Nama

: La Ode Suhardin

SID

: 21213003

Class

: VI A

Task

: Mid Task of TEYL

My English Teacher in Junior High School

Being succeeded the goal of learning English in the classroom depends on how the
learning process is experienced by students. An English teacher is required to be more
meticulous in selecting and applying teaching method that is suitable to his/her students
needs in order to achieve the goal of effective learning. However, the selection of unsuitable
method of learning undertaken by teachers will cause many problems in the process of
learning English in the class. For instance, many students who are learning English in junior
high school do not know how to speak or write in English even though they have learned
English for three years. Therefore, based on the writer's experience when studying English in
junior high school, the writer tries to describe the problems made by my English teacher. For
more details, it will be presented in the following paragraphs.
The first problem is my teacher pays little attention to the prior knowledge of his
students. When he taught English to us for the first time, he did not figure out where the
source of inability of his students in studying English. He immediately taught us the lesson
that we did not understand a lot about it. In this case, English was something new for us so
that we needed much more adaptation to understand it. As a result, we felt difficulty in
following the materials and we tended to behave deviant in the class such as abstracteding,
being nosy with other friends, writing or drawing that was nothing relevancy with the
materials. According to Moon (2000), teachers should first investigate what students need

because it is the best way to start teaching English. Moreover, In line with Moon, Suyanto
(2008) states that teacher is a facilitator that facilitates what students need in learning
English. Therefore, teachers should be able to understand students' prior knowledge because
by understanding students' prior knowledge, teachers can help students to accelerate the
process of learning and minimize the difficulties faced by students.
The second problem is the delivery of the content of his material was difficult to be
understood by us. It was a common mistake made by my teacher so that we did not
understand a lot about the materials. In addition, delivering a complicated material can cause
students lazy in receiving the lessons provided by teacher. According to Suyanto (2008), an
English teacher need to use simple language in presenting their materials because teaching
English is very different from Bahasa. Therefore, an English teacher must be able to explain
his/her materials in a simple way in order to make his/her students more understood about the
material.
The last problem is his method of teaching English was too monotonous and boring.
He only centered teaching English based on worksheets only and he asked us to answer
questions from the worksheets. There was no variation in learning activities that he was
taught. His monotonous method made us lose motivate in studying English. In addition, at
that moment, we were studying English but he never taught us how to pronounce English
words properly; never trained to speak English either in individual or in pairs. Suyanto (2008)
states that in order to avoid a sense of boredom when teaching English in the class, an
English teacher should perform variety of learning activities to maintain students interest in
studying English and should replace the learning activities every 15 minutes. Therefore, a
good solution to hinder monotonous and boring teaching is an English teacher should be able
to set up his/her classroom well with a variety of learning activity as suyanto states. This
activity can be done by using interesting games, media and singing songs.

In conclusion, based on the description above, paying little attention of students prior
knowledge, delivering the materials by using complicated explanation and using monotonous
method in teaching English are the main problems of my teachers in teaching English.
English is something new and foreign for students. By applying the ways above in teaching
English, there is no doubt that students surely need much time to understand a lot about
English. Therefore, English teachers should use interesting methods that can evoke the spirit
of their students in learning English, train their students to pronounce English words properly,
apply the words in a short conversation, and explain their material clearly by using simple
explanation so that the materials are easy to understand.