English Teaching in Elementary School: Parents’
Expectation versus Reality
Agustinus Ngadiman
Davy Budiono
Theories on Second Language
Acquisition suggest that a foreign language should be taught to children of
young age because every individual possesses a Language Acquisition Device,
regardless of their age (Chomsky, 1962). Annenberg (Krashen,
1988: 72) claimed that children are biologically capable to learn a language
easily due to the elasticity nature of their brain. This elasticity will stop
once the lateralization process takes place in a time when children usually
begin to enter their puberty period. In accordance to the 1994 National
Curriculum, English has been formally introduced to students of Elementary
School. Now, at the dawn of the implementation of Competence Based Curriculum,
elementary schools are reformulating their English syllabuses and materials to
respond to parents’ expectations. This paper intends to describe these
expectations along with what the schools have done to respond these
expectations based on a survey conducted on a number of elementary schools in
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Ngadiman, A., & Budiono, D. (2004, February). English teaching
in elementary school: Parents’ expectation versus reality. Paper presented
at the national conference on Teaching English to Young Learners: Why and How, Bandung, Indonesia.
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