Zein, S. (2018A). From EFL to ELF: Implications for teacher education. In S. Zein (Ed.).

Teacher
education for English as a Lingua Franca: Perspectives from Indonesia (pp. 21-40). New York:
Routledge.

2 From EFL to ELF

Implications for teacher education
Subhan Zein

Introduction
English in Indonesia is situated within the second largest linguistic ecology in
the world, with 707 living languages being spoken in the country (Ethnolo-
gue, 2017). Speakers of major indigenous languages such as Javanese, Sunda-
nese and Batak constitute 140.4 million people or 59.3% of the country’s
population (BPS, 2011). This multilingual context means that the majority of
Indonesian children generally learn an indigenous language first and only begin
to learn Indonesian as the national language at school age. English is not a
compulsory subject at Sekolah Dasar (SD) or primary school level, but it is
compulsory at Sekolah Menengah Pertama (SMP) or junior high school and
Sekolah Menengah Atas (SMA) or senior high school. At the university level,
students attending non-language departments are required to undertake two
contact-hours of English studies per week.
In the past decade, the need for English within Indonesian communities has
increased considerably to the realm beyond language education. The importance
of the language for improving Indonesia’s global competitiveness has been widely
asserted (e.g. Ariatna, 2016, Dewi, 2014a; Hamied, 2012; Madya, 2007; Zein,
2018a). But in addition to the global orientation, there is also regional orientation
in that there is an urgent need for Indonesians to be able to communicate suc-
cessfully within the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) commu-
nity. This is especially motivated by the recent officialisation of English as the
working language of ASEAN and the establishment of the ASEAN Economic
Community in 2015, leading to the ASEAN Integration. This chapter explores
the development of English language in Indonesia in the wake of the ASEAN
Integration, touching upon issues such as its brief history, the transition from
English as a foreign language (EFL) perspective into English as a lingua franca
(ELF) and implications for teacher education.

Brief historical background

English has had a relatively short history in Indonesia. Shortly after the nation’s
independence on 17 August 1945, the newly formed Indonesian Government
22 S. Zein
decided to teach English as a compulsory subject in junior and senior high
schools. The decision to select English was motivated primarily by the Indonesian
public’s pervasive aversion to Dutch. Dutch was closely associated with the lan-
guage of the Dutch colonisers who had occupied the nation for three and a half
centuries; and the language was considered to be of no international stature.
English, on the other hand, was seen as the language of the future as represented
by the then-dominant global political powers – the UK and the USA – and it
was foreseen that English would become a language of global importance
(Dardjowidjojo, 2000).
Over the course of its development, English language education in Indonesia
has undergone curricular alterations a number of times. The first methodology
implemented was the grammar-translation method (GTM). Dardjowidjojo (2000)
describes that the focus of the study then was for students to be able to under-
stand passages in English and to translate them into Indonesian. The imple-
mentation of GTM in the early years was deemed appropriate because of the large
classes and the teacher-oriented structure of GTM lessons, which does not require
a high level of teacher proficiency. The popularity of GTM waned when the
Ford Foundation developed Standard Training Centres in Yogyakarta and Bukit
Tinggi to revamp English language teaching (ELT) in Indonesia. According to
Dardjowidjojo (2000), the development of Standard Training Centres was sig-
nificant in the production of language-teaching materials centrally managed in
Salatiga, Central Java, and it marked a significant departure from the oral
approach, which placed emphasis on the development of oral skills.
The structural approach was introduced in 1975 as a reaction to the oral
approach. The view of language and language learning within this approach,
according to Madya (2007), expanded considerably into a set of learnt behaviour,
where repetition of sounds, words and expressions plays a prominent role in the
development of one’s language proficiency. The focus of language and language
learning, however, was still on the oral language. Teaching began with the intro-
duction of English phonetics, both in isolation and in a series of sounds. This
allowed the audio-lingual method to gain prominence in Indonesian classrooms.
The grammatical system of English was also considered to be of importance, as it
was believed that mastery of grammar “will enable students to understand, give
response, and express themselves in a situation to communicate with other
people” (Madya, 2007, p. 12).
The implementation of the structural approach lasted for approximately nine
years, that is, until 1984 when a new curriculum was introduced. The 1984 Cur-
riculum was heavily influenced by Dell Hymes’ Communicative Approach, which
views language as more than mere structure but as a means of communication.
This became the core principle of ELT encapsulated in the 1984 English curricu-
lum. The emphasis of the 1984 Curriculum was the nature of language as a means
of communication and the importance of meaning and functions (Madya, 2003).
To support the implementation of the curriculum, the Indonesian Government set
up an official role for English as the first foreign language through Presidential
Decree No. 28/1990.
 36 S. Zein
While improving teacher’s proficiency remains its main task (see Chapter 10),
teacher education also needs to support teachers to move away from the mono-
lingual view of language teaching that treats languages as separate entities. As García
(2011, p. 7) argues, “language is not something that human beings have, but an
ongoing process that exists in languaging”, that is, the language practices of people
that often require multiple discursive resources. Teacher education therefore needs
to help teachers to develop a pedagogy that utilises fluid, mobile and multiple dis-
cursive resources in Indonesian multilingual classrooms. This means Indonesian
teachers of English need to move away from the monolingual pedagogy where the
use of L1 should be entirely avoided, to a translanguaging pedagogy where L1s are
valued and deliberately utilised (Rasman, 2018; Sugiharto, 2015b; Zein, 2018b).
Although particular differences occur between the two (see Kimura & Canagar-
ajah, 2018), translanguaging and the ELF perspective are complementary. They are
in fact united by a common position to involve the construction of intersubjective
norms according to changing situated practices involving various participants and
contexts. Here, the focus of ELF and translanguaging is the situated practices that
lead to meaning making (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018). Translanguaging does not
recognise linguistic boundaries. It entails a large speech repertoire that overlaps
between administratively assigned languages, so that teachers can incorporate pur-
poseful and systematic discursive modes such as code-switching and translating
as part of their everyday way of meaning making. In translanguaging, linguistic
differences can serve as resources to express one’s unique voice without devalu-
ing linguistic conventions and established varieties (Canagarajah, 2013).
Research in the Indonesian context shows that when implemented effectively,
translanguaging allows learners to develop their own linguistic repertoire (Rasman,
2018), promotes teachers’ ability to develop a metadiscursive practice that fosters
scaffolding (Zein, 2018b), and encourages the inclusion of language users’ identities,
cultural values and rhetorical traditions (Sugiharto, 2015b). But promoting trans-
languaging in the Indonesian ELF context is not only a paradigm shift in pedagogy.
It is also a challenging task to fight against the deeply rooted language ideology pri-
vileging “native speakers” that is still prevalent in the country. Teacher education
needs to create a space for developing awareness that linguistic norms are fluid and
negotiable ideological constructs, while broadening the conception of communica-
tion beyond the linguistic exchanges with the “native speakers”. As suggested by
Dewey & Patsko (2018), such an endeavour should take place early in the teacher
education trajectory, allowing for greater possibility for the practical relevance of ELF
to feature in teachers’ pedagogical repertoire. This will require greater engagement
between researchers and teachers for more salient involvement in teacher education.

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