[caption id="attachment_95532" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Ilustrasi/Admin (shutterstock)"][/caption]
One of the most scaring subjects for Senior High School students to face on the final exam is English. Most students say that English makes them nervous, the others say that they aren’t sure to pass this subject.
Recently, I got a chance to give an English test to students of a private senior high school (which is accredited ‘A’) in Surabaya. The test was divided into two sections. The questions in section one were around simple tenses and vocabulary, such as: John is a good swimmer. He ……. swim very well. (a. can; b. cannot; c. able; d. could not). Section two was writing test. The students were asked to translate simple sentences, such as: Di mana kamu sekolah?, and to change positive sentences to question form, such as: He comes to school by bus.
Shockingly, few students got good marks. The following table shows the result.
Class
Number of Classes
Number of students
Score
≤ 50
51-60
61-70
71-80
≥ 81
X
5
210
107
46
32
20
5
XI
7
285
170
52
30
27
6
XII
5
189
96
38
34
16
5
Total
17
684
373
136
96
63
16
Although the test is not really the valid one, at least the result reflects that English learning process at formal schools fails. This happens not only at this school but also at many other schools. One of the causes is the fact that every class is occupied by more or less 40 students. The quality (esp. the way of teaching) of the educators doesn’t support the atmosphere which makes the students enjoy the subject.To make it worse, the teachers should teach according to the text books so they have to finish ‘feeding’ the books to the students by the end of the semester whether or not the students understand.
This situation, of course, is ‘good’ for English courses, (sixty percent of the students who got 71 or up score were the students who took English courses outside the school), but how many students can afford to study there?
