Indonesians fall short in conversation skills
Indonesians fall short in conversation skills
Leo Wahyudi S, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Compared with other Asian students who speak English as a foreign
language, Indonesians are among those with an outstanding
standard of proficiency in grammar, but lack confidence when
speaking it, a teacher said.
Country Director of English First (EF) Indonesia Arleta
Darusalam said on Wednesday that Indonesian students were often
encouraged to study grammar in a theoretical way, such that they
mastered the subject better than their Asian counterparts in, for
example, Thailand, Japan, Korea and China.
"The relatively easy linguistics in Indonesian also
contributes to our students' achievement in English," Arleta said
on the sidelines of an award ceremony for students on the English
course.
She said, however, most Indonesian students faced problems
when it came to verbal skills.
"As far as I am concerned, many students lack self-confidence
in English conversation," she said. "Indonesian students tend to
be passive in class and worse still, the instructors or teachers
dominate the course of discussion rather than acting as
facilitators of the learning process."
The lack of confidence also resulted in the students' lack of
enthusiasm for practicing the language in class.
Arleta suggested the use of communicative and interactive
approaches to stimulate the students to speak the target language
on as many occasions as possible. However, she did not elaborate.
In a bid to encourage students to improve their command of
English, EF has awarded two of its 5,000 students nationwide a
four-week course overseas. This year the winners came from the
South Sumatra capital, Palembang, and from Denpasar, and
respectively will travel to London and Sydney in May.
"The most important thing is not the destinations but rather
the opportunity for real-life language learning through traveling
and fun activities," she said.
There are about two million students learning English in EF
franchises worldwide.