Mid Assignment :

Teaching English for Young Learners

The Reflection About My Teacher When I Was in Elementary School

__Rahmat__
21113033 (V C)

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF KENDARI

 2014

The Reflection About My Teacher When I Was in Elementary School

The first time I learnt English when I was grade fourth in elementary school. The
teacher who taught in my classroom was graduate from Economic faculty. He became a
teacher because he had relationship with one teacher in my school, but he took the lesson
only as part time job and taught only the basic of English. Scott (1983:9) states Teacher come
in all shapes and sizes. We come to the job with our personalities already formed, but there
are abilities and attitudes which can be learnt and worked on. As a teacher of young children
it helps a lot if you have a sense of humour, you are open mind-ed, adaptable, patient, etc.

The teacher should be make the learning process is fun and interesing. But, my
teacher when he delivered the materials never showed some interesting media to helped
learning process. According to Van Els et al. (1984), media are all aids which may be used by
teachers and learners to attain certain educational objectives. Furthermore, media can be
specified in different ways. Gutchow (1981) in Sugiharto (1994) also states that instructional
media are instrument of motivation and they can also stimulate interest in language program.
Furthermore, he states that with the help of media, the use of the students’ mother tongue can
be avoided.

My teacher never gave interactive activity in learning process,such as games, sang a

song, conversation,Etc. And also he never divided students into group or pair work. Scott
(1983:5) suggest Play with the languages. Let the pupils talk to them selves. Make up
rhymes, sing songs, tell stories. Play with the language- let them talk nonsense, experiment
with words and sounds: ‘let’s go ;pets go.’ ‘blue eyes – blue pies.’ Playing with the language
in this way is very common in first language development and is a very natural stage in the
first stages of foreign language learning too.

In elementary school that it is important is how the students can interact with other
people orally with simple conversation, not only learn more about grammar but also to
increase their vocabularies too, because learnt a lot of grammar make the students can not
communicate using English with everyone. It happened when I was child because the teacher
only gave the pattern of grammar such as tenses and parts of speech, made when someone
asked about simple conversation, I always said yes or no because I could not understood what
they said. Dellar and Hocking (in Thornbury, 2002:13) say that you will see most
improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar,
but you can say almost anything with words. So a person may be judged by other based on
their vocabulary. While, Scott (1983:6) states as a teacher, you should note the structure,
functions and grammar items which you wantyour pupils to learn as well as those they
already know, but your actual teaching should only include the barest minimum of grammar
taught as grammar, and then for the older children only. This des not mean teaching grammar
rules to the whole class. The best time to introduce some sort of simple grammar is either
when a pupil asks for an explanation, or when you think a pupil will benefit from a learning
some grammar.

It is important for English young learner is motivation. When I learnt English first
time, my teacher never gave motivated to built our interest and confidence to learnt English
easier. This made when I learnt English, I felt difficult to understood because the lesson was
only about Grammar and there was not a motivator made me frustated. Thrash & Elliot,
(2001). states Motives are relatively general needs or desires that energize people to initiate
purposeful action sequences. In contrast, goals (and related strategies) are more specifi c and
used to explain the direction and quality of action sequences in particular situations.

If we learnt a language only grammar with a lot of pattern. It is made the learning
process was boring. Those is one thing that happen which my teacher did when he taught
English lesson in my Elementary school. Should be as a teacher delivered their material
with variety of thematic content. Harmer (1999:307) suggest one way to approach a sequence
of lesson is to focus on different thematic content in each individual lesson. This will
certainly provide variety, but it may not give our sequence of lessons much cohesion and
coherence. It might be better, instead, foer themees to carry over for more than one lesson, or
at least to reappear, so that students perceive some over topic stands as the course progress.
With such thematic threads, we and our students can refer backwards.
My teacher when I was elementary school was kind but he rarely gave the students
praise and critism and also he could not Creating a positive classroom management, It make
the students had not spirit to learnt and practice as much as possible. Brown (2000: 203)
states Part of the rapport you create is based on the delicate balance that you set between
praise and critism. To much of either renders it less and less effective. Genuine praise,
appropriately delivered, enables students to welcome critism and to put it to use.
 One thing which I abhor with my teacher when I was in Elementary shool was he
speak could not with slow down and normal rate. And also he did not had a loud voice, when
I sitting farthest away from him I could not hear clearly. Brown (2000: 194) suggest should
you slow down your normal rate of delivery? For beginning level classes, yes, but only
slightly so, and not to the point that the rate of delivery is down-sight silly. Keep as natural a
flow to your language as possible. Clear articulation is usually more of a key to
comprehension than slowed speech.
Assesment too was that a pay attention for me because the teacher was not objective
and only assess cognitive side without afective and Psycomotoric. Scott (1983:7) suggest
Even though formal assesment may not be a compulsory part of your work, it is always
useful for the teacher to make regular notes about each child’s progress. You may want to tell
parents how their children are doing, and you should be talking to the children regularly
about their work and encouraging self-assesmen. From the beginning this can be done in very
simple terms, stressing the positive side of things and playing down what the pupils has not
been able to master. Nothing succeeds like success.
(Rahmat,21113033)