CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

INTRODUCTION

New Curriculum development has been launched in 2004, called Competence Based Curriculum. In Competence Based Curriculum, teaching and learning English is aimed to achieve communicative competence. Communicative competence is formulated to prepare English language learners to communicate with the language in order to participate in the society of English users. In communicative competence, teacher teaches students to use English not only to communicate  in spoken language but also in written language.

There are five competences which must be developed in communicative competence: discourse competence, actional competence, linguistic competence, sociocultural competence, and strategic competence. The major competence in communicative Competence is discourse competence. Discourse competence means to develop students’ competence in spoken and written Language in a discourse. The discourse is communicative event which is influenced by topic, people who involve in the discourse and the channel used to communicate. Discourse competence can be achieved when the language learners master the supporting competence such as linguistic competence, actional competence, socio-cultural competence and strategic competence. Furthermore, all the competence must be taught by teacher in teaching learning process through selected materials.

From the material point of view, teaching English today is based on Text Based Approach or Genre Approach. Text Based Approach use cultural kinds of text as the basis of material to teach in order to achieve communicative competence where discourse competence the main competence to be developed. Genre or kinds of text is view as the best way to develop discourse competence. There are five kinds of texts which must be taught by the teacher: descriptive, narrative, recount, report, and procedure text. This paper discusses about teaching narrative through story telling as the basic approach to develop discourse competence to achieve communicative competence.

The Nature of Narrative and Story Telling

Narrative has been taught to all people in the world.  Narrative Could be  in form, of story such as fairy stories, mystery, science fiction, roan, apartment, 2004) horror, etc.( Education  It happens when we were in the childhood. Parents or even Grandparent prefer to tell stories to children in various ways to make them happy to deliver kids to bed. Telling story has become a lesson since we we are still very young.

Story telling has become a classic way in teaching attitude, belief to young people all of the world. According to Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) in Deacon and Murphy (2001), stories, a form of narrative, help us to make sense of our world. Even in academic research, they have lately been given a higher status. Stories also have the power to reach deep within us into areas that regular teaching may not visit, thereby validating the language classroom for reasons that go beyond l language learning. Our students tell us and show us that they have changed beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors after hearing our stories. This deep impact makes language learning an enriching experience that students find intrinsically valuable.

The purpose of narrative is to entertain people. Furthermore, Derewianka (1995) and Indonesian Education Department (2004) states that narrative is not only to entertain people but also teach value from problem solving in it. That is why narrative is very crucial to learn by language learners because there are many living lesson in all story.

Stages in Teaching Narrative

Teaching English in Competence Based Curriculum is divided into two cycles: oral cycle and written cycle. Both cycles deal with discourse competence development to gain communicative competence. Each cycle has four stages in implementing teaching learning process: building knowledge of field, modeling of text, joint construction of text, and independent construction of text.

The most important stage in teaching narrative text is building knowledge of field. In this stage, teacher plays important role. Teacher will provide students with everything related to the text that students will listen to. This stage provides students with vocabulary, grammar, knowledge of the story, and students’ experience. Also, in this stage students will have some task or exercise to review their understanding about the vocabulary, structure that they have learned. All the activity is aimed to prepare students to comprehend the story they are going to listen to. If there are many student fails in the exercise, it can be predicted that they will fail to understand the story or narrative text. That is why; this stage is the most crucial one in teaching learning process based on Competence Based Curriculum. This stage determines students’ competence to master linguistic competence. Everything about lexico-grammatical features of narrative should be taught to the students. And it is hoped that the students can master all the linguistic features of narrative text, specifically the linguistic features of the story that the students listen to. The successful of teaching learning process in Competence Based Curriculum is most based on mastery learning of the linguistic features in the building knowledge field. It means that teacher should build and prepare students with the knowledge of story that teacher will tell or by story telling. Most of activities in this oral cycle is presented in spoken language. Spoken language dominates the activities in the classroom. It does not mean that there is no writing activity but it is suggested to use oral communication by direct interactive in teaching learning process. Yet, teacher plays centre role in providing students with linguistic element during the class.

The next important stage is modeling of the text. Here, the real story telling   activity takes place. Teacher will tell story as a kind of narrative texts to the students. Teacher should act like a story teller. It will help learners to comprehend the story. Using gesture and asking questions is required to attract listeners or students’ attention to focus to the story. Because the story is told in oral cycle, teacher must tell the story in English orally. Yet, teacher can ask students’ understanding through question answer and guide students to  understand the story. If the students find  unfamiliar words in the story, teacher can ask other students to help to translate the meaning of the words in Indonesian, even teacher can translate the words in Indonesian.

In modeling of text, teacher guides students to understand the story orally. By having direct interaction during telling the story, the teacher tries hard to attract students’ focus on the story. Teacher’s ability to be a story teller is very useful for students to understand the text. As if the students are listening to an interesting story from the teacher. If the teacher just reads the story, the students will get bore. It is hard for them to listen to the teacher. Also in this stage, teacher examines the students about the lexicogrammatical features or linguistic feature of narrative text that the students learned in the previous stage, building knowledge of field. It is very crucial thing.

An important activity in modeling of text is teacher can tell more than one story if it is necessary. From the examples of the texts, the learners will try to understand the Generic structure of narrative. Teacher discusses with the students and guides them to find the generic structure of narrative. The last activity in modeling of text is to guide student to find the language features of narrative such as dominated by verb in past form, use of material process, focus on temporal sequence, use of circumstances of time and place, and focus on specific participant. Another important thing of the last activity is to guide students to find the generic structure of narrative: orientation, evaluation, complication, resolution, and ended with reorientation. The evaluation and reorientation are optional. Modeling of text and building knowledge of text are the most crucial step in teaching learning process, because it determine whether students can go on to  the next stages or not. If these two steps cannot be achieved by students, it is suggested to begin from the beginning. If most students can pass these previous steps, they can go on to Joint Construction of text.

The next stage in teaching learning process in developing discourse communicative competence is joint construction of text. The students are divided into some groups. The activity in this stage is dominated by students in groups. The task in the groups is to report their understanding about the story they have listened to the teacher to heir friends in group. They try to gather information by sharing idea from the story. Furthermore, in groups the students create their groups’ stories or narrative text by following the generic structure of narrative and use the lexico-grammatical features of narrative. The groups are the centre of the activity and they can ask teachers for help. When the groups have their own story, they go to other groups and tell the story while others effort to understand their friends’ story or narrative. They can help each other in groups in order to make the story perfect. All the activity is done orally.

The final stage in teaching narrative is independent construction of text. This stage is intended to work individually. Each student must do his/her own project. A student must create his/her own story. All students can ask teacher to have a student-teacher conference. It means that teacher will provide student with anything to help the students to create their own text or story. When the students have finished the project, teacher can ask them to tell the story like a story teller.

The assessment is taken during teaching and learning process. Every time, every day, every week, and every month, teacher should have teachers’ note of students’ achievement. The authentic assessment is implemented during the process of learning. That is why competence is mostly emphasized in Competence Based Curriculum. If a student has fulfilled the oral communicative competence, he/she can go on to written communicative competence.

Conclusion

All in all, developing students’ English communicative competence can be done through storytelling. Most of histories in the world are told in storytelling. By having new breakthrough in developing curriculum changes, it is hoped that learning process ill be more enjoyable by the students. The students will learn more about the stories written by famous author through storytelling.

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