THE IMPACT OF ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN INDONESIA

Abstract

This study is concerned with the impact of English as an international language on English language teaching in Indonesia. The spread of English in the world has changed the needs of learning English. People are learning English not only to communicate to native speakers but also with non native speakers of English. Thus, the goal of learning English is no longer to imitate native performance but to communicate in English successfully. The important implications for teaching EIL are the content of the material culture of EIL should not be limited to the original English-speaking culture. The main objective of an International language is to enable learners to communicate their culture to others, and then it should provide students with material EIL vocabulary and information to do this by incorporating local culture content. In analyzing the impact of English as an international language, the writer described the curriculum of English in Indonesia, explained how cultural issues are presented in English textbooks, and revealed the teachers’ perception about learning English in Indonesia. The work is led through a qualitative analysis which uses teachers’ questionnaire and English textbooks analysis. The teachers’ questionnaire is concerned with English Language Teaching in Indonesia and the cultural content of English textbooks. And then the English textbooks analysis are concerned with the cultural content of Junior High School English textbooks. The data were collected from SMP N 1 Wiradesa, Pekalongan The result obtained reveal that The impact of English as an International language in Indonesia affects the development of English curriculum. Communicative learning or communicative method in English language teaching process is being developed in English syllabus in Indonesia. This appears because of the role of English as an International language. So, the important goal of learning English in Indonesia is to communicate with other people, mostly non-native speakers of English. In some teachers’ perspective, the role of teacher is to create the communicative method in teaching and learning process through group work, discussion or role-play. This is done as a way of increasing the students’ communication ability. So that at the end of the study students are hoped to be able to use English communicatively. Thus, attention to whether the textbooks used in the teaching and learning process focused more on Indonesian or western cultures seems to be essential to consider because it deals with the contexts and needs of learning. In other words, the more familiar cultures being discussed in teaching and learning process, the more beneficial it will be, from students’ perspectives. This is because the students’ needs in learning English is again to communicate with their fellow about things around them. Related to the cultural content of English textbooks in SMP N 1 Wiradesa used the local cultural content. Teachers of SMP N 1 Wiradesa preferred content that deals with the life and culture of various countries around the world and some of them choose the content that deals with local culture. Local cultural content has been widely accepted as the aim of EFL teaching. Textbooks have played a very important role in the course of teaching and learning. Textbooks introduce students the cultures of regions and different countries. This study shows that, basically, local cultural content has become the purpose of EFL teaching but some teachers still believe that foreign cultures are the target of learning English.