LOVE AND SMILE TEACHING:
An Approach to the Teaching of Indonesian
as a Foreign Language
Presented at Korean Association of Foreign Language Education (KAFLE) International Conference on 15 September 2012 in South Korea
Prof. Burhanuddin Arafah, M.Hum., Ph.D.
Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Hasanuddin University (UNHAS) Indonesia 90245
Tel./Fax: (+62 411) 587223, E-mail:
ABSTRACT
The teaching of Indonesian as a foreign language is sometimes felt uninteresting and ineffective due to a number of reasons. One of the significant reasons is the strategy or approach applied by teachers is not sophisticated. As a result, students are easily bored with the material presented by teachers, and teachers are usually frustrated with students’ inability to understand the teaching materials in their classes. This paper presents an approach called Love and Smile Teaching that is believed to be accurate and efficient for teachers to solve the said problems. Through LOVE (Loyal, Open-hearted, Versed, Educated), and SMILE (Supervisor, Motivator, Initiator, Leader, Entertainer), teachers are expected to be loyal, open-hearted, and versed educators in teaching, and students are kindly hoped to enjoy the teaching-learning process as they should regard their teachers as excellent Supervisors, Motivators, Initiators, Leaders, and Entertainers. This paper also presents effective strategies for the teaching Indonesian as a foreign language.
Key words: love and smile, teaching, strategy, effective and efficient.
A. INTRODUCTION
Basically, teaching is commonly understood as a profession that can produce something great when the methods and ideas are correctly and accurately presented and implemented in the classroom. The purpose of teaching generally lies in getting students to truly understand the concepts and methods being taught. Teaching is also known as a series of activities organized to support the learning process.
Learning, according to some experts, is acquiring new, or modifying existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. Learning is a process, rather than a collection of factual and procedural knowledge.
Teaching is the main activity of teachers, and learning is an obligatory activity of students. Meanwhile, teaching material is a medium of teaching-learning process. These three components—teacher, student, and material—are major components of interactional education.
Several experts point out that teaching is a knowledge transfer process. Teacher is the subject, whereas, the student is the object. This idea implies that the target of learning is that the students can get information or knowledge from their learning activities Therefore, in the teaching-learning process, the teachers are mostly active and the students are usually passive. The teachers explain or describe the topic and the students are hoped to understand it. This is generally known as a Teacher Centered Learning (TCL) method.
Other experts believe that teaching is an organizing activity in the learning process. The learning process has to be organized in order to be effective in transferring knowledge. The target of learning is how to make a good classroom situation so that the students can enjoy their learning activities. The students have to be active, and the teachers fill their roles as good motivators and facilitators. This is commonly called Student Centered Learning (SCL) method.
In the learning-teaching process, especially in teaching Indonesian as a foreign language, both the TCL and SCL methods have been regarded very important methods in many classroom activities at higher education level in Indonesia. They always frame any discussions of language teaching-learning activities. They are sometimes seen as in conflict,and sometimes as complementary. Each of these ideas has had its defenders in the course of Indonesian language learning and teaching activities. The learning and teaching experts have emphasized first one, and then the other, as the most markedteaching methods that arose in many higher institutions in Indonesia.
However, based on the learning and teaching process conducted at BIPA (Bahasa Indonesia untuk Penutur Asing) or Indonesian as a Foreign Language Program at the Faculty of Cultural Sciences of UNHAS in Indonesia, the two methods have been found less effective and inefficient to improve the understanding of Indonesian language learners (students) toward the materials taught in the classrooms.
Therefore, this paper would like to introduce an approach called LOVE and SMILE TEACHING in teaching Indonesian as a foreign language. This approach tries to combine the said two concepts where in the learning-teaching process both the teachers and the students are enticed or convinced to be more active in order that the teaching-learning process is interesting and effective.
B. DISCUSSION
LOVE AND SMILE TEACHING
The term Love and Smile Teaching is actually an acronym of the following words:
L Loyal and Lovable
O Open-hearted and Optimistic
V Versed and Viable
E Educated and Easygoing
S Supervisor
M Motivator
I Initiator
L Leader
E Entertainer
T Train
E Evaluate
A Abbreviate
C Concentrate
H Harmonize
I Interest
N Negotiate
G Gain
The idea lies in the word LOVE is that the teachers of Indonesian language have to be Loyal and Lovable, Open-hearted and Optimistic, Versed and Viable, as well as Educated and Easygoing when teaching their materials. The word SMILE is kindly meant that the teacher should be an excellent Supervisor, Motivator, Initiator, Leader, and Entertainer in performing his or her daily obligation qualified teacher. Whereas the word TEACHING implies that in conducting his or her duty, the teacher has to posses sophisticated behaviors and capabilities which enabled them to Train, Evaluate, Activate, Concentrate, Harmonize, Initiate, Negotiate, and Gain the learning-teaching process
Therefore, Love and Smile Teaching is basically meant to provide the students with wonderful teacher and at the same time the students are kindly hoped to enjoy the learning-teaching process as they will have loveable and smiling teacher every time they attend their courses. In this case, the teachers and the students will establish good partnership in their teaching-learning process as their teachers love teaching and students are convinced to smile whenever they attend their lessons.
TEACHING STEPS
As mentioned in the previous part of this writing that the objective of this Love & Smile Teaching is to present interesting and enjoyable teaching-learning process. To accomplish this, the teachers and students have to follow a series of steps as follows:
First : The teachers and students need to be well-prepared:
- The teachers should have good teaching skills, and students should be skillful in learning.
- They both should have good attitudes, and
- They should be punctual any time to attend the class.
Second: The teachers have to prepare and manage their materials as
good as possible, and the students should not hesitate to give
comments and ask questions about the materials if it is
necessary:
- The topic of their materials should be adapted to the allotted time. Teachers can modify them: what and which topics appropriate to be taught in the morning, at noon, in the afternoon, or in the evening?
- The topics should be adapted to ages of students. The teaching materials for children and adult learners of Indonesian are not the same, even though their abilities may be similar. The age differences are sometimes recognized for the periods from infancy to the age of three, from three to five or six, from five or six to ten, and from eleven to thirteen (Piaget in Lado, 1998).
- The topics should be adapted to the ability of the students or learners. Generally, the classification of ability is (Pre-Basic), Basic, (Pre-Intermediate), Intermediate, (Pre-Advanced), and Advanced. Before teaching, teachers should know their students’ ability or comprehension level, so they can choose the appropriate topics for them.
- The topics should be adapted to students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The teachers cannot ignore the influence of cultural background of their students. The culturally acquired attitudes and information of the learners affect their learning of a second language. Most of the Indonesian people have difficulties in learning English, because of the different forms or patterns of both languages. “Post office”, in Indonesian, for example, should be “kantor pos” (not pos kantor), (post = pos; office = kantor). In South Sulawesi, some people pronounce the word “very” with “peri.”
- Should the students have any comments or questions with regard to the materials, they should not be reluctant to point them out during the teaching-learning process.
Third : The teachers need to alert their students, and the students should alerted.
- The teachers should advise the students to be ready and available to study before they are kindly taught.
- The teachers should motivate their students and improve their ways of learning, as well as entice them to happily keep studying.
- The teachers should create friendly and casual classroom conditions in order that the students may feel studying at home.
- The students should always be ready and get involve to participate on the learning-teaching process.
TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS
T R A I N
It is essential for good language teaching to provide ample participation of the students in meaningful language use. The teachers let the students to be active in learning. The teachers do not only explain or describe the language and let the students listen to it, but they should persuade or let the students describe or explain it themselves. For example, when the students are learning reported speech, the teachers should give them tasks of being reporter or interviewer. Let them demonstrate the task each other where one of them should be a speaker, and the other acts as reporters, and vice versa.
It is essential in the training that the students are not the object only, but they are subject as well. They should not be passive learners. They should demonstrate their good abilities. So, in teaching Indonesian, for example, the teachers provide “problem solving” to stimulate the students’ activities. This method is called learning by doing.
EVALUATE
In teaching, evaluation is a positive reinforcement to motivate students. The students will usually study hard when they know that their teachers will give them evaluation or a test. In this case, the teachers should be aware that even though the test should not be given to the students in every meeting, but it should be implicitly implemented in every session of the teaching process.
The teachers should let the students know their works or marks. By knowing them, they will have high motivation to study hard. When they find that their grades are good, they will keep trying to be more confident. Whereas, the students whose marks are bad, they should then try to improve them. In short, the teachers should have abilities to motivate their students.
ABBREVIATE
When the teachers explain or describe their teaching topics, they should speak clearly and present simple but good explanation to the students. They should abbreviate their language or explanation. A long explanation is usually found ineffective to the students’ comprehensions. If the teachers’ explanations are not systematic, the students will be confused and they are unable to understand the lesson well.
In order to make systematic and simple explanations, the teachers should prepare the scheme of lessons.
CONCENTRATE
The teachers should concentrate to their teaching topics. It is very often to find students ask something that is irrelevant to the topic when the teachers explain a topic. If this case happens, the teachers should have abilities to modify their teaching method to return to the discussing topic. It is usual that several teachers should answer all the students’ questions as they wish. They do not care that the questions are relevant or irrelevant to the discussing topic. They think that they will be a good teacher when they can answer all their students’ questions. In fact, they are not good teachers.
HARMONIZE
A good teacher is the one who is able to harmonize the classroom situation. The teachers and students should have harmonious interaction or relationship in the teaching-learning process). The teachers should enjoy their teaching and the students enjoy their learning. This is called educative interaction.
In learning language, the teachers should let the students to be relaxed, so they will have bravery to express their opinions if they wish. Let the students have their own creativities. The authoritarian teachers are not so good, because they will make their students to be afraid to express their opinions. The authoritarian teachers will probably make the classroom situation calm, but it is not effective. The permissive teachers in the teaching-learning process, in contrary, are not so good as well because they will lead the classroom in unmanageable situation. Therefore, the good teachers will be those who can manage the classroom situation very well. They should know when they will be authoritarian or permissive teachers.
INTEREST
The teachers should have abilities to please the students receive a new topic with sophisticated interests. Sometimes the students are not interested in finding a new topic or lesson on their learning process due to their inability to forget their previous topics or lessons. Changing the topics to the interested ones in such situation is very good, however, it sometimes does not easy. The teachers, then, have to be skilful at combining new topics of teaching-learning materials with the students past experience or remembrances. The teachers should keep convincing them to the new topics, but still relevant to the lesson plans, in order to make them interested. Overall, the teachers should prepare well their lesson plans and other components of education interaction, such as teaching medium or facilities.
NEGOTIATE
In the teaching process, teachers and students are two basic components. There is no teaching without learning process. It means that no teaching without student, no teaching without interaction. So, as a teacher, he or she should be a director or manager in the classroom. He should be able to manage all of the components in the classroom to support their teaching process. By this, it is hoped that educative interaction will be running well. The teachers are not authoritarian ones, but they should be able to negotiate with the students about the lesson schedules, materials, and so on if they wish.
G A I N
The teaching-learning process is good when it can provide effective and efficient learning activities. To determine that the teaching-learning process is successful, the method or procedure used should not been seen as the only parameter. The most wanted parameter is the “outcomes.” However, it cannot be denied as well that methods and procedures are important elements to achieve “the goal”. If the method and procedures are not good (ineffective), of course “the goal” or “the outcomes” will not be good either.