Teaching English at secondary schools

Teaching English at secondary schools

Reading the report on Seminar on English Teaching at secondary
school in Indonesia turned out to be ineffective (according to
the Language Consultant Gloria C Kismadi, The Jakarta Post, May
17, 1996), I as one of the English teachers at IKIP (Teachers
College) Bandung feel a little bit stirred by the news.

In this opportunity, therefore, please allow me to give some
comments and ideas on how to deal with the problem.

First, I wonder if Gloria's statement has been so accurate and
based on the real data of her research across the country.
Second, she might forget about the social status of English in
Indonesia which is regarded as L3 or foreign language and not as
L2 or second language like in Malaysia or Singapore. It seems to
me is unfair to judge that the result of teaching English in
Indonesia has to be equal to that in the countries I mention
above. If possible, however, why not? But this is a big struggle.
Third, in some cases, I agree with you that ineffectiveness in
teaching English has been caused by among other things the over
emphasis on grammar and low quality of English teachers.

Fourth, since I am concerned with English teachers, I herewith
wish to put forward some suggestions:

1. Teaching English should be conducted integratedly and treat
language as a whole rather than in fragments. For example, please
don't teach grammatical points separately.

2. The term language skills has got to be modified into
language arts. The two terms have the same concepts but the
latter has the intensity of applying the concepts not only within
the English class hours but during the school day as well.

3. As a result, the term English teacher also needs to be
developed into a more sophisticated one and that is English Arts
teacher.

4. Hence, as English Arts teachers, we can help our students
not only strengthen their grammar, reading ability etc. (language
competence) but also improve their oral ability (language
performance) as we have ample time to devote ourselves to them
and their learning English.

ODO FADLOELI

Bandung, West Java