Competency in English

Speaking of the competency of our senior high school graduates, we rarely see their outstanding ability in speaking or writing in English (as a foreigen language) though we have already known that they have learned English at school for four hours a week, which logically leads us to a thought that when they graduate they will have already been in 'touched' with English for minimally 960 hours (4 hours x 40 effective weeks x 6 years = 960 hours). This, in big cities in Indonesia, will be added by around another 960 hours (4 hours x 40 weeks x 6 years = 960 hours) if students whose parents are ecnomically classified into 'middle' to ,upper' are sent to improve their English skills to atwo-to-four-hour-per-week English course program. These students are probably the ones who commonly have 'tandard' skill of Englihs as a foreign language. Unfortunately, since most of the students in Indonesia do not come from the above mentioned social classes, they do not have the change to get additional lesson of English which is assumed (by our society) can help them improve their English.

So, the question now is how can't a 960 hour English lesson programme be adequate to make our students obtain and practice at least tandard skill of English ? The writer sees that there are several main problems to be the reasons of the poor quality of senior high school graduates in English, i.e :

1. Lack of grammar understanding and its application,


2. Insensitiveness of teachers to adjust teachng material, or modify it based on the needs and background of the students,


3. Abundant number of students in one class in almost all national school, and


4. Lack of reading habit among the students.

Lack of grammar understanding and its application

During her eight years of teaching junior and senior high school students English subyect privately and classically, which has given her a change to observe what her dtudents' problems in English are, the write sees that most of her students face difficulties in understanding English grammar, which in this case lies in (school) teacher's inability to involve students in comprehending the rules step bu step. Most of English teachers see grammar teaching at school as one way communication in which they genarally just inform the rules of grammar in English to students, and in turn expect students to take in those rules just like that. In other words, teachers still play a role as a'feeder' instead of a facilitator when they teach English. As a resukt, students are often stuck in confusion in their English learning.

Obviously, it is not easy to put in rules of oppositely different language to the mind of students who are not accustomed to speak, read, listen, and write in the language, and to familiarize them smoothly to it, especially when the teachers mostly always expect their students to produce correctutterance or writing in classroom, while at the same time most students are afraid and ashamed to make mistakes in front of their friends. No wonder all these thinngs make most students anxious and worry to interact and explore the language. Unfortunatelym instead of dealing with this anxiety and worry in the first place, our teachers generally tend to blame it to students' disability to understand the rules of the target language easily and quickly; sreating a gap between the students and the language. Hance, why don't teachers try to bridge this gap first by considering students' background knowledge and schemata, identified by Patricia Carrel and Joan Carson (1983, p. 556) in Joy M. Reid (1993) as the following, previously acquired knowledge is called ... background knowledge, and the previously acquired background knowledge structures are called schemata" (p. 62), which in this case is students' background knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia as their native or second language ?

In teaching her students English, first of all, the wruter is used to comparing the grammar in Bahasa Indonesia, and thr grammar in English, their general differences and similiarities, for instance the existence of tense in English but not in Bahasa Indonesia (by being careful not to stuck in 'grammar-translation' method) by comparing several sentences in Bahasa Indonesia with different adverbs of time (e.g. sekarang, besok, kemarin) but with the same verbs (e.g. makan) to their translation in English. This usually helps the students to find out little by little and understand the concept of tenses in English first (and so it goes for other basic rules in English grammar). the writer is also accustomed to display as well as contrast different sentences in different English tenses, thus get students to states their similarities and differences in order to have students see for themselves what and why they are the same, or not the same.

The few examples above show that it is important to put in the students' mind to basically know why and how the two languages are different in answers to their query and confusion. Also, the point here is to make students activate their mind by having them analyze things given by themselves. Hopefully they would feel themselves 'enlightened' and 'bridged' into the language by the guide from the teacher to figyre it out step by step. Then, gradually, students can be guided to draw conclusion and discuss some grammar rules in English by themselves under teacher's monitor, for example concluding the differences among the English tenses; their usage, theircharacteristics, the time signal, and the patterns, in order to make themfamiliar with thinking logically and critically to reach real comprehension of the language, and lead them to be able to use it functionally. The main point here is to lead students to think that their confusion is not because they do not understand the language, but because there are a lot of new things in it that they haven't explored yet. They need to realize this, so that whenever they find problems in the language, they will try to find its solution, instead of running away from it, and creating more confusion.