28 Teaching English to young learners is different from teaching English to
adults and it cannot be seen as a trivial and easy job. Children might be very unpredictable during the teaching-learning process, sometimes they are nice, but
sometimes they are spoiled, naughty, and egoistic. Therefore, English teachers for young learners should not only have good knowledge and techniques about
teaching but also passion and patience in teaching children.
3. Lived Experience
Dilthey 1985 in Van Manen 1990:35 suggests that “lived experience involves our immediate, pre-reflective consciousness of life: a reflexive or self-
given awareness which is, as awareness, unaware of itself”. According to Dilthey 1985:223 as cited in Van Manen 1990, a lived experience
does not confront him as something perceived or represented; it is not given to me, but the reality of lived experience is there-for-him because he
have a reflexive awareness of it, because he possesses it immediately as belonging to him in some senses. Only in thought does it become
objective.
Furthermore, Dilthey 1985 in Van Manen 1990:36 also suggest that lived experience is “to the soul what breath is to the body”. According to Van
Manen 1990:36 it is “the breathing of meaning”. Thus, lived experience has an
essence or quality that could be recognized when we consciously retrospect on it. Then
, Van Manen 1990:36 states that lived experience is “the starting point and end point of phenomeno
logical research”. Phenomenology, according to Van Manen 1990:36 aims to
transform lived experience into a textual expression of its essence – in
such a way that the effect of the text is at once a reflexive re-living and a
29 reflective appropriation of something meaningful: a notion by which a
reader is powerfully animated in his or her own lived experience. For Hegel in Moustakas 1994:26, phenomenology refers to “knowledge
as it appears to consciousness, the science of describing what one perceives, senses, and knows in one‟s immediate awareness and experience.” According to
Husserl 1962 phenomenology as a research method is an in-depth process of reexamining the things themselves. Powers and Knapp 1995 put that
phenomenology is a way of thinking about what life experiences are like for people and is primarily concerned with interpreting the meaning of these
experiences. According to Creswell 2003 phenomenological research is a research in
which the “essence” of human experiences concerning a phenomenon is identified. Phenomenon according to Moustakas 1994 is what appears in
consciousness. Heidegger 1977:74-75 mentions that the word phenomenon comes from the Geek phanesthai. It means to flare up, to show itself, to appear.
Moreover, the word phenomenon, according to Heidegger 1977:74-75, is constructed from phaino. Then, phenomenon means to bring to light, to place in
brightness, to show itself in itself, the totality of what lies before us in the light of day. According to Husserl 1931:129 any phenomenon represents a suitable
starting point for an investigation and it serves as the essential beginning of a science that seeks valid determinations that are open to anyone to verify.
For the purpose of this study the lived experience of novice English teachers at the primary school in this study is defined as their past experience
which has essence of meaning obtained or recognized from conscious reflection
30 on it. The lived experience of novice English teachers in their initial years is the
phenomenon of this study.
4. Review of Related Research
