2006 Curriculum as the Development of 2004 Curriculum

3 Developing students’ understanding on the relationship between language and culture.

c. Self-Development Activity

The KTSP for Junior High School contains regular subject, local subject, and self-development activity. The self-development activity is a new activity for our education. As stated in chapter I, a self-development activity is an integrated part of curriculum structure, which is aimed to provide students with an opportunity to develop and express themselves based on their needs, talent, and interest according to the school condition Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan, 2006, p.8. Each school provides some activities, including English, according to students’ need and interests in which the students have to join one of the activities provided by their school. Based on the previous definition, the writer wants to develop the self- development activity into an activity which provides students much opportunity in speaking and a bit of writing since the two skills reveal the students’ ability in expressing themselves. However, this new activity seems not very clear for some teachers. The ambiguity appears because the self-development seems not to have a big difference from the regular subject and extracurricular activities. Yet, the self-development activity is different from both regular and extracurricular activities. 1 The Difference between Self-Development Activity and Regular Subject Regular activity has more time allotment than the self-development activity does. The regular subject is allocated in four hours learning per week, while the self-development activity is equivalent to two hours learning per week. The two activities must be followed by students. Both activities are also included in the curricular activity. However, they are different. Even though the self-development activity is compulsory, only students who are interested in English will follow this English class since there are other kinds of activities. Nevertheless, all students have to follow English learning in the regular subject even though they are not interested in English. Therefore, the teaching-learning materials must be different. Even though the teachers have competence guidance for creating the materials in both activities, the instructors of the self-development activity have more authority to develop the materials. Meanwhile, the regular teacher has exact time to achieve certain competencies. Since students of self-development activity are interested in English, the teacher can develop some topics that meet students’ needs and interests. The materials can also help students to get a better achievement in the regular subject. 2 The Difference between Self-Development Activity and Extracurricular