LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 45 REDESIGNING ENGLISH SYLLABUS OF THE FOURTH GRADE BASED ON STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS (SWOT) ANALYSIS Emilius German Semarang State University E-Mail:Germanemilexcellent@Gmail.Com ABSTRACT The objectives of the present study are to (1) evaluate the current English syllabus of the fourth grade of elementary school by employing the (SWOT) analysis; 2) redesign current English syllabus based on such analysis; 3) evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed syllabus. The present study applied research and development design which is proposed by Borg and Gall (1983:775). The model was simplified into six stages: Information collecting- this was done by using the SWOT analysis and the strategy of taking the advantages of the opportunities to overcome the weaknesses was adopted to redesign the syllabus, Developing preliminary form of product, Experts and lecturers validation, Product revision, Field testing, Producing final product. The proposed syllabus was tried out at the forth grade of St. Joseph Elementary Schools. It has been tested in try out session. The result shows the significant achievement. Thus, teaching English by using the proposed syllabus for elementary schools students can significantly improve their achievement. Key words: Teaching English for Young Learners, Syllabus, SWOT Analysis. INTRODUCTION Recently, there has been an issue of erasing English for young learners program. This issue led many opinions which were pro and against it. Many people didn’t agree with this topic. The chairman of Educational board of Denpasar city Putu Rumawan Salain was one of those who were against the issue. He said that it is a decline if English is erased in this global era. The English class is supposed to start at grade four if it is burden for the students. In addition Putu said that Bali is the world tourism gate, therefore foreign language especially English must be taught in earlier age. Responding many public opinions on the issue of erasing the English for young English Program, finally Musliar Kalim declared that English for primary school is not erased in the process of developing new curriculum. "English is not erased. In fact English has not been a compulsory subject since it was firstly taught in elementary school." Said Musliar to Kompas.com, Monday (12/11/2012). It indicates that teaching English for young learners is still optional. It remains the same with the previous regulation. However, the different is that the government does not provide the standard competence like the previous curriculum. It 46 LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 implies that elementary schools have authority to what and how to provide a good English learning for young learners. Pangudi Luhur Foundation has considered that English is very important for young learners. Therefore, the foundation has put English for young Learners as local content for years since 2005. Today English remains important for elementary schools of Pangudi Luhur. Br. Markus Sujarwo, FIC., a headmaster of St. Joseph Elementary school of Pangudi Luhur expressed some reasons why English is still considered important for elementary school. First, English has been a need for the society. Therefore, the parents have been strengthening the school to include English in the curriculum. Second, the school always provides a better education for the children for their future. It provides some subjects which are considered important for students’ future such English and Kepangudiluhuran. Third, pangudi luhur foundation agree with Critical Period Hypothesis which says that children between birth and somewhere around the age when a child enters puberty can more easily acquire language than post pubescent children. The foundation has been committed to provide the best quality in education especially for English for young learners program. One of the ways to improve the quality of the teaching is to evaluate the current syllabus applied in teaching young learners. This study aims to evaluate the current ILP YPL syllabus and redesign the syllabus made by English teachers. It begins with some theories of teaching English for young learners, methodology, discussions, findings and ends with a conclusion. Children and adult are different in learning. Children learn in different ways from adults and therefore require a different teaching style. Bruner (1996) as cited in Musthafa, proposes a hierarchy of children’s learning modes; enactive which means relying on physical activities, Iconic which represents residual mental images resulting from the contacts with material entities and symbolic which comes later by way of symbolic means such as language. It implies that teaching English for young learners should cover physical activities and use many images to make English fun for them. It is in line with Piaget’s theory as cited in Musthafa (2010). He proposes five points of learning principles of young learners. First, children learn from direct experience and from what they can capture using their senses. Second, children learn from hands- on physical activities such as playing with physical objects or making physical movement and this learning tendency has great implication for instructional design. Third, children’s thinking is embedded in here- and now context of situation which mean that children can easily understand when the teacher explain things which are closed to them. Next, children learn from whole to parts- holistically- using scripts. Lastly, children have short attention span. They LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 47 can hold their attention for about 15 to 20 minutes only. This short attention span has a great implication for teaching procedures to avoid boredom on the classroom. Young learners mostly do like what babies acquire their mother tongue. They say what they hear others saying and pick up the accent of those around them. In this case, English teachers are similar to mother in many ways. Firstly, both mother and teacher talk a lot more than the children do. Secondly, they provide a secure and supportive environment which gives the children confidence to try out language. Consequently, the English teacher are supposed to speak a lot in the class to provide as many words, phrases and sentences for young learners to be heard, practiced, used for communication. In addition, the teachers are supposed to create a good class atmosphere to encourage students to use the language to communicate. Furthermore, activities conducted in the classroom should be in line with the literacy level, learning theories for young learners and the goal of teaching English for primary school. The following are the activities which are regarded suitable based on literacy level, learning theories and the goal of teaching English for young learners. In the first and second language acquisition, listening is the first skill to learn and In order to foster students’ understanding on what they hear, teachers should provide a variety of fun activities for listening. Suyanto (2008:23-24) proposed some activities for listening. 1). “Listen and imitate” 2) “Listen and repeat” 3) “Listen and follow instruction” 4) “Listen and match”. In addition, Slattery and Wilhelm (2001: 23-28 in Suyanto 2008) proposes others activities such as “listen and color”, “listen and draw”, listen and make”. Speaking is the second stages of acquiring a language after listening. In the context of learning foreign language, speaking lesson is a kind of bridge for learners between classroom and the world outside. Furthermore he says to build the bridge, speaking activities must have three features. They must give the learners practice opportunities for purposeful communication in meaningful situation. As the result, teachers are supposed to provide activities which give possibilities for students to practice opportunities for purposeful communication in meaningful situation. Speaking activities include 1) “Listing”. 2) “Ordering and sorting”. 3) “Matching”. 4) “Comparing”. 5) “Predicting and problem solving” 6). “Sharing personal experience”. 7) “Creative work”. Besides, Suyanto (2008:23-24) presents some activities for speaking such as “short dialogue”, “questions and answer”, “games”, “ role play”, and “ retelling story”. Teaching English as a foreign language especially reading skill for elementary school students are challenging in term of how to make the students fond of reading. Suyanto (2008:25-26) proposed three things that 48 LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 make activities for reading interesting for students. They are 1). using picture as tools to help students’ understanding, 2). giving titles and ask students to guess, 3).providing short sentences. Those three points need to consider when we teach reading in order to avoid boring situation in the class. In addition, other activities such as “matching words/phrases with pictures” , “labeling pictures or objects”, “ rearrange jumbled letters to make a word”, “classifying words into sets”, “ ordering sentences in the correct sequences”, and “ guessing the missing word”. Writing is a process, from gathering ideas through to checking what has been written. It is also a product. In terms of foreign language learning, they say that writing gives learners the opportunity to find ways of expressing their ideas in a foreign language. In order to create a good opportunity, teachers are supposed to provide activities for writing skills which can help students express their ideas. Suyanto (2008:26-27) classify the activities for writing into 2 categories. They are “copy/ write word, sentences or short text”, and “write that demand students’ creativity”. For elementary students the first category is very possible to be applied in the context of foreign language learning. Here are the lists of the activities. 1). Copy/write from memory the word or phrase that matches the picture. 2).Write a label, 3).Finish the word st- - 4). Write the names of the people in the story, 5). Write the story in the write order, 6). Copy the phrase/sentences to complete the dialogues. The activities for four skills above are possible to be applied in elementary school level but still teachers are supposed to be able to adjust to suit their particular school environment. A school based curriculum is an operational curriculum which is developed by each school and implemented in that school (Depdiknas, 2006). According to the government regulation number 20 year 2006 article 36, a school teachers and school committee develop a school based curriculum and a syllabus based on the curriculum frame work and graduate’s Standard of content. Devi P. K (1993: 5-6) defines syllabus as the answers of these following problems; 1), the competence that should be learned by students, 2). The material that should be learned, 3). How the teaching-learning process should be, 4) the indicator formulation to reach the content standard, 5) how to know student’s understanding based on the indicator and, 6) time allocation needed to reached certain standard, 7) Learning source needed to reach content standard. In conclusion, school- based curriculum means that both central and local governments have responsibility in managing education. This can be seen in the process of how a school should set up the curriculum. It has to be developed from standard of content by teachers based on school’s context and potential. Syllabus in LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 49 this curriculum is considered as the plan of learning process which comprises eight components; standard competence, basic competence, learning materials, learning activities, assessment, time allocation and resources. Thus, a good syllabus is the one which derived from the content standard and which is designed in the form of eight components mentioned above. SWOT Analysis Rangkuti (1998: 18) defines Analysis SWOT as a process of identifying many factors systematically to formulate company’s strategy. It was originally developed for business and industry, but it is equally useful in the work of community health and development, education, and even personal growth (http://eclkc.ohs). It is in line with an assumptionthat SWOT analysis has to identify company’s distinctive competence; certain skills and companies’ resources and strategic ways that they apply. Thus the objectives of the SWOT analysis is to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of organizations or companies in terms of their skills, resources, and strategic ways they apply. One of goals of this study is to identify the weaknesses and the strengths of the current syllabus of first semester and to recognize the opportunities and the threat of the syllabus that has been applied at St. Josep elementary school. To identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the syllabus, the researcher applies interview and questionnaire instruments. Weihrich as cited in Hunger and Wheelen (1996:231) suggests a tool to reach the objectives of this analysis as it is shown in the following table. Table 1 SWOT Strategy Formulation Internal Factors External Factors Strengths (S) Number of internal strengths Weaknesses (W) Number of internal Weakness Opportunities(O) The number of opportunities Strategy of SO strategies to employ the strength to take the advantage of the opportunities Strategy of WO Strategies to take the advantages of the opportunities to overcome the weaknesses Threat (T) The number of Threat Strategy of ST Strategies to employ the strengths to ovoid the threat Strategy of WT Strategies to minimize the weaknesses and to avoid the threat. METHODOLOGY This study utilizes research and development approach as pointed by Borg and Gall (1983:772). The study has ten steps to follow but the researcher simplified into six steps. They were 1). 50 LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 School Need Analysis in which SWOT Analysis was employed to evaluate the current syllabus of St. Joseph Elementary School of Pangudi Luhur, 2) Developing Preliminary form of product in which the current syllabus was redesigned based on the result of SWOT Analysis, 3) Validation in which experts and practitioners were involved to evaluate the revised syllabus, 4) Product Revision in which the product was revised based on the validation result, 5) Main Field Testing in which the product was tested, 6) Producing Final Product in which the product was produced and proposed to the school. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Results Table 2. Information about the result of SWOT analysis. Internal Factors External factors Strength 1. Combination of government and ILP curriculum 2. The availability of Education characters 3. Help teachers to prepare the lesson 4. The materials are in a good order 5. The competent English teachers 6. The competent outputs for national standard school. Weakness 1. The absence of integrated skills 2. Written in Indonesian. 3. Not fun learning activities 4. Lack of using classroom language in the class. 5. Teacher’s inconsistency in using English at schools. Opportunities 1. More application of Communicative approach. 2. All students are active to communicate in English well 3. Stakeholders will be more satisfied 4. More students are competent in English competition 5. Big possibilities for students to be accepted at favorite junior high schools. Strategy of SO Upgrade the teachers knowledge about government and ILP curriculum which is based on communicative approach to enable them create and apply an integrated English syllabus to meet the goal of teaching English. Strategy of WO - Redesign the current syllabus into an integrated syllabus with fun and various activities in English - Increase the use of classroom language. - Be consistent in using English at school area. LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 51 Threat 1. The absence of content standard in new government curriculum 2. Not all parents can communicate in English. 3. Students from international schools are more competent in using English. Strategy of ST - Create an extra English program to provide more financial support for English teachers and to accommodate students who are interested in English such as creating English conversation club, Drama club, and English day. Strategy of WT - Start to apply classroom language in every single English class. - Start to consistently use English all the time at school(for teacher as model) - Provide a communication media for teachers and parents to communicate. The matrix above gives clear information to the researcher about how the syllabus is redesigned. The strategy of taking the advantages of the opportunities to overcome the weaknesses was adopted to redesign the syllabus. Thus, the current syllabus was redesigned by these steps; 1). Transferring the language into English, 2) Integrating the skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing which is in line with the feature of the communicative approach.3). Providing the various and fun learning activities. 4) Supplying the classroom languages to increase the use of English in classroom. The syllabus was then redesigned and the result of redesigning process was “integrated syllabus with fun activities”. The proposed syllabus was tested in the try out session at St. Joseph Elementary School to know the effectiveness of the product. It began with the pre test to know the students’ condition before treatment. The treatments were conducted in five meetings. Another test which is called post test was administered after the treatments. Then the result of the pre and post test were analyzed and computed to know the students achievement before and after treatment. The formula of Paired Sample T- Test using SPSS 13.00 for windows program was employed. In order to know whether HO hypothesis is accepted which means there is no difference between the posttest and pretest average scores before and after treatment or whether HA hypothesis is accepted which means there is a difference between the posttest and pretest average scores before and after treatment, the researcher utilized the criteria that HO is accepted if the -t table ≤ t test≤ t table and HO is rejected if -t test < t table or t test > t table. 52 LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 Table 3. Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2- tailed) Mean Std. Deviatio n Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 Before treatment - After treatment -18.263 14.173 3.251 -25.094 -11.432 -5.617 18 .000 The output shows t test = -5.617. The distribution of t table was found on x (significant level) = 5%: 2= 2. 5% (paired samples test) with 18 degree of freedom (df) n-1 or 19-1= 18. With paired samples test (significance 0.025) it is found that the t table is 2.101. Thus, the score of – t test < - t table (-5.617<-2.101). Since the –t test < -t table (-5,617<- 2.101), Ho is rejected. It means that there is a difference between the posttest and pretest average scores before and after treatment. The table of paired samples statistics provides information about the mean before and after the product was tested. The mean before the Integrated English syllabus with fun activities was tested was 72.63 and it went up to 90.89 after it was tested. It shows that the implementation of the integrated English syllabus with fun activities for elementary schools students can significantly improve their achievement. Discussion The current syllabus of St. Josep Elementary Schools has some weaknesses. Those weaknesses influence the students’ achievement. The result of pretest shows that the mean was 72.63. Meanwhile teaching English using the alternative syllabus shows the better result than teaching English using the current syllabus. This can be proved by test using t test. The hypothesis test shows that the score of – t test < - t table (-5.617<-2.101) which means that HO is rejected. It means that there is a difference between the posttest and pretest average scores before and after treatment. Thus, teaching English using the integrated English syllabus with fun activities for elementary schools students can improve their achievement. CONCLUSION Number of negative points of the current syllabus caused by internal factors such as the absence of integrated skills and fun learning activities did not significantly improve the students’ achievement. Those negative points above were then the basic reasons why the current syllabus needs to LANGUAGE CIRCLE Journal of Language and Literature Vol. VIII/1 October 2013 53 be redesigned. The process of redesigning syllabus involved five steps; developing preliminary form of product, validation, first product revision, main field testing, and second product revision and producing final product which is called integrated English syllabus for forth grade of elementary school. After the product was implemented, it is found out that teaching English using the integrated English syllabus for elementary schools students can significantly improve their achievement. The final product, “Integrated Syllabus with fun activities” provides clear information of what to teach, how to teach and how to evaluate the students of forth grade of elementary school. Moreover, it provides many fun activities from some resources. However, the teachers are suggested to take them as the references and adapt them based on the students’ need and condition. The next suggestion is to maximize strength points of the previous syllabus. The teachers should up- grade their knowledge about government and ILP curriculum and to consistently use classroom language in every single English class. References Borg, W& Gall, J. (1983).Educational Research: An Introduction, Longman Inc New York and London. Depdiknas. 2006. Kurikulum 2006 Standark Kompetensi Mata Pelajaran. Jakarta: Depdiknas Devi P. K dkk. 2009. Pengembangan Perangkat Pembelajaran; Pusat Pengembangan dan Pemberdayaan Pendidik dan tenaga kependidikan Ilmu pengetahuan Alam untuk Program Bermut; Bandung. Dewan Pendidikan; Tinjau Penghapusan Bahasa Inggris: Article http://edukasi. kompas.com/read/2012/11/23/222106 35/Dewan.Pendidikan.Tinjau.Penghap usan.Bahasa.Inggris http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/ttasystem/ operations/mgmt-admin/planning /planning/2SWOTAnalysisS.htm Musthafa B. 2010. Teaching English to young Learners in Indonesia: Essensial Requirements. Journal Vol. IV No 2 Juli 2010. Available on http://file.upi.edu/Direktori/ JURNAL/ EDUCATIONIST/Vol._IV_No._2- Juli_2010/07_Bachrudin_Musthafa.pdf Accesed on 1 April 2013 Rangkuti, F. 2000. Analisis SWOT: Teknik Membedah Kasus Bisnis. PT. Gramedia Pustaka Utama: Jakarta Suyanto, Kasihani, E. 2004. Pengajaran bahasa Inggris di Sekolah Dasar; Kebijakan, Implementasi, dan Kenyataan( Teaching English at Elementary School: Policy Implementation, and Reality). 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