Papuan Seminarians Learn through Kinesthetic Activities
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taking notes or reading comprehension. This statement is strengthened by Surya 2013 who states that the method used in Papua such as rewriting the materials
from the blackboards without emerging comprehension of the students is useless. Based on the interview, most of the techniques used by the teachers in
Papua did not consider Papuan students’ oral ability. Most of the techniques used by the teachers were related to written activities. This condition is proved by three
research participants who explained that learning sources were limited in their schools. The learning sources such as books were only owned by the teachers for
particular subjects. Yet, the teachers used techniques which required students to read and write. Thus, the common activities in class were rewriting learning
materials from the blackboard without any explanation since most of the learning hours were spent to rewrite the learning materials.
One of the Papuan seminarians, Mepa stated that the contours of his village were hills and valleys which limited the transportation facilities to reach his
village. Therefore, books were only available when he was in senior high school. Meanwhile, books were very difficult to buy when he was in elementary and
junior high school. The difficulties to find books were caused by the expensive transportation facilities to go to the nearest city to buy books. Once he got a book
from the missionaries who taught students in Intan Jaya, but then his only one book was used to copy all materials from the blackboard. Through experiencing
this condition, Mepa used to read learning materials from the blackboard without rewriting the materials in his book.
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The Papuan seminarians were not familiar with books since books were hard to find. Nem and Nayak stated the similar information that the availability of
books was limited. In Kabe village, books were available, but the price was expensive. Meanwhile, each elementary school student in Pikae village usually
only had one book which contained different subjects or learning materials. Considering this, it was hard for the students to completely understand the
learning materials from the school. Related to English learning, most of the research participants explained
that they firstly learned English in senior high schools. The techniques used were note taking, doing exercises from the guidance books, writing stories, and
remembering the tenses formula. Yet, one of the research participants, Mepa stated that joining the program “Jayanti Formative English 2014” was his first
chance to learn English. For those who had learned English in school, English was seen as a
difficult subject. Jack pseudonym, a Papuan seminarian from Wayati village, Fak-Fak regency shared his feelings toward the learning techniques used in
school. He was always unhappy to learn English since the techniques such as reading long passages and doing exercises from the books were hard to do. He felt
that those techniques were not suitable enough for Papuan students who were not accustomed to reading and writing in English. He also stated that most of the
assignments in senior high school required students to write stories or essays in English. Consequently, the writing process was confusing since they did not
master the English sentence structures. In a nutshell, the techniques such as
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reading long text, doing written assignments and note taking in teaching English for Papuan seminarians should be avoided. On the contrary, to succeed the
learning process of Papuan seminarians, the techniques which involve oral language should be implemented.