TECHNOLOGY IS NOT OBSELET

“Reflective Journal of TLL”

By: Rida Sahridah
2010120029
Section C

In this third semester, I have to visit a high school. I visited a high school of religion, MAN 11 Jakarta. It is located in Lebak Bulus. I started the visiting on 17 October 2011. I did School Experience Period for two weeks there. The relationship between school experience and Technology and Learning Language is observation of the way the school and language teachers conduct language class in this digital age. So, I did observation about utilization of technology in learning and teaching language. I focused on English class only. However, how do ideal usage of technology in learning and teaching language?

The most important that is technology must help language teachers and learners to achieve main goals of learning and teaching language perfectly. How do the school and language teachers maximize usage of technology in the classroom? This century is a golden age of using technology. Technology also touches education part especially in language learning. Indonesian learners learn English as a foreign language even a second language. Learning second language does not easy, but also does not mean difficult. Technology takes the difficulties of learning language become easier. However, not all of problems answered by using technology. How does technology be part of language learning?

Learning language in one packed, it is included abilities of listening, speaking, writing and reading. CALL is a newest issue on technology in language learning. Thomson Reuters (2010) says Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is an intercontinental and interdisciplinary journal which leads the field in its dedication to all matters associated with the use of computers in language learning (L1 and L2), teaching and testing. It provides a forum to discuss the discoveries in the field and to exchange experience and information about existing techniques. In my opinion it is very helpful for language learning process. So,how about utilization of technology in MAN 11 Jakarta?

I have done assistance of English teachers there. I also did observation toward teachers and students and also classroom. In average, each class consists of 35 students. The uniqueness is about the three English teachers. They divided into three different majority in teaching English. These three are Grammar teacher, Reading teacher and Listening and Speaking teacher. So, it means that one class will teach by three English teachers all at once. In the classroom, there were some available equipment. They are speaker, screen and in focus. For usage of computer in classroom, the teacher brought and provided portable PC or notebook by their selves.

According to above, there are three teachers. The Reading teacher is not bring and use technology into classroom at all. His instruments which are used in learning process are only some pieces of reading material papers. The way he teaches just like this, he asks students one by one to read some sentences and then answers the questions about the passage orally. Then, the English class the end. Next teacher is the Grammar teacher. He uses a slide of power point in the class which is showed a general explanation about the topic. Then he shows some examples sentences by open document from Microsoft office. The last is the Speaking and Listening teacher. She asks her students to write conversation and then perform it in a group. That is for speaking part, for listening part is she plays audio material from her cell phone which use external speaker. Then the students fill missing words in the passage. Based on my observation, screen and in focus are ready to use but unfortunately, the speaker does not give affection to language learning process because it is like parallel speaker which use only for announce information from school to all teachers and students.

I have done my team teaching in three classrooms. I have tried to bring and use technology in my teaching time. I thought how to express sympathy at that time in tenth grader. My objectives are students are able to express sympathy in right moment and students can respond well. I explained the topic by using interactive power point slides. Then, showed a video which is about conversation between a girl and a boy. In that video there are some sympathy expression inside the conversation. I asked the students to identify and write down what expression they got from the video. The length of the video is three minutes and I showed it two times.

When I thought grammar class, I used online drilling. The grammar is past simple tense. Before I conducted it, I explained it to students first. Those students’ answers would check by online. So, after they typed their answers and then clicked submit, it would check automatically. It was interesting because it was kind of interactive website to learning and teaching process.

Actually, we cannot avoid of this digital age. Althought, teaching come first and then technology. I am not see difficulty when I showed to them interactive technology because they are digital generation already and they like it. In my opinion, the reason why there are no meaningful, interactive and strategic investment in learning language process is because the teachers expectation to students is students can receive material well only. So, when students listen carefully to the teachers, it means enough for them.

I realized that being an educator must be already being a teacher, but being a teacher does not mean already being an educator. Now days, technology help us. Technology takes the difficulties of learning language become easier. It does not mean all of problems answered by using technology. However, it is interesting to bring by digital teachers to digital generation in this digital age.