Grab reading skills to face challenges

Grab reading skills to face challenges

By John Phillips

This is the second of two articles on the teaching of English
in Indonesian state schools.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): In the previous article, I suggested that
Indonesian schools were likely to continue to be ineffective in
training students to speak English because the environment in and
out of school did not support such efforts and the need for
learning was not strong enough.

It is true that some students learn to "speak" English well,
but this success depends more on the students than on anything
the schools do.

Simply stated, students who learn to speak English do so
because they have a specific and continuing need to speak. They
have real communicative practice and they have an opportunity to
receive guidance and feedback leading to an increase in their
fluency.

Unlike most students, they have sufficient resources and
opportunity to consciously choose to learn and to succeed. But,
this choice isn't easily made by students under the conditions in
which English is taught here.

However, it is equally clear that despite the difficulty
schools have in teaching students to speak English, an ever
increasing number of young Indonesians must learn to use English
if Indonesia is going to continue to develop.

The reasons for this great need are apparent to all. Educators
know that the students must live in the global village with
interdependent economies and instant communication.

Access to information is the most valuable of all commodities.
English is the key tool for gaining access to this information,
so much so that it is an essential element in any national
development plan.

One recent report on CNN (Aug. 24, 1995) about the launching
of Windows 95, highlighted the absolute necessity for Internet
users to know English well in order to be able to surf the
information highway.

Clearly, it is necessary to solve the problem of teaching
English in schools. The need is too great and the urgency too
immediate to ignore. Nor would it be wise to leave the matter to
private schools. These are simply too costly and scarce to
succeed on the scale needed.

One answer has already been discussed in the pages of The
Jakarta Post, specifically in an article by Ignas Kleden (May 20,
1995) entitled "Is Reading Habit a Cultural Need?" It expressed
the many reasons why Indonesians needed to develop "the reading
habit" (in Indonesian) as a means of developing Indonesian
society since "oral language is no longer adequate as the sole
source of information".

In the same sense, teaching school children to read English is
necessary since reading Indonesian may not be adequate either.
And, given the difficulty of teaching school children to speak
English, teaching them English reading skills is the most
effective and efficient means for greater numbers of Indonesians
to gain access to the information needed to develop themselves
and the country.

Numerous researchers in the field of language acquisition
point to the importance and efficacy of having a reading program
for developing academic language skills including the positive
effects such a program has on grammar competence and writing
fluency.

Academic language skills are the kinds of skills needed by an
individual to process and use information, to analyze and solve
problems, and to become more aware and responsive to changes in
conditions.

In other words, individuals with good academic language skills
are often skilled thinkers and problem solvers able to adapt
quickly to changing environment. While it is important for
Indonesians to develop these skills in Indonesian first, further
developing these skills in English provides students with
additional tools needed to access global information. It also
supplies an immediately useful reason and context for learning
the language. Students who can use language to gather and employ
information they need or want have a strong motivation for
improving their language skills.

This ability to understand and utilize information,
particularly in technical and academic fields, will drive the
engine of Indonesian development.

The ability to read English is not only an important cultural
habit but also an important social, political and economic skill.
Furthermore, an English reading curriculum would be valuable in
terms of effective and efficient instructional time spent.

Although a progressive Indonesian reading program is now a
major goal, such a program needs many more Indonesian books to be
written and published at a time when the amount of information
available is much greater than the capacity to translate it.

So, an Indonesian reading program inevitably has certain
limits with respect to current academic, technical, scientific
and economic information. In contrast, an English reading
curriculum in Indonesian schools would have fewer limits and
offer many advantages over a speaking curriculum.

First, reading is much more manageable in a school setting:
the text can be controlled for level of difficulty, reading aids
can be utilized to assist the process, and the specific meaning
of the texts can be specified in advance; all of which eases the
teacher's task.

The teacher does not need extensive training and the students
can work at their own level. The students will be able to acquire
a great deal of vocabulary and some writing and grammar skills
through the reading process.

There are also far more materials written in English at all
levels of difficulty and encompassing every imaginable subject
than can possibly be consumed.

It is true that reading a language is not as sexy as speaking
one. This may be the reason that the old curriculum which
emphasized aspects of reading (grammar and vocabulary) was
abandoned.

Properly conducted, however, a reading program can be very
effective in motivating students. A student who is able to use
language to gather information will be motivated to learn.

Students can then wander far beyond the classroom walls to
explore any subject of interest to them.

This will serve the additional goal of better preparing
students for more advanced subjects in colleges and universities
because many of these disciplines require good English reading
skills.

In addition, since it is virtually impossible for readers to
keep abreast of developments in a number of fields in any
language other than English, the more Indonesian scholars,
technicians and scientists who are well trained in English
reading skills, the more new knowledge that will be incorporated
into Indonesian activities.

Finally, as Indonesians read and analyze more through the
careful and concrete medium of reading, they will sharpen their
ability to critically analyze ideas and arguments in order to
distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly.

Students who regularly practice critical thinking skills
through reading will be better equipped to make intelligent
choices about what information and values from other countries
are most appropriate for Indonesia. Indonesians will also be in a
better position than many native English speakers to compare and
contrast ideas taken from more than one cultural context.

Why was this approach to learning English in schools
abandoned? The first reason is that reading English is not as
attractive or obvious a language skill as speaking it. Speaking
English sets the individual apart and elevates his or her status.

The foremost reason, however, is that reading is not as
attractive to students coming from an oral culture where the
preferred learning mode is not reading.

Quite simply, students don't like reading, because it is
something that they usually have not practiced enough, they may
not feel it is their best learning mode, and it involves hard,
independent work for which there are few short cuts.

In order to learn how to read, they have to read a lot and
they have to read progressively harder texts and be regularly
tested on them.

Reading is good medicine for what ails Indonesian students.
But it is not entirely painless.

Despite the difficulty, the rewards for the individual and
society are infinitely greater than the pain.

Those who truly need to speak English will always find a way
to learn this skill. They will also find it easier to speak
English if they can read English.

The writer is an independent English language, education and
cross-cultural management consultant in Yogyakarta.