ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 Volume 10, Issue 1, December 2021 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE 187 THE ENGLISH TEACHER’S PROFICIENCY IN SOUTH SULAWESI: ITS IMPLICATIONS TO THE TEACHER’S PERFORMANCE Ishak English Education, IAIN Bone, Indonesia Email: ishak@iain-bone.ac.id APA Citation: Ishak. (2021). The teacher’s English proficiency in South Sulawesi: Its implications to the teacher’s performance. English Review: Journal of English Education, 10(1), pp.187-194. doi: https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v10i1.5368 Received: 17-08-2021 Accepted: 09-10-2021 Published: 31-12-2021 INTRODUCTION Teaching proficiency is an important in any educational setting. The goal of teaching is to analyze the students’ need and to drive the students to reach goal. This is in line with Abucayon, Bautista, & Romano (2016), stating that the prime aim of teachers is to help students to learn effectively and efficiently. The students’ problems have many sources. If the teacher could not overcome the students’ problem, it will affect the classroom quality. Especially, mainly the students are incompetent in comprehending the subjects or hard to elaborate their competency in classroom. As many teachers have proficiency but they do not master to perform in classroom. As stated by Özgenel and Mert (2019), teacher performance is a key element in the success of school effectiveness and is very important. Proficiency refers to the extent to which a person thinks that she is competent at communicating (Richards, 2017; Sumual & Ali, 2017). Instructional strategy and personal communication could support inexperienced persons to create innovation in learning innovatively target to create the process of thought and better education (Ishak, 2020; Seechaliao, 2017). Teachers’ proficiency is an important issue to be investigated in teaching and learning process (Garza, Huerta, Spies, Lara-Alecio, Irby, & Tong, 2018; Suyansah & Gabda, 2020) proved that to excel performance should be improved the English performance because it is a critical for English learners to succeed in the science classroom. This is supported by Saruhan and Yıldız (2012), argued that performance is a numerical or non-numerical result that results from predetermined goals. Ertürk (2018) also added that the purpose of performance evaluation is to determine the degree of success of an individual for a job or task and to evaluate the factors affecting his/her success. The benefit of discourses strategies highlights the want to regulate the level and mode of conversation in assembly the language proficiency level of the learner. There is wide variety of studies related to the nature of expertise that desires to be learned and the results of the learning process (Bråten & Ferguson, 2015; Macugay & Bernardo, 2013). Usman, Silviyanti, & Marzatillah (2016) stated the teacher’s captivation and his/her cognitive, effective and psychomotor expertise heighten energy to learn English. Teacher is the main personality in the classroom. Some number of researches proved that teachers and students in case of necessity to communicate Abstract: In this article, it referred to the implications of proficiency to the teacher’s performance in the classroom in South Sulawesi. Most of English teachers associate level of language proficiency with greater powerful teaching performance skills. This research was descriptive qualitative research in South Sulawesi, the participants consisted of several qualified teachers aged from 30 – 40, and they have been teaching more than 10 years, all of the participants interviewed felt strong desire about the implications of proficiency. The data were collected from observation, interview and documents and it was analyzed in interpretation to draw inferences and conclusions based on the description data. The result of this research provided a great interpretation of proficiency and its excessive implication for teaching English, the higher level of language proficiency is, the better performance of the teacher is. It is needed to investigate more about the role of language proficiency to determine the teachers’ performance. Keywords: teacher; proficiency; implication; performance Ishak The teacher’s English proficiency in South Sulawesi: Its implications to the teacher’s performance 188 their thoughts and concepts in the classroom Hua, Nor, & Jaradat, 2012; Mahmud, 2017; Moazen, Kafipour, & Soori, 2016). While, Thompson Aizawa, Curle, & Rose (2019) in the studies explored the utility of the same tenor of academic English courses for not only the direct development of students’ academic English expertise but also their overall immediacy for content learning through second language English. The role of teachers in curriculum implementation is influenced by various factors competence which includes knowledge, skill, and attitude. In another view, a teacher not only knows manage their knowledge but also the classroom and the students in terms of discipline. Teaching is a qualified contextual and textual process and there are many aspects that assist to teacher skillfulness; thus there are no worldly ready for occupancy criteria for knowing the teacher’s expertise. Performance is one of the proportion components that develop a language teacher’s proficiency. Cappelli & Tavis (2016) characterized performance into two kinds, they are objective performance and subjective performance. Having an adequate performance leads the teachers to be more adept at using English to bring out the classroom tasks and prepare appropriate skill the students. During a class relate to the concept of performance of the teacher, the teacher shall be supported by the proficiency. A teacher is a foster communication of ideas. They will show a total physical response, modeling, and demonstration to elaborate the concept of some topics. Teacher’s appearance is designed to formulate the degree of teacher’s appearance in conjunction with teacher’s standard and their ability to appear process standards and product standards of learning (Maba, Perdata, & Astawa, 2017; Mantra, 2017). Indonesian teachers have rather unfavorable language proficiency because in a context where English is mostly confined to the classroom or academic forums, as it in Indonesia, teachers appear to lose their language gradually. The quality has been proven to be significant in improving employee performance (Phytanza & Burhaein, 2020; Taylor, 2015). Language performance should be taken as the most important reason for which a teacher shall concentrate on their oral communication in front of the students. Alabdulkareem (2016) proved in his article that teacher’s trust has mostly focused on teachers’ essence views using self-breakdown mechanisms, including questionnaires and interviews, whereas research investigating whether these trust are conducted in the classroom is restricted. The cultural connections could be a great helping to integrate the students’ academic expectations (Mahboob & Dutcher, 2014; Renandya, Hamied, & Nurkamto, 2018; Tsang, 2017). They asserted that language proficiency is one of the keys unit that build up a language teacher’s professional knowledge and scientific language. While Özgenel & Mert (2019), and Weda & Sakti (2018) asserted that the purpose of teacher’s moral performance value is to predict the percentage level of the methods and practices of the teacher with measurement tools to give feedback to the teacher. The teacher can enable the students to develop their oral language for the sake of having a wonderful performance. Language is used to form a meaning, produce a sound, body language or printed language which encodes and decodes information. The usefulness of sound is to communicate a meaning of language and to deliver the speaker thoughts to others. When the speaker begins to develop their language abilities, the main purpose is to communicate or interact with interlocutors. Spoken language is students’ the prime way of communicating and it is very significant aspects of their learning legal action. It is something that could be implemented to all foreign language acquisition, where one of student’s purposes is to improve the communication expertise to be taken into consideration. English is taken as interest as foreign/second language as long as other school subjects becoming a vital product of a certain language used for learning and teaching in all academic courses. Based on the experience and observations of the researcher as an English teacher, the researcher was interested to know much about the implication of proficiency to perform in the classroom. METHOD This research was qualitative research which applied descriptive qualitative design. It was considered appropriate to know the proficiency of the teachers’ performance in classroom. Qualitative research is a method to comprehend the phenomenon in depth which was based on how the participants in the research perceive it. Gay, Mills, ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 Volume 10, Issue 1, December 2021 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE 189 & Airasian (2011) stated that the design of descriptive qualitative research conducted to collect data, analyze and explain the some data that is connected toward the evidence of phenomenon, it is a way to communicate in learning process. Observation and interview were utilized by the researcher focused on a proficiency levels, they are: accuracy, fluency, complexity. The participants of the research were from the qualified English teachers who are teaching in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The research participants were English teacher aged 30 – 40, they have teaching more than 10 years. All of the participants consisted of 5 males and 5 females with different social and cultural background. The researcher selected participants according the researcher’s observation. The method of the research was to explain all aspects of existing proficiency English teacher. The techniques used by researcher in collecting data were: observation, interview, and documents. Observation and interview were conducted to collect the unrefined data. The data particularly was analyzed by using Thematic Analysis. In qualitative research, the data was analyzed in dynamic, intuitive, and creative process of thinking and theorizing. As the analysis of data is based on the conceptual of discourse analysis which believes on the recording of data, the transcription of data, the selection of data and the interpretation of data (Gee, 2010), the researcher therefore provide a description of the implications of accuracy, fluency, complexity, and capacity and the data reduction strategies that were essential in the analyses, then the description and analyses leaded into interpretation to draw inferences and conclusions to get a novelty of the research. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This part provides some extracts of informants when they were asked about the proficiency of accuracy, fluency, complexity, and capacity to the teacher’s performance: Accuracy “Accuracy is very important because it will minimize the students’ misunderstanding.” (informant#1) “The accuracy will make the teacher look fabulous, skillful, and professional in teaching his/her subject.” (informant #2) “A teacher's good looks are abilities that are possessed with the precision of choosing a word.” (informant#3) “We are able to convey ideas in a simple, precise, concise way, and easy to understand.” (informant#4) “Being skillful in selecting and sorting words indicates the teacher thinks about performance.” (informant#5) “Accuracy influences the teacher’s confidence and it plays an important aspect to the teacher’s performance.” (informant#6) “The teacher has to know students’ ability and level first, if the students are at beginner level; it means that the teacher should use the language by mixing or switching the explanation, so the students can understand what the teacher is talking about. Besides, the teacher should use simple instruction to the students. For the intermediate and advanced students, the teacher could use full English, but in some situations for difficult or new materials, the teacher should switch his/her language.” (informant#7) The extracts above that show that by pronouncing the words accurately, by choosing appropriate words accurately, and speaking clearly and communicating all instructional materials to students, it will make students able to enjoy and comprehend the materials in the classroom and the teacher will look more professional. Fluency “The fluency of a teacher in conveying their ideas will show their performance. So, the teacher should prepare their material before entering to class.” (informant#1) “The teacher has the ability to convey ideas in a simple way but with a wide content of meaning.” (informant#2) “We are able to explain the studies that are quickly understood by the interlocutor.” (informant#3) “The fluency is the image of the teacher’s ability to express his/her feeling accurately and appropriately.” (informant#4) “The teacher whose good English will speak clearly, understandable, and communicatively and it is a good performance.” (informant#5) “The teacher should master their teaching material in order to speak fluently.” (informant#6) “The teacher has to know the situation to determine the style of language used in teaching.” (informant#7) The extracts above show that the teacher has to build up the ideas before entering to the class. It refers to convince the students about the ideas and minimize to the use of fillers in speaking. Using many fillers speaking such as “er…” or “em…” Ishak The teacher’s English proficiency in South Sulawesi: Its implications to the teacher’s performance 190 indicates that the teacher lacks of the idea. Telling the idea fluently means the teacher masters the topic and it is as a good performance. Complexity “The teacher who masters vocabulary can easily convey their material and affect their performances in teaching.” (informant#1) “The teacher who lacks of vocabulary will face difficulties in his/her feeling precisely” (informant#2) “The lack of preparation, lack of knowledge, and psychology factors could hinder teacher’s vocabulary.” (informant#3) “Sometimes, the teacher has many ideas, but because of psychological factors she/he gets difficulties to deliver concepts to the students.” (informant#4) “Because understanding the students’ level will encourage and promote the effectiveness of learning itself.” (informant#5) “The teacher should know, not only constrained by the voice but also the idea to be conveyed.” (informant#6) “Selecting topics / teaching materials in accordance with the expertise will have an effect on achieving the achievement of learning objectives that certainly determine the success of a learning process.” (informant#7) The extracts above show that the teacher should be promoted to the improvement of each individual aspects rather than believing learners able to present to every aspect of language performance; accuracy, fluency and complexity. By mastering the three aspects, the teacher will become plenary teacher. A great interpretation of proficiency language of the teacher’s performance includes accuracy, fluency, and complexity. In addition, teacher’s performance influences students’ skill motivation and interest in learning skill. Thus, the teacher should show, tell, model, and exemplify the teaching and learning materials accurately in the classroom. The result shows that: Accuracy is the ability of language user to pronounce the word. It refers to the extent to which language learner’s performance and the system that underlines to this performance derivates from a norm. The teacher needs to have proficiency to enrich the ability of the students and control the emotions and perceptions of other people. Teacher should be adaptive alongside personality traits based on the cultural and social change, the teacher set up the students to socialize themselves to be easier to apply the rules, discuss the varieties of topics, and share knowledge among them. Bradford (2019) reported the framework characteristics of student’s understanding of teachers, including the teacher’s specialized unfamiliar accents, spontaneous, dialect, and the way of teacher to elaborate their ideas in front of the students. The teacher’s accuracy is used to produce free speech clearly as much as possible. Classroom should become a process of building the basis of language, culture, values, and social communication. Fluency is the ability to manage the ideas in speaking. It will take longer to be carried out by the teachers in the classroom. Fluency can be a rate and density of linguistics units produced, breakdown fluency (number, length and locations of pauses) and repair phonological phenomenon. Rose & Galloway (2019) elaborated in their studies took as conclusion that the challenging performances are the challenges of science of language, and it was always faced by students when the students become negotiating content, especially when the teacher’s proficiency levels are poor. The fluency of English differentiates between stages and levels of English. The teacher’s capacity to choose the topics in proficiency levels affects their performance, the teacher should be able to use language based on the situation by taking into the consideration where, when, the purpose, the social relationship, and the form of communications. Learning system design is to guide to interact effectively and efficiently. The teacher has to know students’ ability and level first, if the students are at beginner level; it means that the teacher should use the language by mixing or switching the explanation, so the students can understand what the teacher is talking about. Besides, the teacher should use simple instruction to the students. For the intermediate and advanced students, the teacher could use full English, but in some situations for difficult or new materials, the teacher should switch his/her language. Fluency is as production model to construct the judgment to be expressed and take into declaration based on the linguistic structure. Complexity is the ability to combine between vocabulary and grammar. Teacher activates prior knowledge related to the proficiency in daily experiences, beyond gaining general and specific vocabulary to combine in the correct grammar. The teacher should enforce to learn the academic content such as science and skills of language, the ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 Volume 10, Issue 1, December 2021 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE 191 teacher also should enhance the understanding of academic knowledge to develop English proficiency of complexity as DeKeyser (2016) believed that complexity could be understood as a production of oral language by teacher or students, specifically, to produce a sound in lexical and grammatical complexity. Language learning and the way of design of knowledge affects the proficiency process. Proficiency refers to how we declare language knowledge and the capacity to produce sound spontaneously. The different performance of fluency, accuracy, and complexity would be result from the proficiency of the teacher. In this article, the researcher offers a specific instructional proficiency that the teacher can integrate proficiency and performance in the classroom. It would address flexible forms of literacy related to science and skills of language, the students would be a support to communicate the skills. The proficiency of complexity is needed to change the form of lexical and grammatical lexicon The role of the teacher is demanded to have achievement in high academic standards. English language learning is expected to develop English proficiency in content situations to achieve higher proficiency level but developing English language capacity needs to give attention for academic approach as the academic language function is to identify, explain, and interpret. Effective teaching models help the students to perform to formulate the hypotheses, manage ideas, draw conclusions, organize the situations and communicate the ideas. Ekperi, Onwuka, & Nyejirime (2019) supported that the classroom atmosphere is determined by the teacher’s attitude. Academic language should be considered among disciplines to guide the students to manage the ideas of texts and tasks. The teacher is expected to give instruction to students to be able to create atmosphere in learning creatively at every stage. The difficulties of this concept could be varying based on vary situations, it depends on the contexts and the instructional designs by the teachers. Instructional strategies for students to education should include sharing knowledge, solution, and consensus ideas. Based on the result, the good performance of the teacher refers to the three levels of proficiency. The teacher should integrate them based on cultural practices. Integrated is focused on classroom interaction to provide cultural and social performance in the classroom. Teachers agreed that English proficiency is a basic to have a good performance, the more language use we know, the better likely to perform properly in the academic subjects. Effective teacher guides the students to classify the vocabulary and manage their brain to recognize the pattern of language. Recognizing the pattern of language is the key to provide the students with access to understanding science. The English teachers are responsible to perform well in the class to influence the students to learn. In the end, the teacher’s goal in the classroom is to facilitate the students to speak English as much as possible in the classroom. CONCLUSION It can be concluded that the variables of teacher’s proficiency are the teacher’s appearance or performance, the teacher’s personality, and the teachers’ language use in the classroom. The better teacher’s proficiency, the better teacher’s performance is. It definitely shows that the teacher’s performance is the most important variable to promote the quality of the teacher. A teacher who has a qualified proficiency gains the confidence, powerfulness and good performance in the classroom. The teacher’s language is important to build the positive perception of the students. Integrated proficiency (accuracy, fluency, and complexity) and performance are an approach to the teachers to teach based on the cultural, social, and educational practices, and become skillful into four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). The proficiency is beneficial for the teacher who is going to develop their academic performance. The teacher’s proficiency is predictor to teacher’s performance. Some students resolutely rely on English language expansion as an important output of product for their studies, expecting to achieve not only the essence of language, but also to improve their English language proficiency. 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