Flawed system in English teaching

Flawed system in English teaching

By Setiono

JAKARTA (JP): The pendulum of the English language teaching
curriculum in Indonesia has swung from one extreme of opinion to
the other. Once it much favored the "audio-lingual" approach when
it was recommended by the government for the 1975 curriculum and
implemented in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL).

However, due to its shortcomings in providing the necessary
conditions for the acquisition of communicative competence in
learners, this approach was then no longer deemed to reflect our
English teaching methodology. As a result, the communicative
approach, which was originally derived from the work of the
Council of Europe, has become a fashionable term in English
language teaching in Indonesia and was recommended in the 1994
curriculum.

This approach has profoundly influenced current thoughts in
the development of the 1994 curriculum and syllabus design, and
to a lesser extent, in the methodology of teaching English as a
foreign language in Indonesia. One of the basic features of this
approach is to provide the learners of English with the ability
to communicate in an appropriate situation as well as in an
actual and purposeful context.

What is the current practice of English language teaching in
Indonesia under the influence of this approach?

In his first article published in The Jakarta Post on Dec. 8,
Dr. A. Chaedar Alwasilah mentioned a poll on the practice of TEFL
in Indonesia. He polled three groups of respondents representing
different levels of education. They included junior high school
(SMP) teachers, Islamic high school English teachers, graduate
students and English lecturers at Bandung's Teachers Training
Institute (IKIP) English department.

From his observations Alwasilah concluded that the
implementation of the 1994 curriculum (which is based on the
communicative approach) has failed in developing English
proficiency in students because the communicative approach is not
well understood by school teachers. In other words, he means that
this failure is caused by school teachers' insufficient knowledge
of the communicative approach.

It is, however, unwise to address English as the sole factor
causing the failure of the implementation of the 1994 curriculum.
Alwasilah seems to have lost sight of the fact the there are
abundant variables causing obstacles in implementing the
communicative approach in Indonesia. Here I shall list the chief
obstacles:

The ultimate objective of teaching English in Indonesia is to
equip learners with reading ability (receptive skills) instead of
speaking and writing (productive skills).

This objective, of course, brings about methodological
consequences. In terms of teaching-learning interaction, class
activities are devoted mostly to reading a text and answering
questions based on the text.

In the light of testing (for instance, the final nationally
held evaluation known as EBTANAS), as an indispensable tool of
teaching, it has been noted that questions are always notoriously
in the form of multiple choice, which does not totally measure a
learner's productive skills.

Teaching using the communicative approach, however, requires
teachers to expose their learners to performance of the language
both in productive spoken and written forms. It is obvious, in
this case, that our language teaching system has misperceived the
concept of the communicative approach.

A sociolinguistic setting is another variable that impedes the
implementation of the communicative approach. Our learners of
English have limited frequency and little opportunity to practice
the language as their environment does not support this.
Considering this sociolinguistic setting is crucial as it leads
to motivational variables which eventually influence language
learning as required in a communicative approach.

The size of class is the third variable that has been
notoriously associated with the problem of implementing the
communicative approach in Indonesia. It is well known that the
average class has too many students, usually 30 to 40. This
condition is, of course, undesirable for conducting an effective
communicative class, which calls for a small number of students.

The final factor which has received little attention from
Indonesian teaching specialists is what Jack C. Richard and
Gloria P. Samson (1974) call the "universal hierarchy of
difficulty". This factor is concerned with the inherent
difficulty in certain phonological, syntactical or semantic items
and structures. Some language elements may be inherently
difficult to learn regardless of the background of the learners.

From the above discussion, it can be inferred that the failure
of the implementation of 1994 curriculum is not caused merely by
the linguistic factors (English teachers' insufficient knowledge
about the communicative approach), but also by nonlinguistic
factors.

The contradictory perspectives between graduate students and
English lecturers and junior high school teachers regarding the
practice of the communicative approach also brought Alwasilah to
the conclusion that the communicative approach has been
relatively successful at certain levels of education. This
conclusion is, I think, exaggerated for at least two reasons.

First, Alwasilah does not mention the criteria used to assess
the relative success of the implementation of the communicative
approach. Nor does he specifically mention at what level of
education the communicative approach can be successfully
implemented. His conclusion is therefore questionable, and cannot
be justified. As far as my English teaching experience at
elementary level is concerned, teaching using the communicative
approach alone is inadequate to make learners communicatively
competent.

The communicative approach per se still suffers from several
drawbacks that I will discuss later. Second, Alwasilah seems to
take for granted the opinion asserted by his respondents without
taking into account the nonlinguistic factors (described earlier)
that might potentially hinder the implementation of this
approach.

To conclude, Alwasilah's observation regarding the
implementation of the communicative approach, which is basic in
the 1994 curriculum, appears to be biased since he only asked his
respondents' opinion and failed to empirically validate his
conclusions.

Nonetheless, Alwasilah's suggestions of putting TEFL in the
framework of national language planning and to revise the
currently employed curriculum ought to be highly appreciated
although there is much resistance related, particularly, to the
former. Endeavors to include TEFL in the national language
planning can be carried out successfully provided that the
central authorities no longer maintain their sentimental attitude
towards foreign languages, especially English.

In the light of the 1994 curriculum, that which employs the
communicative approach, immediate action to revise it is
essential. Our language teaching curriculum designers just simply
adopt the communicative approach without being fully aware of the
fact that there are essential drawbacks to it. They are:

Communicative approach overemphasizes the teaching of such
language functions as greetings, informing, asking for infor
mation, apologizing, etc., and neglects to develop an awareness
of the communicative potential of linguistic forms. In our
understanding, effective communication entails not only
sociolinguistic appropriateness but also linguistic accuracy.
Inaccurate performance, even it is perfectly appropriate
sociolinguistically, can never be really effective as
communication.

In the communicative approach language functions are taught as
"frozen phrases" and require the learners to memorize them in
order to use them appropriately. The danger of this type of
teaching is that learners may be unable to handle the language
they learn in a longer, connected discourse.

Communicative approach utilizes the so-called "analytic
teaching strategy", as opposed to "synthetic teaching strategy",
though there are doubts regarding the validity of this
distinction. In the analytic teaching strategy grammatical points
are taught implicitly and integratively within the language
skills. Nevertheless, not all grammatical points can be presented
integratively; certain grammatical points (such as impersonal
"it", subjunctive, conditional "if", to mention a few) present
difficulties of integration. Such grammatical points undoubtedly
need explicit explanation.

Given the above shortcomings of the communicative approach, it
can be deduced that the 1994 curriculum cannot be considered
successful in its attainment of communicative competence as its
ultimate objective, and attempts to revise it are mandatory.

Communicative competence, according to Canale and Swain
(1980), must entail the following components: linguistic
competence which refers to the mastery of the language form,
sociolinguistic competence which is concerned with the
sociocultural rules of use, discourse competence which deals with
the appropriateness of utterances to their linguistic contexts,
and strategic competence which is a compensatory element that
enables a speaker to make up for gaps in his/her knowledge system
or lack of fluency by means of "communication strategies".

In conclusion, it is apparent that in order to be called a
communicatively competent speaker, one has to possess not only
sociolinguistic competence, but also linguistic, discourse, and
strategic competence. It is the last three mentioned
communicative components that have been ignored in the 1994
curriculum.

Above all, the above components of communicative competence
are worth consideration as a parameter in revising our current
English teaching curriculum.

The writer is a teaching staff member of the English
Department Faculty of Education, Atmajaya Catholic University,
Jakarta.