OUTDOOR
ACTIVITIES THAT FOSTER THE STUDENTS’ FLUENCY
A
paper
In
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For
Method of Teaching English as a Foreign Language Class
(Semester
V)
By
Ika
Mustika
1452041015
Class
B
ENGLISH
EDUCATION
FACULTY
OF LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
STATE
UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR
Outdoor
activities that foster the students’ fluency
Introduction
This paper deals with the essentials,
objectives, problems, and some
of outdoor activities that foster the students’ fluency and the correlation
between them.
Discussion
A. The Essentials of Outdoor Activities
There
are six steps of human learning. They are experiencing, knowing, understanding,
appreciating, instilling in mind, and using. Experiencing here including activity to events or people over a period of
time that will increase the students’ knowledge and skill whether it is at the
school or outside the classroom with different activities. Activity is a loose
term used to give a general description of what will happen in the class. As
one of four major elements of pre plan, activity has an important part. The
teachers should make decisions about activities independently of what language
or skills they have to teach. It will also be necessary to consider activities
not only on the basis of what the students have been doing recently but also in
terms of the class period itself (Jeremy, 1991). In other words, teachers need
to consider what activities are going to be involved and how to balance the
different activities within the period of time. In general, the objective will
provide a sequence that is varied and does not follow one activity with a
completely similar activity. The teachers are forced to consider, above all,
what would be most beneficial and motivating for the students. The teacher here
needs to be creative in creating supportive atmosphere which is encouraged that
the students are listened to, their comments accepted without judgment and they
are encouraged to share their feelings and experience. This supportive
atmosphere is related to the fourth perennial truth (context of time and place)
which refers to when and where the teaching learning activity takes place
(schedule).
However,
the atmosphere
in Indonesian school is already in common. The atmospheres such as white wall,
brown tables, whiteboards, and teacher desks lead the students to have a
saturation point when they are faced with the same thing every day (Mustika,
2016). Both students and teacher need variety in the process of teaching and
learning. Therefore, outdoor activities
would be a good alternative to whoever finds the classroom is boring.
From all of the experts’ opinion above about the outdoor
activities I would say that the outdoor activities are quite important in order
to get the students’ intention. Both students and teacher need variety in
teaching and learning progress. This new variety of teaching and learning will
help the students to enjoy the learning progress and at the same time will
strengthen the students and teacher’s relation.
B. Outdoor activities and Students’ Fluency
Going outside can serve as an attitudinal “reset button” for
the students. Outdoor provides opportunities that are difficult to
duplicate inside a classroom. The physical
change of pace and place that happens when teaching, moves outdoors is
motivating in itself. By going outside the classroom occasionally, there
would be so many unexpected and variety things that would capture the students’
attention. Currently, many countries have a growing interest
in and awareness of the outdoor environment as a valuable complement to
traditional classroom teaching (Dahlgren, Sjölander, Szczepanski & Strid,
2007; Jordet, 2010; Martin, 2010; Mårtensson, Lisberg Jensen, Söderström &
Öhman, 2011; Rickinson et al., 2004). The outdoor education can be simply
defined as experiential leaning in, for, or about the outdoor. Outdoor
learning is just one of many instructional methods that can be used to teach a
concept and to foster the students’ fluency. Furthermore, based on the command of theoretical
knowledge of learning characteristics, learning requires activities,
repetitive, and should be continually because every information tends to
disappear as the time goes by. Therefore, it is important to repeat the lesson
they have learned with some outside the classroom activities in order to
maintaining and fostering the students’ fluency.
Based
on the English dictionary, fluency is quality of being fluent, ability to speak
and write easily. According the National Reading Panel (2000), fluency is the ability
to read text with speed, accuracy and proper expression. Its components are:
1.
Accuracy: Also known as automaticity, it refers
to the person's ability to read words in a text
2.
Rate: The speed a person reads.
3.
Prosody: Refers to stress, intonation, and pauses.
Commonly known as "reading with feeling”
Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word
recognition and comprehension. In the sense of proficiency, fluency encompasses a number of related but
separable skills:
·
Reading comprehension:
the level of understanding of text/messages.To
some extent, these skills can be acquired separately. Generally, the later in
life a learner approaches the study of a foreign language, the harder it is to
acquire receptive (auditory) comprehension and fluent production (speaking) skills.
From all the experts’ opinion above, I can conclude that
outdoor activities have a good impact to the fluency of the students as the
fluency is required some repetition which takes time. Students spend their free
time out door more than they do in the classroom. Therefore, the outdoor
activity should be given to the students’ to foster their fluency.
C.
Outdoor activities that foster the students’ fluency
For example, in language studies, the skills of reading,
writing, speaking and listening can be developed through a range of experiences
outside the classroom.
Listening and Speaking
v The Urban or Natural Areas
·
Interviewing
the tourists (foreigners) *Preparation: tape recorder, note book, and pen.
*Objectives: It will lead the students to recognize the
foreigners’ nationality and build a relation between human beings. In order to
be a fluent English speaker, the students need to involve themselves to talk to
the native speakers. If the students do not find the native speaker of English,
at least the students can make a conversation with the foreigners using
English.
The students in this case, will listen to foreigners who
work in the city or are on vacation and identifying their nationality by
listening to their accent. They might find some new expressions that is
unfamiliar for them.
Reading and Writing
v .The School Grounds and Environments
·
Reading
the notice boards in the school and practice how to make one.
·
Visiting
the local library and using it.
·
When
they find unfamiliar words they may mark the word and then add some notes.
·
The
students try to make a sentence based on those unfamiliar words.
*Preparation: Pen, Notebook
*Objectives: Reading material that deals with
local places and activities relates to learners own experiences. When the
students are involved in the real activity (where they can create their own
sentences ideas) and with some sustainable practices will affect the students
that they will have a long term memory.
v Rural and Natural
·
The
students will visit a quite places (natural environment)
·
Following
written instructions for individual or group activities.
·
Reading
stories, poems, and non-fiction about natural history
·
Repeated
reading.
*Preparation: Textbook or text
*Objectives :
This is such an effective way to improve the students fluency, since the
natural environment gives the students
positive mind, the students will kindly accept the inputs from the teacher .
They will pay attention on how the teachers pronounce the words correctly and
this quite place will let the students find their errors and enable the
students to fix their mistakes in pronouncing certain words.
Students choose their own appropriate
text or the teacher assigns a passage. The teacher discusses reading
behaviors such as phrasing, rate, intonation, etc. The students practice
their texts several times until fluency has developed. Poems and rhymes
are great for repeated reading. There are three ways to provide repeated
reading experiences: direct instruction (whole students), independent choice,
or assisted method (books on tape). It requires read aloud.
v Urban
·
Telling the directions by a map given.
Students they have to explain all
the things correctly and clearly, if not they would get lost
Objectives:
The students will be able to give directions in the real life.
.
D. Objectives of
learning outside the classroom
Learning
outside the classroom can be teacher-centered and expository, or it can be more
enquiry-based and student-centered. This choice depends on the nature and
objectives of the lesson. Although the teacher holds the ultimate
responsibility for what happens in any lesson, the experience of learning
outside the classroom can help students develop a greater sense of their own
responsibilities towards each other and the tasks on which they are working. When planning learning outside the
classroom it is necessary to match the activities selected with the objectives
and purposes of the fieldwork. It may
be used for basic information gathering and increasing the motivation of
students. A major meta-analysis of 97 empirical studies indicated a positive overall effect of adventure
education programs on outcomes such as self-concept, leadership, and
communication skills. This study also indicated that there appeared to be
ongoing positive effects.
Outdoor education has been found more beneficial to those
students who find classroom learning more challenging (Maynard Waters &
Clement, 2013) found that, resonating with their previous findings, the
teachers in their study reported “that when engaged in child-initiated activity
in the outdoor environment, over half of the children who in the classroom were
perceived to be ‘underachieving’ appeared to behave differently” (p. 221).
Their work aims to support the notion that the more natural outdoor spaces in
which child-initiated activities take place both directly and indirectly
diminish the perception of underachievement. This is important because a number
of studies have shown that expectation based on perception of students is
important for student learning. Students who have a great desire in learning
will enjoy the learning process which makes them perform so much better than
the ones who do not.
From all the statements above, I can conclude that the
outdoor activities are very useful to be applied. It is because the outdoor
activities let the students enjoy the material given that they will perform so
much better than they do in the classroom.
D. Problems
However,
taking students outside the classroom requires careful planning of the learning
activities and attention to the health and safety risks that might be faced.
Another
problems faced by outdoor educators in trying to convince education
administrators and policy makers of its worth may be due, in part, to the fact
that outdoor education is a relatively new area of the curriculum which is
still evolving (Higgins & Loynes, 1996). It is perhaps, not yet
sufficiently established to be accepted as anything more than an optional
component of a child's education.
In
my opinion, the problems above shouldn’t be such a matter. Teachers knows their students well. They know
what kind of activities that suitable for the students. The point is that no
matter whether it is just an optional component of child’s education, teachers
know their students best.
Conclusion
There
are a lot of outdoor activities that can foster the students’ fluency. Those outdoor activities may involve the
teacher in (teacher˗centered) or by the students themselves
(students˗centered). The fluency of the students depends on how often they
repeat or review the lessons they have learned before. The outdoor activities
motivate the students to develop positive attitudes toward learning through
varied experiences in natural environment and the relationships among peers and
students and adults. Outdoor activities bring meaningful experiences that the
students cannot forget. This would be a good alternative to foster the
students’ fluency since the meaningful experience will lead the students to a
have long term memory which is endurable.
REFERENCES
v Harmer
Jeremy, The practice of English Language
Teaching (1991)
v Knapp,C.E.(2005).The "I-thou"
relationship, place-based education, and aldo leopold. Journal of experiential
education, 27(3), p.277~285. In Wikipedia. Retrieved in November 19th , 2016.
From https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Outdoor_Education
v Smith,
Harry (2014) ‘ Outdoor Learning’ in
Institute of Outdoor Learning .Retrieved in November 21th
2016 From http://www.outdoor-learning.org/Default.aspx?tabid=210
v Rocket,
Reading (2015)‘Fluency Study’ Retrieved
in November 21th 2016. From http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading-basics/fluency
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