English Classroom Culture Reformation: How Can It be Done?

Abstract

People say that the teaching of English in Indonesia is unsuccessful. Senior High School graduates, after having been studying English for six years, are unable to use the language in daily communication. One of the causes of the failure, in my opinion, is our classroom 'culture' that is not conducive to the learning process.In the classroom students are supposed to sit nicely, listen to the teacher attentively and are obedient to him. The teacher is the only one who is supposed to know everything and therefore becomes the one who dominates the classroom. If this culture, especially during the English class, is not reformed, I think, whatever efforts undertaken to improve the quality of the teaching will he futile.English classroom culture should he different from other classes since the objective of the teaching is also different. An English classroom, therefore, should be a lively one in which students have the chance to practise the language they are learning, and the teacher is the one who facilitates the learning process.

Reinforcing Indonesian EFL Teacher Self-Efficacy: Accomplishing the Responsibilities and Avoiding Absenteeism

“…For instance, they must be able to take in account the authenticity of the materials brought within classroom activities. Moreover, they are even not given excuses to repel with larger classes consisting of 40 up to 50 students with wide range of individual ability, knowledge, and skill in English (Lestari, 1999;Marcellino, 2008;Mattarima & Hamdan, 2011;Sulistyo, 2016;Yulia, 2013). In short, teachers are still demanded to conduct the best teaching practice that can eventually boost students' English mastery no matter how hard the teachers plan the learning activities and execute the process in achieving the objectives.…”

“…Mattarima & Hamdan (2011) support Lie's stance by arguing that most teachers are not confident to speak English as they are worried of making mistakes or errors in which, then, they blame the students' bad English mastery for hiding their anxiety. Another fact shows that most teachers tend to avoid teacher-student confrontation which makes teachers as the ones who know everything (Lestari, 1999) and whose arguments are undebatable (Marcellino, 2008). Therefore, teachers are still necessary to be exposed to numbers of self-development trainings and professional developments, especially on English mastery (Lie, 2007).…”

Teachers’ Practices about Intercultural Communicative Competence in Teaching English Language

“…It gives big problem to the speakers if they learn English without its culture. Teaching culture to foreign or second language students may not be a new subject seeing that it has frequently reviewed by some writers such as Hughes (1986), Atkinson (1999), Lestari (1999), Morgan & Cain (2000), Tang (2006), Brown (2007), Brown (2007a), Kuang (2007), Lestari (2010). On the other hand, following years after language teaching growth, culture turns out to be a vital element in the language curriculum along with in the training programs for language teachers.…”