THE CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTATION OF DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

Even though each student has a unique learning style, aptitude, and interest, most English language teachers employ a single teaching method for all their pupils. There are students who have low, medium, or high cognitive ability. There are also students who have interest in art, science, sport, language, or many others. There are students who have visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learning styles. The diversity of students needs a learning strategy to accommodate in the class. Differentiated learning strategy is one of the strategies offered by a Kurikulum Merdeka to accommodate the differences that exist in the students. The study focused on challenging aspects in the implementation of differentiated learning strategies in English language teaching. The study used systematic review of 100 articles collected and sourced from Google Scholar to answer research questions. This study suggests that the challenges can be overcome by some strategies, namely 1) giving teachers plenty of time to plan and design their teaching, 2) giving students clear instruction before learning activity, 3) using group differentiation so that they can work independently in groups, 4) making a program that can increase teachers’ teaching skill by sharing activity from experienced teachers who have conducted differentiated learning strategies. 5) making a program that can increase teachers’ teaching skill by sharing activity from experienced teachers who have conducted differentiated learning strategies. In implementing a differentiated learning strategy, the teacher encountered challenges associated with students' participation, large number of students, lack of time for planning, the skills of managing the classroom when implementing differentiated learning strategy, limited knowledge in using media and methods, and assessing students' differences.