My First Experience in Learning English
Talking about my last experience related with my first experience in studying English actually is not easy one for me. Since, I do not know how to start my story. But, well, I’ll try as well as I can.
First time I got English subject is at my Junior High School, it means that the previous time at Kindergarten or Elementary School, I do not have gotten it yet. I got it first time at my first grade at Junior High School, exactly at SMP Negeri 1 Sragen, which is located in Jalan Raya Sukowati 160, Sragen, Central Java. I felt so nervous when the teacher came to the class to taught English in his first meeting. The teacher’s way in teaching were speaking/explaining the material, and the students were listened to him. Sometimes he asked the students to repeat the sentence after him and tried to speak about daily activities in the form of some expression in Speaking Section. In Listening Section, we seldom went to the Language laboratory for listening English cassette etc, I do not know why. The other time, we were asked to learn how to write a simple paragraph. Learning English at school, I think was not enjoyable enough since it only held in classroom, not so creative.
While at English Course, I felt more interesting than at school. I joined English course at YES. YES (Youth English Course) is such kind of English course which is located in Ringroad Street, Karanggunan, Tangkil, Sragen. Here, I could improve more and got English more. I loved with its tutors. The ways of teaching which are conducted by the tutor were so amazing for me. The tutor could share their idea, views, and experience deeply in how the easiest way of learning English. The program which was conducted by this course is English Fun Learning. They known how to teach and learn for certain age range of learners/students. What I mean here is, they know how to teach kids class program, how to teach the general class, etc. of course they used different technique when they taught Junior High School and Conversation class for staff. Furthermore sometime, we also went to our environment (outdoor meeting). There, we could learn by using things in our nature, like, tress, flower, animal, and other object for help us in learning English. Of course I like with this activity, due to I could get out from classroom. Since I know, children at Junior High School want free from class. It seemed very boring when we study just at class forever. Moreover, the experience which I could never forget is on the final activities in my program at YES, my program held English Fun in Borobudur Temple, Magelang. It is my oral test in this course, so when we were conducting this study tour, we were practicing our speaking skill by speaking with foreign tourism there. So, that’s why I said that learning English at this institution is more enjoyable.
Finally, at this time I can take a conclusion that not all people, not all teacher can teach since teaching is not an easy thing. We should know more about the best and the most suitable approach, method, and technique for a certain group of learners.
Native speaker teacher versus English teacher
Which one is better taught by the native speaker or by English teacher??This type of question might rise in every people who has deep consideration to the English teaching and process. Some people said that the native speaker better in teaching the students, because some people argue that they know more than Indonesian. But the other ones might be gave their opinion that, every teacher wherever he/she came from, if they have good teaching ability, they can be a good English teacher. Therefore, in this writing, I tried to present some arguments related to this issue.
Personally, my argument about which one is better taught by the native speaker or English teacher, who are Indonesian, since our context here is in Indonesia. I answer this question by saying that Indonesian teacher can be better in teaching English than the native ones. Because English is world language, it is not owned by certain country. This is the way how English will be converted to various styles. Due to the growth of multiculturalism, all English speakers have the same right to use it in their own way. Furthermore foreign language does not require native speaker, since even local teacher, like us (Indonesian teacher) can understand the approach, the technique, and the method to teacher better. This is what we call as local wisdom which rejects domination and marginalization.
