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 Indonesia—it 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

rules—in 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 demanding—the 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

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

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

class—the 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

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) enactive—they tend to do

activities on things, like: folding paper, sticking the

pictures and other things that do not only include

words; (2) iconic—mental pictures that gained from

the experiences, that is why the activities in the class

are designed in the forms of purposive games; and (3)

symbolic—holistic 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 twice—in 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

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

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

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

English First

English Second

English Third

English not in the top three

Dislike English

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

English First

English Second

English Third

English not in the top three

Dislike English

Lowest

Top

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

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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The Effectiveness of English Education at a Public Elementary School in Indonesia in Enhancing English for Young Learners