TEACHERS
’
PERCEPTION ON DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING
ENGLISH IN SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN JUNIOR HIGH
SCHOOL
THESIS
Submitted as a partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Lee SangHun
112012902
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
ii
TEACHERS
’
PERCEPTION ON DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING
ENGLISH IN SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN JUNIOR HIGH
SCHOOL
THESIS
Submitted as a partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Lee SangHun
112012902
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
vi
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
This thesis contain no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due the references is made in the text.
Copyright @ 2016. Lee SangHun and Prof. Dr. Gusti Astika, M.A.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga.
viii
TEACHERS
’
PERCEPTION ON DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING
ENGLISH IN SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN JUNIOR HIGH
SCHOOL
Lee SangHun
Abstract
This study is aimed to find out about teachers’ perception on the difficulties in teaching English in Satya Wacana Christian Junior High school. Two participants from SMP who taught English more than 7 years were chosen purposively. The participants were interviewed twice, one by one with ten interview questions to collect the data. Semi-structured interview was used to draw out the information. This study used descriptive method since the data and the result of this study was in a descriptive form. The results of the study were discussed in two categories. The findings show that those teachers sometimes have difficulties in teaching English. Teacher’s strategies toward those difficulties based on their experiences are identified for those teaching difficulties in SMP. Moreover, understanding each student’s different background knowledge of English and motivating students strategies were emphasized by teachers from SMP.
1 A. Introduction
A Global village is a present area of nowadays. Most of places in the world
are connected. Due to communicate with different country people, they need to decide one language that they will use in an international conversation. English as
the language that people use in the global village is the most important requirement in the global village. In the context where English is not spoken in everyday communication, teaching English seems to have many difficulties. The teachers
might need to understand teaching difficulties in their school. The teaching difficulties have various types in every place. From my experience as a student
teacher, teaching English in a senior high school in Indonesia, many teaching difficulties that I observed and experienced: To understand different background students, learning the teaching strategies to deal with different students’ background,
and learning the strategies to motivate students and so on. From that, I learned that teaching is not an easy job. Therefore, I found it interesting to learn more from the
teacher regarding their perception on teaching and how they deal with teaching difficulties in their context.
According to West (1968, p. 10) “Teaching is an activity that tries to help
someone to acquire, change or develop skills, attitudes, ideas, appreciations, and knowledge.” It shows that teaching is the factor that facilitates the students. Moreover,
2
motivation to study English is the duty of the English teachers. To support this statement, Henry (1989, p.138) indicates that “learning is the process by which an
activityoriginated or changed through training procedure whether in the laboratory or in the natural environment.” It means that the teachers need to provide great
classroom environments that facilitate learning, where according to Buikema and Graves (1993, p. 451) “learning is a process of change of behavior by the experiences and practices.” It shows that the teachers must know how to make interesting
activities to manage not only the students who have already higher English competences but also the students who have lower English competences. Through
interesting activities such as team game, teachers might expect that students might help each other to understand English.
Through this research I would like to find out the teachers’ perception, with
the following research question that, “what are teachers’ perceptions on difficulties in teaching English in Satya Wacana Christian Junior high school?” The purpose of this
research was to describe the difficulties faced by the English teacher during English teaching in Satya Wacana Christian Junior high school.
The finding of this research might increase teacher’s awareness with these
difficulties during English lessons. Not only for the teachers but also the students. They might have the benefits if their teachers know the difficulties that frequently
3
quality teaching. Furthermore, this research can provide information to the beginner teacher researchers who need to understand teaching difficulties in Satya Wacana
Christian Junior high school.
B. Literature review
1. Teachers’ role in teaching
Teachers’ role is an important part of teaching. Severson and Walker (2002)
argue that “teachers are resources with the potential to assist appropriately in the
evaluation and referral of at-risk students for specialized services” This argument shows that whether students can learn the material with good understanding or not
depends on the teacher. According to Brown (2007, p.45), teaching cannot be defined apart from learning, teaching means guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning. In this case, teaching which is
implied in the first definition of learning may be defined as “showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instruction, guiding in the study of
something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand. Clearly, teachers must be trained to consider all aspects of a student’s life in determining what to teach, how to teach it and how you will know when it has been taught. Furthermore,
Kaufman, at.al (2010, p.48) support that English teachers should support and teach students with a variety of emotional and behavioral needs, including those who have
4
that teachers need to raise the students’ interest when they study English. That’s the reason why the teachers’ role is very important in language teaching.
2. Teachers’ talk and language in the classroom
Since teaching always starts from teachers, they must learn the effective way to convey the material to the students. Cao (2010) asserts that in language classroom,
talk is one of the major ways that English teachers convey information to their students. In order to attain highly qualified status, teachers should see in his/her eyes
with same sight of students of difficulties and it will need to show understanding of the characteristics of certain difficulties. Therefore, teachers need the skills in their
present level could appear with assessment, instruction, evaluation and challenge of changing students level that are applied in a collaborative learning context where the impact of teaching and learning is conveyed by teachers’ way to manage the
classroom and students. In addition, Chang (2005) added that primary school teachers of English are trained by different institutions such as the normal universities, teachers’ colleges, and public and private universities that have established faculties,
departments and graduate schools of education. And each of them has different standards. Quite clearly, although the teacher in the same school could have different
teaching strategies that students pay more attention toward differences types of lesson and they need to have different way to understand the material according to the
5
possibilities to provide the enhanced assessment of learner so as to improve student’s skills. They mention that teachers must know the students’ current English level that
how many knowledge that they know by having conversation with students. Once the teachers know students’ level, they can provide the suitable assessment and it will
help improve students’ English level.
3. Teachers’ difficulties
When the teachers teach students in Indonesia, they face a lot of difficulties in
the classroom. Based on my experience, teachers in Satya Wacana Christian Junior High school need to handle some students who cannot write down the correct spelling
of English vocabulary. For some students, it is not easy to get the correct spelling since English is their foreign language. Johnston (1999, p. 64) indicates that “The ability to hear, see, and use the rime as a reliable cue for reading new words and
spelling words that sound alike, offers students a powerful insight into how English spelling works”. It means that writing correct spelling is one of the most important
learning parts for beginner learners so that they are able to speak, listen, read and write. For supporting this statement, Lenski and Nierstheimer (2004) support that “When children are taught the spelling patterns of word families, they are empowered to read and spell many more words” (p. 186). Therefore, teachers need to teach the
spelling to the students to improve their all English skills. However, even for the
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in junior high grade. Moreover, students might not know the correct pronunciation of some English words such as the word ‘weird’, ‘rhythm’, ‘occurred’, ‘pronunciation’
and many words. It happens because the spelling and pronunciation are not well-matched in English since English has 26 letters and with those letters have 44 sounds.
Motivating students can be challenging, in the stage of junior high school in
Indonesia because some students do not really want to study English. Lindsey’s (2006) finding indicated that “an academic process by which students are motivated
to learn in ways that make a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how they think, act, and feel.” It shows that teachers need to know how to handle student’s
behavior, and the way they think. From my observation on Satya Wacana Christian Junior High school, there are some reasons why they do not want to study. First, some students think that English is not important yet for their life since English is not
often used in daily life. They do not pay much attention to study English a lot. Second, some students think that studying English needs quite a lot of time to memorize
totally different meaning of the vocabulary and at the same time they need to understand difficult grammar items that much different comparing with their language. Moreover, most of the students rarely speak English outside of school
because it is not easy to find out the family use English in their home automatically. Some student’s desire of studying English is not high in Satya Wacana Junior High
7
Another teaching difficulty is student’s different background knowledge due to different types of elementary school they went to. According to Deputy Education
and Culture Minister Musliar Kaslim, as stated in Jakarta Post (2012), English will no longer be a subject in government elementary school. The current Indonesian
curriculum has been changed by reducing the time for students to learn English and it seems students lose the chance to learn English more. However, in non-government school such as international school or private school, English class is still one of the
required subjects. In international school, teachers and students use English in daily life and also English is used for teaching any kinds of subject in their school. In
general, students from international school already have quite high English knowledge since they often use it. The case for private school such as SD LAB, students have 70 minutes bilingual class per week. It indicates that students have
great experience to study English since 1st until 6th grade before entering the Junior high school. These statements make totally different student’s English knowledge
when they enter the junior high school. Students from government school will not be able to understand well the English class in Junior high school because they did not have the English class in previous school. However, Students from non-government
school will understand the English class quite well because they had the English class in their elementary school. As the result, if these students are mixed into the one
8
level of background knowledge of English, they must have different learning strategy to follow the class lesson and at the same time English teacher needs to care more
about lower level students in the classroom lesson. In addition, teachers must provide special strategies to care these different levels of students. For the lower students,
teachers must give more attention, and for the higher students, teachers must give extra assessment to improve their level. Moreover, Jones and Elizabeth (2009) support this statement that although schools are required to provide education to all
children and public legislation urges us to leave no child behind; there are still a number of students who end up being an afterthought in policy. It means that teachers
take all students together to the higher level in spite of their different levels of learning process. And it is very difficult for the current English teachers.
Furthermore, controlling student’s behavior can be challenging. Since Satya
Wacana Christian Juinor High school has male and female students, sometimes they have some trouble with female and male students. And some students might have
behavioral disorder. Susan and Anderson (2012, p. 26) discover the characteristics of emotional and behavioral disorder that students might act in the classroom “attitudes which demonstrate violent behaviors to others or retaliation in similar vein”,
“attitudes showing the tendency to want to lord it over others and make them fear
you”, and “not caring about others or caring whether they suffer hurt”. Some students
9
teaching difficulties to handle these characteristics because teachers need to understand some characteristics of behavior disruption.
4. Requirement for the junior high school English teachers
Beyond the difficulties that appear in the classroom, Junior high school might need to have the requirement for selecting suitable teachers. Moreover, based
on Teacher Law 2005, the Government of Indonesia stipulated a teacher as a profession. Teachers should meet the qualification of at least a 4-year Bachelor
degree and have teaching certificates. Holešinská (2006) describes the requirements for English teachers. First, the teacher should pay attention in the physical appearance
of the classroom and the atmosphere in the lessons. Second is about teacher’s attitude towards children and teacher’s enthusiasm for the language. Third is about the activities that involve children in learning English. Last point is the way they show
the appreciation of children and how to praise and assess children. These finding shows that the teachers need to manage the classroom management and also students’
feeling. Teachers should have learnt how to use the gesture in effective ways, how to express their feeling to the students, and what kind of motion that they should practice due to attracts the student’s attention. Moreover, every student likes an
interesting lesson, teachers require preparations. For supporting this statement, Tough’s study (1984, p. 219) shows that the interesting way to read and listening the
10 5. Previous research
The first previous research was about teacher's questioning strategies in SMP
PANGUDI LUHUR SALATIGA. This research aimed to investigate teacher's questioning strategies and the participants were 2 teachers who had more than 3 years
teaching experience. For the research instrument, she used recording teacher's talk during the English class after that recording results were transcribed, coded and categorized. At the finding and discussion part, she found that a descriptive
questioning strategy was used by teachers and this strategy was used for recall information that students learned. Also, in this type of questioning, students were
expected to think at a higher cognitive level. The purpose of teacher's questioning was getting student's attention. Second, analysis questioning strategy, students were asked to put information in another form. Teachers used this questioning to make the
students guess based on the clue that teacher gave. Third, evaluation questioning strategy, the teacher gave clue to the students by giving another question to think so
the students would be stimulated to think about their answer again. The purpose of this strategy was to reinforce the knowledge. Teacher might ask same question to the other students so that some students could revise their response from their classmate's
contribution. Last, she concluded that descriptive questioning strategy is most frequently used in English teaching because, theoretically, descriptive questions could
11
strategy should be applied more often in teaching because it has the potential
stimulate high-level thinking.
The second research was about teachers' strategies to deal with students' silence in SMP KIRISTEN laboratorium Satya Wacana Salatiga. The research question of this research was “what kind of strategies do teachers commonly use to
deal with silent students in the seventh grade during the English lesson”. The
participant was one English teacher who taught seventh graders and the research
instrument was interview and observations. On the finding and discussion part, she found that teacher's awareness about the existence of the silent students. It shows that
the teacher paid more attention to the silent students. The teacher already knew by observing the students so that students can speak more often. And another finding indicates that student's silence was might be come from less good English
background knowledge from elementary school, family's background which English is not too exposed. The second finding was teacher's difficulty in dealing with silent
student. When the teacher spoke in English, students suddenly gave up to answer and student said "enough, Ma'am, I don't know" and student started to be silent student during the class discussion. Lower English competence level students judge
themselves that he did not know English and also they thought that other students are cleverer than themselves. Those students became less confident to speak in the
12
teachers should be aware of the existence of silent students during the class lesson and try to give more chances to speak with motivating words because silence is a
serious obstacle for achieving fluency in spoken English. Through reading previous study, I could see what kind of study has done, and also I could predict and prepare
the research process.
C. The Study
1. Context of the study
The context of this study is Satya Wacana Junior High School was selected because I once had teaching practicum in this Junior High School. Satya Wacana
Junior High School is one of the private schools with around 200 students, each grade has 3 classes and each class has 22 to 25 students. For English lesson, there are two English teachers. Teacher A has been teaching for 15 years and teacher B has been
teaching for 7 years. The English book that the teachers use is ‘When English Rings a Bell’ for 7thgrade students and ‘English in Focus’ for 8th grade students. Furthermore,
English for SMP LAB students has 5 meetings in a week, 3 meetings for integrated course and 2 meetings for listening and speaking class. The listening and speaking classes were conducted in a language laboratory. Also, SMP LAB has a library which
is shared with SMA LAB and it has more than 500 books that students can read to extend their reading comprehension and vocabularies. Moreover, when the teachers
13
room which has the place for projector. From my observation and teaching experience during teaching practice in SMP LAB, I observed that there were various
types of students. Some students were very shy and less confident, whereas some others were very confident that they always wanted to answer any question. They also
had various reasons for learning English or not wanting to study English. Some students wanted to study English because they liked it but some students did not want to study English because students also had different background knowledge: Students
from international elementary school had higher English competence. The students from private school had had English class but they still use bilingual system when the
teacher taught the students. The students from government school had not English class; they did not have much English background knowledge. Moreover, there were so many factors that the teacher should be aware with those difficulties.
2. Method of research
This study described the teachers’ perception of their difficulties of teaching
English in SMP LAB. This study used a descriptive research. The descriptive research refers to the type of research question, design, and data analysis that is applied to a given topic. Three main purposes of research are to describe, explain, and
validate findings. Moreover, description emerges the findings in order to fit them with explanations, and then test to validate those explanations (Krathwohl, 1993).
14 3. Participants
Two English teachers in Satya Wacana Christian junior high school were the
participants in this study. The first participant has been teaching for 15 years in this junior high school and she teaches 7 and 9 graders. The second participant has been
teaching for 7 years in this school and she teaches 8 and 9 graders. To choose the participants, the purposive sampling technique was used. They have taught students for more than 7 years which means that they must have had enough experience in
teaching junior high school students especially 7th and 8th grader. Furthermore, they must have had different criteria for teaching students.
4. Research instrument
In this study, structured interview was used to collect the data. A semi-structured interview has greater flexibility for the participant to change the order of
the questions to provide opportunity for follow up questions (Patton, 1990). The interview questions were conducted to collect information about the teaching
difficulties that most frequently appeared in school. Ten interview questions about teaching difficulties were used. Participants were interviewed twice individually. Each of interviews took around 20 minutes. A recording device, a Smartphone, was
used during interview to record the data.
5. Data collection procedure
15
Two English teachers in Satya Wacana Christian junior high school were interviewed. It was about how the participants overcome the difficulties that most
frequently appeared in the classroom in Junior high school. And also, participants shared other difficulties. During the interview, the questions and answers were
flexibly changed in order to get richer data. Moreover, a recording device was used in order not to forget the important aspects from the interview. Note taking was also
used to record important ideas.
6. Data analysis procedure
The data of interview was analyzed in three steps such as transcribing, coding,
and categorizing. Based on the focus of the research, the data were coded and categorized into one group. There were two categories of teaching difficulties; students’ different background knowledge, student’s lack of motivation. The last step
was drawing a conclusion.
D. Finding and discussion
This section presents the findings on teachers’ perception of difficulties of
teaching English in junior high school (SMP LAB) and teachers’ strategies to deal
with teaching difficulties during the lesson.
The data in the section has been arranged in two categories to describe teachers’ difficulties in teaching English. Teaching difficulties are caused by students’
16 students have not much time to learn English. Second is private school where English is main subject which means that they quite know about English because English is
still main subject and they had much time to learn it. Third is international school where they use English for every subject. It shows that they do not have many
problems to use or learn English in junior high school. These students who came from different elementary schools are put into the same class. Therefore, their English competences are totally different. Students from international school, they can learn
easier than other students such as reading, speaking, listening, and writing. Moreover, students from private school, they are still able to understand English well because
they had bilingual class in their elementary school. However, students from government school who did not spend much time to study English, they are having difficulties to understand English. And at the same time, they lose their confident.
Therefore, these students who came from government school are not easy to teach the English in junior high school. In the interview, teacher A and B said,
17
“Since students are not from same elementary school. Students of regular school take longer time to learn English rather than students of private school” (Teacher B).
To deal with this difficulty, both of teachers had the same perception. They said that teachers needed to pay more attention to the students who has lower English competence. As a consequence, there are some implications which teachers need to
deal, among others are: First, teachers need to prepare more interesting material. Second, teachers need to teach spelling. In addition, the government’s English book
and the 2013 curriculum’s focus more on the reading comprehension, writing skills,
grammar, and listening part, and does not provide enough speaking exercise. Hence,
when the teachers teach English using these materials, they found some difficulties as mentioned by Teacher B,
“Because of curriculum of government is theoretical, speaking is not focused. The curriculum is only focus only basic speaking so that teaching more difficult level is not easy” (Teacher B).
Teacher B needed to prepare more interesting material when she taught the speaking parts. The main purpose of preparing more material was that she wanted to
make the students became more active in the class.
Teachers need to motivate students who have less confident so that students are able to learn English. It depends on teacher’s attitude and awareness that teachers
18
1a. Requirement to provide more interesting materials
Due to students’ different background knowledge of English, teachers needed
to prepare the material before teachers teach the students. Although Junior high school has their own English books, extra materials were still needed for student’s better understanding about English competences. They thought that government
English books are not enough to make a good understanding about difficult English competences such as grammar part, reading comprehension, and writing skills. In the
interview, teacher A said,
“I have limited time to prepare interesting material. It is very important because students want to study hard when they get quite interesting material, if the material is only from government English book, they normally get bored easily. Once again, students will study hard only if the material is interesting” (Teacher A).
Hence, teachers need to find interesting material to grab the student’s attention during teaching and learning process. However, Junior high school has
many competitions and events and English teachers also join. It shows that they do not have a lot of time to prepare materials.
1b. Teachers need to teach spelling
Due to students’ different background knowledge of English, some students could not write down the correct spelling during listening class and it might become the teacher’s teaching difficulty. Teacher B shared her opinion that student’s
19
English to communicate in their daily life. They did not get much time to do spelling practice. Furthermore, teachers in elementary school only taught about vocabularies
and there was no spelling part in their teaching. Students did not get much time to do pronunciation practice. Unlike teacher B, Teacher A gave quite simple strategy to
deal with this problem. In the interview, teacher A said,
“Usually I often use drilling and give them listening practice in order to make them are aware of many vocabularies and I just push them to practice in writing, and sometimes giving assignment or homework” (Teacher A).
Teacher A thought that spelling is not the main difficulty that might occur during the teaching and learning process.
2. Students’ lack of motivation
The second category of teaching difficulties was about motivating students. It was most important part in teaching process because students can learn well if they
get interested in the subject they were learning. In the interview, teacher B and A said,
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some of the students admitted that they did not really like to learn English because English itself is difficult and it is kind of their nightmare that might disturbs their life. As a teacher, I need to make the students understand the importance of learning English such as English is one of the languages that can be used to communicate. Unlike math, English does not have to be memorizing all the time but it is used for communication” (Teacher B).
“Motivating students, sometimes we have to know the background of their life so we can motivate the students, sometime we praising for a little things that they can do, but it should be in a personal way to motivate students, not in whole classroom to motivate some students. Personal approaches, giving them motivation, sometimes talk to them personally to help them in motivate” (Teacher A).
Teacher’s strategies show that teachers should know or be aware of each of student’s different competences of English and teachers should give proper praising
words to each student to encourage them so that the students will be motivated in learning English. With regard to students’ lack of motivation, teachers felt the need to teach students some learning strategies, like taking note. They also provide more time
to teach vocabulary, grammar as well speaking skill.
2a. Teaching students how to take notes
The first difficulty caused by students’ lack of motivation was taking note during the speaking class. Although teacher said to the students that they needed to write down important things such as difficult vocabulary that students did not know
or examples that were given by teacher that students could use when they speak. Especially the male students do not take a note because most of male students did not
21
“Male students do not take some notes during the class which means they do not pay a lot of attention in the class and they prefer to copy female student’s note only if they really want to study”. (Teacher A)
Teacher A added that she needed to check most of male students’ notes whether they took the note of important points or not because when the teacher did
not check the note, male students drew the picture that it did not have any relationship with the lesson or they just did not study hard. When they copy from female students,
they did not learn speaking because they simply copy and paste the words. It should be exhibited by teacher since note-taking is an important learning process. As stated by Boyle & Rivera (2012), note-taking may help students better remember and
incorporate the material into long-term storage.
2b. Teaching vocabulary
The second difficulty caused by students’ lack of motivation was student’s lack of vocabulary during speaking class. Students could not talk about things, more
specifically; they did not know a lot of verbs. Furthermore, students did not want to spend a lot of time to memorize the verbs. In fact, they needed to use it when they
have to speak in the class. In the interview, teacher A said,
“It is too bad that the students do not want to memorize a lot of vocabulary since English is not their first language and it takes quite a lot of time to memorize the vocabularies. As the result, the result of the vocabulary test is not that high for the male students” (Teacher A).
Teacher A described the present classroom environment that students are
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they ask many vocabularies to teachers that they want to use a particular word but they do not know in English. However, teacher A allows students to use this way
because it is the good way for students improving their speaking skills. As stated by Duff & Polio (1990), teachers need to use L1 to mix knowledge that the students have
learned about the foreign language, such as its sentence structures, vocabulary. Teacher A added that teachers as facilitator helps students to complete the sentences
with deep patience.
2c. Teaching grammar
The third difficulty caused by students’ lack of motivation was teaching grammar to the students. Since English is not student’s first language, students need
to understand about English grammar. However, there are a lot of grammars features that students need to memorize and understand because English has totally different
grammar system with Bahasa Indonesia. As the result, students do not really want to study grammar. In the interview, teacher A said,
“I have the difficulties in teaching grammar. Because students do not spend much time to study grammar and honestly, their competence of grammar is low that is the reason why dealing the material is most difficult especially grammar part.” (Teacher A)
Teacher A shared her strategy to deal with this difficulty. Teachers need to
prepare interesting materials when they teach grammar. Those materials could be video materials that explain grammar part well, the interesting games that can help
23
practicing. However she added that finding easy and good materials are difficult for Indonesian students because those materials were designed for native speaker. That’s
why teachers still need to modify the materials to make it easier so that students will understand well.
2d. Teaching speaking
The fourth difficulty caused by students’ lack of motivation was about the usage of English by students. Since English is their foreign language, students rarely
used English in their daily life. Normally, students prefer to use Indonesian or Javanese outside school. Only few students from SMP LAB use English in their
home. In the interview, teacher B said,
“Many students are not taught in house and they do not have the chance to get more exposure to speak English in their house. Honestly, students still think that English is not the important subject for their present life” (Teacher B).
Therefore, English teachers should give some ideas why students have to study English, what results can be followed if they can speak English fluently such as
students might have the chances to go aboard, traveling whole of world, and getting job easily. By doing that, students will understand the importance of studying English
24 E. Conclusion
This study has investigated teachers' perception of difficulties in teaching
English in SMP LAB. The findings show that there were some teaching difficulties experienced by teachers in Satya Wacana Christian Junior High School. Two main difficulties were different students’ background knowledge and student’s lack of
motivation. In addition, the findings show that there were some strategies which had been applied to encounter teaching difficulties. Based on the interview and my
teaching practice experiences, teacher A used the strategies such as checking student's note taking, allowing to use code-mixing, preparing interesting material, paying more
attention to lower students, giving attractive reason to learn English, making students more active by giving complement, drilling and giving proper assignment, and motivating student personally. Moreover, teacher B used strategies such as caring
student's learning process, giving some ideas about advantage of study English, preparing interesting materials, giving pronunciation practice, and discussing with
students for motivating. Both of teachers have various types of strategies to deal with various types of teaching difficulties in SMP. Those strategies were base on teachers’ beliefs, teaching philosophies, teaching experiences, and personal characteristic. In
addition, teacher A and B used the similar strategies to motivate students which proposed by Lindsey’s idea of motivating students, such as “teachers are able to make
25
by Cao’s idea of language teaching such as “in order to attain highly qualified status,
teachers should see in his/her eyes with same sight of students of difficulties and it
will need to show understanding of the characteristics of certain difficulties.” Moreover, teacher A and B strongly believe that learning English should be fun and
easy since it is a language used to communicate with people. Last, both teachers emphasized that motivating students is one of the most important strategies to handle
the teaching difficulties.
Regarding the analyses and discussions in the previous section, it can be concluded that teachers should be able to use those strategies in an appropriate stage
in order to deal with teaching difficulties. First, English teachers need to understand how to motivate students, and also they needed to understand the different types of student’s background knowledge of English, or with different English competences.
English teachers should be aware of teaching difficulties in a particular stage or place that they teach and they should learn the proper strategies to deal with those difficulties to make the better student’s learning process.
This study has a limitation. It does not focus on students’ learning process during the course of their school. For further research I would like to recommend
having a similar research about the strategies to deal with students with different English competences in SMP LAB. It is unclear whether teachers’ strategies to deal with students with different English competences change student’s learning process
26
impact their learning. Besides, it is very important to understand students with different English competences in order to teach English in SMP LAB to make an
28 Acknowledgement
This research was accomplished with help of many people. First, I would like
to thank to God, without His blessing, I could not finish my thesis.
Second, I would like to appreciate and thanks for my supervisor Prof. Dr.
Gusti Astika, M.A. and Victoria Usadya Palupi, M.A-ELT, I could finish my thesis because of their patience and helpful advices.
Third, I would like to thank my family in South Korea, without their support,
I could not survive in Indonesia and I could not finish my thesis.
Special thanks for my friends, Maureen, Intan, Bram, Kartika, Lia, Happy,
Nanda, Moren, Chan; who helped me a lot in writing my thesis and in my university life in Satya Wacana Christian University.
Finally, I would say thanks for Athriyana S. Pattiwael., M. Hum, Christian
Rudianto., M. Appling, Dian Toar Y.G. Sumakul, M.A., Erio RP FanggidaE, S.Pd., Neny Isharyanti, M.A., who helped me a lot in studying and staffs Faculty of
29 References
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31 APPENDIX
Below are the interview questions that were given in order to gain information about teachers’ perception of difficulties in teaching English in junior high school
1. How long did you teach in Junior high school?
2. What are the major causes of teaching difficulties in SMP LAB?
3. What do you think about teaching spelling to the students?
4. How would you feel if the student cannot write down the spelling well?
5. What do you think about motivating students?
6. What are your strategies to motivating students?
7. How to deal with the less confident students?
8. How do you see the student’s background knowledge of English competence?
9. What do you think about student’s behavior disruption?
