TEFL Report

Eva Nur Mazidah
120710209
Teaching English as a Foreign Language


English Teaching Practice in Assa’adah Senior High School Bungah Gresik
Held on December 1, 2010

1. Introduction

In Indonesia English becomes as a foreign language. Since we live in the globalization era and the future generation also need to have skills a\especially on the global language used by millions people in he world, English at school is one of compulsory subject for students, especially senior and junior high school students. English is also examined as their final sate examination. Therefore, students must learn English because English is urgently needed for many reasons.
In accordance to Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) subject that I am taking this semester, in my teaching practice, I selected Assa’adah Senior High School in Bungah, Gresik. Since on the school were going to have final examination, I only had time to teach for a day in four different class namely they are XII IPA 2, XII IPA 1, XI IB, and X 1. Before I taught, I had consulted to teachers who teach those classes about the material and the condition of the students including their English level. The number of the students on a class is about 35 students. In short, the class is quiet big to handle. One thing they wanted me to do was to encourage them to study English.
The aim of this teaching is to practice theories that I have learnt during my study in TEFL lecture. I tried to combine theories with the real condition of the students. In some ways, they were very difficult to handle. Many factors influence such condition, one of the reasons is because the language level they have is not good. For them English is still a difficult boring lesson. They claim so because they did not like English many of them found difficulties in understanding English for instance comprehension, pronunciation, and other factors. I hoped that by giving a new insight of how fun English is with different teacher, they were attracted to what I programmed.
In this report, I am going to explain what I did during my teaching practice in Assa’adah Senior High School in Bungah. I divided my explanation per class including materials, condition of class, and class activities.

2. Teaching Practice
Teaching Practice in XII IPA 2
The class started at 6. 40. I taught XII IPA 2. The students in this class are 38 students. This class is homogenous, all female students. I and an English teacher of this class had to wait for the class being cleaned by students for 5 minutes before I had to teach them. Afterward, since I was new for them, after greeting, I was introduced by the teacher, Bu Shofi, to the class and I continued to introduced my self and my intention to teach their class. I told them what we were going to do for next 80 minutes. It was about practicing ‘admitting’ and ‘accusing’. Before I continued to the lesson, I checked their presence first because it was a must in every lesson, while Bu Shofi sat in the back row of the class watching the class activities.
The lesson began. I invited them to recall their memory when they were being accused or accusing and admitting for their mistakes. Some of students responded my instruction. Since their English level is not good, they responded my instruction in Bahasa though I told them in English. At least I knew that they understand what I said in English but they were not eager to speak in English. Then I asked one of them to tell her experience about the topic. I asked her to code switch if she could not make in English. Afterward, I commanded them to open their book on certain page regarding the lesson for that day. There were a passage and I asked some students randomly to read the passage in turn. They made many mispronunciations. After the passage was read, I corrected the misspelling and asked the students to repeat after me. I hoped that they can remember the mistakes and know the correct ones. Then, I asked them to find the difficult words that they did not know the meaning. Some students asked me while some others were crowded. I had to ask them to keep silent for several times because there was no Bu Shofi in the class (she left me alone in the class for some times to let me handle the class). Then, I explain the use of admitting and accusing and also the structure to make such sentences. Afterward, I group them, four students and for two groups they had 5 students in a group. For 5 minutes I asked them to make a sentence of admitting and a sentence of accusing made in a dialogue. I went around the class in case they still got difficulties. Many of them were about the grammar, the use of tenses and conjugation. I directly corrected them. Afterward, I asked some representative of the group to read their sentences and I give comment. In this class, I mixed English and Indonesian so that they know what I mean. Then, I also explained them, only as additional, the tenses that they were confused and the conjugation. It was about simple present and present continuous. 15 minutes left, I recalled again the difficult words they find and re-emphasized the lesson. Then, I asked them to make some sentences again individually in a piece of paper and gave them several conditions. I asked them to choose one of them. The conditions were presumably experienced by them in everyday life for instance being accused of stealing money, stealing boyfriend, admitting mistakes, and other problems. Some of them grumbled because I asked them to do the assignment and some of them looked enthusiastic. After all, I had to say most of them could follow what I asked but the class was also crowded so that that I had to walk around the class to make them order. Though there was Bu Shofi but they sometimes annoyed me. Further, the result of the individual assignment showed that they actually knew the use of accusing and admitting but the problems lay on the sentence structure, tenses, and conjugation.
Teaching Practice in XI IB (Bahasa)
The class takes 80 minutes. The number of students is 35 students with heterogonous students, male and female. Their English level is not good and their motivation is too low. The language that I use is mostly Indonesian. The lesson is about genre texts. The teacher, Pak Syafi’, stated that the lesson had done. So mostly I only reviewed and practices with LKS. At first Pak Syafi’ did not accompany me. So I handled the class by my self for 20 minutes before he came to the class. I told them the outline and they requested to play a game before the time was up. They told me about their confusion with genre texts then I explained them and draw the generic structure of each genre to summarize the lesson. Then I checked them orally the difference between as genre to others. I thought that they mostly understood. Then I commanded them to work on the worksheet of LKS in pair, with their tablemates for 20 minutes while I checked their presence. Then I walked around the class in case they had troubles. I encourage them to be active in asking if they did not understand or found difficulties. I tried ti make them feel comfort with me. Then I and the class checked their answers together. I also asked some of them to read the questions, asked difficult words. They I told them the right ones and wrote on their vocabularies-bank board. I also corrected their mispronunciations and some grammatical errors in speaking and asked them to repeat after me in order to make them remember the mistakes. 20 minutes before the class was over, I played a game with them, I call it Words in the Jungle. I gave them a piece of paper each group. They have to find words either in horizontal or vertical lines. It was all in alphabets. The contain is about the generic structure of genre texts. After finding the words, they have to classify to which generic structure the words belong. It was done in a group of four students. Then I asked them to make an example of a title of each genre text. Then I asked a volunteer and two students to presents their answers.

Teaching Practice in XII IPA 1
The class is conducive with 38 students and their English level is good enough. They were all female students. The lesson is the same as XII IPA 2, accusing and admitting. I mix English and Indonesia but I tended to use English rather than Indonesia. After being introduced by Bu Shofi, I told them the outline of today’s lesson. I asked if they know about the topic and one of the students voluntarily expressed her opinion. It was so helpful so that I could directly give an example. Afterward, I asked them in a pair to make a dialogue containing admitting and accusing. I let them to freely select a topic they liked. Checking in case they found difficulties, I found many of them had known about tenses and grammar only some of them still got confused with conjugations. So I did not need to explain in front of the class. Then I randomly asked some students to present their dialogue while other handing in their answers. One of students then asked me how to learn English. I just asked what they liked for instance song lyrics to learn pronunciation, vocabularies and other aspects of English grammar. They were enthusiastic to follow. Then, suddenly, a teacher came to tell that one of the students had to join English speech contest then Bu Shofi asked me how to develop the topic for speech. I just invited them to brainstorm. I had to say that most of hem enjoyed the class.
Teaching Practice in X-1
There were 32 students in the class. Their English level was good. They were active and a bit crowded. It is the 80 minutes before they went home so they looked tired. Since Bu Shofi said that their lesson was done, so I was asked to check their homework about procedure text and give them grammar test in LKS. After introducing me and checking their presence, I asked them what procedure text was and asked a volunteer and some students randomly to present the homework and others submitted their work to Bu Shofi who sat at the back row. Then I asked them to work individually on a grammar tests for 15 minutes in a piece of paper. Then, we checked their answers after distributing the papers to whole class. I asked some students to read the answers and corrected them if any mistakes. At least more than twenty students get more that 75. then I let them asked questions about their difficulties then explained them in fron of the class. Some of them wanted to have a game then I invited them to play ‘making a sentence’. It was done in a group of four students. I told them to fold the paper after they wrote what I instructed. I instructed them to make a subject, fold the paper, make a verb, and fold a paper, and so on until they created a sentence. They were curious with what I asked them to do. Then, we open the folded paper and I asked 5 students to read their sentences. Indeed the conjugations are wrong because they did not know the whole sentence. Many students laughed because sentences were non-sense. Then, I asked them to reconstruct the sentence and find the words they do not understand the meaning. Some students used unfamiliar words that I had to check in my dictionary. Then we pronounced some words together because some students mispronounced the words. Then the class was over. I have to say that the class was quiet fun though some students were sometimes crowded and I had to ask them to order.
3. Conclusion
Teaching English is not as easy as I thought. I had to understand the condition of the class not only their English level, but also their interest in English in order to make me easy in giving program for them. Bu Shofi and Pak Syafi’s also asked me to encourage them so I have to really open and aware to the problem they faced. I also gave them games because I knew that games were seldom given by their teacher, at least they did not get bored with the lesson I gave. For their English, I saw that many of them still got confused with grammars, pronunciation, and vocabularies. So, I tried to re-explain some points that they were confused. I hope they learnt something with me.