EFL Teachers ' competence in the context of Engrish curriculum 2004 : tmprications for EFL Teachir Education

This is a report of a study which was intended to respond to criticisrn of the Engrish curricula used in indonesia which harle been claimed by some as failure to make Indonesian students ready incompeting with those from other nations. The study tried ro po*iui eFi t"u"t,ers' competence in west Java and the implications for teacher education. using a descriptive method, the study investigated proficiency oiEngrisr, teachers in west Java as a rool to asslss theirieadiness in a"ingirr" "rrurlenge of the implementation of the 2004 English cu*iculum i-na its im_ plication for teacher education. The data concerning teachers, proficiency in Listening, structure, and Reading comprehensio-n *"." coilecteci using a ToEFl-equivarent test, whire the writing skiil was gained through a writing test' [nterviews were used to gatherinfo.rution-"on"*ning p-ulems faced by the teachers in the implementation of and their p"ri"ption on the new curricurum. The data were then anaryzed, described, and interpreted anary'ticalry. It was found that the quarification of the majority of the teachers was not yet at a rever of presumably sufficient to imprement the 2004 curriculum successfully.

high school leavers, even university graduates, fail to gain sufficient mastery of bnglish to understand references written in English. I engkanawati (2002) observes in her research at the Language Center she manages that from 286 students-candidates who took TOEFL equivalent in the entrance test required to enroll in the graduate programs at the Indonesia University of Education for the Academic year 2a0212003, only 18J8% of the test takers gained TOEFL score above 500' Hamied (2001a) states that overall the teachers' English competence is below level of adequacy. At the lower secondary schools, there are 42.74o/o teachers with a bacheior degree or higher; 46'91% with a diploma; and 1035% with an upper secondary school diploma. He believes that very often degrees do not necessarily correlate positively with the actual language and teJching competence. Besides teachers' competence there are also other factors which should be responsible for the failure of the English teaching. In his research, it was found that the farther the location of the school was from big cities, the less adequate the teacher's English competence would be. The questions lingering are whether the failure is due to teachers' competence as a result of teacher education training which has put too much emphasis on how to teach but not on what to teach. Woodward (1991) confirrns that two things will be especially important if we are going to train teachers of English as a foreign language. The first one is content that is what information, skills, or knowledge to be taught and the second one is pracess, that is how this knowledge is going to be taught or what vehicle to be used to convey the content. The easiest way in responding to this question, most of the time is by blaming the curriculum. Changing and modi$ing the curriculum might be considered easier than improving the teachers' quality and emending the teacher education progfam. We are fully aware that no matter how good and well developed a curriculum is if it is implemented by under quaiifie<i teachers it woui<i not resuit in fruittul outcome. The cieveiopment of the new curriculum-the 2004 Curriculum, which is now being implemented in schools in Indonesia was meant to rectifu the failure of the teaching of English in Indonesia.
The present curriculum was also meant to answer the criticism of the previous English Curricula used in Indonesia which have been claimed by some as failure to make Indonesian students ready in competing with those from other nations. Will the new curriculum successfully answer the criticism? It is believed that curriculum revision is needed, among others, to Lengkanawati,EFL Teachers' Competence 81 create relevance to the existing demand of the society. Lengkanawati (2004) states that curriculum revision would not be effective if it is not accompanied by other necessary efforts to improve education as a whole. There are soine sectors in our current education system which need handling very badly at the moment on the top of priority, that is the teachers who are the forefront implementers of the curriculum. Many experts have raised doubt about the teachers' competence in understanding and implementing the 2004 Curriculurn, which has set up high competencies.
The implementation of curriculum needs some supporting factors such as teachers 'familiarity of the cuniculum being implemented and teachers' competence. Questions raiseci by experts and practitioners alike are whether teachers as the forefront implementers are well-prepared professionally to put the curriculum into classroom reality? The answer to this will entail necessity to see into various other aspects that woulci contribute to ihe success of the curricuium implementation.
Teachers in Indonesia constitute the largest size of educational personnel, They play a very strategic role in our national buiiding and deveioprnent. Nevertheiess, quantitative fuifillment does not always automatically guarantee the qualitative fulfillment (Hamied, 2001b). Improving teacher's quality is not a simple affair since it relates to and is to be supported by rnulti-dimensional factors. When we intend to, improve the teaching of English in our schools we have to, among others, lift up teacher's competence through a well designed and organized teacher education progmm.
As regards the significant role of teachers' competence in the implernentation of the present curriculum, teachers, of course, should be familiar with the competencies expected by the curriculum. Implicitly, the objective of English instruction in secondary schools was geared to the attainment of communicative competence. In its broadest sense, the term communicative competence consists at least of four components: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence 1(lanale 1983 in Oxford 1990). The latest models of competence in the language literature put forward by Celce-Murcia, Dornyei and Thurrell (1995) rus quoted in the 2004 Curriculum has been chosen to underlie the existing crrrriculum. This model is developed for the purpose of language pedagogy, which includes five components: (1) discourse competence, (2) linguistic ('()mpetence, (3) actional competence, (4) sociocultural comptence, and (5) ttrtttegic competence with the shift of paradigm in that the ultimate compe-tence of the communicative competence is discourse competence.
A better trained teaching force is an important factor in educational quality and efficiency. The proportion of the teaching force meeting national qualiircation standards differs markedly between countries. In terms of formal qualification, Indonesia is better than any other developing countries as most teachers have formal qualifications, as indicated in Table 1 below' More than 85% of the primary and upper secondary school teachers in Indonesia have formal tertiary levelqualification (see Table 1)' 'fhe test instruments which were used to assess the teacheis, competence in English were a T0EFL equivalent test and a writing test which-were administered to a sample of 66 teachers coming from junior and senior high schools in west Java. out of the 66 subjects in the study only 3g were analyzed as they were the ones who compretery accomplish both ihe proficiency and written tests. In addition to the iesiing insiruments, an intervijw was also conducted to selected teachers to gain information regarding problems faced by the teachers, their perception on the new curricuium, and tnrir expectation conceming the content and ways of pre and in-service trainings which could enhance the implementation of the new curriculum. The data were then analytically described, analyznd, and interpreted as they were relevant to issues and problems in the teaching of English based on the20a4 Engiish.

I,'INDINGS
It was found that teachers' competence in the four language skills of rnost junior and senior high school teachers involved in thJstudy had not rcached a level expected from the teachers to be ready fcr the implementation of the present curriculum. close to 50% of the tlachers in the sample had competence that could be categorized as inadequate for the implementation of the curriculum (see Table 2). The average ToEFl-equivaient score llrat they gained was only 467 rangingfrorn the lowest one whlch was 290 to the highest of the score which was 587. In the listening section. the teachers .n the average could only answer 16 items or 35.5g% correctly out of 40 iterns they had to work on. In the structure and written "*pr*.rion section, thcy could manage answering the questions better than in the listening comprehension part. In this part, the teachers on the average could answer 26 itcms correctly or 650/o of the items covered. The teacheri' ability in Reading (lomprehension section on the average was lower than in the structure sectiorr. They, on the average, could only answer 29 questions or 5g.73yo of thc 50 questions that should be answered. The teachers' proficiency in English is displayed in Table 2. The data in Table 2 show that there are only 11 teachers or 28.95Yo of the 38 teachers whose TOEFL score is above 500, ll teachers ar28.95o/ois between 450 and 499, and 16 teachers or 42.l0Yo between 290 and 449. This finding indicates that the teachers' competence is far below the expected cornp"t"n"e. Most teachers are only adequateiy proficient in structure but not iufficiently proficient yet in listening and reading' Overail, their level of proficiency with the average of 467 is still below 500 based on the TOEFLiquivaleni scoring standard, an indicator ofvery probably inadequate proficiency. The teachers' competence in writing scems to be inadequate. Most essays written by the teachers still contained weaknesses in almost all aspects of good writing such as content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and meJhanic. The respondents' essays were analyzed using ESL Composition Profile put forward by Jacobs et al (1981). Content-wise most essays written by the tiachers in the sample showed their limited knowiedge of the subject written and with little substance and inadequate development of the topic.
Most respondents did not use facts or other pertinent information to support their argument. The thesis in their writing was not expanded properly and sufficiently to convey a sense of completeness. The following unedited essay is an exampie of a very poor writing of a teacher in the sample which indicaies iiitie si;'Dstatr,Je ai-r,i iiia,jequaie 'Jevelopment of the topic' My opinion edttcation expensive for examples if we want to enter school we must out a lot of money, although want to enter kindergarden. I think education should be a good not always be cheap or expensive not always to look from the matherial but we must to look the attitude one of school. (A teacher in a public high school in Bandung) Lengkanawati, EFL Teachers' Competence gS In terms of the oiganization of their writing, most essays indicate that the writers are not capable of organizing their ideas and theyiack logical se_ quencing and development. The ideas in their writing did not flow to,build a coherent essay. In some essays, there were even no clearly stated controlling idea or central focus and none of their essays was withouidigression. Moreover, several essays consist of only one very long sentence consisting of more than 100 words so that their essays contain mainly run-on sentences. An example of a teacher's writing with run-on sentences can be seen in the following unedited essay. I believe that education needfees to suport more quality so I can if education is expensive because we need everythiig to'suport education in good qrality as we lmow that everything that we need is expensive too for example. we need some booiu, we need up grade tools or medias transportations too, and arso we need [ood resources or experts and we have to develop the human resources ihat need research to lstow wether the result is fail and nat we have to do that if we want to get good quality ii arytthing we,ve done. So it's logic if we say that education is ixpensiie. -(A teacher in a public high school in the city of Bandung) , The respondents' essays show that they could not use their knowledge of vocabuiary productively. Most of them used limited range of vocabulaf. They frequently made errors of word forms, choice, and uiage. Sometimes the meanings were not clear and very often confusing. The d-ata show that, cven the respondents whose TOEFL score was abovi 500, they could not use the sophisticated range of vocabulary in their writing. Many teachers could not use words in their correct forms with regard to the struciural functions of the words in the sentence. For example in adjective was used in a place for a noun; a verb form was placed in a nominal position; articles were used when they were actually unnecessary, The following unedited essay by one ofthe teachers illustrates the errors.
The education shoud be expensive because the education is very important for every people or every citizen in Indonesia. Sometimes if the education too cheap we considered that the education that the education is lower. The important of educationfor; The in-i, 86 TEFLTN Jottrnal, Volv.me W!, Number !, February 2005 crease intelectual so that the people become smart. Indonesian people that education didn't do with the best, because Indonesian 'cuiriculum stilt be changed. The education should be expensive, should be used mediafoi example computer, internet' many books and so on. I agree wtih the education should be cheap so that the Indonesian people can study very well' (A teacher in a prrvate high school in Banciung) The above examples of essays written by some of the teachers also indicate grammatical mistakes and problems in the mechanic of writing.
Gramm*atical mistakes could be found not only in the respondents' essays whose TOEFL score below 450 but also in the respondent essays whose TOEFL score were between 450 and 500. The malor problems are in the simple as well as compiex constructions. Errors of negation, agreement, tense, word order, wordfunction, articles, prepositions. Fragments and runons which made the meaning of the sentences were confusing were frequently founci in their writing ' cood writing should be construeted by correet mecha-nic of writing' Many essays were written using poor mechanic. Error in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and poor handwriting were found in some of ttreii essays. These .i.orr *id. the meaning of the essays unclear and confusing. Fiom the <iata collected, it couid be concluded that the responcients vefu probably rareiy write compositions, not only in Engiish but aiso in their native language as can be seen not only are they weak in llnguistic aspects of writingluf also in such logical aspects as content and organization.
Interviews with sorne secondary school teachers have revealed difficulties experienced by the teachers in uniiersianciing and implementing the curriouium as rreii as e.raiuaiing aChicvcrnent tliiiie Studsilts ilt iire classruOtn' The teachers admitted that guidelines for the implementation had varied a lot so that selection of which guidelines to implement became diffieult' 'fechniques of teaching introduce in the new curriculum were not yet specific enough for the teachers to choose. This situation could be even worse as mostleachers had to handle big classes consisting of more than 45 studenls with average teaching loads of at least 18 hours a week' Lengkanawati,EFL Teachers,Competence g7 The mechanism of quarterly reports also made the teachers fully occupied by their work. In one of the pirot schoor, the teachers, i""iuoing Engrish teachers of course, there were iwo types of scoring rt;;;;;ring score grades as well as narrative reports. consequentry, Ihe teach*, *".* u"ry busy filling out the forms provided by the schools for the nanative report for every individual student to be reported to the parents. po, il.,. ,traenB who could not perform weil in the tests, the teachers sttouta *so frovide e*tra time for remedial teaching. This made the teacher even much busier than they could manage. other problerns encountered were not onry the ones facec by the teach, ers.bril also compraints raised by the students. a.roJing-io ili. t.urh.rr, their students comprained that thi activities assigned to them were time and money consuming. Another problem admitted bylhe students hal something to do with the learning environments which were not conducive to make the students have adequate exposure to native Engrish speakers. The students also felt that they were.too busy working on f,o*.*or* urrignlents provided by each subject. The teachers were n'ow thinking or aoinf ii across the curriculum. Instead of asking the students to do different type-s of tasks for one subject, each teacher collaborated with other teachers from different sub_ .iect matters in developing rhe task activities for the students.

DISCUSSION
As a result of the^adopted concepts underlying the new curriculum, competencies expected from the learners of Engiish ii our schooLas it is ex_ plicitiy stated in the 2004 curricurum are considerecr to have been set too high. The expected competencies which are expricitry stated in the curriculum include the abirity to communicate fluently and ur.urat.ty rn li. spoken .nd written language by using appropriate ranguage varieties in the form of interactional and monologue disiourses which in.t"ua. o.r.ription, narration, 'pooflrecount, proceciures, reports, news items, anecdotes, exposition, ex-'lanation, discussion, commentary, and reviews (Depdiknar, zoo:;. conse-(r'ently, tlre expected competencies shourd of cou.se fi;;;";;;essed by thc teachers who are goinq,l9 be in charge of the teaching and iearning activities in thc classrooms. when the com*petencies cover ti. uriruf to comrrrunic,te in both speaking.and.writing by using appropriate runguig, uuri.tics. this rvorrld entair the deveropmenl oithe runguug" srcrrs wrrlcr-, are very close to native-like ability. The promulgation of the New Education Law (UU No. 2012003) has been effective since 1l July 2003. This has signaled a new era of TEFL in lndonesia. With this new law being enforced, major changes should occur in our practices of teaching English in schools. This Law implies reforms to be conducted in our profession. Two articles of this Law are related, whether directly or indirectly, to our profession. First, the mandate to establish at least a school of international standard in every province (Article 50), which will in turn require teachers who can teach bilingually (at least using two languages-Indonesian and English), implies that probably half of the teachers, especially those teaching mathematics and science, should be able to use English as the medium of instruction. In relation to this, in Article 33, verse 3, it is stated that a foreign language can be used to support the development of leamers' foreign language skills. Lifting up the teachers' competence in the implementation of the present curriculum is very urgent io respond to the new law.
Referring to the two articles in the Education Law articles 33 and 50, EFL teacher education institutions should then respond timely to this new policy. This is a real professional challenge. How can the new policy make significant contribution to teacher education programs which will ensure that the student teachers can learn how to communicate in English while they are teaching? The answer to this question can be obtained through intensive discussions among experts involved in the teaching of English as a foreign language to specifically outline professional steps and procedures n improving teachers through different types of training and education: pre-service, inservice as well as on-service. The findings above have indicated weaknesses on the part ofthe teachers in almost all aspects of English proficiency. The data has shown that the teachers' competence in writing seems to be inadequate. Apparently, it is doubtful that the teacher would be capable of bringing students to have expected competence in writing as listed in Curriculum 2004. Most essays written by the teachers still contain weaknesses in almost all aspects of good writing such as content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanic.
The fact that the English teachers' competence is far from expected competencies listed in the curriculum would raise a question if it has anything to do with the teachers' welfare. As a matter of fact, when we compare teachers' salaries in some Asian countries, we can see that our teachers' sala-Lengknnawati, EFL Teachers' Competence 89 ries rank lowest with almost one tenth of those gained by their colleagues teaching in primary schools in Malaysia, and one third when compared to Sri Lanka. Korea tremendously exceeds all other countries in this respect (see Table 3). Unpleasant reward in the teachers' career should not impede the effort in lifting up the quality of education with the hope that in future teachers, salary would also be standardized. It has been mentioned earlier that when we intend to improve the quality of education we should first improve the teachers' competence. Teachers' competence would then require standardization as a result of the stipulation of the national standard of education in Education Law No 2A, article 35. Since the national standards of education should cover the standards for content, processes, exit competencies, teachers, facilities and equipment, management, and educational assessment and evaluation, teacher education should respond to this new policy by looking into each aspect of education to be standardized. In this respect, no exception applies for English teacher education to set up a standardized list of teacher competencies developed and inculcated in a standardized teacher cducation system. It is certainly true that a better trained teaching force is an important l'actor in maintaining educational quality and efficiency especially in the implementation of a curriculum in relation to the quality of learning outcome. Therefore, as teachers play a significant role in implementing the curriculum, their competence becomes a crucial factor in making the implementation efforls successful.
Another problem encountered is not directly faced by the teachers but has something to do with the students. According to the teachers interviewed, their students complained that the activities assigneci to them were time and money consuming. The students basically reflect typical Indonesian learners with specific characteristics, They are not used to working hard in their learning process. Lengkanawati (i996) in her research report describes that almost 90o/o of her respondents admit that they will work for their study only when they ha','e tc face tesls. The findings above has shown data describing insufficient proficiency in English among school teachers. To respond to this particular issue there is a need of all existing teacher education institutions t0 set up standards within their institutions that cover standards in the teaching learning process, student assessment, learner characteristic recognition, teachers' English language proficiency, and TEFL professionalism. It also seems to be imperative as well that involvement of a greater number of teachers in many different types of in-service training in the district level and sub-district level take place and be managed in a professional manner.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
In order to improve the students' ability to communicate in English as prescribed in the curriculum, they have to be exposed to the English textthe spoken and written language that are developed to achieve different communicative purposes. Therefore we need teachers who can totally implement the new curriculum in order to facilitate the development of discourse competence.
To materialize the expectation mentioned above, teachers' in-service training should be designed to cater to a gleater number of EFL teachers by offering different types of traiiring in the district level and even in the subdistrict level. The training should be tailored to, first of all, facilitate the teachers to understand the new curriculum well so that they can make use 01: the curriculum to enhance and strengihen their teaching activities. Lengkanawati,EFL Teachers' Competence 9l It could also be concluded that the problems encountered in the implementation level could also be due to the level of insufficienl proficiency of the teachers, The data indicated that most teachers involved in this research were very weak in listening and writing ability. Therefore the training and education of the teachers should include materials and activities that will improve the teachers' competence in the four language skills as well as the professional skill ofhow to assist the students in developing those skills.
Because the teachers' difficulty also took place in the aspect ofevaluation, the training and education of teachers should also cover the material to help teachers get familiar with specific assessment types as recommended by the new curriculum such as portfolio assessment. portfolio assessment is considered by most teachers not effectively and efficiently applicable yet in the Indonesian contexts considering the big classes in the secondary school level in Indonesia and the heavy teaching loads ofthe teachers. Last but not least, to improve the quality of English education in Indonesia, the teachers' competence could also be improved by a more competitive and selective teacher recruitment process. In other words the recruitment mechanism should be reviewed and reassessed in a professional fashion. only teacher candidates with proficient English could be hired to become English teachc rs.