NO COMMON LANGUAGE IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING TO ADULT LEARNERS: IS IT POSSIBLE?

Abstract

In this paper, we try to share our experience in teaching language lacking of common language at our Bahasa Indonesia to foreign adult learners' class. Most of the learners come from various countries in which English is not the main language, whereas, the teachersare not able to speak or understand their languages. How to overcome this language barrier in language class during the teaching and learning process will be presented and then discussed. We find three main difficulties in transferring the knowledge to the leamers: the problems in teaching vocabularies, affixations, and cultural concept. Those problems are acquired not only from the experience done by the teachers during the language teaching and learning process, but also from the observation of the classroom and interview with the learners. Next. we provide the appropriate method of teaching used in resolving the problems in such language class.The alternatives of language teaching approaches and methods by Richards and Rodgers (2001) can then be applied t_o design the classroom teaching methods. Furthermore, the latest research about affbctive filter by Dulby and Burt (1977) and Krashen (1982) as well as psycholinguistics theory of Steinberg (1993) are the basic considerations in resolving the problems. The findings show that using Total Physical Response (TPR). Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). and Audilingual Method can efl-ectively fix the problems in teaching vocabularies. affixations, and cultural concepts, particularly in the area rvhere no common language is shared.