THE IMPLEMENTATION OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

The objective of this study is to describe the implementation of bilingual education program at junior high schools. The research was designed with naturalistic qualitative inquiry. The subjects of this study were represented teachers, headmasters and students of both SMP Panca Budi Medan and SMP Negeri 1 Medan. The data were obtained by implementing participant observation and interview. The participant observation was held to investigate the process of the implementation of bilingual education programs. Furthermore, the interview was conducted to have in-dept information on the reason of why such a process was conducted in implementing bilingual education program. The analysis of this research was by applying Bogdan & Biklen approach. The finding shows that there were five types of bilingual education programs used by teachers in the teaching at both SMP Panca Budi Medan and SMP Panca Budi, namely Full-English, Dominant English, Balanced Bilingual, Code-Mixing Bilingual, and Full-Indonesian. Full-English was used because of the demand. As schools which apply bilingualism teachers are suggested to use English as a medium of instruction in the teaching. Dominant English and Balanced Bilingual were used to give emphasis on the explanation of materials so that it helped students have better profound of the materials. Code-Mixing Bilingual was likely applied due to the teachers concerns. It was because of their unconsciousness. They actually knew the English concepts; however, they got slip when uttering them. Full-English was likely used for new materials and unfamiliar vocabularies. It was aimed to give deeper elaborations on the materials.