CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
SMAN 2 Sungai Penuh
B. Discussions
2. The Problems faced by English Teachers in
In this session, the researcher described the problems faced by the three English teachers in developing the English teaching syllabus.
a. Teacher A
In developing the standard competency teacher A said that she had problem to sequence the order of the lesson based on the level of difficulty, because she lacked the knowledge of standard competency and did not know the nature of the standard competency. So that she just developed it by what she thought easier for her teaching. She said in the interview:
“Sure…., as I said I don’t really know the nature of the standard competency.”
In formulating the indicators of the competence teacher A stated that having problem to relate the indicators to the students’
characteristic, subject lesson, and local potency. She said that sometimes she was difficult to decide the operational words are appropriately used. She said in the interview:
“A little bit yes, it is difficult to decide what the operational words are appropriately used.
In developing and designing the materials teacher A had problems to relate the materials to the students’ potency. She said
that the students were not in the level of the competencies stated in the curriculum that made her trouble in adopting the lesson with the students’ condition. She said in the interview:
“Yes, my students were not in the level of the competencies stated in the curriculum, so I got trouble in adopting the lesson with my students’ condition”
Additional teacher A said that she had problem in doing need analysis and doing test English proficiency of the students. She stated that she got difficulties to find appropriate materials for the students’ need. As she said in the interview:
“Yes, sometimes I get difficulty to find the appropriate materials for the students’ need”.
Next, teacher A also had problem to consider the depth, breadth, width, and authenticity of the materials. She got trouble in designing them because the time allocation in the syllabus sometimes did not match with the materials need and she could not managed well to fit her materials with the syllabus application. She said in the interview:
“Yes, I got trouble in teaching difficult lesson, it takes time, but the curriculum won’t give much time.”
Besides teacher A also stated that she had problem in designing the authentic materials. She got difficulties to adjust the authentic materials with the students’ level. She said in the interview:
“Yes, I do. I get difficult to adjust the authentic material with the students’ level”
Teacher A also said that she had problem in developing the media which relate to the materials. She stated that when choosing the IT she could not find it easily, because the sources and facility at the school was limited. Besides she also had problems to provide such as in-focus, LCD, etc, because she did really know to operate them. She said in the interview:
“I got problem in using IT because of limited resources or facility at my school.”
Regarding time allocation teacher A said that she had problem to manage her time allocation and relating it to the basic competence. She spent much time to plan these, because sometimes she could not match her time to the materials. And she often had longer or shorter. She said in the interview:
“Yes, I often go longer or shorter. And I could not match well my time with the materials”
b. Teacher B
And teacher B said that he had difficulty in designing and developing the standard competency in choosing the appropriate materials for the indicators because sometimes the materials did not fit with the indicators needed. He said in the interview:
“Yes, sometimes I get difficulty to find such a good materials that appropriate with the indicators”
Regarding materials teacher B had problem in relating the materials to students’ potency because the students had different level. He said in the interview:
“Yes, it is become a problem for me, because they are in different level.”
And teacher B also had problem in designing the authenticity materials in his syllabus. He explained that he got difficulty to sort out which pattern to use that was easier for the students to understand. And he said that she could not find easy the authentic materials. Besides she lacked the knowledge of selecting the authentic materials how it looks like. Even he got it he did not know which materials should be included to the materials. He said in the interview:
“I don’t know much about the authenticity materials.”
Besides teacher B had problem to adjust the materials with the time allocation. He stated that the size of the materials sometimes did not fit to the time he had and he spent much time to put it well.
He said in the interview:
“Yes, I spent a lot of time to do that”
Additional teacher B also had problem to relate the media with the materials. Sometimes what the materials need on the media could not provide at the school. And some of the media was not available in the school. He said in the interview:
“Yes, sometimes it is hard to serve the media such as in- focus and LCD is not available.”
Dealing with time allocation teacher B also had problem in managing the time which relates to the basic competence. He said
that the time that he designed in the syllabus sometimes did not fit with the materials, because the number of the English lesson a day was limited. He said in the interview:
“Yes, I said above, sometimes I can’t manage the time well, because the number of meeting only two times a week.”
c. Teacher C
Teacher C said that she had problem to relate the materials to the time allocation, she said sometimes the time was not enough to adjust to the materials because the meeting of English subject was limited. She said in the interview:
“Yes, sometimes the time is not fit with the materials”
Regarding media teacher C had problem to provide the media that appropriate to the materials. She said that the media were not available in the school, besides she got trouble to adjust the media to the materials. She said in the interview:
“Yes, it is. Sometimes the media is very limited and I could not prepare it well.”
B. Discussion
Based on the findings above, the researcher presented discussion directed to answer the research questions. The discussion was directed to the answer for every research questions holistically by recalling the ideal theory related to the research findings.
1. The Syllabus Development by English Teachers at Grade XI of SMAN 2 Sungai Penuh
Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan 2006 has located teachers’
understanding of the curriculum and syllabus as the symbol of professionalism of a teacher in the implementation of syllabus. All teachers must have a good understanding of a syllabus in order for them to do better implementation in their hour of implementation. The rationale is that there will never be a teacher without the knowledge about curriculum and syllabus.
According to Mulyassa (2009) there are some preparations before teaching and learning process: prepare the subject, local material, self- development, time schedule, criteria of mastery learning, criteria of assessment and grading policy, and the most important are preparing syllabus and the lesson plan. Besides, there are five components that must be also considered before implementing the English teaching syllabus, such as material, media, teaching activities, classroom and time allocation, evaluation and textbooks.
Richards (2001) mentions that preparing syllabus and lesson plan should be provided for each course offered in the program with information on the course, aims and objectives, recommended materials and methods, suggested learning activities, and procedures assessment. In addition he explains that preparation of teaching included adequate materials. Teachers need good materials to teach from either in the form of
commercial textbook or institutionally prepared materials. Preparing materials provide the basis of the content of lessons.
Then, based on the ministry regulation No.41 (2007) about the process standard, it was explained that a Lesson Plan is the elaboration of syllabus which illustrates the teaching and learning activities to achieve the goals of the basic competency. Every teacher who uses school curriculum, should design a plan completely and systematically to make the teaching and learning interactive, inspirative, joyful, challenging, and could be able to motivate students to active, creative, and self-reliance, in line with their talent, motivation, their physical, and physiological development. Every stage of the lesson should be planned to fulfill the above requirements and make certain that the instructional objectives could be achieved. Besides, every teacher should make syllabus and lesson plan as the guidance for their teaching. So, they can evaluate whether the objective could be reached or not.
A still controversial issue among the most debated topics regarding which component of a syllabus to be designed ahead of any other components is a statement of an objective of a lesson (Nunan, 2001). A familiar term in School Based Curriculum is what is called Standard Competency and Basic Competence in which all the learning purposes or objectives are stated clearly with suitable operational words. It is, however, in School Based Curriculum, this component that is designed first before the other components.
From the interview of three English teachers at SMA N 2 Sungai Penuh, a considerable number of differing policies emerged within their responses. Teacher A’s developments were not so much dependent on a theoretical approach. Much of what she did was referring to her personal experiences, beliefs and perceptual ideas. She developed the standard and basic competency ahead of the other components; objective specification over contents, and learning tasks. However, Nunan (2001) suggests that teachers, as role players, in a syllabus design should first have some necessary knowledge; knowing the scope of the objectives, and the rationale. Regarding the objective specification before content and learning task Nunan further points out that teachers should understand the type of syllabus they opt for in order to decide if they need to design them before the other components. The reason behind that is different learning approach will need a different way of stating a learning objective.
Widdowson (1979) clearly puts that very often the way a language learning objective is designed does not reflect the natural way of how a language is being learned.
Teacher B, on the other hand, gave a primary concern on the kinds of material to be taught. This way she believed that having decided the materials in advance one will be able to determine which objective to achieve and which is not. This is in contrast to what Nunan (2001) suggests that teachers should not neglect the sociological, personal variability of the students. Each student has different cultural view points,
different personalities, and learning styles. Therefore, before deciding which objectives to be learned and achieved by the students, teachers should carry out a need analysis and a test of English proficiency for determining the students’ level of English and language variation they tend to have. Thenceforth, teachers will have a clear orientation of which kind of students they are going to teach and be able to design a learning objective accurately at least, to some extent, of that which is of value for their students.
Teacher C followed a three-step development of the standard and basic competency of a syllabus: ordering the difficulty level of the materials, establish the relationship between the standard and basic competency, and the relationship within the subject lesson. Pertaining to this issue in language teaching, there was some significant research during the 1970s e.g. Dulay and Burt (1975), Larsen Freeman (1976), Krashen, Butler, Birnbaum, and Robertson (1978) on if there was a natural order of the acquisition. The implication of that research connected to the syllabus design in ordering the difficulty level of the materials for the purpose of stating the competence in Standard and Basic Competency, it is imperative that lesson should be ordered in accordance with the natural route of acquisition. Another most important thing is that the nature of the input, from which the Standard and Basic Competency will be achieved by the students in their learning, should be comprehensible and slightly higher in difficulty than the students’ current level of English proficiency (Krashen,
1981). Teacher C in this regard fulfilled the theoretical requirement for difficulty order of the input for a lesson.
To relate the standard and basic competency within a subject lesson, teacher A and B stated that they just need to select a related genre to be taught. However, they admitted to get lost finding their way round within the zone of Standard and Basic Competency. Nunan (2001) suggests that teachers are obliged to have some necessary knowledge on syllabus design and curriculum development. In contrast to teacher A, and B, teacher C accomplished the relationship between the standard competency and basic competency within a subject lesson by categorizing them into the same materials then mapping the systematical order of the lesson based on the difficulty level. While Brown (2000) suggests that basic competence as he calls it enabling objectives, can be related to the standard competence or in his term terminal objectives, by assigning each of the enabling objectives the interim steps to reach the terminal objectives thereby, accomplishing the relationship between the two.
According to BSNP (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan or The Council of National Education Standard: 2006) the achievement indicators should be formulated through considering the students’ characteristics, subject lesson, the educational levels, local potency, using operational words which are observable and are used as a tool for instruments of evaluation. From the interview of the three English teachers, some laxity was revealed. Teachers A stated that in formulating the indicators she only
focused on the students’ characteristics, and the lesson to be taught, while not recognizing the other important factors as suggested by BSNP.
Similarly, teacher B formulated the indicators only based on the local potency and the students’ characteristics. While teacher C on the other hand only focused on the integration of materials. This is indicative that they did not follow an appropriate step in formulating the indicators in terms of the factors to be considered.
In addition to the above factors, BSNP (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan or The Council of National Education Standard: 2006) also suggests that indicators should have the appropriate operational words with the order lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills.
This is supported by Ishihara and Cohen (2010) who suggest that operational words should be ordered with Bloom’s Taxonomy’s order of thinking matching the students with the right adjustment of cognitive development stage. It is obvious from the interview that the three English teachers did not take into account of this aspect.
Material is one of the most important elements of a syllabus. In order to carry out a syllabus, a teacher must have some fundamental knowledge about it. In developing the English teaching syllabus regarding materials teacher A, B and C must have the criteria of instructional materials; first, the materials should be slightly higher in their level of difficulty than the students’ current level of English proficiency. Teacher A, B, and C did relate the materials with the student’s current level of
English proficiency although here and there, there were still some problems and obstacles for them to optimize their development. This criterion has been suggested by some educators and experts in language teaching as one among the first things teachers should do with the materials. Krashen (1981) strongly emphasized that acquisition should only occur when the input given to the learners is slightly higher in difficulties than students’ current level of proficiency as what he called i+1. It is also supported by Brown (2001) that good material should relate to the students’ need and the English level of the students.
Related to the connection between age and materials, both Teacher A and C believed that the material should only be adjusted to the standard competence in the curriculum that they thought they only needed to make some necessary changes in the materials that were adaptable to the curriculum. Teacher B has an even very simple tackling on it, he thought that it was not a problem; all the content within the standardized curriculum should not require any change at all. It is, as he said, already a well-planned lesson from the educational office.
While age in language learning is one of the main constraints that influence the success of the leaning therefore it requires a lot of close attention. Despite the fact that the ages of senior high school students are comparatively the same, their maturity is different. Griffiths (2008) argues that age in relation to language learning is affected by the maturational stage of the students. Consequently the content of the lesson needs to be
adjusted with it. This is in contrast to what the teachers believed.
Suggestive from Griffiths that teachers’ duties are not only adjusting the materials with the standardized curriculum but also and not the least studying and paying attention to the students themselves before making changes and designing materials. The obvious benefit of that is to help students understand better in the learning. Urr (1991) says that the choice of materials should be suitable with students’ age, so that the students will be easy to understand the materials.
Student’s potency is also one of the major constraints in language learning that should be taken into account. The question of who learns a language is of the utmost importance. Students in their journey to achieving their learning goal are very much affected by their personal factors like the potency they have on the ground as Brown (2001) calls it students’ intellectual capacities. Materials must be weighted with the content that does not go beyond the students’ capacity, instead loaded with the content that supports their potency. It was found from the interview that the three teachers did pay a lot of attention to the students’ potency despite differing viewpoints. Teacher A and B tended to initially know the students’ need and their pre-existing knowledge. Thence, they would be able to sort out some materials to be suited with what they thought to be their students’ potency. This is supported by Kunandar (2007) that materials should be suitable with the students’ knowledge.
Teacher C in the interview stated that students’ potency can be looked at from what the students are doing, and dealing with in everyday life. Consequently, the materials should be designed by relating it to their everyday school life, and environment. The researcher assumes that these differing viewpoints occur because of a multitude of study on cognitive psychology and language acquisition. Mitchell and Myles (1998) points out that students are language processors where everyone of them is already equipped with their inner mental mechanism to acquire and process any kind of language input. Students’ potency in this case stands as something more universal rather than specific. This means that materials developed by the teachers do not matter much in the route of learning. Teacher A, B, and C may have considered anything to dig out their students’ potency from their eliciting materials but the jury is still out.
Another important factor to be concerned with in developing materials is the local characteristics in which the students are immersed. It influences the rate of the acquisition since students learn the things they are familiar with. As Brown (2001) puts it learning a language is learning something that influences our thought while thought is influenced by the language reflected by the cultural and physical aspect of local conditions.
In due course, our thought is very reflective to our local characteristics and automatically we can easily recognize the things related to it. In relation to the materials, students will be able to recognize things easily if they are