Mess in the general Election of Indonesian Government

By Azys Syaiful Anwar

On the previous Month, Indonesia has general election aimed to choose several functionaries who are able and qualified enough to sit in Indonesian Legislative assembly. In spite of this, the significant changes also happen in the system of general election which leads to the public confusion. People have to set up their voice for their favorite candidates which are offered by many political parties. Can you imagine about 33 political parties attempting to obtain voices as many as possible and those political parties has approximately five candidates which may not familiar to the most of Indonesian, especially villager.

Moreover, people are forced to choose candidates that they do not even know. Considering this phenomenon, people need to be clever electors who are actively search for information and studying the characteristic of the candidates. However, In Indonesia most of electors do not care about that. They tend to be interested to the candidates who just show up their service during the campaign session. Besides, some of them are attracted by several artist, celebrities or public figures that look for another job before they lost their popularity.

The most shocking news comes from MUI (Association of Indonesian Muslim Scholar) which issues a ‘fatwa’ (a binding ruling related to the religious matters) to have Indonesian Muslim participate in the general election, it means that Muslim who do not take a part in this event take a wrong way. In my opinion, the decision whether participating to the general election or not is our private right and anyone should respect to it. Besides, democracy in Indonesia is still being a big question to several Muslim.

Another problem met in the general election 2009 is the name list of the electors which is not well organized. Some of Indonesian who is qualified to be an elector is not registered. In reverse, some of died people are still listed as the electors. This is an urgent problem which needs to be highlighted. The general election result may cause several controversy which lead to many friction between political parties.

All the issues which emerge during general election-April 9, 2009- prove that Indonesian general election is not good enough. Government need to pay bigger attention to repair their election system considering election is about choose a leader which directly affects our state destiny.

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Simple Way of Teaching Vocabulary

By Azys Syaiful Anwar

Communication is an interaction to exchange ideas or messages. When people want to communicate to others, they need some tools used to express their mind. One of the communication tools is languages. In this era, English is mostly spoken as a unitary language of the world. Considering its role, English is listed as one of main subjects in the national education curriculum in Indonesia. Students start to learn English from elementary to senior high school. During studying English, they will obtain four skills of English. They are writing, speaking, listening and reading. To help students master these skills, students are required to master the English vocabulary. Vocabulary is a list of difficult or foreign words with an explanation of their meanings. Therefore, teachers have big duty to teach vocabulary to their students.

Recently, teaching and learning process does not happen in a conventional or traditional ways. There are many teaching methods which are developed to be better from the previous methods. Teacher not only gives the material but also stimulate the students’ enthusiasm in teaching and learning process. Therefore, teacher must choose the best method to teach their students. In teaching vocabulary, teacher must be creative to arrange the teaching plan. Teacher may create some activities in class or use some teaching tools, such as games and pictures. In this way, students will be interested to learn the material.

Game is one of teaching tools which can be used to teach vocabulary. Teaching using games is giving students the material through some games activities. The games used in language teaching include some fun activities which can help students understanding the material taught by teacher. The activities in a game must be adjusted to the objectives of teaching. In teaching vocabulary, teacher may create some games which can improve the students’ ability in vocabulary. Teacher can use games as an alternative way to reduce the students’ boredom. Therefore, students will encourage learning in the class.

Teacher may choose communicative language games which have six characteristic, there are: students should interact with other students,

   1. The student should know the rule of the games,
   2. The games have clear purposes,
   3. The context of the activity should be clear,
   4. The students should cooperate with other students.
   5. The student should involve in the games actively,
   6. The student gets special rules in the game. (Suyanto, 2007:118)

The other tools which can be used to teach vocabulary are pictures. Teaching using pictures is conveying some material using pictures. Pictures can help students obtaining vocabulary. Teacher can use pictures as a visual aid to teach vocabulary. Using pictures, students may easily understand the meaning of a word. Therefore, teacher can improve the ability of students in vocabulary. In the other word, teaching using picture also encourage students to master more vocabulary because pictures can be easily identified rather than a word in a sentence.

Teacher should be creative to teach using games and pictures. Teacher is demanded to be active to stimulate students in learning. As the result, Students actively attend the teaching and learning process which employs either games or pictures. The theme of games and pictures which will be used to teach is adjusted to the lesson plan, the number of students (especially for games), and the students’ ability. In teaching vocabulary, teacher can create some games, for example: using puzzle game. Besides, teacher also uses picture to teach vocabulary, for example, flashcard about fruits to teach the list of vocabulary about fruits, printed material or their own sketch.

Reference:

Suyanto, Kasihani K.E. 2007. English for Young Learner. Jakarta: Bumi Aksara

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Nine Ethic Code of Indonesian Teachers

Sembilan kode etik guru

Persatuan Guru Republik Indonesia menyadari bahwa Pendidikan adalah merupakan suatu bidang Pengabdian terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, Bangsa dan Tanah Air serta kemanusiaan pada umumnya dan …….Guru Indonesia yang berjiwa Pancasila dan Undang –Undang Dasar 1945 . Maka Guru Indonesia terpanggil untuk menunaikan karyanya sebagai Guru dengan mempedomani dasar –dasar sebagai berikut :

Guru berbakti membimbing anak didik seutuhnya untuk membentuk manusia pembangun yang berjiwa Pancasila

1. Guru memiliki kejujuran Profesional dalam menerapkan Kurikulum sesuai dengan kebutuhan anak didik masing –masing .
2. Guru mengadakan komunikasi terutama dalam memperoleh informasi tentang anak didik , tetapi menghindarkan diri dari segala bentuk penyalahgunaan .
3. Guru menciptakan suasana kehidupan sekolah dan memelihara hubungan dengan orang tua murid sebaik –baiknya bagi kepentingan anak didik
4. Guru memelihara hubungan dengan masyarakat disekitar sekolahnya maupun masyarakat yang luas untuk kepentingan pendidikan .
5. Guru secara sendiri – sendiri dan atau bersama – sama berusaha mengembangkan dan meningkatkan mutu Profesinya .
6. Guru menciptakan dan memelihara hubungan antara sesama guru baik berdasarkan lingkungan maupun didalam hubungan keseluruhan .
7. Guru bersama –sama memelihara membina dan meningkatkan mutu Organisasi Guru Profesional sebagai sarana pengapdiannya.
8. Guru melaksanakan segala ketentuan yang merupakan kebijaksanaan Pemerintah dalam bidang Pendidikan.

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Semantics Case: Ambiguity Occurs in Indonesian Used in the Daily Conversation

by:
Azys Syaiful Anwar


A. Introduction

Semantics is the study of meaning in language (Hurford and Heasley, 1983:1). Meanwhile, the meaning of ‘meaning’ is a word of the ordinary everyday vocabulary (Lyon, 1977: 4). Moreover, Andrew Moore in www.universalteacher.org said that Semantics knowledge is essential to the study of language acquisition. The way language users acquire a sense of meaning regarding users’ status (as speakers and writers, listeners and readers). Besides, it is also significant to the study language change. It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and effects of style. It is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in linguistics. The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased (Moore, 2000).

Semantics is needed to avoid the misunderstanding or mislead in acquiring a word. Besides, semantics also support the skill of encoding and decoding meaning. Meaning is not only derived from words or sentences but also from symbol, gesture or some action. Each person has different interpretation in defining meaning. Hurford and Heasley in their book, Semantics: A Course Book distinct the term of what speakers mean and what words (or sentence) mean. Speaker meaning is what aspeaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses piece of language. Meanwhile, Sentence (or word meaning) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned. The distinction is useful in analyzing the various kinds of communication between people made possible by language (Hurford and Heasley , 1983: 3).

Semantics which is a part of the study of linguistics are important for the language user. Everyone willing to study or use language, for example: Indonesian, English or Javanese need to consider their ability in semantics. By obtaining the knowledge of Semantics, language user must be able to apply the target language in their daily conversation. For example in learning Indonesian, people need to study not only the literal meaning of a sentence but also need to analyze the aspect of this sentence to obtain a better understanding. Besides, language user has to consider the external factor influencing languages, for example: culture, situation and technology. In simple words, language user needs to think about the context of language.

In Indonesia, there are many people with different tribes. Although there is an official language of Indonesia, each people will apply Indonesian in different ways. For example: a person from Jakarta and Central Java will be different in using Indonesian. The differences may include the way sentences pronounced, the diction used in the sentences and the dialect of the speaker. It means that Indonesian is influenced by cultural factor.

Since the ‘Sumpah Pemuda’ event in October 28th, 1928, Indonesian was confessed as the unitary language that can be used as a connector in the communication between many tribes in Indonesia. During the Dutch colonialism, Indonesian was influenced some Dutch including the formal spelling and vocabulary. Only the educated people who are able to write or read some sentence and master Indonesian well even they also master Dutch. In the progress, Indonesian becomes a tool to chase the freedom. Indonesian music composer, W.R. Supratman for the first time creates a song which can be a motivation for Indonesian. Nowadays, this song becomes Indonesian nationality song.

Regarding to its historical background, Indonesian is spoken even before the Indonesian Independence Day. Recently, Indonesian is considered to experience changes than it is first time established. There is not only Dutch influenced Indonesian but also other foreign languages, such as English, French and some traditional language existing in Indonesia. This factor has big effect to the form of Indonesian used in the daily conversation.

In the everyday communication, people use two kinds of Indonesian; they are formal and informal languages. Formal languages refer to polite and grammatically constructed languages. It may be used in an institution or it is used when people need to talk to the older person. This is intended to express their respect to the others. Meanwhile, informal language is the language used in informal situation. Using informal language, people will feel more comfortable to communicate with his friends. They do not need to consider about grammatical construction of a sentence. They just freely express their mind.

B. Discussion

1. Language Ambiguity

Human is a perfect creature having a complex communication system. In addition, people have more organs of speech which support their communication skill, for example: ear, mouth, brain and tongue. One of communication tools which are used by human to communicate is language. Moreover, language helps people to convey what they want to tell to the other people. People can express their mind using verbal or nonverbal language. In the process of language recognition, people need to encode what they mean to do to be an action, including using spoken or written media and gesture. Considering the usage frequency, spoken language may often be used in the daily live. However, it is also important to reveal the daily language and its components.

People must be involved in their own business every day. Each person has different activities. However, people must make time to get along with their friends. Besides, people are also a part of society because people are also a social creature which cannot live independently. As a result, they need to keep communicate with their society. In the other word, they have daily conversation using daily languages. Daily languages in this term refer to verbal or nonverbal languages, spoken or written languages, etc. Language is a complex system of human communication skill. In the spoken language, people produce some words through a complex language production process. It is involving the process of encoding and decoding meaning. Moreover, people are able to produce words to express what they mean.

People have ability to distinct the proper language used in certain occasion. In a formal situation, people have to use a polite and formal language. Meanwhile, people may use colloquial or informal language in the relax situation. Therefore, people feel comfort in communicating to the other people. However, the sense of polite of a language depends on some factor, such as culture, religion, and situation. People need to consider this matter before they start to produce a language. In Indonesia, there are some unwritten laws ruled in society. One of them is regulate the norm of speaking. People are not allowed to speak a rude or a negative statement related to the other religions and tribes.

Recently, there are some changes in language which are often used in the community. There are many factors which influenced this, for example: the progress in technology, culture, and lifestyle. In some cases, these factors may improve the value of a language or decrease its value. It means that language consists of some values which can be classified as a rude or impolite and polite. In Indonesian, The word ‘anjing’, for example, will be considered has an impolite value, if it is applied to mock someone. It has different meaning or in simple explanation it cannot be understood as its literal meaning. It will be clearer if the word ‘anjing’ is applied in these following sentences:

1. “Anjing, bego lu ya!”

2. “Anjing itu berbulu hitam.”

‘Anjing’ has two different meanings which lead to the sense of ambiguity. The literal meaning of ‘anjing’ is an animal (dog) and the contextual meaning of ‘anjing’ in the first sentence refers to a rude word, such as ‘bastard’ or ‘son of a bitch’.

According to Merriam Webster online dictionary ambiguity means the quality or state of being ambiguous especially in meaning, an ambiguous word or expression and uncertainty (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambiguity). According to Hurford and Heasley, A word or sentence is ambiguous when it has more than one sense. A sentence is ambiguous if it has two (or more) paraphrases which are not themselves paraphrases of each other (Hurford and Heasley, 1983: 121). Considering this definition, ambiguity causes confusion in understanding the meaning of sentences. Beside, an ambiguous sentence must not a good sentence and not well-constructed. In addition, only the reader or listener will suffer an ambiguity. Most of speaker or writer may not aware if they have told or wrote ambiguous sentences. For example: ‘’Sopir membiarkan para penumpang naik dan turun di tengah jalan raya karena ketidakdisiplinnya.’’ (The driver lets the passenger to get down in inappropriate places because of his indiscipline attitude). This is classified as an ambiguous sentence because it does not have a clear meaning. Who has indiscipline attitude? Is it the driver or the passenger?

2. Various Kinds of Ambiguity

Andrew Moore in www.universalteacher.org said that ambiguity occurs when a language element has more than one meaning. If the ambiguity is in a single word it is lexical ambiguity. If in a sentence or clause, it is grammatical or structural ambiguity (Moore: 2000). Moreover, A sentence which is ambiguous because its words relate to each other in different ways, even though none of the individual ambiguous, is structurally (or grammatically) ambiguous. Meanwhile, any ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a word is a lexical ambiguity (Hurford and Heasley, 1983:128).

Grammatical ambiguity often occurs in spoken or written languages and it appears in the process of encoding one of language units whether in the term of morphology, word, sentence, phrase, and paragraph or discourse. In addition, Morphological process may result in Ambiguity (Wijana and Rohmadi, 2008). Related to the morphological condition, for example, the changing of the word ‘bunuh’ to be ‘pembunuh’ may result in an ambiguity case. There are double meanings of the word ‘pembunuh’. The first one refers to someone who kills someone else and the second meaning is related to a tool which can be use to kill (for example: gun). The ambiguous word which is caused by morphologically process will automatically disappears when it is used in the right sentences, for example: (1) “Harjo adalah pembunuh berdarah dingin; (2) “Pestisida merupakan pembunuh serangga yang ampuh.”

The other kind of ambiguity is lexical ambiguity. This an ambiguity which is caused by a word of a sentences, for example: (1) “Keadaan kian ramai ketika para demonstran mulai bertindak anarkis”; (2) “Solo Grand Mall ramai dikunjungi pada hari libur.”. The word ‘ramai’ in both sentences has different meaning depending to its contextual meaning. Besides, there is also Phonetic Ambiguity which mostly happens in the spoken language. It may occur when someone speak too fast then resulted in the misunderstanding the sentences. Besides, it can be caused by homophone, synonymy or homonym.

Bibliography

Hurford, James R and Heasley, Breendan. 1983. Semantics: A Course Book. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lyon, John.1977. Semantics. New York: Cambridge University Press

Wijana, I Dewa Putu and Rohmadi, Muhamad. 2008. Semantik Teori dan Analisa. Surakarta: Yama Pustaka

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/semantics.htm browsed on December, 30th 2008 at 11: 57 p.m.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambiguity browsed on January, 5th 2008 at 07: 57 a.m.

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Violence in Indonesian School

By Azys Syaiful Anwar
May 5, 2009

Recently, violence is not only happened in the street but also in the school environment in Indonesia. Some violence cases done by irresponsibility teachers, such as a teacher from East Java which slaps his students without worrying the students’ psychological condition, emerge as one of education problems in Indonesia. Besides, violence also occurs in the students’ sphere. However, violence is not the proper way to be applied in the teaching and learning process. It is against both the teachers’ ethic code and human rights.

Violence, especially done by some teachers, may be related to the form of punishment used to straighten up the discipline attitude of students. In some cases, students will get a physical punishment related to their negative behavior. Moreover, some teachers without doubt hit or slap their students which do not obey the rule. Besides, certain teachers which do not realize and respect to their profession have negative motive and tend to be a criminal motive, such as: sexual insult, grudge and teachers’ private problems which is blamed to their students, when do violence to their students. Teachers which has main role to transfer knowledge and educate their students have to give positive guidance and education to their students not a negative attitude which is represented by doing violence behavior to their students.

A teacher done violence to his students for discipline reason

In addition, violence is not only done by teachers but also students. Certain shocking news reported on the students’ violence, such as gang fight, sexual insult, and looting, can be a warning for the government and every single educational institution to create a healthy education system. Some students’ violence may implicit in several school programs, for example in the school orientation programs. The lack of school programs monitoring can create a chance for the senior students to depress the junior students. In a state educational institution in Indonesia which is known as STPDN (Sekolah Tinggi Pemerintahan Dalam Negri), for example, senior freely kick and hit their junior for discipline motive, even in some cases resulting to the homicide case. Government need to take a bigger to this educational problem which is increasing year by year.

Violence in an educational environment can be caused by many reasons. One of them is the lack of awareness of human right. People are born with the same right. Likewise, they have to respect to others without considering their status. Besides, to enhance the quality of Indonesia education system, government can be actively monitoring the educational dilemma and several phenomenons occurred in the educational environment and try to find the best solution to solve it.

Video from www.youtube.com

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