6. The role of teachers in succeeding English language teaching:
teacher professional development in facing the AEC 2015
Nanik Mariyati, S.Pd., M.Pd.
Department of Language, Communication and Tourism, Politeknik Negeri Jember, Indonesia
Abstract
This article is underpinned by the fact that English becomes increasingly important in the context of AEC 2015. Thinking of the effectiveness of English teaching, one of crucial aspects to consider is the role of teacher which has been found weak in support of English teaching. In fact, there are still practices signified with outdated methods, lacks of preparation, and careless behavior on professional development. This article posits that the teacher’ roles need to be
revitalized in terms of teacher as a facilitator, role model, evaluator, and motivator.
Keywords: English language teaching,teacher’s roles
Introduction
AEC (ASEAN Economic Community) was decalared in ASEAN summit 2007 which held in Cebu, Filiphine by 10 ASEAN state leaders. It will be established in 2015. The AEC areas cooperation include human resources development and capacity building. In short, the AEC will transform ASEAN into a region with not only free movement of goods, services, investment, and freer flow of capital but also skilled labours and proffesionals. There will be no barrier for all people in ASEAN countries to move and work in companies in ASEAN countries. The competition will perhaps be tighter than that at present times. Every person should be aware of their own capacity to win the limmited opportunities offered. Government need to be the promotor in preparing their citizen to face these challenges.
local content subject. The biggest question now is how English teacher can prepare the students’English skills effectively?
English as a local content subject basically has already been given in all education level in Indonesia. The fact that can not be denied the most students in Indonesia can not communicate in English well because English is only as the same subject as another subject like Math, Physic and Biology. There is no obligation for the students to apply English in their daily conversation. The worst thing happend in almost all school is the English teachers are relauctant to use English inside and or outside the classroom. This perhaps is being the most common caused that make the students also reluctant to speak English. The construction is already there. How will be the AEC 2015 faced by the young generation of Indonesia dealing with their English proficiency?
The Teachers’ Role
The English teachers take the very big porsion in preparing this potential state human resources to be ready to face AEC 2015 especially dealing with English proficiency. For sure, the first thing to be considered is the quality of human resources themselves dealing with their basic skills of their profession. But, if I can say there is a big but, it will be hard to compette with other ASEAN countries workers candidate if they don’t equip themselves with good English. They perhap realize that the provided time is not enough to recover all weaknesses but some efforts must be taken than just be hopeless.
Little thingsto do mean something for the students’ future. The teacher should put themselves in a different role. They are not only transfering the knowledge of the language to the students but they also need to force themselves to make their students become language user. This ideal goal only can be achieved by spending maximum energy, time, knowledge and skills.
Teacher Common Critical Situation
Teaching English as a foreign language is a challenging, yet rewarding career choice for most English teacher in Indonesia, since the presence of wealthy guarantee from the government is available. As an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher, we must try to understand deeply and continuosly of our students needs. We also should ready dealing with a variety of problems in the classroom, most of them is the critical one and already common happened. A good EFL teacher must not be passive in facing these things but never give up to find its solution for better students’ achievement. Small renewable means something for the students’ progress. It also can help to build more dynamic and casual environment for both teachers and students.
Based on my casual observation and my own experiences, the most critical classroom problems faced when teaching English as foreign language are in the following explaination.
Out dated Teaching Methodology
interested in. Some teachers may realize this situation, yet limited time and reluctant block their energy to get out from it. Teacher may need to participate in various conference, seminar or workshop to upgrade and refresh their knowledge and skills concerning with teaching methodology. By joining those kind of scientific meetings will renew the energy in helping the students to maximize their ability in learning language to get maximum result.
Language is a practical skill and it always develops as well as the rapid development of social interaction. The burden of English teachers nowadays are heavier than before in helping the students to face AEC 2015, so the teacher should spend their time to create up to date teaching methodology to attract the students to learn English more enthusiast. Teacher need to create some innovation to trigger the students to be more active and interested in process of teaching learning English. The students are the centre of the teaching learning. Exploring more their potential capacity will result maximum ability than just listening to the teacher explanation. Teacher can utilize recourses that already provided and easy to find. There are so many tools available to support their teaching innovation and methodology such as, TV, Radio, video streaming, internet, magazine etc, so there is no reason to be old fashion teacher anymore. Appropriate teaching methodology will create classroom more dynamic and the students more anthusiast so it will result the improvement of the students skills.
Carelessness
In particular cases, English teachers do some careless things in doing their duty in the classroom. They do not come to the class but always give assignment to the students. When giving wrong explanation they seems does not do the wrong thing and there is no confirmation about what has already been done. Besides, they do not want to give any review or feedback to thestudents’ worksheet or performance. Those kinds of mistakes often happen in the language classroom which is a dangerous situation.
The students need to confirm their progress and skills improvement. The teacher must focus on the students as the centre of the teaching learning activities. They are the most valuable and priceless client ever for the teacher. The teachers need to do some regular reflection to their performance to locate their strengths and weaknesses. Attention, personal touch, and feedback are much needed in language classroom, since they are close to the action in doing correction to guide the students to do right things. Learning language is not like learning mathematic that should be counted persistently, it perhaps some compromises made. When the students practice speaking, they may not do it as perfect as native speaker, but as far as their utterances could be understood and meaningful, it is accepted.
Teacher Positioning
How the teacher positioning themselve in the classroom when teaching learning process occur to get maximum result and being effective teacher to reshape their students skills? It can not be denyed that teacher is the centre of the attention of the students. Promising students do believe in the teacher and seem like put their future to the teachers’ hand. Still, it was so obvious that the students always obey their teacher instruction eventough sometimes they found something unpleasent to do it. The relation between teacher and students socially may already reshaped but the role of the teacher is already over there as facilitator, role model, evaluator and motivator.
Facilitator
Being facilitator, teacher should facilitate the students with valuable material by considering the students need. Technology nowadays shrapen teachers’ future dealing with their position as a facilitator for their students. Authentic materials are widely available in the variaty form of resources. Nothing will be the reason to say that they don’t have any appropriate material to facilitate the students with qualified knowledge and skills. Everything is easy to be taken from internet. It is not recommended to give material merely based on their stock or giving an old version material that have not been already suitable with the students target competencies. The material that already out of date may considered to be balancing but the main point is the students should get what actually the expect. English is a dynamic subject and teacher can explore themselves greater to make the students more anthusiastic in learning.
When the students are facilitated well, involving time, care and personal touch in fullfilling their need, it is not possible that they can learn well and the goal of the subject will be reached perfectly. To support the teachers duty as facilitator, teachers should have a very good preparation in conducting the class in form of syllabus and lesson plan, so they will have a clear guidline in teaching. Besides applying appropriate teaching strategy is also the very importat factor in succeeding the students’ learning. When the goal is maintaining the students communication, the teaching strategy must corellate with facilitating the students in using English as a mean of communication. Giving more space to the students to practice speaking is the form of facilitating them to be an English speaker. Triggering the students to acquire English especially to be ready to communicate using appropriate language in winning AEC competetion must be the first priority.
Role Model
The students need to have clear model in practicing their English. The person who is capable and possible being the role model is the teacher. Teachers take the very big portion in reshaping the students in mastering English since they are the only agent to be imitated and to confirm wheter the students do the right thngs or not.
Realizing the vital position as a role model, teachers should encourage themelves to be qualified and trustworthy one to make sure that the students have already followed the right trend setter. They have to guarantee their students that they see and follow the right idol. As I already stated before language is a practical skill, and whoever want to master it they have to try it or practice it. Teachers as a role model should be aware of this fact. They need to demonstrade the knowledge and skill that they share to the students not only explain it. Teaching language is not only explaining about the pattern or grammar and remembering many vocabulary as possible, but it is really close relates to how to use it in daily conversation. This so called learning by doing. The teachers should use English inside and ouside the classroom. Without giving the right example and being the role model to their students, teachers may will be in a very difficult situation. The students will only guess and use trial and error strategy to practice their English. This thing offcourse very dengorous if happen in long period. The guessing input will be fossilize and more difficult to be repaired in the future.
The use of body language in orang English leraning is also important to be demonstrated to the students, because sometimes they do not understand the sentence perfectly so body language will emphasize the intent of the uterances. Appropriate body language will make the conversation become more understandable. This, someday will help the students easier to communicate with people who come from non English speaking country just like ASEAN people.
In terms of being a role model teachers should aware with their own competence. They can not only rely on what they have already got from pre service teacher skill but they must always upgrade their knowledge and skills. Related to AEC 2015, teachers need to read more about the news and movement around ASEAN countries so they have authentic resources to be shared to their students. It also could be the additional topic of oral English teaching discussion in the classroom, so the students will get two benefits; practicing the language and also getting authentic information. Besides teacher should always improve and develop their English skills regularly to make sure the students that the teacher is the right role model they have.
Evaluator
Teaching learning proccess aims to make the students reached certain achievement that already set in syllabus and lesson plan. In doing this the teachers are not only
transfering the knowledge and skills that needed by the students but also evaluate the students progress.
components included. The teachers should take part in all activities conducted in the classroom to analize and evaluate the students performance. Giving some comments are very needed to correct the mistake made by the students. Liu (2013) states the teachers should let students understand their shortcomings and provide guidance for them so that the same mistakes can be avoided. The teacher should focus more to the major mistake than minor mistake (slip of tounge). In giving evaluation, teacher also let the students to do reflection to their own progress by giving some notes personally of their performance in certain period. Personal evaluation is done to avoid negative feelings from the students such as shy, hopeless and reluctant. If the mistake is done by mojority of the students, the teacher should point them out in front of all the class. When the teacher take this role perfectly, the students output achievements will reach both the students and the teachers expectation.
Motivator
Students’ motivationhas already been the main concern of many researches in learning English area for a long time, but the situation seems still setle in the previous place.
Students’ motivation is the serious problem faced by the teacher in teaching English. Most the students joining the English class are only because they have to take the subject not because they want to master English skills. The motivation mostly come from external factors such as school regulation, parents, obligation, friends, and score. Internal factors, learn English because of they want to do it and aim to master it well, are hard to find. It influences much to the style in learning English. In this case the teachers should aware with the students condition. They have to spend certain time inside and also outside the classroom to always motivate them to learn English more serious. Teachers should provide more examples and cases related to the benefit of mastering English. Sterngthening external and internal motivation everytime and every moment will encourage the students to trigger themselves to learn more.
Teachers also need to spend more energy to find more resourches to be shared to the students to mativate them to do the same things so they will enrich their knowledge not only from their teacher but also from other valuable resourches that can be found by themselves. This thing is very important to promote the students achievement and experiences in learning English from different point of view.
Conclusion
This article argues that the roles of teacher need to be revitalized in order to boost the effectiveness of English classes in Indonesian context. The ASEAN economic integration has been in front of the eyes which demands English proficiency for those involved in particular academic or professional activities. Therefore, the effectiveness of English teaching has to be increased through revitalising the teachers’ roles. Four of many highlighted in this article are related to the importance of teacher in facilitating the learning process, becoming an English language model, motivator and evaluator.
References
