CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the
Study
Nowadays, English
has become a very powerful
language in the
world. As an international language, most communities
in the world use English. Different from other countries in South East Asia;
such as Malaysia, Singapore or Philippines, where they put English as
their second language,
Indonesia puts English
as its first
foreign language. Anyone who
wants to get respectable position in community and in a working place must master
this language. As the most important
foreign language, English has been taught at formal schools
from the seventh
grade of Junior
High School (SMP)
up to the
twelfth grade of Senior High School (SMA) and some semesters in the
university.
Even now,
English can be
taught at elementary
schools as “a
local content subject’. As stated
in the local content of teaching guidelines (GBPP Mulok SD 1995:2), the objectives
of teaching English
to elementary school
students as a
local content are “they are expected to have the skills of
the language in simple English, with the emphasis to have speaking skill using
selected topics related to their environmental needs such as tourism industry”.
(Depdikbud, 1995: 2)
Teaching
English as a foreign language to children is not the same as teaching it to adults
because they have
different characteristics and
different motivation. The
way children learn a foreign language, and therefore the way to teach
it, obviously depends on their
developmental stage. It
would not be
reasonable to ask
a child to
do a task
that demands a sophisticated
control of spatial orientation (for example, tracing a route on a map) if he or she has not yet
developed this skill. On the other hand, beginners of 8 or 10 years of
age will not
respond well to
an activity that
they perceive as
childish, or well below their intellectual level even it
is linguistically appropriate (for example, identifying an odd shape out of
matching picture halves). This way, teacher has to be more aware and take into
account in his or her teaching.
Teaching English
to the fourth
grader students of
elementary schools means teaching the
children at the
age between 8
and 10 years
old. According to
Scott and Ytreberg (1990: 2-4)
there are some general characteristics of children of that group such as they
are competent users of mother tongue, they love to play and learn best when
they enjoy themselves.Helaly also stated
that children in
that age are
not self motivated
and do not immediate need to learn English. Their
word is their daily games and events of interest to them (1987: 49)
From the
statements above, we
know that in
teaching English to
children, a teacher plays
a very important
role, because he
has the task
to give the
very basic introduction of the
first foreign language. Here he must be able to draw student’s interest and motivation
in learning English.
Here are some
points to bear??????????????
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