An analysis on english teaching methods in the teletubbies and the snow film

ABSTRACT

Teaching is a system of actions, which is presented differently from culture to culture (Macmillan and Nelson,1968:13). However, according to Larsen (1986:٧11 )و the attention to the needs of students - teachers practice, especially English was still little، The materials given still do not directly touch the students’ needs. Therefore, Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport developed the program, called the Teletubbies series. According to them, the Teletubbies’ teaching and learning activities were based on the children’s personal experience and mental development. Indeed, the existence of the Teletubbies series, which helped the children language development, was still debatable. Some parents claimed that Teletubbies series was dangerous for their children’s language development.

Based on the background above, the writer conducted a research by stating three research problems as follow. Firstly, what are the language teaching methods used in the Teletubbies and the Snow Film? Secondly, What are the language teaching Designs used in the Teletubbies and the Snow Film? And thirdly, why are those designs applied in the Teletubbies and the Snow Film? These problems were aimed to know the kinds of language teaching methods used in the Teletubbies and the Snow Film, the language teaching designs and also the reasons of applying those designs. The specifications of the methods were only Audio-lingual Method and Total Physical Response. Meanwhile the designs were only focused on the objectives, syllabus, teaching and learning activities, teacher role, leamer role, and the instructional materials.

After analyzing the data, the writer found that the Teletubbies and the Snow Film had fulfilled two kinds of language teaching methods, the Audio- lingual Method and the Total Physical Response. Both methods were analyzed deeply from their designs. The Teletubbies and the Snow Film’s objectives was mainly to help the children’s development on the language and mental, as fun as possible. The syllabus of the Teletubbies and the Snow Film was grammatical or structure-based syllabus, which mesh with the vocabulary syllabus. The Teletubbies and the Snow Film used drills, music, real object and culture in the teaching and learning activities. The audio-visual aids were used to instruct the materials, it gave the different role for the teacher and leamer. The teacher was the program itself, which was rolled to be a conductor, a model and an instructor. Whereas, the learners were the viewers who were rolled to listen, repeat and give the responses correctly.

The writer suggested to the programmers to create the program, which contains education, such as: science, language, etc. Furthermore, for the parents and teachers, they should always use the time they had to guide the children whenever they watched television. The writer also suggested to the next researcher to conduct research from the other area of language study.