Detail Teaching writing Through Variety Ways To Encourage Police Officer Students’ Critical Thinking Development In English As A Foreign Language Class (An Experience At Indonesian National Police Language Training And Education Centre Classroom)   Oleh:  Sepriani, Soegma Jenis: Article from Proceeding Dalam koleksi: 57th TEFLIN International Conference: Revitaziling professionalis in ELT as a response to the globlazed world, Bandung, 1-3 November 2010 Topik: Classroom Practices Fulltext: Soegma Sepriani.pdf (49.74KB) Isi artikel Integrating teaching critical thinking in an English as a Foreign Language class is really important not only in developed countries like in America and Europe, but also in developing countries like Indonesia in which learning English for adults is influenced by some factors, such as cultural, age, occupation, and background of education. As Emilia (2010:1) points out that the development of critical thinking and critical literacy in the workforce at all levels is now seen as of great national importance, and the teaching of English assumes a new significance as a means by which critical capacities can be promoted. And Halpern (1996,1998) also cited in Renaud and Murray (2008:85) that critical thinking has become more important as a skill because individuals are faced with having to make an increasing number of important decisions affecting themselves and society in general. In fact, many teachers in Indonesia sometimes have problems in encouraging their students to think critically in the process of learning a foreign language. There are so many ways the teacher can use in the EFL classroom that can encourage the students to think and develop their ideas in a learning process. Like any other skills of English, writing skill is also important. The main reason for teaching writing is to help students express their thoughts in words. Students have many ideas and opinion about something but they don’t know how to express them. Harmer (1998:79) stated that the reasons for teaching writing to students of English as a foreign language include reinforcement, language development, learning style, and most importantly, writing as a skill in its own right. Teaching writing with its problems sometimes becomes something challenging for some teachers. Writing is perceived as the most difficult skill to acquire by students and to teach by teachers (Smith, 1980:212). It means that there are some problems in teaching and learning writing. Teachers should prepare the materials that can be easily understood by the students. The most important thing is the materials should be relevant with the activities in their daily life. Selecting the authentic materials will be helpful for the students. This is in line with Halliday that states that there are three aspects in any situation that have linguistic consequences: field, mode and tenor, which are also called the register variables (Halliday, 1976, 1985c; Christie and Derewianka 2008; Feez, Iedema and White, 2008). Field refers to the ongoing activity or subject matter, or what is happening, the nature of the social action is taking place. In writing, it refers to the topic that is written about. In activities, examples of fields, according to Martin (2010a:16), are tennis, opera, linguistics, cooking, building construction, farming, politics, education and so on. Tenor refers to who is taking part, or the role relationship between interactants; their relative status and the amount and type of contact they have with each other. Tenor to Martin (2010a:16) refers to the way we relate to other people when doing what we do. Mode refers to the role played by language in a context, and the simplest distinction is between spoken and written language (Macken-Horarik, 2002:24). Mode also refers to the channel of communication (Martin, 2010a:16). Wells (2009:55) also suggests that the topic must be of interest to the participants; individual students must have relevant ideas, opinions or experiences that they want to share; others must be willing to listen attentively and critically. Based on the statement above, the writer has an experience in developing students’ critical thinking through teaching writing. It is essential that teachers should give some grammar parts in order to form the sentences and motivate the students to find some vocabularies so that they will create in the writing subject. But it does not mean that grammar is the most important factor in writing. Teachers can start from the easiest one of simple grammar to the complicated one. This paper will provide ideas that teachers can use in their classrooms for students of all levels based on the writer’s experience in teaching writing. It presents materials on variety ways of teaching writing that can solve many of the problems teachers currently face in the writing learning classroom. It also provides practical examples teachers can apply to make lessons more relevant and meaningful to students. Opini Anda Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini! Kembali

Copyright © 2006, 2007 Unika Atma Jaya, all rights reserved