Are The Graduate Students of English Language Teaching Program Ready To Teach The Undergraduates?

Abstract

According to the curriculum of the Graduate Program, Universitas Negeri Malang, the graduate (S2) students of the English Language Teaching program have to take teaching practicum in their third semester, where they have to teach the undergraduate students. In the past, they could choose and apply for the subjects that they wanted to teach, either skill or content courses. Since the academic year 2012, however, the practice has changed. The students no longer have to teach at the undergraduate program; instead they only have to do Peer Teaching with their classmates. In the past, graduate students were mostly teachers or lecturers of English; while currently they enrol at the Graduate Program straight after graduating from their undergraduate (S1) degree. Some of them are teachers of private courses, some are junior lecturers with 1-5 years’ experience, while the rest are fresh graduates who have nevertaught. Questions then arise: are these students ready to teach the undergraduates? What difficulties do they have in the teaching practicum? What do they hope to get from the course? This paper presents the results of my mini research concerning the readiness of the students to do the teaching practicum, and their hopes and expectations regarding the conduct of the Teaching Practicum Course. Data were taken from observations and questionnaire to 35 students from two classes of the 2014 cohort. Most of them stated that they still needed further lessons, especially in Classroom management and  materials selection to equip them. This is in line with the writer’s observations which show that many of their practicum are still teacher-centered, and there is some apparent difficulty in time management. Some suggestions on improving the curriculum for the graduate program are provided.