Introduction
Teachers use variety of method to help their students learn English. Some use old method while some, maybe many more, others use updated-method. However, regardless whether the method are new or old-fashioned, the question reminds the same, how well is it able to help students learn English?. As an English lecturer/ teacher, I also pound on the same question myself. I am in a constant search of ways to help my students learn English better, in this case speak English better.
I have tried couple of methods in teaching. Some worked better on certain group while not so much on the other. Various factors influenced the level of success in my class as no unilateral results had been found, it was quiet a mix. Certain group of students may take the lesson easier on certain method while some students take it less motivating and intriguing.
I have been teaching English for more than 12 years now. I started it since I was at college doing my bachelor degree courses. Currently, I am teaching basic general English to university students in my campus. Here, I found one depressing fact which I believe to slow down the entire process of learning that is low L1 mastery. They have good conversational skill of L1, but poor understanding on L1 grammatical forms and limited knowledge on L1 proper use. This resulted in low ability in, for example, making sentence in L1, moreover to say making long, complex one. Many students produced false sentences and take long period of time when asked to make sentence in L1.
To tackle the issue, I am taking a new approach. I used a combination of Grammar Translation method, an old theory, and L1 context, as an adaptation. Due to their low L1 mastery, I decided to take the elements of L1 as contextual base for our language learning. Students will be directed into producing a guided English speaking materials but tie it with their native language for better understanding. This use of L1 context to help them better understand when and how the word(s) are used and using which tenses. This method is called Grammar Translation method as it requires translation of many sentences from Indonesian into English. Students will be given some sentences using the context of their L1 and later figure out how to properly say it in English.
Some examples of the instruction.
At this point, students learn how to say “Ada” in English. Teacher presents several examples of “Ada” under different context of all Positive, Negative, and Interrogative. As students are translating the sentences below, teacher makes modifications to help expand the variety of the tenses, context, subjects, etc.
ADA TAS DIATAS MEJA.
ADA TAS HIJAU DIATAS MEJA BARU DOSEN.
ADA TAS DI SAMPING MEJA SAYA.
TAS ADA DIANTARA MEJA DAN KURSI.
TIDAK ADA TAS HIJAU DIBAWAH MEJA BIRU DAN KURSI LAMA ITU
APAKAH ADA TAS COKLAT DIATAS KURSI HITAM LAMA ITU?
APA YANG ADA DIATAS MEJA DOSEN ITU?
ADA 1 BUAH PULPEN NAMUN TIDAK ADA 2 PULPEN DIATAS MEJA GURU.
TADI ADA PULPEN HITAM BARU DIATAS MEJA SAYA, TETAPI SEKARANG TIDAK ADA.
TADI TIDAK ADA BAJU DIBAWAH BANTAL INI TETAPI SEKARANG ADA. SIAPA YANG TELAH MELETAKKANNYA?
In this context, students will learn both sentences formation and tenses. They will learn the concept not just the theory. This will help boost their memory and ability to use it later in the future. More sentences are needed to help students expose to variety of sentences and memorize vocabularies at the same time.
As for the next step in the process, usually I change the sentences into interrogative and get them to ask and answer questions. Finally, all the sentences would then be transformed into text. Students will once again translate the text. Doing this, students will be exposed to certain material they need to study, in this case “ada” and automatically will memorize some vocabularies as I used quiet similar words in both sentences and text.
