Reflective Thinking Journal 3 Integrating skills in High School KTSP Curriculum Rohib Adrianto Sangia (137835102), Kemenag class,

, rohib_sangia@yahoo.com It has been believed the paradigms of four language skills in teaching and learning language. The four language skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In every times teaching English, especially for listening skills, I always introduce this concept to my student, this is to make them aware what kind of skill they deal with in the class. From that, hopefully, they can understand, and become a motivation to them in learning language and English particularly. The four skills of language, I think as they become a natural cycle in mastering a language. Its like a baby who gets first language acquisition. It starts when a baby doing listening as his receiving sounds the spoken language, for months and several years, he will be trying to imitate the sounds into small words even to sentences. When he trying to speaks, means he is trying to produce what he receive before. Time after time, the growing of intelligence, give the child not only dealing with oral cycle (the integration of listening and speaking), but he goes to transcript of the language. The transcript of the language or reading material, become another media besides the sounds, it is more structured and containing system. Reading here is process of receiving the information. Finally, after receiving many things from reading, this child is learning how to write as the ultimate or final part of skills From some the story about first language acquisition above, it seems to be clear the concept of receive-and-produce in language performance from human being. Brown (2006:232) classifies the forms of human performance in language. They are productive performance which are oral and written and the receptive performance which are aural (auditory) and reading. It means that, there are 2 pairs of skills, listening and speaking, also reading and writing. It is natural, that in the class, the learners could be trying one skills, but also another skills, for example, when listening in the listening material, as receptive performance, the student can try to imitate what he listen then, the process of speaking performance in the same time exist in the listening class. This kind of reality we may say with integration of skills in learning process. In the second language learning there is a new trend of approach, which are the skills is not separated, but they are presented in the class in the same time. Integrated Skills Approach, according to Su (2007:29) can help the student in increasing communicative skill, it is replace old approach which are skill-oriented, and also it can give the meaningful and functional learning process. It implies that integrated skills Approach basically is made more for practical English, such as English for special purpose. These reasons are making sense with Brown (2006:233) excuse in suggesting integrated skills learning that the old day teaching process is focused on form, that it was wasting time, expensing a lot of resources and also making the classes are not integrated causing the difficulty in higher students.

Kam and Wong (In Su, 2007:29) expose that The implementation in integrating skills in English teaching for the second or foreign language students has been conducted in East Asia countries. Even more, Su (2007:29) reveals that Malaysia and Singapore have asserted Integrating of the four skills can be achieved through the thematic approach. The problem arise, about my country, how the policy of English curriculum of Indonesia concerned with this issue. With my experience in the field, I do believe that curriculum of English subject in Indonesia have given the space to the teacher in applying the integration of four skills. According to Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan (2006:123), the orientation of English learning in Senior High School level is communicative and discourse purpose. Thus, the understanding of communicative ability in here means the students are able to understand the recent development and accessing the information about the global current issues that provided in English. Not only to accessing the global information, but also to response by expressing the idea in spoken or written media by using English. This purpose shows that there is integrating concept in the curriculum, that give some space to the teachers in exploring of applying integrated of skills in teaching English. The purpose of the curriculum has explained the orientation about the learning purpose. Going to the content of the curriculum, we can see almost all material is related in each skill. The genre based text contributes to give opportunities in teaching a material in different skills that can be integrated in one time. For example, Narrative genre in every grade, its Kompetesi Dasar provide the four skills course, from listening monolog text, responding things with narrative speech, reading the narrative material, and finally producing by write some stories in narrative structure. This kind of reality seems linear with Grellet (1981:8) claims that it is important to link different skills through reading activities. Finally after all, Integrating the four skills in teaching, practically is very useful, functional, and meaningful in classroom activities, rather that isolating the learners in one skill class. From the explanation in advance, KTSP has answering the problem in improving the students skills by providing space that can be used to the teacher in integrating the four skills. It depends for the teachers in planning the classroom activities that can accommodate multi-skills learning in their classroom.

References Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan. 2006. Standar Isi Untuk Satuan Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah : Standar Kompetensi dan Kompetensi Dasar SMA/MA. Jakarta: Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan. Brown, H. Douglas. 2006. Principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed.). New York: Longman. Grellet, Francoise. 1981. Developing Reading Skills: A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises. No. Su, Ya-Chen. 2007. Students changing views and the integrated-skills approach in Taiwans EFL college classes. Asia Pacific Education Review Vol. 8 No. 1, 27-40.