Basic Skill Of English Language

BAB I
PENDAHULUAN

Adanya beberapa masalah yang dihadapi baik oleh guru maupun oleh siswa dalam pembelajaran bahasa Inggris. Secara urnum dalam belajar bahasa Inggris siswa harus menguasai empat keterampilan berbahasa, yaitu: keterampilan mendengar (listening), berbicara (speaking), membaca (reading) dan menulis (writing), Namun dalam penelitian ini hanya difokuskan pada masalah yang timbul dalam kegiatan menulis, khususnya dalam membuat kalimat bahasa Inggris sederhana.
Data dari lapangan menunjukkan bahwa kemampuan membuat kalimat bahasa Inggris siswa sangat memprihatinkan atau masih rendah, yaitu nilai rata-rata 4,10 setelah diadakan tes awal kemampuan siswa dalam membuat kalimat bahasa Inggris (t-O).
Rendahnya kemampuan siswa dalam membuat kalimat bahasa Inggris ini tentunya dipengaruhi oleh beberapa hal, antara lain: kurangnya latihan yang diberikan guru, pelaksanaan kegiatan belajar mengajar di kelas kurang bervariasi dan kurangnya tugas yang diberikan oleh guru. Dan pastinya kurangnya kemampuan siswa dalam keterampilan mendengar (listening), berbicara (speaking), membaca (reading) dan menulis (writing).

BAB II
BASIC SKILL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Yang dimaksud dengan basic skill of English language adalah : Listening, Reading, Writing dan Speaking.
A. Listening
Kadang - kadang kita tanya sama diri kita sendiri, terus juga sama guru Inggris kita ” Ngapain sih belajar listening?” . Banyak siswa yang merasa listening itu tidak berguna. Wah apa ya gunanya listening , Coba simak saja pentingnya listening berikut ini.
Several years back there was a public service announcement that ran on television. It talked about the importance of good listening skills and the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physical ability while listening is a skill. Listening skills allow one to make sense of and understand what another person is saying. In other words, listening skills allow you to understand what someone is “talking about”. In 1991 the United States Department of Labor Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identified five competencies and three foundation skills that are essential for those entering the workforce. Listening skills were among the foundation skills SCANS identified.
How to Listen Well
The following tips will help you listen well. Doing these things will also demonstrate to the speaker that you are paying attention. While you may in fact be able to listen while looking down at the floor, doing so may imply that you are not.
• maintain eye contact;
• don’t interrupt the speaker;
• sit still;
• nod your head;
• lean toward the speaker;
• repeat instructions and ask appropriate questions when the speaker has finished.
A good listener knows that being attentive to what the speaker doesn’t say is as important as being attentive to what he does say. Look for non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and posture to get the full gist of what the speaker is telling you.
B. Reading
Ternyata banyak lho mahasiswa - mahasiswa Indonesia yang saat berhadapan dengan literatur - literatur Berbahasa Inggris jadi pusing tujuh keliling. Dan bias jadi kita adalah salah satunya. Walaupun sudah belajar Bahasa Inggris sejak SMP, namun tetap saja kalau sudah berhadapan dengan berbagai literatur dalam Bahasa Inggris , jadi pusing. Kalau sudah begini jadi pingin bisa membaca dalam Bahasa Inggris dengan baik. Gimana caranya ? ada cara - cara fun untuk pelan - pelan meningkatkan kemampuan membaca Bahasa Inggris kita.
Make a habit of reading regularly. Read as many English books, newspapers and magazines as you can find. Again this should be fun so make sure the texts you choose are not too too difficult for you. If the book or article you are reading is difficult, then find something easier.
Find an author that you like and read all their books. By doing this you will get used to the style of a particular author and the typical vocabulary and grammar they use. As you read more of his/her books you will find it easier and easier.
If you have a local library find out if they stock English books or if they have bilingual editions of English classics. Or ask them to stock English translations of books you are already familiar with.
Try reading things more than once. Read something and then read it again a few weeks/months later. You should find your understanding has improved.
Don’t try to read “the classics”. Save them for later, start with contemporary short stories. And don’t forget, there are loads of excellent comics out there too.
Learning Tip - don’t try to understand every word. Try to understand the overall meaning of a sentence or passage.
Learning Tip - don’t translate - only use a dictionary if a word keeps appearing in a text and you still don’t understand it.
C. Writing
Kita semua pasti pada kenal sama J.K. Rowling ?.Ya, dia adalah nggak lain dan nggak bukan, penulis novel Harry Potter yang dahsyat bangat. Jika ingin menjadi seperti J.K. Rowling mari kita menulis, tapi, mungkin susah kalau langsung disuruh nulis novel, makanya pertama-tama coba kita tulis cerita pendek dulu. Ada tips tentang cara - cara nulis short story yang asyik.
Writing short stories allows the writer to experiment and find himself. Beginners very rarely have their natural voice when they begin writing. By learning about themselves, through writing many separate pieces, they find those styles, points-of-view, viewpoints, and language that are more natural to them. Commonly, beginners try to write like those authors they admire or authors who have written books similar to the kind they hope to write. Often this style may not be the one best suited to the particular writer. It is also common to see beginners change styles WITHIN books.
1. Burn Off the Autobiographical Urge
A common failing with beginning writers is that they write too close to themselves, producing autobiographical or near-autobiographical work. Though some great autobiographical novels have been written, most creative writing teachers are well aware that the autobiographical urge needs to be spent before the beginner learns that good writing needs to be generalisable. The writing of many short stories usually burns off this rarely desirable tendency and should some of the material be noticeably special it is still available as the basis for a longer work.
2. Variety of Experience
If students are writing a single novel, perhaps two in their first year, though this would be rare, they can, at the most, explore writing in two genres. If, on the other hand, students are writing, say, one short story a week they can try many many genres, styles, viewpoints; they can explore the terse hard-boiled Ford/Hemingway approach, the lyrical styles of Laurie Lee or Dylan Thomas, John Irving, and many points in between. This is not the case if they are writing novels.
3. Beginners Get Used to Completing Tasks.
One major advantage of writing short stories to begin with is that the one or two thousand word task seems less intimidating than the novel and far more achieveable.
4. Quicker, Better Feedback.
It is easier to get proper feedback on a short story because it is a complete entity. Thus, by writing many shorts the student gets repeated feedback and learns more quickly about his strengths and weaknesses.
5. Easily Focussed Teaching/Learning.
A sympathetic teacher can design short story tasks to develop those areas seen as weakest. This is virtually impossible if the student is writing a novel.


6. More Meaningful Cross-criticism
Students writing short stories can be encouraged to exchange works and learn by cross-reviewing each other’s work. Though this can be done with novel extracts, the story, by being complete, being finite, is more easy to judge. Further, where same-subject shorts are being exchanged, it is easier and clearer to understand how different approaches to the same intial subject alter the final work. With differently-titled novels, approach may well be obscured by subject matter.
7. Comparison and Identifying Voice and Style
In classes, getting students to produce shorts has the advantage of compare and contrast. This is obviously less easy with novels on often vastly different subjects. By creating a single subject task, the teacher has the advantage that all students are working in roughly the same area, and, since the initial subject matter is the same, s/he is more easily able to note the student’s individual characteristic set against a constant.<
8. Discipline
The discipline of the short story, the need to say as much as possible in a few words as possible is an excellent teacher. The ability to paint briefly is not wasted but makes the eventual novelist a better one. John Gardner was very keen to emphasise the usefulness of small focussed exercises in which the student could concentrate on selected areas of his art. Teachers can shape and point far easier when the target is an exercise or short story
9. Less Waste, More Material
A wasted novel is for most beginners a wasted year. A wasted short story is typically a few days or a week. Though it is true that theoretically a student could write 52 consecutive wasted short stories, experience tells us otherwise, since, after every story, finite, complete, the student has usually learned something. In the case of the novel the student does not learn much until he has completed his long and arduous task and submits.
10. Nothing Wasted
Novels are rarely honed down to short stories. The reverse is not true. Short stories have been made into novellas, short stories made into novels, and short stories have been made into films.
11. Short stories contain all the major elements of good writing.
Beginning, middle and end, dialogue, characterisation, conflict and change. It is easier to teach for example, the idea of premise/theme on a single short than on a novel. A student can be asked to write a 2,000 word short illustrating a proverb without ever referring to it or proving a statement such as “All men are pigs”. It hardly needs saying that a teacher cannot realistically ask students to produce a novel to do the same.
D. Speaking
Tentunya ketika orang belajar Bahasa Inggris mereka berharap akan dapat menggunakan bahasa itu untuk dapat berkomunikasi dengan orang lain, mengungkapan maksud mereka, memahami serta dipahami oleh orang lain dalam bahasa tersebut. Namun, sungguh sayang, faktanya ketika seorang pelajar di Indonesia yang sudah belajar Bahasa Inggris selama minimal 6 tahun (3 tahun di SMP, 3 tahun di SMA), masih banyak sekali yang tidak bisa berbicara dengan lancar. Jangankan dengan lancar, mengucapkan kata - katanya saja susahnya bukan main. Ada apa sebenarnya dengan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris di sekolah - sekolah kita ? Siapa yang salah ? Gurunya yang tidak bisa mengajar atau muridnya yang malas belajar?
Bukan tujuan dari makalah ini untuk mengetahui apa penyebab pasti hal tersebut terjadi. makalah ini lebih ingin membagikan tips bagi para siswa, untuk merubah cara belajar mereka dalam Bahasa Inggris. Kalau selama ini para siswa belajar Bahasa Inggris secara pasif, tulisan ini ingin mengajak semua pelajar untuk secara lebih aktif mengambil peran dalam pembelajaran.
Cara - cara ini bisa dipakai untuk setidaknya untuk bisa belajar Bahasa Inggris secara lebih aktif baik di sekolah maupun luar sekolah.
1. Ingatkan Bapak / Ibu Guru untuk secara dominan menggunakan Bahasa Inggris dalam mengajar!
2. Sering - seringlah mendengar lagu - lagu dalam Bahasa Inggris. Catak liriknya dan cari tahu arti dan cara pengucapannya di kamus. Apabila masih kurang jelas tanyakan pada Bapak / Ibu guru di sekolah.
3. Usahakan melihat acara - acara di TV atau mendengar siaran radio yang berbahasa Inggris! Mungkin pertama kalian akan menemukan banyak kesulitan namun lama kelamaan akan terbiasa. Catat kata - kata baru yang kalian dengar dan cari penggunaanya di dalam kamus.
4. Kalau kalian melihat Film dalam Bahasa Inggris, jangan terus tergantung pada terjemahan yang ada! Coba gunakan kemampuan kalian sendiri untuk mendengar dan memahami ucapan - ucapan yang kalian dengar!
5. Selalu ulang terus kata - kata yang kalian temukan! Kalau kata baru yang kalian temukan tidak dipakai lama - kelamaan akan hilang!
6. Coba gunakan Bahasa Inggris dengan teman - teman kalian, dengan guru, atau kalau mungkin dengan orang tua kalian dalam percakapan sehari - hari! Jangan takut salah, bahkan orang - orang native speaker pun juga kadang - kadang salah. Yang penting terus coba dan coba!
7. Akhirnya, No practice no progress! Practice makes Perfect! Jadi berlatih terus dan jangan malu!




BAB III
KESIMPULAN

1. Yang dimaksud dengan basic skill of English language adalah : Listening, Speaking, Reading dan Writing.
2. Adanya beberapa masalah yang dihadapi baik oleh guru maupun oleh siswa dalam pembelajaran bahasa Inggris. Secara urnum dalam belajar bahasa Inggris siswa harus menguasai empat keterampilan berbahasa, yaitu: keterampilan mendengar (listening), berbicara (speaking), membaca (reading) dan menulis (writing).
3. Tips to listen will maintain eye contact;
• don’t interrupt the speaker;
• sit still;
• nod your head;
• lean toward the speaker;
• repeat instructions and ask appropriate questions when the speaker has finished.
3. Kita semua pasti pada kenal sama J.K. Rowling ?.Ya, dia adalah nggak lain dan nggak bukan, penulis novel Harry Potter yang dahsyat bangat. Jika ingin menjadi seperti J.K. Rowling mari kita menulis.
4. Tips tentang cara - cara nulis short story yang asyik.
a. Burn Off the Autobiographical Urge
b. Variety of Experience
c. Beginners Get Used to Completing Tasks.
d. Quicker, Better Feedback.
e. Easily Focussed Teaching/Learning.
f. More Meaningful Cross-criticism
g. Comparison and Identifying Voice and Style
h. Discipline
i. Less Waste, More Material
j. Nothing Wasted
k. Short stories contain all the major elements of good writing.
5. Cara - cara ini bisa dipakai untuk setidaknya untuk bisa belajar Bahasa Inggris secara lebih aktif baik di sekolah maupun luar sekolah.
a. . Ingatkan Bapak / Ibu Guru untuk berbahasa Inggris dalam mengajar!
b. Sering - seringlah mendengar lagu - lagu dalam Bahasa Inggris.
c. Usahakan melihat acara - acara di TV atau mendengar siaran radio yang berbahasa Inggris!
d. Kalau kalian melihat Film dalam Bahasa Inggris, jangan terus tergantung pada terjemahan yang ada!
e. Selalu ulang terus kata - kata yang kita temukan
f. Coba gunakan Bahasa Inggris
g. Akhirnya, No practice no progress! Practice makes Perfect!

DAFTAR REFERENSI

http://pakguruonline.pendidikan.net/Peningkatan%20Kemampuan%20Membuat%20Kalimat%20Bahasa%20Inggris.RTF
http://francisxavier.blog2.plasa.com/2008/05/13/pengin-jadi-kayak-jk-rowling-makanya-nulis/
http://francisxavier.blog2.plasa.com/2008/04/29/improve-your-reading-skills/
http://francisxavier.blog2.plasa.com/2008/05/10/listening-skill-buat-apa-sich/
http://www.uny.ac.id/akademik/sharefile/files/06062007134630_ELCR.doc
http://lcc-ptc.blogspot.com/2008/05/meningkatkan-kemampuan-membaca.html