Scope English Standard and Basic Competence 2006 for Elementary School Level

21 which they live. Hamachek 1990 includes the years from age six to twelve are increasingly more aware of and responsive to an ever-widening array of influences ranging all the way from their parents, to playmates, to television, to comic books, etc. They continue to develop and expand the personality characteristics that began to appear during the preschool years. The cognitive processes also continue to evolve slowly from the purely concrete, black-and- white thinking of the elementary years to an increasing capacity to the conceptual thinking that will emerge during the later middle years and adolescence. Certainly, each year from those ages has particular uniqueness. The children development stage is related to the cognitive development. The word cognitive focused on mental processes such as thinking, learning, remembering and problem solving. Meanwhile, the word development is used to imply that cognitive processes change with age or experience Byrnes, 1996:3. In brief, the cognitive processes such as thinking change with age. The children cognitive development has four general stages which are proposed by Piaget in Vasta et.all 1995: 35. They are: 1 Sensorimotor Form of intelligence in which knowledge is based on physical interactions with people and objects. This period is extending from birth to 2 years. 2 Preoperational Form of intelligence in which symbols and mental actions begin to replace objects and overt behavior. This third stage is extending from about 2 to 6 years. 22 3 Concrete Operations Form of intelligence in which mental operations make logical problem solving with concrete objects possible. This period is extending from 6 to 11 years. 4 Formal Operations Form of intelligence in such higher level mental operations make possible logical reasoning with respect to abstract and hypothetical events and not merely concrete objects. The fourth stage begins at about 11 years. From this study, the fifth graders whose ages around 10 to 11, are included in concrete operations stage. They are able to solve problem in concrete ways. Cole 1956: 137 affirms the fifth grade students shows higher intellectual capacity, more controlled imagination, some slight powers of reasoning, and an intense curiosity about all kinds of things.

b. Elementary School Language Learning

Certainly the ability of elementary years to learn language is distinct from the higher years. Elementary years involve many activities during learning processes regarding the cognitive development of the children. As quoted by Trisisca 1994:9 children have unique attitude toward learning something. Unlike adults who can be told to what is needed to learn, children even learn something because they like it, not because it is important to be learned. Thus, various activities could grab children’ attentions. The various activities enable students to actively involved in learning processes, as stated by Hudelson 1991: 2 that in