14 students’ response forms to examine the detail of the students’ reactions in
the specific aspect of teaching during the performance. Since the teaching practice is recorded into a video, the teacher can evaluate the performance
by playing back the video-recorded and see what should be improved. The last, after this process of assessment, the teacher can re-teach for a further
practice.
b. Practical Process in Microteaching
Allen and Ryan 1969 state microteaching can be as a safe practice. A practice is a prior condition for many learning activities. The teaching
performance can be improved by practicing. The skill and technique applied in the practice must be suitable with the lesson at that time. Allen and Ryan 1969 say,
“microteaching was designed to provide teachers with a safe setting for the acquisition of the techniques and skills of their profession” p. 4. In addition,
between a micro teacher who starts to learn the skill of teaching, and the experienced teacher, microteaching is a realistic setting that can develop
professional competencies. A student who is willing to improve the performance in teaching identifies
the specific teaching activities. Microteaching consists of several teaching skills such as explaining, questioning, reinforcement, set closure and induction. The
student who practices as a teacher will identify what act is appropriate in response to a particular skill so it can help the teacher achieve the aims of that skill, the
practice environment allows the teacher candidate to deal with the acquisition of
15 specific skills, for example, how to increase the students’ participation using a
particular method or questioning the students Allen Ryan, 1969. The feedback and re-teaching practice can enable the teacher candidate to acquire the teaching
skills fluently in a short time. Allen and Ryan 1969 also state, in a microteaching setting, a good
teacher can apply his skill and it is recorded into a video as the result. The basic characteristic of microteaching builds a natural setting that gives a chance to the
teacher the student who practice teaching to develop the instructional methods of the various teaching skills and techniques. The methods can separate the
teaching skill and emphasize the teacher performance so the observers can focus on the teacher’s behavior. The well-performed models of instructional skill have a
number of uses, they can be imitated as the example, show the alternative instructional, and stimulate the discussion about a teaching among the student
who practices teaching Allen Ryan, 1969. The less number of students, duration and the scope of the lesson can
lessen the pressure of the teacher who is practicing. Allen and Ryan 1969 say “one of the key principles of microteaching is to focus on a particular teaching
skill or some very clear objective” p. 7. It is related to this research that is intended to investigate the use of one of the teaching skills, reinforcement skill.
So, the safe practice, modeling the instructional skill and focus on a particular teaching skill are a means to achieve the microteaching practice objectives.
In Teachers Training and Education Faculty of Sanata Dharma University, Microteaching is one of the obligatory courses that must be taken by English
16 Language Education Study Program ELESP students. ELESP offers this course
in semester 6 even semester and 7 odd semester in the undergraduate program. As stated in ELESP academic guidebook, Microteaching is a pre-requisite course
before a student takes Program Pengalaman Lapangan as the further training of applying the concept and procedure of English language teaching in a real
classroom especially in high schools Tutyandari, et al., 2011. It is also explained by Suseno and Gilarso 1986 that say the teaching skills training passes two
phases, those are a peer teaching –teaching in front of the other Microteaching students– and a real teaching –teaching in a real situation of classroom–. They
add, in the peer teaching, a Microteaching student teaches a small group of students which consists of Microteaching students and it is called
“Microteaching” or Program Pengalaman Lapangan I. The student who is assigned as a teacher has three-time chances to perform
the teaching practice with the lecturer as the supervisor and three other students as the observers, the rest of Microteaching students act as the students and it goes by
turns. The process of teaching a group of 4-7 students in the beginning of the course initiates the three-time progress tests of the teaching practice. The tests
consist of levels of junior high school, senior high school and the complicated part, lower semester. The duration is about 30 minutes with a lesson plan that has
been discussed with the supervisor. However, the duration in teaching lower semester depends on the agreement between the lecturer and Microteaching
student.
17 Each student who practices in Microteaching lab gets a video record as the
result of teaching practice. The researcher took the 2009-academic-year students. There are seven classes chosen as the subject. The focus of this research is on one
of the basic teaching skills learnt by Microteaching students especially reinforcement skill. This skill will be discussed further in the next part.
3. Reinforcement Skill
