ELT in Indonesia: What culture should be taught?

This paper reports on a study of a common educational problem in Southeast Asian countries, namely, what culture should be taught in ELT. As a result of globalization, English has become the lingua franca in Southeast Asian region. The importance of English has been widely accepted by educators and policy makers in Southeast Asian countries. They are working hard to improve their ELT in order to be more competitive in their economic development. The recent economic and political crisis that hit most countries in this region has created a more challenging task for their government and English teachers to improve the current ELT practices.

Most countries in Southeast Asian region have a history of colonization by the western powers regardless of English-speaking or non-English-speaking countries. This historical background has a strong impact on the current government’s policies and teachers’ attitude towards ELT in those countries. For example, Brunei Darussalam adopts a dwibahasa (Dual language or bilingual) policy (Martin & Abdullah, 2003), Cambodia has intensively trained and re-trained its English teachers (Pit & Roth, 2003), Myanmar adopts English as the medium of instruction for science and economic subjects in schools and universities (Myo Myint & Poe Poe, 2003), Thailand introduces English as early as primary one (Wongsothorn, Hiranburana, & Chinnawongs, 2003), Vietnam has developed English textbooks that are appropriate for Vietnamese (Nguyen, 2003).

The case of ELT in Indonesia, on the other hand, is different from her neighboring countries. Her history of ELT span over more than fifty years since her independence from the Dutch in 1945. In the last decade, its practices have shifted from a traditional way of learning to a new direction, namely, from acquisition of linguistic forms to enhancing communicative competence. The government has put a great effort to improve ELT through the national curriculum innovation and policy change. However, despite of some progress, ELT is still considered not a success (Dardjowidjojo, 2003).

This paper includes both theoretical exploration and empirical investigation. In the theoretical level, a critical review was made on the basis of the history of ELT in Indonesia. The analysis reveals a circular trilogy: resistance-reluctance-revision on its ELT. The dichotomy of globalization and localization is the main problem behind Indonesia government’s decision in planning and implementing its policy. The important question that arises is what culture should be taught to Indonesian learners of English. Its vast diversity of cultures as well as the history of ELT in this archipelago needs to be taken into account in deciding what “English” culture needs to be taught.

In the practical level, this paper identifies the problems and difficulties on English education that emphasize more on the “English” culture through a field investigation and extensive literature study. A qualitative approach has been used to investigate English teacher trainer’, teacher’ and students’ attitude towards the recent English curriculum reform in Indonesia. This paper argues that ELT in Indonesia needs to include both local as well as global cultural contents with more emphasis given to the former. Local culture contents to foster nationalism, and global culture to enhance communicative competence.

The study is of a significant contribution to non-English speaking countries in this region, especially Indonesia. The goal of this study is not just a matter of taking a limited view of ELT structure but more importantly allowing local form of cultural tradition to be described. The findings of this research have implications for improving ELT practices, teacher training, and curriculum development in most non-English speaking countries in Southeast Asia.

Reference

Dardjowidjojo, S. (2003). English teaching in Indonesia. In Soekamto, K. E. (Ed.) Rampai bahasa, pendidikan, dan budaya: Kumpulan esai Soenjono Dardjowidjojo (pp. 83-92). Jakarta: Yayasan obor Indonesia.

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Nguyen, X. V. (2003). English language teaching in Vietnam today: Policy, practice and constraints. In Ho. W. K. and Wong, R. Y. L. (Eds.) English language teaching in East Asia today: Changing policies and practices (pp. 455-462). Singapore: Eastern University Press.

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