Ways to better RI English skills
By A. Chaedar Alwasilah
BANDUNG (JP): Success in implementing educational programs depends on many variables. Mixed in are teachers, student motivation, textbooks, bureaucrats' attitude and government policy.
All form a vicious circle when the programs end up as a failure.
Often we find ourselves in the dilemma of deciding which to fix first. By focusing attention on a single aspect, we get a comprehensive description of the issue, and we can immediately spotlight weaknesses and suggest relevant solutions.
We can address any of the variables mentioned above in discussing the failure of English education in Indonesia. Such an approach does not necessarily downplay the other variables in any way.
In fact, understanding one variable will enhance our understanding of the others because all of them are mutually interlinked.
Commenting on my articles in The Jakarta Post editions of Dec. 8 and Dec. 9, Setiono in his article, Flawed system in English teaching (Dec. 28) listed the chief obstacles in implementing the communicative approach in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Indonesia. In general, I agree with him, but feel some of his perspectives need further clarification.
Communicative language teaching can legitimately be seen to derive from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes linguistics, psychology, educational research and politics. Central to communicative language teaching is the understanding of language learning as both an educational and political issue. It is inextricably tied to language policy, and to a certain extent its failure is caused by lack of political will on the part of policymakers.
It is true the EFL curriculum has always emphasized reading, the classic reason being English is a foreign rather than second language. One may readily assume that Indonesian students are good at reading English.
To everybody's dismay, it is not the case. Respondents in my dissertation survey -- 100 Indonesian graduate students living across all 50 states in America -- reported scoring highest on the TOEFL test in structure and written expression and listening comprehension, and lowest in the reading comprehension and vocabulary section (Alwasilah: 1991).
In other words, reading, what is called the prioritized language skill, is, in fact, the least acquired skill. And, in my assumption, it still holds true. Skill-oriented arguments, as suggested by Setiono in explaining the failure of teaching English in the country, are not necessarily relevant.
Research was conducted on English mastery of newly enrolled Satya Wacana University students. Their average vocabulary was 1,000 words, only a third of the standard set by the national curriculum, and a tenth of the standard proposed by Thorndike as the minimum vocabulary necessary to read English textbooks (Sadtono, 1985). This research testified that our high school students were weak in vocabulary; in my view, it is still the case.
One can present abundant findings of TEFL research in Indonesia, but those cited above are evidence enough to suspect English teaching in the country has been a failure.
Given this as shared knowledge among TEFL specialists, I was not interested at all in presenting criteria of relative success in the implementation of the communicative approach, as Setiono insisted. It is evident Setiono's approach to the issue is classroom-based.
Important and insightful though such an approach is, my approach, in contrast, is based on critical pedagogy, attempting to explain the social and political aspects of English education. Therefore the analyses move beyond classroom structures and processes.
I share Setiono's position on the following issues. The national testing system (Ebtanas) is contradictory to the theoretical assumption underlying the communicative approach. The test does not fully measure learners' productive skills. The approach entails students' exposure to language use, both written and spoken. Many teachers and assessment specialists believe that the approach is only for promoting receptive skills, especially reading, to the neglect of the productive skills.
Teachers are aware that school settings and large classroom sizes are not conducive to developing effective communication in English. However, their awareness is not necessarily synonymous with understanding the communicative approach.
Such an awareness is an experiential phenomenon, while understanding of the communicative approach is an epistemic phenomenon on the construct suggested by experts and specialists in the field of TEFL. The two do not necessarily parallel.
Setiono's elaboration of the nonlinguistic aspects is authentic and portrays the ignorance, or at least indifference, of many teachers and educational bureaucrats.
My assumption holds that their insufficient knowledge of the issues elaborated above is to a great extent responsible for the failure in implementing the communicative approach.
In this country, many bureaucrats are assigned jobs related to TEFL, despite the fact they do not have any professional background in the field.
To mention just one example, in the 1996 English textbook competition for national book provisions, dozens of EFL textbooks were evaluated by the committee of the National Book Center. Many doubted the credibility of the committee since some, if not most, of the evaluators did not have any experience in writing textbooks themselves. How could a non-skater judge a skating competition impartially and professionally?
With regards to "universal hierarchy of difficulty" as suggested by Richard and Samson (1974), the hypothesis needs critical elaboration.
In learning any foreign language, students develop a language variety commonly called interlanguage. The variety is characterized by systematicness, approximation, transitional competence, idiosyncrasy and fossilization (Corder: 1981, Selinker: 1972, McLaughlin: 1987).
An interlanguage theory assumption is that adult learners will never acquire native-like proficiency. This suggests that communicative competence does not require native-like proficiency at all. That is to say learners with fossilized interlanguage can develop communicative competence. This is an established principle, and yet is unknown to most EFL teachers and practitioners. Many jump to the erroneous conclusion that communicative competence will never be successfully developed in Indonesian settings.
On the issue of "frozen phrases", it is important to surmise that language functions, as originally defined by communicative approach proponents, do not suggest memorizing chunks of frozen phrases at all. If that is what happens in the classroom, it is more telling evidence of the failure in implementing the communicative approach, resulting from teachers' misconception of the communicative approach.
At instructional levels, it is common for teachers to initiate communication engagements by using routines or patterns as a strategy for developing rapport and comfort, which are essential for managing conversations.
Setiono's critical accounts on the pragmatic sides of TEFL in Indonesia have brought to our attention practical aspects that tend to be taken for granted. What happened in the past was often piecemeal changes which entail fixing a part but leaving the other parts unfixed.
For improving TEFL, it is imperative to exercise a paradigm shift, that is a systematic and massive change. It entails replacing the whole mechanism in the context of systematic and well-planned language planning.
The writer is a lecturer at Bandung Teachers Training Institute, West Java.
Window: Teachers are aware that school settings and large classroom sizes are not conducive to developing effective communication in English. However, their awareness is not necessarily synonymous with understanding the communicative approach.