Another Goal of Teaching English

Many books have described what actually professional and great teacher is. they have explained a professional teacher is not only able to explain the teaching materials well but he is also able to motivate the students, become good guidance for them, become good example for the students, and many more. Dealing with the responsibility, a teacher should be able to make sure that the students understand the topics he explained. In other words, the teacher should be able to teach well so that the student are able to reach or accomplish the goal or the indicators of the learning that the teacher expect. 

In reaching the goals of the learning, many teachers usually face many problems to realize it. Most of the problem frequently come to the students themselves. One of the examples of this problem is that since the students’ competence of English in certain classroom is heterogenous, a teacher usually gets difficulty to reach the goal of learning. A teacher usually faces an obstacle to reach the goal of learning since many students’ English skill or competence is far from the goal of the learning. For example, an English teacher of Senior High School has addrressed the goal of teaching speaking, it is the students should be able to use English for active communication. Unfortunately, Many students do not have requirements to be able to use English for active communication. They do not have rich vocabularies for communication, they do not have skill in composing sentence for communication, and they always pronounce the English word in  a wrong way. When an English teacher faces those situations, should a teacher reach a target of teaching? In which, on the other hand, a teacher only has limited time to reach the target.

For me, when an English teacher faces these problems, particularly in teaching Senior High School, he should change the goal of learning from enable the students understand the topics discussed or practising the skills to making them feel joyful or impressed learning about English. Why should an English teacher change this perspective? In my opinion, the indicator of success or great teacher is not only determined by how he is able to make the student reach the goal of learning, but it is also determined by how he is able to make the unmotivated students have motivation of learning English. How to make uninterested students to learn English interestingly. An English teacher, on this case, is not only demanded to master the English knowledge and skill themselves, but he is also demanded to be able to apply creative, fun, and active teaching technique and media. In other words, in my opinion, when an English teacher faces the classroom problems above, making the students enjoy learning process should be placed on the first goal rather than reaching the goal of the competence.