From the past to the present time, the problem around the students at school is not yet shifted. At every period, there is always a problem about students, including missing classes, being reluctant to learn, being dropped out, and those who prefer working to completing their study. Moreover, there are also stories about teachers who are heavy-handed and unfair to their students, or teachers who deliver uninteresting presentation, or teachers who assess their students not in accordance with the students’ hard work.
All of these problems demonstrate inharmony between the needs of the students and those of the teachers. In fact as adults and teachers, they should have been more knowledgeable and can accommodate the students’ needs, not only their intellectual aspects but also their needs as youth in their developmental age. By understanding their students, the teachers are expected to be able to better teach and communicate with their student so that they can create learning and school atmospheres convenient for their students and can reduce the problems as faced by the teachers and the students in their school. Therefore, the teachers of Junior High Schools (SMP) should understand the characteristics of the students aged 12 – 16 or often called the youth.
The youth have unique characteristics. They are no longer children but not yet adults. In their age period, the youth are looking for self-identity, so some of them often look childish but some others want to be treated as adults. This is influenced by the surrounding environment they consider more suitable for them as a reference, than their teachers or parents. This often causes the problems for the youth so that this becomes a challenge for adults, including teachers.
One of the youth’s needs is that they want other people to listen to them. The awareness to listen to other people is often ignored by the adults so the youth are more interested in their environment and peers. It is a good opportunity for teachers, being adults having some great influence to the youth, to approach their students by listening to them as one of the effective and empathetic communicative strategies.
If we are willing to listen, the students can help us achieve what we want in English language learning including motivating them to be more interested in learning English, because the youth can propose ideas about how to make English language learning to be more interesting.
Adaptation : From DBE3 handout