My daughter's language development

Observing my daughter , Sekar Putri, learning to communicate is amazing. She is now 2 year 10 m0nths old. She produced her first word "kakak" when she was turning one. I noticed that she imitated our habit of greeting our next door neighbour's daughters, Kakak Tiara and Kakak Echa, everytime we met them. Since then she started to call them Kakak. The next word is "Dede" since those two kakak called Sekar "Dede".

Having been exposed with Indonesian, Javanese and a little English, Sekar is able to communicate well now. She can express her feelings using appropriate words. She sometimes says "thank you" "makasih" or "matur nuwun" when given something. I usually make up a story from certain pictures that she likes. She keeps on asking me to repeat the story. I was surprised when one day she showed me the pictures and told me a story with her own words. She didn't change the name of the characters but she made up her own story which was different from mine. Knowing this, I am more interested to know how a child acquires a language.

Echa, Dardjowidjojo's book, has given much information about this. His research reveals that children's language development is influenced by their innate properties and environmental stimulation. Children can not be forced to produce sounds or words when their brain is not ready. According to Chomsky, children's language acquisition occurs when provided with appropriate nutrition and enviromental stimulation. I know now why Sekar can't produce the sound [r] yet. According to Jakobson , this sound is usually acquired the latest. Sekar's organ of speech is not ready to produce [r] at this moment.

I conclude that stimulation is important to help children learn a language. However, we don't have to force them to speak the language when their organ of speech and brain are not ready.

Teaching English Tenses

I have been teaching college students for almost 5 years. However, teaching tenses is still quite stressful. I have been trying to apply several methods and techniques but I think I haven't been able to make my students capable of using them in speaking let alone in writing. That our beloved national language-Bahasa Indonesia-doesn't have tenses is not an excuse for this difficulty. What I have experienced recently may give some illustration of how English has been thought in the formal schools.

Last week I taught Simple Present Tense to the first year students. Considering that they have learned about this tense before, I elicited their knowledge about its use and usage. When I asked them to give examples, they still came up with "The sun sets in the west" for fact and "I go to school everyday" for habit. Wow !!! They are at least 18 years younger than me but they still gave the examples which I got from my English teacher at SMP in 1983. Then I gave an example : I am a teacher. I asked them : Is it a fact ? None of them answered "Yes". I was trying to find some more techniques to help them understand when and how to use this tense for communicating.

New approaches in ELT have been developed but in my opinion teaching English in formal schools has never made students know how to communicate in English. The students whose English is good usually take a course after school hour. English courses usually keep updated with the recent findings in ELT. In addition, the small number of students in the class also help teachers to monitor their progress. How will our human resources survive in the globalization era if we let this situation continues ? Who should do something about this. Diknas ? PKG ? Pusat Kurikulum ?

I have a dream that one day my students will come up with their own ideas when asked to give some examples of Simple Present Tense such as : "My sister has long hair and wears glasses", "My father doesn't drive to work. He walks. His office is only 1 km from our house".
Dream on ..............................................

Translation problem

This morning I was examining the student who was taking the comprehensive exam. It is a compulsory exam for the students to finish their Strata 1 program in our English Department. Something funny happened with a particular student who is majoring in translation. After he succesfully explained one of translation procedure called modulation, I gave him two English sentences. "I cut my finger when I was cooking" and "I left my wallet at home". I asked him to translate these sentences into Indonesian. To my surprise, he gave me these answers : Saya memotong tangan saya ketika saya sedang memasak and Saya meninggalkan dompet saya di rumah. I felt dissapointed. He only knew the concept of modulation but didn't know how to apply the concept. There was another student who translated the sentence "She passed the SAT test with flying colors" into Dia lulus tes SAT dengan nilai warna-warni. It seems that they have never been taught about the translation theories.I was asking myself. What have we (lecturers) done wrong ? Does this happen in other colleges ? How are we supposed to change the way we teach ? What is wrong with our curriculum ? Can anyone share some ideas ?

My first page

Testing my first page !