The Effectiveness of English Education at a Public Elementary School
in Indonesia in Enhancing English for Young Learners
Diah Royani Meisani
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
diahroyani@student.upi.edu
Keywords English for Young Learners, English Literacy.
Abstract The role of English as a wide-reaching means of communication has led early English education becomes
more prevalent in today’s world. This present research aims at finding out the effectiveness of English
education at a public elementary school in Indonesia. Besides the English teacher, the fourth, fifth and sixth
grade students of a public elementary school located in Bandung, Indonesia, were the participants. An
English proficiency test is administered to see whether the English ability of students in higher grade is better
than the lower ones. Through questionnaire, further investigation was also done to know the students’
perceptions towards English as a subject at school. The findings of this study revealed that students’ English
score did not show a significant difference among grade four, five and six. Varied answers of students’
responses towards the English teaching were also recorded. Hence, the results are expected to give valuable
contributions on the implementation English education, especially English for Young Learners (EYL) that
can be beneficial for English teachers and other related stakeholders, so that it can keep developing and the
English ability of Indonesian students can be further improved.
1 INTRODUCTION
With the aims of introducing English as a global tool
of communication as well as motivating the young
learners to learn a foreign language, English has been
included as an elective subject at elementary schools
in Indonesiait is offered as a local content subject
which its implementation depends on the school‘s
readiness, particularly with the teacher resources,
learning resources and curriculum (Hanawati, 2011).
While private schools have their own authority to use
and construct school curriculum based on the school’s
characteristics, the public should follow government
rulesin this case, English subject at public
elementary school is given once a week for each
grade for 70 minutes a week. However, each schools
vary in starting giving the English subject, although
most of the public elementary schools start with the
fourth graders, some begin from the first or the
second.
In fact, the status of English subject taught at
primary school level as a local content undeniably
impacts on the way teachers teaching the students
teachers of English at elementary schools seem to
face unavoidable challenges in conducting the class
because of many factors. Different from the English
teaching at secondary school, the goals of teaching
English at elementary school are unclearly
formulated and considered to be more to teachers’
own beliefs and pretension. As elementary school
teachers are assigned as homeroom teachers, not
subject teachers, they are given responsibilities to
teach all subjects at their assigned classroom. It
occurs also to English teachers who have to teach
other subjects besides English. Moreover, as English
is not tested in the national examination at elementary
schools in Indonesia, the teaching and learning of
English becomes less demandingthe subjects
included in the national examination are given more
time and attention. Furthermore, a stern
misconception among the elementary English
teachers (Musthafa, 2010) and some other related
stakeholders in considering English teaching to
young learners does not necessitate the same English
competences as English teaching at a higher level has
also directed to misinformed program
implementation.
It cannot be denied that the blurred guidelines for
English teaching at primary level might potentially
mislead English teachers in conducting the teaching
and learning activities. Different from English
teaching at primary level in Japan that has set the
80
Meisani, D.
The Effectiveness of English Education at a Public Elementary School in Indonesia in Enhancing English for Young Learners.
DOI: 10.5220/0007162400800085
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 80-85
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
focus on aural language (Katsuyama et al., 2008;
Butler & Takeuchi, 2008) in Indonesia, the objectives
are still hazy, and it has been acknowledged that the
implementation is still controversial (Setiasih, 2012).
This indirectly affects the teachers in making decision
to choose appropriate materials, teaching strategies
and assessment.
The misconception about teaching young learners
also influence teachers in conducting the class
many spend most of the allocated time for assigning
the pupils to do the exercises on the workbook. As
English subject is given only once a week for 70
minutes, how can meaningful learning occur when
students are busy spending the time to do the
exercises? How can students be motivated in learning
English when interesting and meaningful learning is
not provided? As many suggest that to draw students’
engagement, it is required for the teachers to
implement ways to create learning which is relevant,
authentic, and valuable in students' lives, evocative
learning ought to be provided so that students are
encouraged to enjoy studying and triggered to be
engaged in the classroom activities.
As English teaching at the primary level is
decentralized (Musthafa, 2010) and the curriculum
for English subject is not provided by the central
government, these have created the loose guidelines
that actually may bring positive impacts to teachers to
be explorative and creative in conducting the class
(Tomlinson, 2003; Harmer, 2001). The status of
English as an elective subject and as it is not tested in
the national examination provide opportunities for
teachers to create materials based on their needs,
preferences and views. Then, it always finally
depends on the teachers themselves whether they
want to spend extra energy and time to prepare
teaching materials based on their creativity and
conduct meaningful activities. In this case, the school
can take a part in supporting teachers by working
together with the teachers set and adjust the
objectives of English teaching based on the local
needs, so that guidelines can be formulated and class
can be designed to achieve the goals (Sundayana,
2017; Richards, 2013 & 2001; Yuwono, 2005;
Harmer, 2001; Brown 1995).
Furthermore, as local content subject, English
textbooks are not provided by the government like
other subjects where the electronic ones are available
and teachers can download th e files of the book free
at the website address www.bse.kemdikbud.go.id.
Consequently, often teachers use any books and
resources available for them to support the English
classthe books could be the ones used for years by
the previous classes or those that school can afford to
buy which do not always meet the needs of the
students. Thus, besides teachers’ low English
proficiency, teachers’ overloaded duties, teachers’
misconception about teaching English for young
learners, and other unsupportive variables, the role of
government support becomes one of the handicaps of
English education at public schools in Indonesia,
especially at the elementary schools.
Even though English education is given since
primary level, studies conducted by Larson (2014),
Marcellino (2008) and Lie (2007), depict that most of
the students in Indonesia graduate from senior high
school with low English skills despite studying
English since primary to secondary level. Dealing
with this, it cannot be denied that the lacks towards
the teaching and learning English elaborated above
could be the causes of those results. Regarding their
findings, the current research was intended to do the
investigation on the effect of English education at
public elementary school in Indonesia by comparing
the students’ English achievement. Students of grade
four, five and six were tested to see whether higher
graders achieve higher scores and if there is
significant difference of overall students’ scores.
The consideration of limiting the participants of
the research into three higher grade at elementary
level which are the four, five and six graders, and not
including the first, second and the third ones is
because many public elementary schools start giving
English education from the fourth grade. This is
supported by Suherdi (2016) who posits that it is
suggested that English can be introduced to young
learners at grade four when they have their mother
tongue and national language reinforced. Scott et al.
(1990: 4) add by depicting that children in the age of
eight to ten have gained the basic foundations of a
language as they have been good at their mother
tongue and aware of the statutes of syntax in L1.
Thus, it can be concluded that the decision of seeing
the English achievement of grade four, five and six is
appropriate.
Dealing with the background above, the
problems of the study are stated below:
1. How different is the English performance of
three different grade students?
2. How do the students perceive English as a
subject at school?
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
In teaching English for young learners, it is required
that stakeholders consider the characteristics of the
learners that are formulated by Scott et al. (1990) as
The Effectiveness of English Education at a Public Elementary School in Indonesia in Enhancing English for Young Learners
81
follow: 1) children’s own understanding comes
through hands, eyes and ears. They consider physical
world dominant at all times; 2) their logic comes first;
3) they cannot sit and study too long as their attention
and concentration span are short; 4) young learners
like playing and working individually but still need
others as companions; 5) they need explicit
explanation about why they are asked work with
others; 6) they need to be given clear explanation
about the work they need to do; and 7) as they love to
play, the activities designed for them should be
enjoyable so that they are interested to participate in
the class.
He also specifies the general individualities of
children aged eight to ten year olds (1990: 3), they
are: 1) they have their own perspectives about world;
2) they know the differences between fiction and non-
fiction; 3) they like to question a lot; 4) they relate
what they hear and see to gain meaning; 5) they have
capability to decide something; 6) they see the
alternatives and have preferences; 7) they have
become critical about the surroundings; and 8) they
can cooperate with others. Bruner (1996) enhances by
formulating three modus related to how children
learn, they are: (1) enactivethey tend to do
activities on things, like: folding paper, sticking the
pictures and other things that do not only include
words; (2) iconicmental pictures that gained from
the experiences, that is why the activities in the class
are designed in the forms of purposive games; and (3)
symbolicholistic learning should be provided by
relating to their life context.
In this present study, the above elaborations
support the consideration of limiting the participants
of the research into the four, five and six graders only.
It is supported by Suherdi (2016) and Scott et al.
(1990: 4) that young learners starting from grade four
have their mother tongue and national language
reinforced, they also have gained the basic
foundations of a language as they have been good at
their mother tongue and aware of the statutes of
syntax in L1.
In Indonesian context, the teaching and learning
of English as a foreign language was firstly offered in
1994 (the Decree by Ministry of Education No.
060/U/1993 and 1994 Curriculum). Based on this
regulation, a school has authority to include English
subject as a local content by considering the recent
conditions of schools, parents and society. The
purposes and goals of elementary English teaching
according to the Ministry of Education are 1) to
develop learners’ basic skills of English
communication in school contexts, 2) to encourage
learners’ attention in English class, and 3) to extend
learners’ viewpoint toward the prominence of
learning English to improve their competitiveness
worldwide.
The implementation of English teaching at the
elementary schools in Indonesia is quite similar to
what is applied in Japan. Katsuyama et al. (2008)
write that in Japan, where the English education is
behind the other Asian countries, English has been
given at elementary school as an optional subject
since 2002. The research that they conducted was
aimed at finding the effectiveness of early English
education and to decide whether English should be
given formally in public elementary schools in Japan.
By administering test and a set of questionnaires to
1466 students of elementary school twicein 2004
and 2005, findings were found that there were major
differences between students who had English at their
primary school and students who did not. These
undeniably show the positive effects of the English
learning to students at the early stage and hence,
encourage their interests in it when entering higher
level of education.
However, there are some differences on how the
government take a part in the English education
between Indonesia and Japan. At the primary level,
Indonesian government do not interfere too much as
the English education is decentralized (Musthafa,
2010). On the other hand, Japanese Ministry of
Education take a part by making policy decisions as
an experiment basis on curricula, instructional
methodology and assessment. Butler & Takeuchi
(2008), at their research, identified the factors that
most toughly affect students’ performance in English
learning at the elementary school in Japan. 6,541
elementary school students who had obtained many
kinds of English instruction in Japan were given a test
namely STEP Silver Test. The results revealed that
grade levels and occurrences of teaching gained
outside of schools appeared to be good predictors
among others. Based on the findings, an hour extra
lesson of English was also very beneficially
influential.
Another related previous study was done by
Nikolov (1999) who looked at the attitudes and
motivation of Hungarian children between the ages of
6 and 14. In his long-term study, he investigated why
the students think they study a foreign language, how
they relate to school subjects and what classroom
activities they like and dislike. From the findings, he
concluded that causes of motivation were found to
vary at different ages. He confirmed that although the
importance of instrumental motivation increases with
age, engagement and persistence in learning activities
are not directly influenced by this factor as children
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
82
will choose to pay attention to, engage and persist in
learning tasks only if they find them worth the
trouble.
From what had been done by the previous
researchers and regarding the problematic matters
that occur in the English teaching and learning at
elementary schools in Indonesia, therefore, a study is
intended to be conducted to find out the effectiveness
of English education students receive at the
elementary schools. An English proficiency test is
administered to see whether the ability of students in
higher grade is better than the lower ones and whether
students study at different schools gain different
achievement of English skills. Besides, a
questionnaire and in-depth interview are also directed
to figure out the factors that influence the results of
the test.
3 METHODOLOGY
This present study employed mixed-methods by
collecting and analyzing quantitative data gathered
from test and qualitative data gained from the
questionnaires then interpreting the results into
qualitative study (Creswell, 2003).
3.1 Participants
This present study included 162 students of grade
four, five and six at Public Elementary School 195
Isola, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The school has
given English subject to the students from grade two
to six. Two English teachers are assigned to teach
English classes besides teaching other subjects. The
participants that include four, five and six graders are
considered representative to signify the sample as
many public elementary schools start giving English
education from the fourth grade. This is based on
what is recommended by the government to start the
English education at elementary school from grade
four (the Ministry of Education and Culture Decree
No. 060/U/1993) and also recommended by Suherdi
(2016) and Scott et al. (1990: 4) related to the
students’ readiness to learn a foreign language. Thus,
it can be concluded that the decision of seeing the
English achievement of grade four, five and six is
appropriate.
3.2 English Test
Different from other country like Japan that conduct
the Society for Testing English Proficiency (STEP)
which is a-TOEFL-like test, Indonesia do not have the
kind of test which is accepted in the national forum;
so that a test should be constructed. To support the
study and to reliably determine the attention of the
proficiency test contents, English test was developed
based on the rubric of school examination of English
for grade six in the previous year which refers to the
Standard of Elementary School Outcomes. The test
consisted of thirty number of multiple choice
questions and was designed to be done in 60 minutes.
The contents covering the materials of English taught
from grade four to six.
3.3 Questionnaire
After the test scores were analysed, a questionnaire
which was adapted from Katsuyama et al. (2008) and
Nikolov (1999) was administered to the participating
students to gather auxiliary information for further
investigation. The questions were set in Bahasa
Indonesia and including the following items: (1)
What are your first three favourite school subjects?;
(2) What are the school subjects (if any) you dislike?;
(3) What do you enjoy doing the most in English
classes?; (4) What do you dislike (related to
English)?; (5) If you were the teacher what would you
do differently?
4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Results of English Test
As stated in the previous section, the test created for
this study consisted of thirty numbers of multiple
choice test questions. The students were divided into
three groups based on their grade, which are grade
four, five, and six. The table below shows the mean
scores of each group.
Table 1: Mean Score of English Test.
Grade
4
5
6
N
54
53
55
Mean
41,05
41,3
53,15
From the Table 1 above, the mean scores which
the students achieved in the test can be known. From
162 participants in total, 54 of them were students of
grade four, 53 were students of grade five and 55 were
students of grade six. It can be seen that minor
difference was found among the three groups,
especially between the fourth and fifth graders which
is only 0.25. The mean score of the sixth graders,
although it was the highest of all, still shows trivial
difference from the other two groups which was not
The Effectiveness of English Education at a Public Elementary School in Indonesia in Enhancing English for Young Learners
83
as expected. It differs 12.1 from the fourth graders
group and 11.85 from the fifth. From these findings,
it can be assumed that the length of time the students
learn English at school does not significantly affect
the students’ English achievement. Thus, further
investigation is undertaken to find out the underlying
factors of the test results by administering the
questionnaire.
4.2 Results of Questionnaire
A questionnaire that contained five open questions
administered in Bahasa Indonesia was filled out by 30
out of 162 students. This number was gained from 10
students of grade 4, 10 students of grade 5, and 10
students of grade 6. Other criteria in choosing the
participants for filling out the questionnaire was the
students whose scores were on the top 15 and the
lowest 15.
The first and second questions were aimed at
finding out the place of English among other school
subjects. When seen from the students’ grade, slight
different was found that the results expose overall
interest towards English as a subject learned at
school. The findings shown in Table 2 present the
irregular pattern where it can be assumed that the
students’ grades and the length of time they learn
English do not affect pointedly to students
preferences towards English as a subject at school.
Table 2 shows how students in different grade placed
English as a subject among other subjects at school.
Table 2: The Position of English Subject Based on Students in Different Grade.
Grade
N
English Second
English Third
English not in the top three
Dislike English
4
10
5
3
1
0
5
10
2
0
7
2
6
10
3
1
4
0
However, different pattern was found when the
groups of students were modified into two groups
based on their test scores. More students in the top 15
group like English than in the other group. Only two
of low score listed English as one of the subject they
dislike. Table 3 shows how students with different
test scores placed English as a subject among other
subjects at school.
Table 3: The Position of English Subject Based on Students with Different Test Achievement.
Group
N
English First
English Second
English Third
English not in the top three
Dislike English
Lowest
15
0
4
2
9
2
Top
15
4
6
1
3
0
From these findings, it can be referred that
students who like English tend to be more motivated
in learning English that indirectly, affect their
learning achievement.
Hence, the third and fourth questions sought to
draw detailed information concerning classroom
activities. The students’ answers varied based on their
grade. The fourth graders mostly listed the factors that
they are keen on in English class, like: the teacher, the
songs, the games, and the pictures. They responses by
writing that they loved being with the English teacher
who was kind and helpful. One student wrote that
English subject is not too difficult, that is why she
liked it. Eight students left the fourth questions in
blank and two other answered by writing that they
hated English subject when the teacher gave too many
exercises to do.
Grade five students tended to answer the
questions number 3 and 4 by mentioning about the
materials they had learned in English class. Six out of
10 students wrote the topics that they likes best,
which are about family and time. The other four
students mentioned that they enjoyed English
learning vocabulary and having the conversation for
the class activities. Most of them also did not answer
the fourth question. Only two who wrote that they did
not like learning the topic about hobby without
mentioning the detailed reasons.
Compared to the other two groups, the students
sitting on sixth grade had stated their goals of learning
English. 50% of sixth grade students revealed that as
English is an international language, they gained
more knowledge by learning the language. It can be
assumed that the higher grade students have been
more likely to identify the sense of usefulness of
English, while the lower ones tended to mention the
things that attract them to study English, like: the
patient teachers, the songs and games and the
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
84
interesting materials. These are in line with the
findings of the study conducted by Nikolov (1999)
and Katsuyama et al. (2008).
The final question asked for suggestions and
criticism from students’ perspectives. In general,
most of the students in all levels wrote that they
would not change anything the way their teachers
teach. They would teach patiently, help the students
who face difficulties, and explain the materials
clearly. Very meaningful suggestions were given by
students in grade 5 and 6, like: they would conduct
outing class and relate the place to the theme being
discussed, apply appropriate strategies to make
students understand the materials easily, and
designing attractive activities so students would not
get bored. From these results, we can conclude that
higher grade students who are assumed to learn
English longer, have seen how to study English
effectively and have been able to express what they
think beneficial in English learning.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study show that young learners are
motivated in English class if they find the interesting
activities and materials and the teachers are kind and
helpful. Another imperative finding revealed in this
study is the fact that the percentage of classroom and
teacher-related reasons lessened with age. Students’
in higher grade have been aware of the goals of
studying English as an international language which
later will be beneficial and able to give concrete
suggestions for the teachers in conducting the class.
Finally, similar to Nikolov’s findings (1999),
classroom implications relates to the way causes of
motivation were revealed to vary at different ages.
For students in lower grade who are younger,
classroom activities should be designed with fun to
engage the students in the class. The teacher is also
the centre who determines how the class objectives
can be achieved. For students in higher grade, more
challenging activities in terms of the tasks, the
materials, and the assessment, are required to be done
so that they will be more challenged and gain the
worth of learning a foreign language.
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