Authentic Materials: The Bridge to the Real Language Use

Materials exist in order to support learning and teaching process, so they should be designed to suit the people and the processes involved. The teachers must be realizing that their purpose is not to teach the materials itself, but they are teaching the students using the materials. There are many kinds of materials such as published materials, teacher produced materials, authentic materials and students materials. Published materials refer to the textbook and course books used by the teacher, then teacher produced materials are the materials that produced by the teacher to bridge the gap between the classroom in the world outside. Other important materials to introduce are authentic materials and students materials. Authentic material is refers to examples of language that were not originally produced for language learning purposes, for example the teacher cut out newspaper and use it in the classroom. There are many examples of authentic materials, such as menus, job applications, voice mail messages, radio programs, videos, etc. The last is student materials, in a two ways it is the learning materials produced by the students and the role of students themselves as the materials.

As a future teacher, we need to expose more about the using of authentic materials, because it can represent the actual goal of language learning including the difficulties that learning materials avoid such as the learners should learn how to respond to language which they do not fully understand and it also increase the motivation of the students to learn more about the use of English in real world condition. The use of authentic materials can also expose the students’ cultural awareness, because they get new and various information about the other culture. In addition of teaching process, we also need to develop our creativity and responsibility in teaching our classroom, because the good materials cannot be understand by the students without balanced by the good way of the delivering the materials itself.

Source: A book entitled essentials of English language teaching by Julian Edge in 1993 page 43-60

Adapting a Turkish middle school textbook to develop cultural awareness

Tomalin and Stempleski (1994) identify three qualities of cultural awareness: awareness of learners’ own cultural behaviour, awareness of others’ cultural behaviour, and the ability to explain their own cultural position, and adopt a task-oriented approach towards teaching culture, where learners cooperate in pairs or groups for gathering, sharing, discussing and interpreting information in view of both the target and native cultures. For this reason, the present activities are designed in such a way that (1) learners in pairs and groups work together to collect information, (2) decide whether the situation is similar or different in their own culture, (3) express their own stance toward the situation by drawing on from their real lives. Consequently, originally a sexist and unstimulating material has been reconstructed by such adaptation strategies as addition, modification, omission, reordering, and replacement, and exploited to resist stereotyping, and to develop cultural awareness and tolerance.

As a future teacher we need to select the appropriate books and materials to teach to the students. The materials in the books itself should balanced between the language proficiency and intercultural competence. Therefore, the teacher can adapt some strategies from this journal to add the cultural content, modify the materials, and omit the unimportant and irrelevant materials and replacement with the better materials in order to achieve the language and cultural needs.

Reference: A journal entitled Adapting a Turkish middle school textbook to develop cultural awareness by Meliha R. Simsek, 2014

Expose the Cultural Awareness Using Authentic Materials

Usually, English language learning tends to focus on vocabulary, grammar, reading, speaking, listening or writing skills. However, in the globalization era the students need to develop their cultural awareness and improve their communication skills. Communication and culture are inseparable and interconnected. Culture determines the way of communication proceeds and how people decipher the messages they get. To achieve the students’ need, teacher should create classroom that provide more opportunities for second language learners and encourage students` contact with the target language beyond scheduled lessons. The teacher can use semi-authentic and authentic materials. Using authentic sources helps to engage students in authentic cultural experiences. Sources can include films, news broadcasts, and television shows; Web sites; and photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, travel brochures, and other printed materials. As a future teacher, I want to use the authentic materials in my classroom because it can improve the students’ motivation on learning their second language, exposure the students’ awareness and further the students can improve their communication skills.

Reference: Journal entitled Exposing students to authentic materials as a way to increase students` language proficiency and cultural awareness by Elena Kozhevnikova.

'Biggest invisible thing on earth?' – It's called Indonesia, and it's waking up

I have got some messages from FPCI (Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia) and this is the most interesting one. 

by: Elizabeth Pisani

Looking for fun on a rainy afternoon? Try this: take a blow-up globe down to your nearest public space – a shopping mall, perhaps, or a train station – and ask people to find Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation.

I’ve tried it in London, New York and Rio. The response: “Uuuuuuuhh …”

Much stroking of chins and scratching of heads. “Somewhere around here, maybe,” accompanied by vague hand gestures towards Indochina or south Asia.

If you’re in Melbourne or Sydney you may have more luck. But even there, interest in Indonesia per se is muted. In the words of an editor at Penguin Australia: “Despite [Indonesia] being a profoundly important near neighbour of ours, I feel our market would need an Australian angle on the country.”

Despite being a country of superlatives – most populous Muslim-majority nation, biggest exporter of numerous commodities dug or grown out of its generous earth, one of the world’s most enthusiastic users of Twitter and Facebook – Indonesia also remains, in the words of Indonesian businessman John Riady, the biggest invisible thing on the planet.

This is despite the cheerleading of brokers and business consultants who point to Indonesia’s young population, its rapid urbanisation and its huge market of enthusiastic consumers as reasons for foreign investors to pay it more attention.

I’ve been hearing those same arguments since I first covered Indonesia for Reuters and the Economist in the late 1980s. Over the intervening three decades, per-capita income in Indonesia did indeed rise steeply to $3,300, over five times its level when I first lived there.

Which is great, but not as great as Thailand or Vietnam (between seven and eight times higher), let alone China (where per capita income is now close to $8,000 a year, 26 times its 1985 value).

For a country that has such extraordinary natural resources, and such an abundance of labour, Indonesia is arguably underperforming economically. This is in part because the scatter of its 7,000 inhabited islands creates extraordinary infrastructure challenges, in part because a torpid bureaucracy squashes innovation, and in (large) part because Indonesia’s miasmic legal system means no contract is secure.

The much vaunted “demographic dividend” will not deliver the pot of gold at the end of the Indonesian rainbow until all three of these things change. Now, for the first time since a brave but ill-prepared Indonesia declared its independence from Dutch colonists in 1945, at least two of these changes are under way. That’s no small achievement in a nation as kaleidoscopic as Indonesia, where there are almost as many ethnicities, languages and belief systems as there are islands. The improvements in both infrastructure and governance are especially worthy of global attention because they are being propelled by the twin engines of democracy and decentralisation, both relatively new to Indonesians.

Having lived through 45 years of virtual dictatorship, Indonesians are now rowdily democratic, directly electing everyone from their village head up to the president. Some politicians still hand out cash for ballots, but Indonesian citizens even in the remotest villages have a remarkably acute understanding of the twists and turns of politics.

“They think we’re idiots, that they can buy our votes,” commented a fisherman in North Sulawesi last month of the politicians who are already campaigning ahead of next year’s district elections. “Of course we take the cash, we’ll take it from all of them, but we vote with our heads.” Political elites who expect bribery or blind populism to trump all else in Indonesia are often left flummoxed, and, increasingly, out of power.

Indonesia’s democratic rebirth came with what some see as a second wave of decolonisation. For the first five and a half decades of its existence, the nation was firmly ruled from the capital Jakarta, largely for the benefit of the 60% of Indonesians who are squashed in to the single island of Java.

The resentment this caused contributed to the 1998 downfall of the country’s second leader, Suharto, after 32 years in power. There followed a “big bang” decentralisation that turned Indonesia’s many geographic, cultural and ethnic fiefdoms from vassals of the central government in Jakarta into quasi-autonomous democracies.

Among the many votes Indonesians now cast, the one that affects their lives most directly is that for district head or mayor. Voters laughingly refer to these local potentates as “little Sultans” because they are so powerful. They make most of the important decisions about education, healthcare and local infrastructure; they dole out jobs and contracts, regulate entertainment, and negotiate the transport routes that are all-important in an island nation.

Though Indonesia’s current president, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, has made much of his support for infrastructure development, it is driven less by a well-planned push from Jakarta than by active demand from politicians directly elected in district and provincial governments. Though progress is slow, those demands are gradually overcoming the hurdles raised by the country’s geography.

Decentralisation has had an effect on innovation-squashing bureaucracy also, though not all of it good. In many areas, district governments have simply pasted cumbersome new layers on to an already dysfunctional administrative system.

But in a few districts, adventurous politicians have experimented with radical reforms: they require civil servants to show up on time, to treat citizens with respect, to do their jobs without being bribed. These individuals have become local heroes and media darlings: their popularity has in many cases provided a springboard to higher office, including the presidency. Jokowi rose from small-town mayor to governor of Jakarta and on to the presidency on the strength of his no-nonsense approach to local government.

However, neither decentralised democracy nor Jokowi himself have managed an assault on the third major hurdle to Indonesia’s self-actualisation: the legal quagmire referred to by his predecessor as the “judicial mafia”.

The judiciary, still bruised after the 2013 conviction on corruption charges of the highest judge in the land, will be in the global spotlight again as it considers a blasphemy investigation opened against the Jakarta governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as Ahok).

If he is charged, a transparent trial and a fair verdict would signal the beginning of improvements in the legal landscape. That, more than anything, would make Indonesia a country to watch in eager anticipation of a destiny of global greatness soon to be fulfilled.

Elizabeth Pisani is author of Indonesia Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation

Internationalization at Home

Internationalization in higher education is important for developing students’ language proficiency. Many students is going abroad or learning in language institution to develop their English language proficiency. However, those activities need much money and require extending the study period. So that, the efficient ways to develop students proficiency is motivating the students to learn Internationalization at home.  As the instructor, teacher should lead the students in enhancing their motivation and self-conception in order to maximize Internationalization at home. Teacher gives the students task that will help them to learn at home. Teacher supply the students log activity to know their learning activity at home. By doing this activity, teacher can understand the students motivation and give them good respond to improved it.  At last, Internationalization at home can be done effectively if the teacher be a good educators that lead the students to motivate and develop their English language proficiency.

Reference : Internationalization  at  home:  Using  learning  motivation  to  predict students’  attitudes  toward  teaching  in  a  foreign  language by Julia  Gorges, Christian  Kandler, Gerd  Bohner

Internationalization in Elementary School, Why Not?

In line with the needs of facing globalization, we realize that internationalization is one of the important things that need to be done. Internationalization is not only can apply on higher education but also can be started from elementary school. At the elementary school level, the intention and focus of international education are to motivate the students in knowing their own cultures, expand students’ international knowledge and improve students’ foreign language communication skills. In this case, teacher can establish a school-wide foreign language learning environment, integrate international knowledge into the curriculum, hold frequent study tours and join a variety of international competitions. In fact, to teach elementary school students about culture and foreign language skills is not easy. That’s why as a future teacher we need to improve our competencies through creating fun learning environment that can foster the students to learn foreign language in emphasizing the internationalization needs.

Reference : A journal entitled A Comparison of the Internationalization of Education in Taiwan and Japan: The Perspective of Elementary School Principals by Ming-Huang Lin & Shan-Hua Chen. 

Internationalization, needs or wants?

Talking about internationalization as the actual issues nowadays, internationalization of high school students is very important to prepare the students on facing global competition. As the teacher, it is important to decide which factors have higher priority in the process of internationalizing their schools. One of the effective ways is developing the curriculum with a wide range of international content. Teacher can add and modify the materials given with international content such as the other countries cultures. By doing this, teacher will help the students on increasing international language understanding and enhancing international communication capability as the important needs of 21st century students . At last, as an English teacher is not only teach skill materials but also prepare their bright future in global society through internationalization.

Reference: A journal entitled How to Internationalize a High School? Perspectives from Principals in Taiwan by Yueh-Chun Huang , Shan-Hua Chen , Hsuan-Fu Ho and Cheng-Cheng Yang.

Let's make discussion as a bridge

A journal entitled Developing Higher Order Thinking Skills and Team Commitment via Group Problem Solving: A Bridge to the Real World by Phawani Vijayaratnam  explore about the effectiveness of group problem solving in developing students’ higher order thinking, problem solving and team skills.
I learn that classroom nowadays is not only giving students materials in academic but also having much relevance to the real world for preparing their future. One of the ways is  providing students opportunities to harness the power of group discussion in order to practice problem solving techniques and develop thinking skills while working in team environments. Work in group actually helps students to clarify their understandings, negotiate meaning and co-construct new knowledge with such discussions having the potential to transform students’ thinking. In addition, it also can test their abilities and strategies associated to planning, guiding, monitoring and evaluating team member’s contribution. So that, as a future teacher I can implied this group discussion in my future class to improve interpersonal skills of my students and develop their thinking to be more critical in the way for preparing them in real world.

A Model of Critical Thinking as an Important Attribute for Success in the 21st Century

I have read journal by entitled a Model of Critical Thinking as an Important Attribute for Success in the 21st Century by Slaÿana Živkoviü.  

Entering 21st century, students need to master additional subject areas, including foreign languages for preparing them in global society. The students need to be communicative, collaborative, creative, innovative, to think critically and analytically, and to be able to effectively solve real-world problems. With this in mind, it is necessity that educators should help students to become successful for future performance.

As a future teachers, we need to understand that the most important thing to realize students’ need is creating a classroom that encourages collaboration, open dialogue and an acceptance of diverse beliefs and perspectives. We give the students opportunity to openly express their opinion, encourage their thinking behaviours and attitude through effective modelling of those behaviours. For examples, they can involved in debate and dialogue activity. Further, we also need to develop instructional pedagogy with purposeful learning activities that encourage critical thinking abilities and help them to achieve their full potential. For instance, students are involved in writing and problem solving as well as higher-order thinking, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global Society Through Four Cs

I have read a book From National Education Association entitled Preparing 21^st Century Students For a Global Society. In this book examines about the importance of teaching by using Four Cs. This technique consists of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and Innovation. Students need to master additional subject areas, including foreign languages, the arts, geography, science, and social studies. So that, educators must complement all of those subjects with the “Four Cs” to prepare young people for citizenship and the global workforce.

Teaching critical thinking and problem solving effectively in the classroom is vital for students. Learning critical thinking leads students to develop other skills, such as a higher level of concentration, deeper analytical abilities, and improved thought processing. Then, learning communication help students to express thoughts clearly, articulate opinions crisply, communicate instructions coherently, further motivate others through powerful speech. Thirdly, collaboration is essential in classrooms because it is inherent in the nature of how work is accomplished in our civic and workforce lives. Lastly, creativity and innovation are key drivers in the global society.

Social norms and rules in the interaction of a bilingual classroom

Journal entitled Managing  multiple normativies  in  classroom  interaction: Student  responses  to teacher  reproaches  for  inappropriate language  choice  in  a  bilingual  classroom examines how  language  choice  is  managed  at  the  crossroads  of  social  norms  and  rules  in  the  interaction  of  a bilingual  classroom.

Educational  institutions  are interesting  sites  for  investigating  the  normative  nature  of  social  conduct  because  they  routinely  interface  the classroom  rules with social norm,  designed  to  establish  social  order  and  to  socialise  students  into  the wider  community,  and  students’  own  norms  meet. Normative  orientations  towards  language  choice  and  language  alternation  have mostly  been  studied  in  classrooms  in  which  two  or  more  languages  are  available  to  the students.  In managing the classroom, teacher involves handling relations between individual students and the classroom itself.  When teacher  indicate  that  a  student  has  breached  a  local  rule,  they  face  the  practical  task  of  identifying  the  rule-breaker. The teacher must give the right correctness and tell them to use appropriate language choice without any sarcasm. The important thing is when we teach bilingual classroom is necessary to have many references about the use of English language whether in formal and informal situations and manage well the classroom to make the students ready on using language in the society.

Sociolinguistic Perspective on Teaching English Intonation

I have read journal entitled Sociolinguistic Perspective on Teaching English Intonation for Adult Learners by Olga G. Shevchenko.  The journal shows how sociolinguistic approach with the focus on conscious control of using intonation can enhance the communicative performance of students linguistic.

Teachers present a teaching model based on appealing to senses, making students’ egos more permeate and creating favorable socio and psychological conditions to the acquisition of the second language intonation. The organized teaching of L2 should concentrate on building awareness of how pronunciation is acquired, on breaking stereotypes about different nations and on creating a friendly atmosphere where students can feel relaxed and free in expressing their emotions. To improve students’ awareness and maximize students’ skill we can integrate the cognitive, emotional and psychological perspectives in the language learning process. On having awareness of foreign language sounds and intonation students are prepared for further efforts and can control intonation because they get used to listening to a great amount of audio materials and they get used to depicting intonation contours on the paper. Finally, as a future teacher it is important to guide the students to have high motivation and create comfortable atmosphere in the class in order to make the students having well understanding of English course. 

Internationalization of Higher Education

Journal entitled The internationalization of higher education: Perspectives on self-conceptions in teaching by Vesa Korhonen, University of Tampere, Finland and Markus Weil, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland examines about the importance of internationalization of higher education in teaching and learning for university teachers.

Meeting diverse cultures and world views can be an everyday challenge for a university teacher. The teachers’ perspective is an important one if we see internationalization beyond a strategy. Teachers’ cultural competency within the classroom, especially for those who are not trained to expect cultural diversity, may generate discussions and debates around ethnocentricity. Thus, there is a clear need to make visible the influence of internationalization from the perspective of the university staff’s teaching practice and their self-conceptions. This perspective includes aims such as enhancing global skill-building and improving intercultural relations in culturally mixed classrooms.

Multicultural Context in Language Teaching

I have read the journal about the development of the Indonesian teaching material based on multicultural context by using sociolinguistics approach at junior high school published in 2010 by Fathur Rokhman and Yuliati. I learn about the importance of teachers’ awareness, competence and creativity in developing teaching materials especially on multicultural context. As the future teacher, we need more references to understand multicultural education and need to be creative in order to produce challenging material and method, interesting and functional for the students. We are not only have duty to transfer the knowledge related to the social topics but also have responsibility to build students character and develop the society culture site. The language aspect and multicultural aspect are given balance portion with teaching material based on curriculum so that the students can explore the useful multicultural potential in the social life. Beside, based on communicative approach principles, teachers have to balance the four learning skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) or focused on one of the four learning skills. At last, the essence of learning is changing learners attitude from not good condition becomes better condition and improving the learners’ condition from know nothing to know something and improve it.

Linguistics and Education

The summary of Journal

“Pre-service  English  Language  Arts  teachers’  development of  Critical  Language  Awareness  for  teaching.”

by : Amanda  J.  Godleya,  Jeffrey  Reaserb,1,  Kaylan  G.  Moorec.   May 2015.

This journal examines about pre-service English teachers’ (PSTs’) development of Critical Awareness for teaching through an online course focused on language variation. This course purposes to increase PSTs’ understanding of dialect diversity, language ideologies, and linguistic prejudices for teaching. PSTs are support for the value of all dialects and literacy instruction that must be honoured the vernacular dialects used by students and found in literature. It is used to avoid discrimination between the students’ spoken vernacular dialects with the students using Standardized English. In order to effectively teach students having different dialects, teachers need to have basic sociolinguistics knowledge. It includes the understanding that (a)  the  English  language  has  various  dialects  that  are  equally  valid  and  grammatical, (b)  language  varies  in  different  contexts  and  communities  in  systematic  ways,  (c)  language  use  reflects  identity,  and  (d) language  is  often  the  basis  for  judgments  about  people in social affiliation. In Addition, the content of knowledge is not sufficient for preparing teachers to teach well. Teachers must develop pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to explain, frame, assess and evolve the content knowledge for diverse group of students. Sociolinguistics of PCK includes accurately explaining features  of  dialects  and  grammatical  patterns;  evaluating  students’  language  choices; developing  students’  competency  in  Standardized  Written  English;  and  teaching  about  systems  of  power  and  privilege  that  are  maintained  via  language  ideologies. So that, to achieve successful teaching pre-service English teachers (PSTs) must be coupled with learning sociolinguistics of Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).