Mengkreasi Materi Pembelajaran

Di kalangan guru, di berbagai wilayah di tanah air, sering kali mengeluh mengenai sumber belajar terutama buku materi pelajaran. Ada yang berpendapat bahwa buku-buku pelajaran yang menjadi pegangannya tidak sesuai dengan kurikulum. Pandang seperti ini biasanya menjadi alasan konyol bagi seorang guru yang kurang kreatif. Padahal, kalau kita mencoba mencermati amanah kurikulum yang menekankan pada sisi pengembangan materi pembelajaran, tentu yang harus membuat dan mengembangkan materi pembelajaran adalah guru itu sendiri sesuai dengan kondisi peserta didik, budaya setempat, perkembangan IPTEK dsb. Nah, ini terjadi karena rancangan pembelajaran lahir bukan dari analisa yang cermat terhadap berbagai faktor perkembangan dan kebutuhan peserta didik, konteks, dan segala yang melingkupi proses pembelajaran, tetapi rancangan pembelajaran lahir dari sebuah kreativitas copy paste (menyalin).
Nah, yang perlu diketahu bagi para guru adalah mengkreasi materi pembelajaran yang sesuai dengan kurikulum dan terjabarkan dalam rancangan pembelajaran. Karakteristik materi pembelajaran yang diharapkan adalah meteri ajar yang mampu mengembangkan potensi anak dalam mencapai kompetensi yang diharapkan dalam standar isi kurikulum. Disamping itu, materi yang dimaksudkan adalah materi yang mempu menciptakan suasana belajar yang efektif dan menyenangkan. (Short Suggestions for all teachers)

TEACHING ENGLISH TROUGH GENRE-BASED APPROACH

By Syamsul Bahri, S.S.*)

Abstract: This paper discusses teaching English through genre-based approach. Its aim is to illustrate how an approach may be extended to EFL teaching. It is very related to English teaching curriculum applied in Indonesia. It is designed to develop the students ability to communicate based on genre. The students are expected to be able to create a text in both spoken and written English language. Hopefully, English teachers are expected to understand how genre or text is taught well.

Key words: Genre, text,

*) The English Teacher of SMP Negeri 3 Mattiro Sompe – South Sulawesi

Introduction

Language has the central role in intellectual, social, and emotional development of learners and represents the determinant key to the efficacy in learning all study areas. Considering language function which is not merely as a study area; a language curriculum for the high school in Indonesia is appropriate to draw up the learners to reach competences that can make learners be able to reflect their own experience and other people’s experience; to express their idea and feeling; and to comprehend the sense unit. Language is expected to assist the learners to recognize themselves, their culture, and the others culture; to express idea and feeling; to participate in society in which the language is used; to make accountable decision for individual and society level; to find and also use the analytical and imaginative ability existing in themselves.

In the curriculum applied in Indonesian school, language competences model that is used is based on the considerations of pedagogical model of language that has been expending since thirty years ago.

One of recent language curriculum models in the literature of language education which was introduced by Calce-Murcia, Dornyei, and Thurrell (1995) that language is communication, not only a set of rule. It means that model of language competences that is formulated is a model that can prepare learners to establish communication in the community of the language users. This model is usually called communicative competence.

According to Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) that the main competence in language education is discourse competence. It means that when someone is doing communication both written and spoken language, the one automatically involves discourse. The term of discourse itself , according to curriculum 2006, is a communication activity that is influenced by the topic communicated in a context culture. This discourse competence itself can be acquired by involving four supporting competences. They are linguistic, action, socio-cultural, and strategic competence. Therefore, the important point should be noted in the English teaching activity at high school in Indonesia; that is, the English teachers should involve all supporting competences in order to achieve the main competence, discourse competence.

Besides the five competences, there is a a language model views language as social semiotic (Halliday 1978). According to the curriculum 2006 that there are three important aspects considered when people think of language. They are context, text, and language.

Genre-based approaches, where teaching and learning focuses on the understanding and production of selected genres of texts, have been identified by Rodgers (2001) as a major trend in English language teaching (ELT) in the new millennium. Such approaches are, of course, not “new”. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) are early examples, arising from pioneering Conference Proceedings: Task-based Learning in the Asian Context work in genre analysis by Swales (1981, 1990) and others. However, teaching and learning around text genres has become increasingly influential in mainstream ELT in a number of situations, including “primary, secondary, tertiary, professional and community teaching contexts” involving “native speakers of English as well as ESL and EFL learners”, and “in countries as diverse as Singapore, South Africa, USA, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia, UK, China, Canada, Sweden and Thailand” (Derewianka, 2003). Nevertheless, their influence in EFL in East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea still appears limited, as a trawl through ELT-

related journals in the region indicates. For instance, between 2001 And the present, one finds Only one article (Kim & Kim, 2005).

This paper gives a brief overview of genre-based language teaching, and then

documents one initiative in extending it to the Indonesia EFL context.

Genre Theory

Genre is a term used to classify types of spoken or written discourse. These are normally classified by content, language, purpose and form. A SFL approach to genre developed by linguistics and practitioners in Australia mainly draws on the linguistic theory of Michael Halliday (e.g. Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Halliday & Hasan, 1989). With its focus on the core educational genres and its clearly articulated social function as well as discourse and grammatical features for each genre, SFL approach is taken as the pedagogical framework for this study. This theory addresses the relationship between language and its social functions and sets out to show how language is a system from which users make choices to express meanings. It advances that the context of situation of a language event on how we use language is further divided into: field (topic or focus of the activity), tenor (the relationship between the writer and reader or the speaker and hearer), and mode (expectations for how particular text types should be organized). These three components are realized through elements in the lexico-grammatical system (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin, 1984). That is, the way people make meaning by choosing linguistic choices varies according to the field, tenor, and mode variables that constitute the context of situation. The lexico-grammar is seen as construing three kinds of meanings, corresponding to field, tenor, and mode: with the field of discourse realized in ideational resources, the tenor of discourse realized in interpersonal resources, and the mode of discourse realized in textual resources. According to Eggins (1994), it is the

lexico-grammar level that is particularly important in understanding how the different contexts of situation are realized in lexical and grammatical choices.

SFL pedagogy is grounded in the belief that learning to write should be based

On explicit awareness of language (Hyland, 2004; Hyon, 1996). As an attempt to provide a framework that will help explain genre use at all educational levels, SFL researchers characterize genres in terms of broad rhetorical patterns such as narratives, recounts, arguments, and expositions. In addition to specifying key genres that students are often asked to write, SFL researchers have also identified the purposes for communicating in each genre and the typical stages and linguistic features of these texts that can express these purposes. Furthermore, they employ analytical tools and frames from systemic functional linguistics to identify the discourse and grammatical structures needed to produce genres. By describing the typical features of valued genres, teachers can provide students with clear options for writing, both within and beyond the sentences, to help them create texts appropriate to readers (Hyland, 2004; Lin, 2006; Schleppegrell, 2004).

Genre-Based Approach

Genre-based approaches have varied theoretical bases in linguistics, such as Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) in North America (Mann & Thompson 1988), and Generic Structure Potential (GSP) theory in Australia (Halliday & Hasan 1989), in fields such as genre analysis and discourse analysis. They also take on various forms and guises. However, some key features are common to all of them.

To begin with, genre-based approaches begin with the whole text as the unit in focus rather than the sentence. The preoccupation is thus the creation of meaning at the level of discourse and not the acquisition of syntactical forms: "rather than dealing with discrete instances of language, there is recognition that meaning accumulates and evolves over a stretch of text" (Derewianka 2003). Here, a "text" refers to "a piece of language in use", which is a "harmonious collection of meanings appropriate to its context" and hence has "unity of purpose" (Butt et al. 2001:3). In other words, texts are stretches of language that may be considered complete in themselves as acts of social exchange. Length and mode of communication are immaterial: each text may be long or short, written or spoken. Thus, a brief exchange of greetings as two acquaintances pass each other is as much a text as is a 600-page novel.

Closely related to this, genre-based approaches are concerned with the social macro-purposes of language, and not just the semantic micro-functions of individual words and sentences: the genres in focus are generally defined according to the broad social purposes of communication. The classification and labeling of genres may vary, depending, among other things, on the theoretical influences behind each approach. For example, in some instances, writing genres are defined in terms of familiar broad categories such as 'Narratives', 'Description', 'Persuasion and Argumentation' and so on. Another approach, elaborated on later, makes a distinction between six or so text prototypes called text types, and more specific genres that employ each or combinations of these text types. Whatever the differences, categorization is based on what the discourse seeks to achieve or to do socially, for example, to tell a story ('Narratives' in many typologies) or to argue an opinion ('Argument' in some typologies, 'Exposition' in others).

Finally, the focus on whole texts implies recognition that there is a higher level of order and patterning in language than just the sentence - grammar at the level of discourse organization and meta-patterning of grammatical features. Genre-based approaches emphasize that this higher order must be attended to for effective language use: "all texts conform to certain conventions, and that if a student is to be successful in joining a particular English-language discourse community, the student will need to be able to produce texts which fulfill the expectations of its readers in regards to grammar, organization, and context" (Kim & Kim 2005, citing Muncie 2002). It must be noted that sentence-level grammar is not seen as unimportant: rather, its importance is seen in terms of the part it plays in the overall patterning of whole texts (e.g. what sorts of sentence patterns tend to pre-dominate in a particular genre). Indeed, close attention is paid to sentence- and word-level grammar in many current approaches, but without such grammar being treated separately from the business of communication, unlike in older grammar-focused approaches or in many forms of communicative language teaching. Thus, genre-based approaches can be seen as being at once both whole-to-part and part to whole.

Conclusion

Genre is a term used to classify types of spoken or written discourse. These are normally classified by content, language, purpose and form. Genre-based approaches, where teaching and learning focuses on the understanding and production of selected genres of texts, have been identified by Rodgers (2001) as a major trend in English language teaching (ELT) in the new millennium. Genre-based approaches emphasize that this higher order must be attended to for effective language use: "all texts conform to certain conventions, and that if a student is to be successful in joining a particular English-language discourse community, the student will need to be able to produce texts which fulfill the expectations of its readers in regards to grammar, organization, and context

References

Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks, S. & Yallop, C. (2000). Using functional

grammar: An explorer’s guide. Macquarie University: NCELTR

Derewianka, B. (1990). Exploring how texts work. NSW: Primary English Teaching

Association.

Derewianka, B. (2003). Trends and issues in genre-based approaches. RELC Journal.

34(2), 133-54.

Halliday, M A K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar. (2nd edition).

London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of

language in a social-semiotic perspective (2nd edition.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar.

3rd Edition. London: Arnold.

Hyland, K. (2002). Teaching and researching writing. London: Longman.

___________. (2003). Second language writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University

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Kim, Y. & Kim, J. (2005). Teaching Korean university writing class: Balancing the

process and the genre approach. Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, 7(2), 69-90.

Adopted from some sources

Beban Kerja Guru

Ada kesan bahwa di kabupaten Pinrang terjadi ketidakpahaman aturan tentang perhitungan beban mengajar guru pada sebagian kalangan penentu kebijakan, baik dalam lingkup sekolah (kepala sekolah) maupun sebagian pengawas, menyebabkan guru menjerit. Atau memang mungkin mereka sengaja membuat aturannya sendiri untuk tidak menyenangkan guru-guru mereka. Boleh jadi atmosfir ini dilatarbelakngi oleh kecemburuan atas prestasi guru dalam memboyong predikat guru berkualifikasi.
Karena itu disarankan kepada mereka yang mempunyai power di sekolah-sekolah (khususnya di kabupaten Pinrang) untuk lebih mengkaji kebijakan-kebijakan pendidikan secara lebih seksama.
Khusus kepada kepala sekolah diharapkan menghargai tugas tambahan kerja guru. Contoh, wakil kepala sekolah dihargai 12 jam mengajar. Nah, untuk memenuhi 24 jam sebagai beban wajib mengajar, maka beban mengajar sisa 12 jam mengajar dalam bentuk tatap muka. Kalau hal ini tidak diberlakukan, maka seorang kepala sekolah akan dikenai juga mengajar (tatap muka) sebanyak 24 jam wajib mengajar. Sebab jabatan kepala sekolah tersebut merupakan tugas tambahan yang sama dengan wakil kepala sekolah, laboran, pustakawan dll. (Baca Pedoman Penghitungan Beban Mengajar Guru, yang diterbitkan oleh Dirjen PMPTK)

Karebana DBE3 (DBE3 News)

Pinrang, 19/1/07

Today, at least 20 English teachers of Junior School in Pinrang get together at Study Centre to join training of module 6 and 7 as continuity of previous training. The training is conducted by DBE 3. This training aims at developing English teachers quality.

The main delivered material for module 6 is English learning strategies; whereas, module 7 will discuss about authentic assessment. During this program run, three trainers are ready to facilitate the participants. They are Mr. Syahrir (the English trainer from SMPN 4 Pinrang), Mr. Rustan (the senior English teacher from SMPN 1 Leppangeng), and Mr. Rahman (the English trainer from SMPN 1 Pinrang). They have already prepared to deliver the materials of those modules. Plus, the very important person is Mr. Saiful Jihad (District Trainer of DBE3 in Pinrang) who will observe all activities of DBE3 in Pinrang.