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b. Low order activities
Document analysis shows that some tasks in these worksheets are considered as low order activities. In Listening Section, Task 3, page 4 Appendix 6 there is a
instruction: Listen and repeat after you teacher The examples of the sentences are as follow:
1. Indonesia is a republic. 2. A president leads a republic.
3. A king leads a kingdom. 2008:3
While in Speaking Section, Task 3, page 6, there is an instruction: Substitution drill Appendix 8. The examples of drilling activities are:
Where are you from? I am from Papua Where do you come from? I come from Ambon.
2008:6
The low order language skill can also be found in mid semester exercise, there is a sub task that asks the students: Arrange these words into good sentences The
examples of this task are:
1. phone—you –at 07.00 p.m.—me –Could -? 2. the—well—mountain—grow—in—Vegetables
3. room—enter—the—Don’t- 2008:29
82 Even, in this task the first word of the correct sentences are blacken and made
italic, so hopefully the students can arrange these jumbled words easier. From those findings, it can be said that this worksheet does not promote its students to sharpen
their high order language skill. Nurkamto 2008 criticized that the previous English teaching and learning in Indonesia. There were many English teachers who only
focused their teaching on the form only; they seldom discussed the meaning of it. The lack of cognitive value in classical teaching model of English in Indonesia can be
obviously seen in just memorizing and language drilling only. Furthermore, according to Nurkamto 2008 this teaching and learning model is in the level of low
order memory. He also mentioned several examples of instructions in English teaching and learning materials that reflected low order memory, for example: listen
and repeat after your teacher, rearrange these jumbled sentences. Littejohn and Windeatt in Litz 2006 criticize the role of choral repetition in
the classroom. They said that ’simply repeating sentences…would appear to demonstrate clearly that students’ role in the classroom largely a powerless one…’
However they also commented that the use of choral drilling may have some benefit for the students as they had little opportunity to actually speak in English before and
need some opportunity to connect the spoken sounds of English with its written form. Jacob and Ball in Litz 2006 also claimed that an ideal children ELT material
should contain a wide variety of role play and information gap tasks that focus on fluency production as well as several open ended discussion questions that allow
83 students to personalize their responses, share information, and express their thought
and experiences in English. The researcher suggests that it will be beneficial for the young learners if this
worksheet also contains role play, open ended discussion questions, so the young learners have chance to elaborate their ideas in spoken or written form, for instance,
there is a reading comprehension question—the theme is about Government, like mentioned in theme 1—that ask the students to question their parents the names of
local governments in their home surrounding, so these young students have discussion topic in their classroom later or they can submit their simple investigation
to their English teacher.
4. The Reliance on Presentation, Practice, and Production Approach
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