-Teachers' knowledge of the characteristics of their students, including English language young learners is important in supporting successful learning. This paper discusses teachers' knowledge of English learners in Jambi city of Indonesia. Thirteen secondary-trained EFL teachers teaching English to children at nine selected primary schools in Jambi were interviewed for data collection. A thematic data analysis conducted revealed that these teachers recognised several specific characteristics of primary school children that underlined their teachings such as innocence, curiosity in learning, limited attention span, and active user of English.Few themes emerging from responses of the participants relate to Indonesian cultural values, and others described characteristics of child's development.

This study examined the development of English Education students' core competencies based on lecturers' intsructional practice report. The core competencies in this research include two domain: soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills and hard skills are categorized into sub-domain. Self evaluation questionnaire using likert scale 1 to 5 responses were distributed to 30 lecturers, and 23 returned. The interpretation of mean score was catagorized into five level; very low, low, medium, high and very high. The findings showed that lecturers rated their instructional practices in developing studens' soft skills, and hard skills, and in overall core competencies were at high level. In subskills of soft skills showed that instructional practices in term of communication skills, learning how to learn skills, problem solving skills and working with others were rated at high level, while IT skill and numeracy skills were practiced at medium level. It is assumed that the level of instructional practices of core competencies will impact on unsatisfied level of students' core competencies output. This study suggested that faculty and department should take a role in implementation of instructional practice based on students core competencies development.

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