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