not familiar with technology. She had begun to teach since 1984. Can you imagine how old she is! Based on my interview, she knew that it was a mistake that she did not use technology; however she said that she is too old to learn about technology.

Then, Teacher did not pay attention with teacher task orientation that refers to time management in the classroom to deliver the material. Such as, teacher asked the students to review the previous topic last week. However when the students could not answer it, teacher yelled them. So a lot of time was spent to yell them. Then teacher gave the task on the “LKS” until time was up. So I think those ineffective teaching gave the big influences from the students’ motivation.

However, The effective teaching that I think it can be good example for me as a teacher candidate is when teacher explained about the materials, she did not use complicated sentences; make their points clear to students who have different levels of understanding. According to five key behaviors, it includes of lesson clarity that refers how clear a teacher to deliver the materials. Such as, when teacher explained about the argumentation text, she gave the example that related with their daily context.

Based on my observation, the students need an interesting condition in their classroom; and the students have lost their motivation to study English. Because of that, if I had to teach in the same class and lesson, I will help them to build their motivation first, and understand about the students’ need. For instance, I will use the variety of instruction approaches and various models of learning. Such as collaborative learning, and indirect instruction which the students-centered and interact to share ideas in the groups. So the students will not feel bored, and they can feel the senses of learning itself. Give the anticipation of rewards and intrinsic motivation. So, it can motivate them to enthusiasm in learning and they will feel comfortable without yell to them. I will also capitalize the technology to enhance the students learning… 🙂