Articles

1. Implementing communicative language teaching in Indonesia.
The communicative language teaching (CLT) has been enjoying much support from teaching practices in many EFL/ESL contexts. The approach which consists of many aspects, such as sociolinguistics, grammatical, pragmatic, and discourse is believed as the most suitable to address the nature of language. That is why the previous approach, such as grammar translation and audio-lingual which focus on drilling and repetition cannot get much support now because of focusing on forms and structure and neglecting the other factors such as usage and sociolinguistics factor.
However, language learning cannot be separated from the context, socioeconomic or political context. Teaching English in formal schooling in Indonesia is like flogging a dead horse, there are simply too many obstacles to overcome by the classroom teachers, and many of them are beyond the teachers’ capacity to surmount, such as limited number of class hours, class size, the price of supplementary reading materials, etc. These are virtually never addressed seriously by the concerned authorities. In addition, the social situation is not particularly conducive to learning English, as English is not spoken in society. So whatever method is used, TEFL in formal schooling in Indonesia will never succeed, as method is only one aspect of language learning, whereas many of the other contributing factors are left untouched.
In relation to formal ELT, the dedication of teachers of English in remote areas of Indonesia deserves mentioning. Their problems are much more complicated than those in big cities, e.g. low motivation, students cannot afford to buy textbooks, no photocopy machine, etc. and yet they face them with undaunted courage and optimism.

2. ESP Teaching in Indonesia
English as a foreign language is a compulsory subject in university curriculum. It is known as English for specific purposes (ESP) taught for students in different departments at universities. It is expected that the students can develop their English to support their academic life and prepare them for future jobs. Whether it seems ambitious or not, ESP has been a big issue for university language centres to provide good English teaching for the students.
From my experiences as a university English teacher from three different universities, some big efforts have been done devoted for developing course materials, improving language teaching facilities, developing teacher competence, and strengthening inter-disciplinary coordination of English use. Here I want to reflect my experience in material development. It is quite promising that almost each department has the special ESP material developed by the teachers organized in the language centre or each university or faculty. Almost all materials incorporate all language skills (reading, speaking, writing, and listening) in the book. However, each chapter is divided into subchapters with each skill arranged and taught separately and grammar teaching is given more attention.
Furthermore, there is also a material designed mostly to teach TOEFL or IELTS test. So, the students learn English by learning how to do a test. In my opinion, this can be due to the demand of the university that students must possess certain score in English proficiency test (TOEFL) and also because it is one of the requirement of applying a job. Besides, teaching of test is considered by many teachers as the easiest one because the teacher has the key answers. Is it what ESP should be designed?

3. English for young learners: Do they really know why the do it?
English language teaching at primary school is now being more popular in Indonesia. Many believe that the earlier the better in learning a second language. This is due to the fact that age is one of the factors that influence success in second language acquisition (Lightbown & Spada, 1999). However, in Indonesian context, the idea of teaching English for younger learners has to be seen from many critical perspectives by looking at many aspects.
Despite the fact that early age can contribute to success in learning a foreign language, there exists some problems which are: (1) limited number of teachers because teacher training does not provide such training, (2) socio-economically the program is not suitable for all regions, (3) the threat to the position of national language, (4) too many subjects students learn at primary school, (5) possible problems for teachers in secondary school due to heterogeneous English of the input students. (Sadtono, 2005).
Therefore, English for young learners is taught as local load curriculum depending on the school contexts. In big cities, like Jakarta or Surabaya, there are not big problems. However, in majority of the schools, it seems that schools force themselves to start teaching English earlier. It is even going to be very naive if it is just for economic reason that is to attract more students. Research, however, has shown that most teachers (62, 8%) teaching English in the primary schools as part-timers and the rest (37, 2%) as classroom teachers without any English education background. Most of the teachers (72, 9%) used ‘translation’ besides other kinds of paper-and-pen test. It is even a big problem if the policy is just to attract many students to study at schools. Outside the class English is used very little. At last, should the English education be sacrificed just to show off?

4. Teacher Professional Development
In Indonesia, teacher development can start from the teacher training education. It is conducted in teacher training institute called IKIP. This institution prepares teachers for elementary school to senior high school. If there is a postgraduate program, the institution can prepare teachers for high education level. However, since 1998, the government has changed the institute into university. Private institutions are mostly the providers of teacher training.
The phenomenon has led into a problem of lack of teachers for schools. The limited number of institutes consequently leads into limited graduates who can become teacher. Therefore, many school teachers are found to have no background in teaching. And this is blamed for the failure in English education. Moreover, the quality of the graduates from the private institutes is lower that those from government universities. This is because in Indonesia, the best students mostly go to state universities because of better education quality. Sadtono (2005) in his paper states that many of the graduate students even have lower English proficiency that the undergraduate program students. This shows how the quality of teachers is being questioned.
Although there is limited number of institutes offering teacher training, some universities are offering special program for those who want to teach after graduate from universities. This program requires students to take one to two semesters for teacher training courses. Afterward, they can get certificate in teaching which can be used for applying a job as a teacher.
Teacher professional development can be conducted from the local level, such as Teacher association (MGMP), regional or national through in-service teacher training, or participating in national seminars, such as TEFLIN. By doing so, hopefully the teacher quality in Indonesia will be better.

5. Curriculum development at high school in Indonesia
The change of English curriculum in Indonesia is very interesting to observe. Since its independence Indonesia has changed its English curriculum for almost six times: Unknown curriculum using grammar translation approach (1945-1967), Oral Approach curriculum using audio-lingual approach (1968 – 1983), Communicative Approach curriculum (1984-1993), Meaning-based Curriculum (1994-2003), Competency-based Curriculum (2004-2006), and KSP (subject-based curriculum) (2007-present). If seen from the years of implementation the changes show dynamic of teaching of English in Indonesia. However, it is not as it is.
The political aspect seems to be the main reason for the rapid changes of curriculum. It seems that each minister under certain political party tries to bring its own political mission to the education policy. It is then followed by some projects involving curriculum development, textbook writing, textbook publication, and school text book policy at schools. When I was teaching at a senior high school, the people involved usually colluded to use certain books at school based more on profit taking rather on its quality. The teacher could get percentage of its sale in every semester, so the teacher would always consider financial aspect.
It is also getting worse because the evaluation of the previous curriculum has never been conducted to be the basis for further curriculum development (Sadtono, 2005). So, the curriculum change is likely to be fashionable in order to follow what is the trend in the western world. Meanwhile, it is very important to make a language policy based on the context where the policy is going to be conducted.

6. The position of English in Indonesia society.
The use of English in Indonesian society is extremely limited as Indonesians can meet their needs satisfactorily using Indonesian. However, English is getting more attention from the society. It can be seem from the newspapers published in English in Indonesia, and a handful of academic journals and magazines. There is a good newspaper, called The Jakarta Post, the rest may not have survived. However, judging from the number of English newspapers published in Indonesia, English readership in Indonesia is small for the population of over 200 million, though the number of Indonesian capable of speaking English may have increased.
Another indication of the more use of English in the society is more advertisements written in English in Indonesian language newspapers than ten years ago. The people start to realize the importance of English for globalization, resulting in the development of English private courses everywhere. English words and phrases are now much more used in written as well oral Bahasa Indonesia. Flyers, banners, pamphlets, booklets and announcements for public consumption never fail to use some English words or phrases (though not always correct), when using Indonesian would actually be more than sufficient. To a large extent, using English words and phrases in such cases is simply pure snobbery, though some are inevitable.
And yet the result of ELT in Indonesia in general is ambiguous at best. There are people who are proficient in English, but mostly their proficiency is the result of their own undertaking, not the formal schooling (Sadtono, 2005). From my experience several students whose English is relatively good told me that all of them took a private English course; the fact only confirmed my belief that if students want to be successful in English, they should take an English course as TEFL at school is far from sufficient in many aspects of an ideal teaching-learning situation.

7. Using English as a means of instruction in teaching content subject.
Learning a second or foreign language is best done through being engaged in meaningful situations where the target language is used in a like or real situation (Krashen 1981). In academic settings, the ESL or EFL teaching cannot be separated from content subject teaching.
The Biology department in my university has started to apply this approach. English is not just taught as a subject in ESP class, but it is used as the medium of instruction. The department has started using English more, meaning that stronger position is given to English. This is due to the fact that the globalization requires English as the means of communication in all fields. It is expected that the use of English can strengthen the students academic achievement and also can equip them with the compulsory skill when the graduate.
The language centre where I was working was asked to be the consultant in carrying out this program. What we had to do first is developing more awareness to students and also teachers by conducting some workshops on how English can be integrated in teaching content subjects. Meanwhile, there were two classes were being taught in English. One is English for Biology, which is the follow up class of ESP, and Bioconservation class, a content course taught using bilingual instruction. The English by Biology was focusing more on speaking activities using some Biology articles written in English. The class was more done in form of group presentation followed by discussion. Outside the classroom, students came to see the teacher for consultation by using English. The second class was using English more integratedly. English was used almost in all skills, reading, speaking, writing, and listening. Reading is very dominant, where all students were required to find references in English. Speaking was done in the form of group presentation and class presentation. Writing was done in form of power point presentation slides, and assessment, Midterm test and final test. In the tests questions were given in two languages, but it was encouraged that students answered in English.
From the implementation, it can be seen that the students’ attitude toward English was improving. They became more aware of the importance of English to support their academic and future career. Better attitude was shown by their involvement in some English activities outside the classroom. From the questionnaires given at the end of the program, they stated that by reading references in English, they know the subjects better because, the available Indonesian texts are usually translation ones which are often difficult to understand.

References
Kasbolah, K. (2005). What do the teachers of EFL say? Paper presented at the TEFLIN Conference 2005.
Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (1999). How Languages are Learned. 2nd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sadtono, E. (2005). A concise history of TEFL in Indonesia. Paper presented at the TEFLIN Conference 2005.