PARENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD ENGLISH BILINGUAL KINDERGARTEN AT RURAL AREA IN CERME

In Indonesia English becomes first focus in education system. It had been teaching since elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, and university. Now, English is not only started from elementary school but kindergartens have implemented English as their subject to learn. Bilingual for kindergarten has emerged at rural area for about two years ago. Now kindergarten is the first school that uses two languages in teaching and learning process, those are; mothers’ language and foreign language (English). As we know that kindergarten is the first education for children, so it is better for children to continue in the next level. In this study, the researcher used descriptive qualitative as a research design. The subjects of this research are 32 parents of first year of two bilingual kindergartens. Those are “Shoots Excellent” and “Masa Depan” kindergartens. The data was collected by using questionnaire and interview. The questionnaire used to get parents’ perception about bilingual and their way in developing child’s English ability. After gaining the data, the researcher analyzed the result of questionnaire. The researcher also conducted interview to support the result of questionnaire. The result of this analyze, showed that there are three aspects. The first is parents’ evaluation; it was showed that parents choose bilingual school based on the quality of the teachers. The second is parents’ memory, it was showed that bilingual in kindergarten can help their children to be better in the next level. The third is parents’ impression; it was showed that bilingual kindergarten is good institution because the teaching and learning process is very active and interactive. In conclusion parents’ perception is good toward English learning in bilingual kindergarten. Bilingual kindergarten is strongly accepted by parents in the village. They were aware with better education for their children, it can be seen from their explanation, and they take more attention to the quality of the school itself. It can be seen from three aspects, those are evaluation, memory, and impression. Based on the research finding, suggestions are provided to other researchers to conduct some researchers in some field. May be they can study about the comparing toward two bilingual kindergarten in English implementation. The researcher realizes that this research is far from perfect, that is why some related studies in the same area are needed