UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS’ LEARNING STRATEGIES AS AN INPUT CONTEXT TO DESIGN ENGLISH CLASSROOM ACTIVITY AT SMAN 8 KOTA BENGKULU

Shift in teaching and learning process from teacher-centered to learner-centered needs more various pro-student approaches.The approaches focus on students’ learning activities.In doing their  activities,students apply different efforts because of having different individual potencies. From these individual differences, they also learn in different ways. Understanding individual differences of students such as motivation, learning strategies, attitudes,   and   learning   styles   is   necessary   for   teachers   to   set   appropriate   instructions.   Students’  differences   in learning challenge teachers to prepare and apply various instructions with the same materials in order to gain learning objectives for all students. Teachers should have skills in classroom instruction for all students and in individualized instruction for each student.

Focus of this study is on understanding   learning strategies as a front line in learner-centered   approaches in teaching and learning English as a foreign language. The great reason as the background of doing this study is to maximize the implementation of school based curriculum of English in large class with mixed-ability learners. Large class with mixed-ability of English language in the context of teaching English as foreign language makes the   greatest   challenge for language teachers to have maximal and dynamic efforts to improve students’ communicative skills.  Understanding   students’   learning   strategies   possibly   contributes teachers’dynamic and interesting efforts to where conditions they apply classroom instruction or individualized instruction in teaching and learning process. These efforts would become practical guidelines to carry out students’ learning activities, and then intensively promote and develop students’ learning autonomy.

2. Research Objectives

This study investigated learning strategies of senior high schools’students in learning   English at SMAN 8 Kota Bengkulu. Objectives of the study were to find out the more frequently use of students’ strategies in learning English and to find out more frequently use of activities in each category of strategies in learning English as a foreign language in senior high schools in Bengkulu.