The Status of English at Junior High School

21 When their work is going to be published in some way, students are writing with a purpose. http:www.unicef.orgteacherslearnerwriting.htm

2.2.3 Teaching English at Junior High School

2.2.3.1 The Status of English at Junior High School

A lot of people speak more than one language in order to communicate with other people from different parts of the world. In Indonesia, English is taught as a foreign language from elementary school to university. In Junior High School, English is usually taught twice a week which lasts for 90 minutes each meeting. This program focuses on language concepts and language skills. In learning a foreign language, there are many factors which influence the result, including personal factors like age, motivation, and experiences, and certain enviromental factors. Age is one of the influential factors which effects learning. A foreign language should be introduced to children as early as possible, because children are better in attaining the target language than adult people. The way children learn a foreign language depends on their development stage. Some children developed early, while others in leaps and abound. We cannot say that at the same age, the children will have same ability. In language teaching, the teacher must give attention to the characteristics of the average child, and the materials must be appropriate to their ability. In order to make the students get involved in learning process, the teacher should choose an appropriate learning method that is the students’ active learning method. An active learning process requires students and teacher to commit to a dynamic partnership in which 22 both share a vision and responsibility for instruction. Students learn content, develop conceptual knowledge, and acquire language through a discovery- oriented approach, the learner is not only engaged with the activity, but also with the goal of the activity. Essential to this approach is the view of the learners being responsible for discovering, contructing, and creating something new, and the view of the teacher as resource and facilitator. It is pointed out further that instruction will be most effective when situated within a students’ own knowledge and word view as cited by Satria 2005 in his final project “The Application of the Five-Minute Activities to Teach English Vocabulary at the Junior High School”. The students’ culture and commnity play an important role in learning. This theory supports the idea that students learn best when new information presented is just beyond their present knowledge. In teaching-learning process, the teacher not only has to pay attention to the students’ characteristics, but also the students personality, individual differences because the students have different abilities and point a view, background, and experience. In addition to it, Scott and Ytreberg 1993: 5 state that “there must be variety in the classroom, such as a variety of activity and a variety of organization”. Based on the assumption, during the teaching-learning process, the teacher should sometimes let the children learn individually, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes in groups. Teacher as a facilitator should give facility to children in learning process. It is important for the teacher to arrange his future activities before teaching in the classroom. So, a teacher should be able to choose the effective methods of 23 teaching to expose every particular material, since all methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

2.2.3.2 The Characteristics of the Seventh Grade Students at Junior High

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