(Jakarta Globe, Sat. October 20, 2009)
Celebrating its 10th Lustrum, Yayasan LIA (formerly known as Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia-Amerika) will hold an international conference in Bali on English Language Teaching and Learning on April 28-30, 2010. Based on its experience of teaching English at various levels and groups, LIA is looking at how the English language today has become intertwined with different cultural settings, how native English speakers today are outnumbered by non-natives, and the debate over which form of English should be used: American, British or Australian. “World Englishes Across Cultures” is about how standards in English language teaching and learning have transformed. Owing to globalization, the use of English as lingua franca is increasing as it enables people from different non-English speaking countries to communicate. The teaching profession of English has to consider applying new international standards of World Englishes in compliance with local culture and understanding.
Andy Kirkpatrick, the author of “World Englishes” and a speaker at the conference will raise the issue of the implications to English Language Teaching (ELT) curriculum and materials development. In his book he mentions the phenomenon of different usage of the English language by Jamaicans, South Africans, Singaporeans, and many more, as he questions whether the English language used is not “English” anymore. An American expert in linguistics who lived nearly twenty years in Hong Kong, Kirkpatrick suggests the possibility of improving the multilingual model and pedagogy based on new global standards that can be applied internationally thereby eliminating the common perception that English is best taught by native speakers.
Ir. Hafilia R. Ismanto, M.M., the Director of Academic Affairs in LIA believes in locally trained teachers . “For 50 years, we never use nativespeakers as our teaching staff.” Today LIA has established 62 branches in 18 provinces in Indonesia, giving regular language classes to more than 60,000 students. “This has proven that our methodology is working, and we are trying to maintain it by strict monitoring and quality assurance, and intensive training and mentoring for our teaching staff. We only use native speakers (with substantive background in ELT) when it comes to developing our course materials.”, she continued. Even so, she believes that course and teaching materials should be left to local content. LIA believes that its materials are appropriately designed for the learning and understanding of Indonesians to learn English as members of the global community. Currently, LIA employs approximately 1,000 teaching staff all over Indonesia.
By empowering non-native teachers LIA manages to operate at a lower cost compared to other language schools that hire native english speakers as teachers. The affordable fee, years of experience, and quality make LIA the obvious choice for many Indonesians, and even the national Government. LIA has been the selected partner in language training for, amongst others, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Labour. LIA also signed a memorandum of understanding with several departments for language testing.
According to Umar Latinulu, the operations Director, LIA is planning to expand its schools to 70 branches by the year 2012, through an intensive scouting for potential partners in other regions in Indonesia, in order to “educate (as much as) Indonesian people in the country” just as its mission states. By the end of this year, a new branch in Payakumbuh will be opened.
Dr. Sudibyo Siyam, M.A., LIA’s Managing Director is trying to develop LIA in the direction of becoming the leading language institution in ELT, translation, and testing in Indonesia, and later in the Asian region. He refers to the SEAMEO Regional Language Centre in Singapore, whose one of the educators will also be speaking at LIA’S 2010 Conference, as the benchmark. Other speakers who will be attending the conference are experts and professionals of ELT in non-English speaking countries such as Korea, Hong Kong,Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Aside from the International Conference, LIA also held several other events such as the National Students Competition, and a 10-city Seminar that was held in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bandung, Bekasi, Surabaya, and also cities outside Java such as Makassar, Banjarmasin, Pontianak, Palembang, and Padang. The National Students Competition was held per branch starting from June to August 2009. Around 40 winners from these branches then competed in a national level last September. The competition had four categories: SAY, SPEAK, TESTIFY and TALK. The students competing in the SAY category were LIA students age 15-18 years old who were told to give a presentation, using any kind of medium, on Indonesian children’s welfare. The participants were judged by their fluency, vocabulary, creativity, and poise. The top-20 national participants from this category will represent Indonesia in the IFCW World Forum this October 21-24 2009 in Jakarta, to participate in the discussion of the rights and welfare of children and young people in Indonesia on a global scale. The world forum is co-hosted by the Indonesian Children Welfare Foundation (YKAI or Yayasan Kesejahteraan Anak Indonesia).
The 10-city Seminar is a one-day workshop held for teachers from June to December 2009, raising the latest issues on teacher development corresponding to the growing trends of Pilot School with International Standard or RSBI (Rintisan Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional) and School with International Standard or SBI (Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional) in Indonesia, that taught several subjects in English. The seminar is aimed at the empowerment of English language teachers in facing the challenge of teaching students to use English to learn, and at the same time facilitating students’ learning to use English, and also on content and language integrated learning especially for math and science teachers. The different teaching staff’s educational background at LIA made it possible for cross-subject ELT, developing the English skill of teachers who taught subjects other than English.
The seminar participants on islands outside Java gave strong responses as people from faraway regions had to travel for hours by boat, bus or plane, and expend the extra costs only to attend the seminar, as an attestation to the unequal distribution on opportunities for education and training in Indonesia. Basically, most of the teachers that came to the seminar were very much motivated and eager to comply to the “international” standard that has recently been ratified by the Ministry of Education in 2004. It is the capacity of the teachers that needs more attention, Hafilia Ismanto told the Jakarta Globe. LIA realized this issue and aimed to empower school teachers, with or without a direct assignment from the Government. “Students, our young generation are the output of our education system, and teachers are the prominent factor on how the output will be”, she said. The seminar was the first held nationally, while LIA encourages its branches to periodically develop their teaching staff through local training, seminar, or workshop. Two upcoming seminars will be held in Kalimalang on November 21st, and Surabaya on December 10th.
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