The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers and Students

Abstract

Page 25 24 Learning through English: Chapter 2 Insights from INDONESIA Nilawati Hadisantosa Introduction The present paper is divided into three parts: first, education at school in Indonesia at present which deals with national policy priorities, policy decisions and forms of provision for the teaching of English; second, bilingual education involving English in the past up to the present time, and third, possibilities for English Bilingual Education (EBE) in the future. The data have been collected in two ways: first, review of published research articles and policy documents; second, interview with key stakeholders. The British Council in Jakarta has provided a number of policy documents which have been helpful. However, it is difficult to find published research articles in Indonesia except for some unpublished research, some papers presented at the Eighth International Conference, ITB Bandung, and research conducted by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE). Based on curiosity, the writer tried to find articles about EBE in Indonesian newspapers and it turned out that it was mostly discussed in the English newspaper The Jakarta Post. For the meetings with key stakeholders, the writer interviewed two senior officials at the MoNE, three head teachers, one primary school English teacher trainer who is also the founder of ETN-the Jakarta Primary School English Teachers’ Network, and one class teacher. Indonesia is an archipelagic country which encompasses an estimated 17508 islands, only 6000 of which are inhabited. Indonesia’s 238 million people make it the world’s fourth-most populous state. The official language is Indonesian language or bahasa Indonesia which is used in administrative offices, schools, science, and mass-media (Alwi, 2000). Indonesia has 726 local languages, second ranked as language diversity laboratory in the world after Papua New Guinea which has 867 languages (SIL, 2001). There are at least 13 large-scale local languages with at least one million speakers. In addition to that, there are hundreds of local languages with less than one million speakers which with the advent of globalization can become potentially endangered or even extinct.