ENGLISH TEACHERS’ CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES IN BUILDING LEARNERS’ SPEAKING SKILLS DURING MERDEKA CURRICULUM IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

This research answers the challenges and strategies faced by teachers in creating an effective and active learning environment, especially within the Merdeka Curriculum framework where teachers act as facilitators to help students achieve learning goals. This emphasizes the need for effective learning strategies to support academic achievement. The main aim is to explore the challenges and strategies of teaching English in junior high schools using the Merdeka curriculum. This research uses qualitative methods with data collection carried out through interviews and observations covering one junior high school in Bojonegoro for the 2023-2024 academic year. Data will be analyzed by means of data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions/verification. The challenges and strategies faced by teachers are definitely different in each curriculum. For this reason, researchers will explain the results of teacher challenges and strategies, especially in the current merdeka curriculum. The findings highlight five main challenges: teaching methods, mother tongue interference, student motivation, vocabulary deficiencies, and learning materials. To overcome challenges teachers use various strategies, including using cooperative learning, group discussion strategies, direct method, demonstration strategy, practice and exercise, using a communication strategy and using the question-answer relationship (QAR).