Minggu, 28 November 2010 Principles from Brown in SMA ** Jakarta Diposting oleh an.pane di 02.38

This is still about my school experience in SMA ** Jakarta with Mr. L.H. as my master teacher. During the school experience, I came to grade ten, eleven, and twelve. Now, I want to show five Brown’s principles about language learning approach that occurred in SMA ** Jakarta in Mr. L.H’s class. I took the principles and put some other references related to them.

The first principle is meaningful learning. The first class that I visited was XII Social 1. In that class, Mr. L.H. delivered a material about explanation text. He told the students there to pretend as a businessman with an innovative product. Each student had to draw the picture based on their imagination then showed it to me. I pretended as an investor who would decide whether I wanted to invest my money or not based on how they presented the product. So, they gave some explanations about the product such as the material, colors, function, etc. After that, I asked them some questions, gave comments and feedback, and then report it to Mr. L.H.  In this activity, I could see that Mr. L.H. gave a meaningful learning. He knew how to engage the material with an appropriate content for students. The students became interested in it. This activity supports the idea which is stated by Brown (1994). He says that meaningful learning happens in content-centered approach to language teaching. Nunan (1999) states that students will be motivated when they do some meaningful activities. According to him, students have to know what and why they learn a subject. Pretending as a businessman showed them that the material can be applied in their real life. They became know what explanation text is and how they use it in a real context.

            The second principle is automaticity. The next meeting, I came to class X.6 and pretended as an investor like I did in class XII Social 1. The difference is in this class, they talked about procedure text. They drew an innovative product using their imagination. Then, they mentioned the goal, its material, and the steps to use the product. Although Mr. L.H. already told them not to worry about grammar too much, they told me that they were still afraid of it when they had to speak in English. When they produced an incorrect structure of sentence, they would get stuck and think about how to do it correctly. Actually, I, as the listener and interviewer, still got their point and understood what they wanted to say. Brown states that overanalyzing language, thinking too much about its forms and rules will impede second language leaner’s automaticity. That was why the students had a low automaticity. Krashen (1981), through his hypotheses, states that second language learner usually utilize a ‘monitor’ in their mind when they produce the output using their second language. He says that a successful monitor user edit their second language output when it does not hinder the communication. According to Krashen’s hypotheses, the students whom I mentioned before were included in a ‘monitor overuser’, second language learners who use their ‘monitor’ too much.

            The third principle is self confidence. Considering that most classes had a similar activity and situation, I still use X.6 as an example for discussing this principle. Many students who got their turn for the interview said that they were nervous. They were not sure whether they could present their product well or not. Sometimes, they bargained to speak in Indonesian. I encouraged them to try to speak in English as well as they could. Brown says that a learners’ belief in their capability to accomplish a task becomes a factor that affects their success. Moreover, some of the students who have not been interviewed yet came to watch the interview. It was because of their curiosity. They wanted to know how it was going to be like. This thing made the students who were being interviewed felt more nervous. They told the others not to watch them because they would feel ashamed if they made many mistakes. Amy Tsui (as cited in Nunan, 1999) identifies some factors that cause reluctance of students to speak up in class. One of them is students’ fear of mistakes. She explains that students are also afraid of making fools of themselves in front of their peers. These things made the students’ self-confidence low.

            The fourth principle is native language effect. This point can be seen from all the students whom I met in this school. Even those ones who spoke fluently enough in English often met this principle. For example, when they had to use countable and plural nouns, sometimes they did not put ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ at the end of the word. It might be affected by their first language, Indonesia, which does not have any inflectional affixes like those ones. Brown states that the native language systems of learners can give influence to their comprehension of the second language. Krashen, through his research in Czech, finds that first language influence comes strongest in complex word order and in phrases’ translation. He also finds that first language influence is weaker in bound morphology. During my observation, sometimes I also met students who produce complex words order in English and got influence from Indonesian. It made them produce a word or statement with incorrect arrangement. However, different from Kranshen’s research, students in SMA** got first language influence stronger when they had to produce inflectional affixes, which are bound morphology. This difference may appear because of the different countries where the researches took place. The language system of each country may be different. 

            The last principle I want to show is communicative competence. I took the example from my master teacher and my experience in interviewing the students for their products. Mr. L.H spoke in English with good fluency and accuracy. He also explained the materials in class with good structures. He knew how to communicate well with the students and encourage the students to speak in English at the same time. Mr. L.H also wanted all the students to have a good communicative competence. That was why he asked me to join the activity in the class by interviewing the students about the products they made. He asked me to give a report about their fluency, accuracy, structure and sentence arrangements, intonation, etc. In the process of interview, Mr. L.H told the students how to introduce themselves as a businessman and how to end the presentation. This is like what Richards, Plat, and Weber (as cited in Nunan, 1999) say about the characteristics of communicative competence. One of them is knowing how to begin and end conversation. During the interview, the points that I had to see from the students are various. It relates to Brown’s statement that communicative competence is the goal of language classroom with some components inside. Dell Hymes (as cited in Nunan, 1999) proposes that communicative competence does not only include linguistic competence but also other sociolinguistic and conversational skills that make the speaker know what, how, and when to say something, and  to whom she or he says it.

  Which principles that you see as the biggest challenge to be improved in Indonesian schools?