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To provide the need of local competence oriented to the national and global standard of education, Education Unit Level Curriculum or Kurikulum Tingkat
Satuan Pendidikan KTSP is applied. The arrangement of this curriculum is based on the guidance from the Education National Standard Institution or Badan
Standar Nasional Pendidikan BSNP. In Law number 20 in 2003, chapter 1, section 1 Article 19, KTSP provides sets of equipment about plans and the
arrangement of objectives, contents, learning materials, and learning methods as the guidance to establish learning activities to achieve determined learning goals.
The curriculum of middle level, in which Vocational High School is included, is arranged relevant to any educational units under the surveillance of province
education government. The establishment of KTSP is based on the characteristics of the educational unit, local characteristics, social and culture local people, and
the level of students. In general, there is no national curriculum of education. KTSP is arranged with the coordination of school management and school
committee.
7. English Curriculum in Vocational High School
In the Vocational High School in Indonesia, the English learning is conducted academically and vocationally in order to support the environment
study and to get a job after the students graduate. English learning skills of vocational school students have specific characteristics to differ with others.
Specific here means that the English skills serve vocational subject for certain fields of works such as tourism English or Business English. The Vocational High
School students are prosecuted to be able to practice speaking more rather than
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studying the grammar. KTSP of English subject is arranged based on the study programs available on the schools.
To support the implementation of English teaching and learning activities, some teaching and learning documents must be prepared. The documents state the
objectives of school, structure and content of school curriculum, school education calendar, and syllabus. The syllabus must contain the parts of content standards
like competence standard and basic competence. The duration of English teaching and learning activities as adaptive field is five hours of learning-teaching meeting.
One hour of learning-teaching meeting is equal with forty five minutes. On the syllabus, the values of education emphasizing on the stude
nts’ behaviour during joining the learning activities are done integrally. Students are free to search for
their own learning materials to support their active and autonomous learning. The English teacher gives them English learning module as their learning guidance.
Based on BSNP, tenth graders of Vocational High School are categorized into novice level. The English competence which should be achieved related to
speaking skill is they have to be able to express meanings orally in interpersonal and transactional context, formal or informal situation in their daily lives. Since
the curriculum applied is school-based KTSP, then English teachers are able to determine further composition of English syllabus coordinated with school
curriculum with the major standard competence and basic competence determined by BNSP. The standard competence for tenth graders is to be communicative with
English in novice level. The basic competence for tenth graders is to understand basic competences in social interaction for life interest and to be able to mention
characteristics of things, people, and time.
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The objectives of educational system in Tarcisius 2 Pangudi Luhur Vocational High schools are based on the special quality intellectual and
professional, value education, physical education, transparency participative dialogue condition, human effort, community management, communication,
effect-oriented leadership rather than authority and privilege, option for the poor, and solidarity. There are two study programs in this school. They are tax
accounting and computer accounting. Tax accounting study program is oriented for the mastery of accounting skill and the ability to overcome the tax cases.
Computer accounting is more on the use of computer to handle administration especially related to accounting.
The purposes of English learning in novice level consist of four skills. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Since this research employed the
variable of speaking, the purpose of speaking learning activities for novice level is exposed. The purpose is to be able to express orally in the discourse of
interpersonal and transactional, formally or informally, in the shape of delivering request and command related to daily lives. The education of national culture and
characteristics is integrated to the learning materials, self-improvement, and school culture. The English speaking materials based on KTSP are greeting and
leave taking, introduction, thanking, apologizing, adjectives of describing things and people related to their nationality, profession, and physical appearance,
nouns showing time and date, cardinal and ordinal numbers, and expressions of feeling, sympathy, asking-giving opinion, command, request, and offerings.
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8. Related Studies
Several related studies related to this research were already conducted. The first research taken is from Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, and Cox 1977 entitled
Field dependent and field independent cognitive styles and their educational implications
. They stated that cognitive styles as the process of acquiring and processing knowledge did not have clear framework of preferred ways of learning
since students were not able yet to recognize their dependent and independent modes of cognition. Cognitive styles are the abstraction of learning styles in
which learning styles concern with the manners of perceiving, interacting with, and responding to learning environment. How people acquired and processed
knowledge related to the tendency in choosing kinaesthetic or visual learning activities. Although there was a correlation between the cognitive styles with
education, but the implication was still unclear since there was no exact model of which learning activities were better to apply to achieve certain educational
achievement. Curry 1990 in his research entitled A critique of the research on learning
styles discussed learning styles as the high level of learners’ behaviours. Curry
stated that learning styles had little or even no correlation with the learners’
behaviours as their learning outcome. The preferences of behaviour levels were determined by the level of learning content understanding, attention issues related
to the situation attractiveness, and motivational issues from the learning content based on the learners’ need. In this research, Curry emphasized the role of the
learners’ social environment as the determinant of learners’ behaviour as the learning implication. How the learners positioned themselves to respond with
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their learning environment condition was the main factor of how they would behave.
Richmond and Cummings 2005 in their research entitled Implementing Kolb’s learning styles into online distance education emphasized the role of
learning designs to give guidance to the learners’ learning process. This emphasis
related to the circumstance that the learners were not able to have intensive face- to-face meeting with their teachers since the system of learning was by online.
From this research, they stated that there was correlation between learning styles and educational outcome but not significant. The success of educational outcome
was determined by the level of course design effectiveness in helping the learners understand the learning materials properly. When and how learners learned did
not relate to their understanding speed of the learning materials. When the learners were interested to the content and design of the course materials, they were easier
to absorb the knowledge of the learning materials. Kolb’s Learning Styles
inventory was used to find out the preferences of learners’ expectation course
designs. The next similar research on learning styles and their correlation to
educational implication was taken by Lu, Jia, Gong, and Clark 2007 entitled The Relationship of
Kolb’s learning styles, online learning behaviours, and learning outcomes.
They emphasized the diversity of learners’ learning styles when
designing and developing online learning modules for different students. Learners’ needs on proper learning materials became the main factor of the
learners’ interest in learning the materials. Since face-to-face learning activities were not held intensively,
interesting materials based on the learners’ expectation to fulfill their curiosity of certain knowledge were the triggers to attract the
