Do Indonesians Speak English Well?

Recently a couple of questions where asked about how well Indonesians speak English. A lot of Indonesians may feel that the quality of Indonesian English is generally low, but I have found otherwise. I elaborated on my feelings in the following answers.

How good are Indonesians in speaking English, their accent and fluency?

Previously Indonesians in the public school system used to study English starting from SMP-SMA (Junior-Senior High School) then schools changed it to start at SD 3 (3rd Year of Primary School) and then for quite a while it has been obligatory since SD 1 (1st Year of Primary School). For private schools, they were usually a few steps ahead with when their students started learning English, most private kindergartens already start giving English from playgroup with songs and chants, but not all.

There is an interesting phenomena here though where students can 'learn' English for 12+ years but still not be able to communicate with it. This is due to a number of reasons such as:

• A one track curriculum, where if you fall behind there are no more entry points. This also leads to multi-level classrooms that are unmanageable for teachers.
• Poor teaching quality (either with pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge or both)
• Too many unrealistic competencies which are the same for city schools and schools on a mountain in the middle of a jungle. That leads to poor teaching.
• Some people feel motivation is also a factor but I feel with realistic expectations and well trained and facilitated teachers motivation will not be a major issue. Sure if students are self-motivated learners they will do well, but they will do well without classes too.

It is a very general question when referring to 'Indonesians' but as a whole those who are given the right environment usually learn English very well, I have seen in general the Indonesian tongue and mind is very well suited for English, usually well trained Indonesians have a lovely accent and if they are of the younger generation have good grammar too. The options for Indonesians wanting to introduce their children to this international language have increased with many more schools using the Cambridge curriculum for their Maths, Science and English subjects including Islamic schools. Previously if the Muslim majority wanted to have their children schooled well and speaking English they had to send their children to Catholic schools, now though many Islamic schools have improved in regards to English, although they still haven't yet got the experience to overtake Catholic schools in general.

What do people from other countries think about Indonesian accents (when speaking English)?

I feel I am qualified to answer this question because I have been teaching English to Indonesians almost exclusively for around 10 years. I am an Australian who lives in Jakarta and also a Toastmaster (public speaking organization), so I hear a lot of different English accents coming from Indonesian English speakers.

In general, Indonesians adapt their pronunciation to English very easily. Sometimes when they have studied English poorly this is not the case but after receiving good instruction early on they have very few long standing difficulties, in fact I would be hard pressed to mention any.

An exception perhaps are people with a strong Javanese accent in Bahasa Indonesia, I have found a lot of the time their accents stick thickly when they learn English. This is not to say that some can't master English pronunciation and intonation or that those who don't can't be understood. Even Javanese English learners find English easier than Japanese, Chinese, Thai or Korean English learners. Mainly because of the similarities between Bahasa Indonesia and English.

Inter-language (mixing the two codes of mother tongue and new language) can be an issue but again with proper instruction this can be easily overcome.

The important stage is Threshold stage, where the learner begins to become independent in their language production. If they have good resources to learn from and a good guide they will do fine, if they have poor resources and a poor guide (maybe the teacher isn't proficient themselves) then this can lead to fosilisation of a poor accent and inter-language.

So in summary you will find most Indonesians do not speak English, there are many though who can though and many who can speak English quite well, especially if you are dealing with big companies from Jakarta, most international companies only hire Indonesians who can speak English (for obvious reasons).

The above are edited excerpts from my Quora answers. You can see more questions I've answered on Quora from my Quora profile here!

Challenges of Creating an English Environment on Campus

Hi Guys,

Ever been asked to create an English environment at your school, office or club? How did you find it? Did everybody come on board with enthusiasm? If so did that enthusiasm last? Or did you find people sabotaged their own best efforts by getting out of their habit before they even got into it?

During the past 6 years I've been working to create English learning environments in schools and institutes around Jakarta, Indonesia. Usually I'm given all the main ingredients you would dream of for such a program.

1. Support from the board of directors (they are the ones who asked for the program)

2. Enough teachers around the campus who speak English easily (some schools/institutes had more than others depending on the recruitment process)

3. Enough Students who already had a good level of English

So what could go wrong right?

It seems like if these were the main factors we needed and we had them there shouldn't be any problem, but in reality there are many other factors to consider and there are no two schools the same.

In this article I wanted to share with you some of those factors that I've found slows down the transition to an English Environment.

Synergy

A buzz word in people management theory it may sound cliche but really there is nothing more important than synergy to make a program work.

If students see an inconsistency in the way teachers and staff try to carry out the program before you know it they will have worked out how much effort they should put in around different teachers. Usually if the synergy is bad teachers with high motivation and commitment will usually just be avoided by the students around campus. I'll mention this a few times in this article students are great observers, they can work out the loopholes in your plan before you even realize they are there.

An example:

When first launching the program at one school we found some teachers reminded students to speak English on campus but most didn't. The students themselves found Bahasa Indonesia the easier language so they kept testing the teachers to see how long they would continue to remind them for. Before long the teachers who had been in the habit of "reminding" gave up because of lack of support from their coworkers (they felt they were chasing their tail) and because they didn't see any immediate results with the students.

Take away points:

1. The team must be in it together for better or worse, choose one course and stick to it together

2. There should be a degree of patience involved

3. Regular follow up meetings should be made to have teachers think of solutions together


Loopholes

The next factor is loopholes. If there are loopholes in your environment the students will find them and abuse them. The hardest thing when starting a new habit or facing a new challenge is the beginning. Too often if there are many loopholes you will find people never begin.

I will give you a metaphor:

Let's say you were given the choice of two roads to pass a mountain range. A tunnel or the windy road that went up close to the peaks? Of course the tunnel is quicker and if you took that way everyday you would surely take the tunnel as it's much quicker and less effort.

Let's say on day the tunnel is blocked and you are forced to take the scenic route, no doubt while on it you would experience and learn more that going through the tunnel. Your life would be better for it.

Now in many cases for students their L1 (Indonesian) is the tunnel and the L2 (English) is the scenic route, if you give them an option between the two they will of course choose the former. So you have to close the tunnel in some way.

An example:

For two years one school made everywhere an English Zone except to the Musholla (prayer room). When the students saw a teacher coming they would dash into the prayer room as quick as they could so they wouldn't get in trouble for speaking Indonesian. They chose to run instead of speaking English because it was easier for them.

Take away points:

1. Close the tunnel

2. Make sure your regulations are not full of loopholes

Middle Management

 If you have a few people trying to undermine the new program or who are slow to pull their socks up this is normal. If however those people are in any level of management it can be fatal. Middle Management such as Principals, Vice Principals, Administrators and Coordinators must lead by example if the program is to work. If you have been assigned to set up a program and you see that the "leading by example" is not there. It is crucial that you speak personally with the person involved and if you still don't see any improvement the board of directors may have to give more direct instructions and clarity of expectations to their Middle Management.


All in all if you are being put in charge of helping set up an English Environment I can't give you one formula that will work, as every school is unique. But taking care of the above and keeping yourself adaptable, communicative and persistent will take you a long way in your efforts.

Until next time, good luck and let's change some lives!

In kindness,


-Hugh Elliott

How to get 100% Success in Teaching a Foreign Language

Hi Guys,

Continuing from the last post "Questioning Our Preconceptions on Education", what can we achieve after we question our preconceptions? The answer of course is a world of opportunities but what I'd like to focus on today is the benefit that language teachers can get.

CS to BS:

CS to BS means "current situation" to "better situation" to bet a better situation we must first examine our or our current situation. Here's the CS:

1. To be able to speak another language you must be able to speak using another language (sorry for stating the obvious)
2. It is common in most schools around Indonesia to have students graduate from studying English for 9-12 years without even being able to speak English confidently
3. The excuse floating around is that this is okay because they can still pass written tests and are therefore building up a good background knowledge of the language
4. Having a good background knowledge of the language but not being able to speak yet is what we call a "false beginner" being a false beginner after 9-12 years of studying a language is not good enough, to say the least
5. Some students come out of the system being able to speak the target language well. Many say this is showing the system works, I say those students are linguistically gifted and have great internal motivation to succeed. Having a 10% success rate is not to be bragged about.
6. There must be change!

BS:

1. Language is perhaps the only subject in which we can claim to be able to get a 100% success rate. Not every child born on this earth will be competent in Mathematics, nor will they be great in Geography but all human beings can speak a language (unless of course they have some severe disability). Even those who are not able to speak or hear, can use sign language. So everybody can learn a language, if everybody can learn a language, everybody can learn a second or a third language, we have this ability inbuilt in us at birth.
2. All we need to do to get this kind of success is set the correct standards. For the first few years (or at least until the students get past not being able to speak) books and paper based tests should not be used. This is setting many students up for failure and does not instill confidence in students. You should not ask a Second Language Learner to work on literacy skills straight away just as you would not ask a baby to learn their mother tongue from a text book either!
3. If we focus on speaking and listening for a year using a brain friendly approach our students will be able to speak. It may take a few sessions a week but they will speak. This means in one year we will achieve more than what others do in 12 (this is not to say reading and writing wouldn't be used but it just wouldn't be tested or focused on). This means that our students WILL graduate speaking another language, ALL our students, not that shabby right?
4. This opens up a world of possibility for language instruction. If it is possible to get a student to an upper-beginner level in a foreign language in 2 years (being confident to speak and explore the language afterwards by themselves) this means after Primary School (SD) all students would be able to speak three foreign languages to an upper-beginner level.
5. If students graduating Primary School have an Upper-Beginner level in three languages and feel confident with foreign languages this means they could fine tune one or all three of these languages in the next 6 years on Secondary Education. More than enough time to work on literacy skills (especially if they are making a transition from Bahasa Indononesia which is also a Latin Script language or being able to read Quran which is a good enough background in Arabic literacy to kick start the next 6 years).

So in conclusion with only a slight change of mindset and a few new techniques up our sleeve we can achieve grand possibilities in teaching another language. How about for other subjects, what small changes could we make to achieve similar grand results? I think there are probably a few, but let's leave that till another day to discuss.

Please don't forget to leave your comment and visit/join our facebook group to discuss information on the blog or to add your own ideas.
Until next time - Let's Change some Lives!
Kindest regards,
-Hugh