Language Skill

So, they need a good language teaching from the teachers. A good language teaching is very important especially to deliver all those four skills. Besides the language skills, the pupils also have their “own” world or theme to understand. If we refer to the English Primary School Curriculum Specification, there are three worlds that pupils must understand it. There are World of Self, World of Knowledge and World of Stories. These three worlds are very important to classify each topic that pupils need to learn. Here, we want to evaluate these four language skills through variety of activities in the classroom using the theme, World of Stories. As we know, there are many activities that teachers can do to develop pupils understanding about these four language skill based on theme, World of Stories.

The first skill is listening. What is listening? Listening can be defined as pay attention to what someone is saying or to a sound that you can hear. Listening skill is very important in our daily life, and according to Wilga Rivers (1981), we listen twice as much as we speak, four times as much as we read and five times as much as we write. So, to teach this skill, teacher can provide many activities to develop pupils understanding. The first activity that we can do is listening to the animal's sound. First, teachers play the sound and let pupils listen to that sound. It is better to play it twice, so that, the pupil can listen it clearly. After that, teacher let pupils guess the name of animal that provide the sound. Then, teacher asks simple questions based on that sound. The teacher can sure that the pupils able to understand and master this skill when they can answer questions correctly.

The second activity that teacher can choose is listening to the jazz chants. The teacher must chant it clearly. After that, teacher let the pupils listen carefully. Then, the teacher can evaluate the pupils understanding by let them note down the keywords, which is the difficult words in the chants. When they are able to list down the keywords, that's mean the pupils listen deeply when the teacher chanting.

The last activity that teacher can do to develop this skill is tell a story. To make this activity more attractive, teachers can use the puppet to tell the story. When pupils enjoy this activity, they can listen carefully and give more focus on that. Teacher must tell it twice to make pupils fully understand the story. Then, teacher gives the handouts to the pupils. The handouts are based on the story. Then, let the pupils complete the missing words in that story. So, the pupils must remember the story. Here, the pupils use this skill. The teacher can know either the pupils understand or not according to the numbers of correct answer.

The second language skill is speaking, and it is important as a communication tools and making relationships with others. According to Carl W.Buechner, “they may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel”. When we speak, we must use the correct words, pronunciation and the intonation. Through this way, we can deliver the skill perfectly to the other person. To develop pupils understanding on this skill, teachers can do a lot of activity like role-play, story telling and game. The first activity that teachers can do is role-play. With role-play, teachers can create the situation for pupils to act. This activity can be done in pairs or groups. Pupils also can create their own situation to act. But, the most important thing here is every pupil must speak. It is because the language is not important but we want to see either pupil is able to speak in front of the whole class or not. Besides that, we want to see either they can play a role very well or not.

For the second activity, teacher can do a story telling to evaluate the pupils understanding. This activity can make the pupils brave to speak or deliver their story. Teachers call the pupils to come out and let them tell a story that they had chosen. It is better for the pupils to tell a story without refer to the text. Besides that, teachers also can create mini story telling competition among the pupils in the class. Teachers must prepare a present for the winner. It is to make the pupils like this activity. From that, we can sure the pupils are able to understand this skill when they brave to speak using correct pronunciation, intonation and good language. For this activity, teachers can give some guidance.

Next, the teachers also can make a puppet show. First, the teacher needs to guide pupils to make a puppet. But, the puppet must suitable with the characters in the story. After that, the pupils must act in front of the whole class using the puppet that they provide. They can use their own creativity to provide the puppet. The pupils must speak or act among themselves. Here, we can see either the pupils can deliver their speech using puppet or not.