Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses the study which is investigated in this research. This chapter is divided into seven parts; they are background of the study, identification of the problems, limitation of the problems, problem formulation, objectives of the study, benefits of the study, and definition of terms.

A. Background of the Study

English has been taught to students in Indonesia. As a foreign language, English has become a complementary subject in formal schools in Indonesia. As a major subject, English starts being taught in Junior High School and continuously until the first year of college. At the age of thirteen years old, the Junior High School students used to be said as the appropriate level to begin learning English. However, the government changed the decision and made a new policy that English should be taught earlier in the Elementary School. Based on the Indonesian decree, English has been taught to the students of the fourth grade of Elementary School. The fourth grade of Elementary School is considered as an appropriate level to start learning English since the students at the early age of ten years old are still eager to learn something new especially to study a new subject. Moreover, the younger the learners the easier they study English because children have unique attitude towards learning, especially a new language. When they learn what they are curious about, they go faster, cover more territory than they would everything of Faw, 1980: 255. It will be better if English is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 2 taught to the students in the very beginning level since the purpose of teaching English for children is to give basic knowledge to the students so as to prepare the students to learn English in the next level. In 2001, the government changed the curriculum and started implementing a new curriculum. The previous curriculum was the 1994 English curriculum which put emphasis on the development of communicative competence and cover the four language skills based on the teacher-centered method Depdikbud, 1994: 1-2. However, in the new curriculum, the Competency-Based Curriculum, the learners are the center of the teaching learning process. This research attempts to investigate the classroom activities in the implementation of Competency-Based Curriculum to teach English at the sixth grade of SD Negeri Serayu Yogyakarta. The sixth grade students and the English teachers of SD Negeri Serayu Yogyakarta are taken as the subjects of this research. The researcher takes the sixth grade of SD Negeri Serayu Yogyakarta as the participants under a consideration that they have had the basic knowledge of English because they have learnt English since they were at the fourth grade and the fifth grade of Elementary School.

B. Identification of the Problems