Teachers Conception in Teaching English in Indonesia

The teachers perception in teaching practice impact to students learning activities. Teachers
perception influence by their experience in learning or teaching in past experience, knowledge
that their got during college and environment around. Kennedy (1997: 7) states, "One of the most
difficult beliefs to be changed for teachers are those formed during childhood, which is while
they themselves are students in school observing their teachers and envisioning the kind of
teachers they themselves would be". In this paper, I discuss about teacher perception on teaching
english in Indonesia.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNER

During six years learn english in high school, for me english is learn about memorizing
vocabulary and set grammars rules. The ability to speak English itself is divided into 4 parts,
namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The part that I remember in learning English is
reading. Usually the teacher gives assignments to read and answer questions. First the students
are assigned to translate reading passages still remember that I used to read some passages,
translate them into Indonesian, and then memorize the new words in both English and
Indonesian. When I could translate a passage into Indonesian, it was easier for me to answer
the reading comprehension questions that followed. However, since I had to find the meanings
of the new words in a bilingual dictionary almost without guidance, I often missed the right
definitions. It's a problem in teacher conception in teaching language that focus on teaching
language is memories words or vocabulary. To make clear, this paper discuss issue about
teacher conception in teaching English as a teaching vocabulary.

THE IMPORTANT OF TEACHING VOCABULARY

Vocabulary can be defined as '' words we must know to communicate effectively; words in
speaking (expressive vocabulary) and words in listening (receptive vocabulary)'' (Neuman &
Dwyer, 2009, p. 385). Hornby (1995) defines vocabulary as ''the total number of words in a
language; vocabulary is a list of words with their meanings”. While Ur (1998)states:
“Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a
new item of vocabulary may be more than just a single word: for example, post office, and
mother-in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea. A useful
convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary "items" rather than "words".

From defenition above can be concluded that vocabulary is a number of words that convey
meaning. That is the reason why it is important to learn vocabulary.

VOCABULARY TEACHING AND THE DICTIONARY

There is a large amount of research on the use of the dictionary for language learning,
especially reading skill, and the results vary. However, there are two important points
highlighted in most research. The first is the role of the dictionary and the second is the use of
context in EFL learning. Luppescu and Day (1993) found out that learners comprehend better
when using dictionary while reading but, as a consequence, need longer time to read. McCreary
and Dolezal (1999) found that the use of dictionary expands the reading time compared to
context use only, but learners' comprehension results are not significantly different because
both the dictionary and context resources are not used effectively by students.

Commonly, there are several techniques concerning the teaching of' vocabulary. However,
there are a few things that have to be remembered by most English teachers if they want to
present a new vocabulary or lexical items to their students. It means that the English teachers
want students to remember new vocabulary .Then, it needs to be learnt, practiced, and revised
to prevent students from forgetting.Techniques employed by teachers depend on some factors,
such as the content, time availability, and its value for the learners (Takač, 2008). This makes
teachers have some reasons in employing certain techniques in presenting vocabulary.In
presenting one planned vocabulary item, the teacher usually combined more than one
technique, instead of employing one single technique. Teachers, furthermore, are suggested to
employ planned vocabulary presentation as various as possible for example using object and
drawing.

But in the field and based on my experience the teaching of vocabulary still abstract, such just
write down the words and translation, students will remember in short time compared with
using object or drawing. So teachers need new techniques in teaching vocabulary