Tips for Indonesian English teachers
By Iwan Jazadi
ADELAIDE, Australia (JP): Indonesian English teachers seem to be very familiar with the term "communicative approach". However, they are not well-informed about how this approach has developed in its original context of English as a second language and that there are many forms and types of communicative language teaching (CLT) or communicative approaches used in many different contexts in the world.
What many English teachers in Indonesia are informed about are new teaching methods such as the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, Total Physical Response or Community Language Learning, which are taught in the pre-service (S1) program from a textbook (e.g. Richards and Rodgers, 1986). When teachers cope with their actual teaching in schools, they use the national curriculum guidelines, such as the 1984 and 1994 curricula, in which any such methods do not even rate a mention. Instead, the documents mention a "communicative approach" or a "meaningful approach" as the organizing principles of the curriculum.
As a result, teachers have long-experienced silent confusion about the relationship between the methods studied in the university and the approach used in their teaching. The gap occurs because there is a missing link -- in terms of how the curriculum is conceptualized and formulated -- between most teacher training colleges that produce new teachers and the Ministry of National Education, i.e. the Directorate General of Primary and Secondary Education that provides national curricula and in-service training programs.
Hence, to date there has not been any illuminating explanation concerning how the communicative approach mentioned in the national official curriculum should ideally be understood and implemented by teachers and other stakeholders. Because the communicative approach in Indonesian English teaching is adopted from English speaking countries, it is considered necessary to figure out how the approach is worked out in its original contexts.
By this, it is hoped that English teachers, as the implementors of the approach in Indonesian schools, can compare and locate the directions and complexities of the Indonesian English teaching system. The following discusses the development of communicative language teaching (CLT) and how it influences and is adopted by the English teaching system in Indonesia.
In language teaching, as in other fields, new movements often begin as a result of dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs. CLT, which is fashionable nowadays, emerged as a reaction against the structural audio-lingual approach. The approach focused on structural competence at the expense of communicative competence, which stressed an ability to be appropriate, to know the right form to express at the right time.
The 1970s marked the beginning of CLT when the Council of Europe produced the notional-functional approach, with a "common core" curriculum developed from a systematic approach to needs analysis based on notional syllabuses. The syllabus has spread beyond Europe to the United States, as well as to Indonesia and Malaysia. It appeared that Indonesian students who studied mostly in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s were the ones who introduced the syllabus in Indonesia.
The approach was favorably taken up in Indonesia because it implicitly relied on top-down research, development and a diffusion model of change, which in fact suited Indonesia's centralized and top-down model of development. Other factors that contributed to the success of the syllabus were the support from publishing houses and the often-structural syllabus in disguise. A great number of course books were developed in the late 1970s and the 1980s based on this syllabus and many of them are still used in Indonesia, such as those by L.G. Alexander, O'Neill, etc. The 1984 curriculum on English and textbooks was obviously designed based on the principles of the notional-functional syllabus.
At later stages, the notional-functional syllabus has been on the receiving end of a great deal of criticism because it still gives too much attention to forms and not enough to communication. Since the mid 1980s, many new approaches have emerged as forms of dissatisfaction with the notional-functional syllabus. Such approaches include the process syllabus, the needs-based approach, the task-based approach, the competency- based approach and the discourse-based approach. The different naming of the approaches is essential to reflect procedural matters and emphasizes the different kinds of program contexts. All the approaches assume a communicative approach and learner- centeredness as their underlying principles.
The new forms of the above communicative approach are considered responsive to students' different needs in their original contexts, such as Australia, the United States, Canada and England, where English is taught to immigrants as a second language. The success stories of the approach have attracted overseas students and visiting fellows who studied Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) to bring the innovation and adopt it in their home countries, including Indonesia.
The 1994 curriculum modification is obviously an attempt to enact the principles of a communicative approach that is learner- centered and process-oriented. The modification took place because a lot of parents, teachers and students in Indonesia complained that the 1984 English curriculum was still too grammar-oriented. Hence, the students eventually did not master communicative skills required for real-life communication. Therefore, those who wished to learn skills such as conversation had to attend privately run courses.
Different from the notional-functional syllabus however, are the new forms of the communicative approach which are not supported by ready-to-use textbooks or easily transferred syllabuses. Instead, it only provides key principles and authorizes teachers to play a central role in curriculum development. The new approach assumes classroom interaction as an arena whereby learners and teachers negotiate for the curriculum. The practicalities of the communicative approach can be seen in the following two contexts.
* From a Canadian context, it is reported that teachers interpret a curriculum document very differently among themselves. Based on their teaching and learning values, they each deliver different classroom activities, but all aim to achieve the curriculum's target. Such a practice is justified because the Canadian Ministry of Education and Training document states that "all of the activities and experiences that contribute to students' achieving the outcomes must be considered part of the curriculum" (1995).
* Australian education contexts are even more varied. In some instances, teachers may consider national frameworks as only one of many possible resources -- that is, they use them if they are relevant for their learners. This diversity is the basis for creating a "learner-centered" teaching situation. In such curricula, decisions are based on negotiations between teachers and learners. Even though national assessment guidelines for English language teaching (ELT) in both adult and school sectors are in place, teachers are still relatively free to design and implement their own courses.
By analyzing the 1994 curriculum and its textbooks, it appears that the new forms of the communicative approach has influenced the curriculum and textbook designers. That is, the designers seem to have the intention and expectation of activating a true local-based, learner-centered communicative approach in language teaching in the formal education system. However, all this innovative goodwill is then swallowed up by the centralized sociopolitical constraints. The fact that there are no assumed ready-transfer packages in the new approach adds to the complexities in implementing a true learner-centered teaching situation.
A solution to the chronic problem was believed to be impossible, or a search in a vicious circle, particularly before the reform era. In this new era, the problem is not yet solved, but it is believed to be possible because people have been given the freedom of speech and innovative, though different, ideas can flourish. However, if judged fairly, democratic and decentralized principles that are in line with a learner-centered communicative approach in language education should be truly held by Indonesian stakeholders.
The writer is an English lecturer in Indonesia, currently undertaking a Ph.D. in education at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia.