Masa depan bangsa Indonesia sangat tergantung terhadap bagaimana kualitas pendidikan yang ada. Rendahnya kualitas pendidikan yang ada saat mengindikasikan bahwa pertahanan bangsa Indonesia dalam mempertahankan jati diri dan karakter bangsa berada pada ambang kehancuran. Mari tingkatkan kualitas pendidikan bangsa
Hi everyone in English Majoring of UMM. This even semester, six subjects should be beared on me. They are:
1) Speaking III
2) Public Speaking (Member)
3) English for Spesific Purpose
4) Seminar (Member)
5) Micro Teaching (Member)
6) Metodologi Penelitian (Member)
Every information related to those subject will be available in this blog. Links are already activated.
Many English methods have been introduced by experts years ago. Among of them are Grammar Translation Method (GTM), Audio Lingual Method (ALM), Silent way method, Suggestopedia method, Direct method, and many others. Somehow result of English score in Indonesia for both secondary and tertiary students are still low. To deal with this problem an offer has been proposed to use The Five Fingers method for English teaching. This method was created by Syahban Ahmad, a practician of English teaching. Ahmad (2010:3) claims that:
“Fingers can sistematically become a powerfull guide to brain speed theraphy in the process of English speaking learning, the easiest, the best, the fastest and spectacular. The magic power of the right hand when holding every fingers of left hand is able to arrange words and create systematic communication sentences, effective, and responsive in a communicative conversation, simple and easily understandable”.
The statement above appears to be so convincing for every English teacher to implement the method. In order to facilitate the use of the method, there are 12 steps to do. They are: 1) Determine word to be questioned: verb, noun, or adjective; 2) Make sure to understand the meaning of pronoun: they, we, I, you, he, she, it; 3) make sure to understand question words: where, when, why, who, which, whose, how, how long, how many, how old, etc; 4) determine structure or tense form; present tense, past tense etc; 5) Make every first interogrative sentence initiated by question word; 6) The form of the sentence are: (a) interogrative with question word, (b) interogrative sentence with yes or no answer, (c) positive tag question sentence, (d) negative tag question sentence, (e) asumption question with yes answer; 7) make sure the use of conjunction word; 8) practice to speak (without seeing book); 9) first question sentence using question word: what do+S+verb…, then do position altered by doesetc; 10) by holding fingers at the correct position is the main key to forming attitude habit of achieving time target so that it may lead one to be able to speak fluently and full of self confident; 11) as ability of making question reached in 4 second, then it can be added an and word at the third interogrative sentence, but at the fourth, so at the fifth; 12) make sure to understand the development of personal pronoun, object pronoun, posessive pronoun, posessive adjective, reflexive adjective, I, me, my, mine, and myself, he, him, his mother, his, himself, she,her, her father, hers, we, us, our teachers, ours, ourselves, they, them, their books, theirs, themselves, it, its, itself.
The using of five fingers method can be described on the picture belows:
Basic concept of five fingers method
Example of arrangement sentence:
What
do you drink every morning
Do
you drink coffe every morning
You
drink coffe every morning, don’t you
You
don’t drink coffe every morning, do you
You
drink coffe every morning
As the right hand holds left hand thumb, then one must speak “What do you drink every morning?”, after finishing speaking the first line, the right hand moves to the point finger and hold it, then one omitting question word what and speak” Do you drink coffe every morning”?, after finishing speaking the second line, the right hand moves to the midle finger and hold it, then one omitting do, and speak”You drink coffe every morning, don’t you?”, after finishing speaking the third line, the right hand moves to the ring finger and hold it, and speak”You don’t drink coffe every morning, do you?”, after finishing speaking the fourth line, the right hand moves to the litle finger and hold it, and speak “ You drink coffe every morning”.
The using of the sentence form should be carried out consistantly, so that the habit formation moves from fingers to one’s mind. Mind does not control on forming sentences, but fingers lead to the creation of sentence by heart. This condition is expected to the flowing of words from mouth automatically since sound apparatus works well coordinated by fingers and mind.
B. Perspective of Teaching Learning Theory
1. Behaviorism Perspective
Fingers are used to facilitate learning. This happen when one tries to remember and arrange the words in a correct structure. At the early learning process, arranging word in a certain structure can be very difficult for anyone. Structure is word arrangement with certain order in a sentence, that each part of the sentence has its exact position. Fingers, here represent the exact position of each part in a sentence, that one simply needs to pay attention to each finger so that he/she easily can remember each word position to build a sentence. Rather than remembering the word position, seeing which finger being hold will absolutely remind one on what position the word is. The use of fingers play as stimulation and cause learning process takes place so that learner produce speaking as a respon.
Let’s consider this analogy, a place we used to go is red coloured, so that when we are on our way heading it, we are expecting seeing red colour to identify the place as fast as we can. When the finger thumb is the question word and located at first part of the sentence, as we hold the thumb, we will identify it as question word and locate it at the first part of a sentence. Thumb represents question word, by holding the thumb one saying the question word. Index finger represents omitting question word. Midle finger represents omitting auxullary verb. Ring finger represents adding not after auxullary verb. Little finger represents affirmative sentence. Following the basic concept of five fingers method, one will be able to at least build five structures; they are: question sentence using question word, interogrative question, positive tag question, negative tag question, and assumption.
Learning process by using this method takes place when learner holding fingers as they represents structure function. Fingers become icon which easily recognized by learner as they hardly remember how to arrange the word. This is why then habit of word forming automatically sustained. Considering the learning process, it appears to be in line with behaviorsm teaching and learning theory. There are two main features in five fingers method which lead to the significant relation with behaviorist. They are, the using of fingers and habitual formation. These two features create condition which learner as living organism give up response and orderly interaction with the environment.
Skinner as cited in Wikipedia (2010) says that there are five main obstacles in learning, they are: 1) People have a fear of failure, 2) There is a lack of directions, 3) There is also a lack of clarity in the direction, 4) Positive reinforcement is not used enough, 5) The task is not broken down into small enough steps. A good English teaching method must be able to deal with those above obstacles. These five main obstacles, somehow to be overcomed by using five fingers method.
Deal with the first obstacle, learners have a fear of failure by having difficult method to achieve learning objective, five fingers method provide simple procedure to achieve learning objective. It is not a difficult method at all, so there is no need for learners to feel a fear of failure. There will be always some time needed to adjust, but considering that fingers are available in every human, one can practice five fingers method any time possible. In fact, a fear of failure with a certain dose will generate internal motivation. This internal motivation grows stronger when one realizes that the problem he/she has been dealing with is merely a simple problem. One will die hard to solve the problem anyway. This method simply lose one’s fair because it is easy to do.
The second obstacle, the direction of using five fingers method in order to achieve learning objective is quite clear. When teacher introduces the way to perform five fingers method, teacher simply needs to show the fingers and demonstrate them along with the pronunciation of sentence being in used. The same sentence may be repeated a few times to ensure learner’s mastery of the sentence and the procedure of five fingers method. Adjustment should takes place at fifth up to the tenth usage of the method. Most people are likely to understand object easily when they organize sense as many as they can. The using of five fingers method does organize human sense such as: fingers, eyes, sound organ. Learners who have finished the tenth usage are assumed to have understood the procedure adequately. An adequation understanding of the five fingers method procedure in a short time is an indicator of direction clearity.
Many teachers often forget to provide reinforcement when learning objective has been performed by learners. This condition often leads to decrease learner’s motivation and hereby learning doesn’t develop maximally. This obstacle doesn’t have anything to do with five fingers method because it depends on teacher’s skill. Skilled teacher will be likely to present reinforcement when learners have shown progress in learning.
To avoid the fifth obstacle, the using of five fingers method provide materials already broken in to pieces, started from the lowest level. Normally, the lowest level of the materials are related to pronoun, verbal and nominal sentences. This materials somehow have been integrated in to the method. Starting from the adjustment level, materials are divided in to pieces, yet the difficulty level will relay on teacher’s ability to develop it. The development of the materials subdivision are related a lot to local policy on curriculum.
2. Cognitivism Perspective
Cognitivism learning theory, formerly introduced by Lev Vygotsky, imply that learning is a change of understanding. This theory somehow has inspired Brunner. As a change of understanding, learning doesn’t always indicate behavior change. Learning also identified as mental activity, somehow to measure learning achievement, operational word need to be used When learners try to identify meaning of icon which are represented by fingers, there is a change of understanding in it. At first they don’t know how to place each part of a sentence but when they see fingers, their mind start to develop an understanding by making connection between finger and word structure. As one function of structure already mastered by learners, they move to another form of structure and word. Shifting of one structure to another leads to the change of understanding. Operational word related to the measurement of should be the same but touching different function of word.
Implementation of cognitivism learning theory based on Brunner’s view are as follows: 1) determine learning objective, 2) choosing learning materials, 3) determine topic which can be learnt inductively by student, 4) providing illustration or sample which can be used by student for learning, 5) enactive-iconize-simbolize, 6) evaluation of process and learning objective.
The using of five fingers method also requires the determination of learning objective. en For example” Student will be able to use will in a correct form”,”Student will be able to use can in a correct form, etc”. When choosing materials, it is in accordance with arranging them from the easiest up to the most difficult, 3) since students can practice themselves when they have been taught earlier related to a certain topic and the way they arrange word in order to build sentence, they can do induction among them easily, 4) Sample given to student through writing the example of sentence structure on the white board in order for them understanding the structure before they start to pratice, 5) by practicing saying the sentences, it will drive them to be active, leading to connect fingers toward word position in the structure, 6) process evaluation occurs when students try to check wether the structure is correct or not. Not only checking the structure but also the way they pronunciate the word in sentence.
Both behaviorism or cognitivism allow three domains of learning objective as the learning result. The domains are cognitive, psychomotor, and affective as it is well known to be Bloom’s taxonomy. The cognitive domain involves six levels, starting from the lowest up the highest, take place when students elaborate all information related to brain activity. The operational words which represent the six levels are likely to be typical rather than spread all over type of word in each level. In psychomotor domain, the level occurs between level 3 and 5, because the students try to accentuate the way they move their sound organs so that they may produce correct pronunciation which mean they try to immitiate how native speaker producing sound of the word. The affective domain occurs when students try to accept the value of being discipline as they focusing their attention to certain form of structure and certain move in producing sound. The tension of being eager to master the method creates effective induction among them.
C. Similarity
The notion of five fingers method seems to have resemblance with other previous method. When five fingers method concentrated to the mastery of structure, then it will be more like GTM. As it is fully awared that GTM deal a lot with grammar, so focusing student on structure mastering, no matter how easy the structure is, it tends to be GTM sense.
to be continued.......
Refference
Ahmad, Syahban. 2010. Magic Five Fingers for English Conversation. Private Publisher. Metro, Lampung.
The PPP Approach to Communicative Language Teaching
Reposted by Agus R
"PPP" (or the "3Ps") stands for Presentation, Practice and Production - a common approach to communicative language teaching that works through the progression of three sequential stages.
Presentation represents the introduction to a lesson, and necessarily requires the creation of a realistic (or realistic-feeling) "situation" requiring the target language to be learned. This can be achieved through using pictures, dialogs, imagination or actual "classroom situations". The teacher checks to see that the students understand the nature of the situation, then builds the "concept" underlying the language to be learned using small chunks of language that the students already know. Having understood the concept, students are then given the language "model" and angage in choral drills to learn statement, answer and question forms for the target language. This is a very teacher-orientated stage where error correction is important.
Practice usually begins with what is termed "mechanical practice" - open and closed pairwork. Students gradually move into more "communicative practice" involving procedures like information gap activities, dialog creation and controlled roleplays. Practice is seen as the frequency device to create familiarity and confidence with the new language, and a measuring stick for accuracy. The teacher still directs and corrects at this stage, but the classroom is beginning to become more learner-centered.
Production is seen as the culmination of the language learning process, whereby the learners have started to become independent users of the language rather than students of the language. The teacher's role here is to somehow facilitate a realistic situation or activity where the students instinctively feel the need to actively apply the language they have been practicing. The teacher does not correct or become involved unless students directly appeal to him/her to do so.
The PPP approach is relatively straight forward, and structured enough to be easily understood by both students and new or emerging teachers. It is a good place to start in terms of applying good communicative language teaching in the classroom. It has also been criticized considerably for the very characteristic that makes it the easiest method for 'beginner' teachers, that is, that it is far too teacher-orientated and over controlled. A nice alternative to 'PPP' is Harmer's 'ESA' (Engage/Study/Activate) - click here to find out more.
1. Pick a student and ask him/her to read the instructions for Activity 1/2/3 or whatever. ‘Marco, please read the instructions for Activity 2 for us’.
2. Pick a different student each time.
Why:
1. It saves you doing it.
2. You can check pronunciation.
3. The other students may well understand the instructions better when read by another student.
4. The students are more likely to listen to another student than to you.
5. If they all read the instructions silently they will all finish at different times. If they listen to someone reading the instructions out loud they all finish at the same time.
Extra Info:
Getting students to read aloud used to be unpopular because the powers that be said that it was unrealistic as we never do it in real life - you read books silently, don’t you? Things have changed since then as it has since been argued that we do do it, e.g. ‘hey, listen to this, it says in the paper here that Prince Charles is already, secretly, married to Camilla! Listen - “Prince Charles allegedly married Camilla Parker Bowles in a secret ceremony at WindsorCastle yesterday. The ceremony was attended only by the prince’s closest family and friends. A palace spokesman denied the rumour, saying that..............” etc.
The Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching is an approach developed by British applied linguists in the 1930s to the 1960s. It is little known by many language teachers although it had an impact on language courses and was still used in the design of many widely used EF/ESL textbooks in the 1980s such as Streamline English (Hartley and Viney 1979).
The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching relied on the structural view of language. Both speech and strucure were seen to be the basis of language and, especially, speaking ability. This was a view similar to American structuralists, such as Fries. However, the notion of the British applied linguists, such as Firth and Halliday, that structures must be presented in situations in which they could be used, gave Situational LanguageTeaching its distinctiveness.
Vocabulary and grammar control
One of the outstanding features of the method is its emphasis on vocabulary and reading skills learning. This led to the development of principles of vocabulary control. Frequency counts showed that a core of about 2000 words occurred frequently in written text and that a mastery of such an inventory would lead to better reading skills.
Likewise, it has been believed that an analysis of English and a classification of its principal grammatical structures into sentence patterns (or situational tables) could be used to assist learners to internalize the rules and sentence structures.
Behavioristic background
Situation Language Teaching held a is behavioristic stand to language learning. It dealt with the processes rather than the conditions of learning. These processes englobe three stages:
recieving the knwoledge or material
fixing it in memory by repetition
and using it in actual practice until it becomes a personal skill.
The principles of the behavioristic theory of learning can be summerized as follows:
language learning is habit-formation
mistakes are bad and should be avoided, as they make bad habits
language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form
analogy is a better foundation for language learning than analysis
the meanings of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context
SLT objectives
Situational Language Teaching aims at the achievement of these objectives:
a practical command of the four basic skills of a language, through structure
accuracy in both pronunciation and grammar
ability to respond quickly and accurately in speech situations
automatic control of basic structures and sentence patterns.
The syllabus, tecniques and activities
Situational Language Teaching uses a structural syllabus and a word list and relied on structural activities including situational presentation of new sentence patterns and drills to practice the patterns. Typical procedure in Situational Language Teaching include
Procedures that move from controlled to freer practice of structures
Procedures that move from oral use of sentence patterns to their automatic use in speech, reading and writing.
A typical situational Language Teaching lesson would start with stress and intonation practice. Then the main body of the lesson might consist of four parts:
revision (to prepare for new work if necessary)
presentation of new structure or vocabulary
oral practice (drilling)
reading of material on the new structure, or written exercises.
Advantages
Although Situational Language Teaching was developed during the 1930s, it still attracts the interest of many teachers. Its strong emphasis on oral practice, grammar and sentence patterns conform to the intuitions of many practically oriented classroom teachers.
Disadvantages
The views of language and language learning underlying Situational Language Teaching were called into question. Chomsky (1957) showed that the structural and the behaviouristic approaches to langauge were erronous and do not account for the fundamental characteristic of language namely the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. Children do not acquire their mother tongue through repetition and habit formation. There must be, however, an innate predisposition that lead them to a certain kind of linguistic comptence.
The natural approach developed by Tracy Terrell and supported by Stephen Krashen,is a language teaching approach which claims that language learning is a reproduction of the way humans naturally acquire their native language. The approach adheres to a communicative approach to language teaching and rejects earlier methods such as the audiolingual method and the situational laguage teaching approach which Krashen and terrell (1983) believe are not based on “actual theories of language acquisition but theories of the structure of language “
The Natural Approach vs the Direct Method
Although The Natural approach and the Direct Method (also called the natural method) share some features, there are important differences . Like the direct method the natural approach is
” believed to conform to the naturalistic principles found in second language acquisition. Unlike the direct method, however, it places less emphasis on teacher monologues, direct repetion,and formal questions and answers, and less focus on accurate production of target language sentences” (Richards and Rodgers, 1986:129)
Theory of language
Krashen and Terrell view communication as the primary function of language, and adhere to a communicative approach to language teaching, focusing on teaching communicative abilities rather than sterile language structures.
What really distinguishes the Natural approach from other methods and approaches are its premises concerning the use of language and the importance of vocabulary:
Language is viewed as a vehicle for communicating meaning and messages.
Voacbulary is of paramount importance as language is essencially its lexicon!
This means that language acquisition can not take place unless the acquirer understands messages in the targe language and has developed sufficient vocabulary inventory. In fact it should be easier to reconstruct a message containing just vocabulary items than one containing just the grammatical structures.
Theory of learning
Krashen grounded the Natural approach on a number of theory of learning tenets.
The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis
Krashen makes a distinction between acquisition and learning.
Krashen defines acquisition as developing competence by using language for real communication. It is the natural way, paralleling first language development in children and refers to an unconscious process that involves the naturalistic development of language proficiency through understanding language and through using language for meaningful communication.
Learning, however, refers to formal knowledge of a language. It is the process in which conscious rules about a language are developed. It results in explicit knowledge about the forms of a language and the ability to verbalize this knowledge. Formal teaching is necessary for “learning” to occur, and correction of errors helps with the development of learned rules.
The Monitor Hypothesis
Conscious learning can function only as a monitor or editor that checks and repairs the output of the acquired system. The Monitor Hypothesis states that we may use learned knowledge to correct ourselves when we communicate, but that conscious learning has only this function. Three conditions limit the successful use of the monitor:
Time. Sufficient time for a learner to choose and apply a learned rule.
Focus on form. Focus on correctness or on the form of the output.
Knowledge of rules. Knowing the rules is a prerequiste for the use of the monitor.
The Natural Order Hypothesis
The acquisition of grammatical structures proceeds in a predictable order. Certain grammatical structures or morphemes are acquired before others in first language acquisition of English, and the Natural Order Hypothesis claims that the same natural order is found in second language acquisition. It is also believed that errors are signs of naturalistic developmental processes. Similar developmental errors occur in learners during acquisition (but not during learning) no matter what their native language is
The Input Hypothesis
The Input Hypothesis relates to acquisition not to learning and states that people acquire language best by understanding input that is slightly beyond their level of competence. Krashen refers to this by the formula L +1 (where L+1 is the stage immediately following L along some natural order.) Comprehension is achieved through linguistic and extra linguistic context clues including knowledge about the world, the context of the situation etc… Comprehension preceds the emergence of speaking as fluency appears only as a result of the provision of sufficient comprehensible input. By comprehensible input Krashen means the utterances that learners understand based on linguistic and extralinguistic context and which consists of a sort of simplified code . He contends that when there is such comprensible input language acquisition proceeds successfully. Krashen also claims that when there is enough of such comprehensible input, L+1will usually be provided automatically and
Affective Filter Hypothesis
There are three types of emotional attitudinal factors that may affect acquisition and that may impede, block or freely passes necessary input for acquisition . These are motivation, self confidence and anxiety. Acquirers with high affective filter are less likely to develop comptence.
In a nutshell
Teaching according to the Natural Approach involves the following principles:
Teaching according to the Natural approach focuses on communicative abilities.
One of its objectives is to help beginners become intermediate.
Vocabulary is considered prior to synthactic structures.
A lot of comprehensible input must be provided.
Use of visual aids to help comprehension.
Focus is on listening and reading. Speaking emerges later.
Reducing the high affective filter by
focusing on meaningful communication rather than on form.
prividing interesting comprehensible input
The technique used in this approach are often borrowed from other methods and adapted to meet the requirement of the approach. Thses include:
The Natural Approach belongs to a tradition of language acquisition where the naturalistic features of L1 acquisition are utilized in L2 acquisition. It is an approach that draws a variety of techniques from other methods and approaches to reach this goal which is one of its advantages. But the originality of this approach does not lie in these techniques but on the emphasis on activities based on comprehensible input and meaningful communication rather than on only grammatical mastery of language.
References:
Richards, Jack C. and Theodore S. Rodgers (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching: A description and analysis.Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press
Please vote. Usefullness of this blog based on your view
Sponsored by Randall's
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
This ESL/EFL multimedia site is designed to help English learners improve their listening comprehension through a variety of audio and video conversations, interviews, and news reports.
- Follow Us on Twitter!
- "Join Us on Facebook!
- RSS
Contact