here I would like to share my teaching experience in one of suburb area in Kupang, Indonesia where I taught English for 20-male students in one Maritime Vocational Senior High School. As a young teacher who just graduated from uni, I brought all the ideal teaching philosophy and atmosphere and always wanted to teach English in fun way and used creative teaching resources and media in class. However, the facts I found in the school were not the same as I expected. I faced lots of difficulties in teaching English in this suburb area due to lack of teaching resources and demotivated students. The school did not provide the English textbooks for the students and only had a set of syllabus which informed the teachers about the English materials. Besides, the schools also did not have any supporting facilities, like printers or photocopy machines, therefore, I had to create my teaching materials and go to city to print out some teaching materials for teaching. The sad thing was that teachers used their own money to afford the teaching materials because the schools would not pay extra for it.
Moreover, I sometimes found myself almost giving up on teaching because I felt like doing many things for nothing. I said “doing things for things” because my students have a very low motivation in English. My students in suburb area did not see any benefits in learning English after high school and out of school. They said that English is not used in daily communication therefore learning English at school was merely to pass the exam. After all, they would only work on domestic ship and got a good money-making job. This statement is relatable to the world described by Nico where compulsory English study under these conditions not produce any results but it attracts a cost and leaves a burden for both teacher and students.

Once again thank you for sharing Nicolaus Pasassung’s thesis.

Thanks, Nico! It’s great to see you on Language on the Move whenever you can make it! All the best!

Sorry for this late gratitude (I have always been late due to several reasons amongst other is internet connection problem .
Thanks a lot Ingrid for blogging my work. You are such of help that I nobody else can be. I have shared it among my networks, and hopefully it will attract people’s interests. The points you highlight are fascinating and capture the important parts of the thesis. The title well-reflects a major issue that requires serious consideration from language education policy makers in Indonesia to rethink of the current English Language Teaching in the context of Indonesia.

Kimie, Thanks for your support. Hopefully, people in Thailand will be aware of the contribution you make for better development of the country.

Saluton Sinjoro,

Many thanks for your suggestions. I’m from Yunnan bordering Burma, Vietnam and Laos. Over the past few years, the Yunnan government has encouraged the locals to choose bordering languages rather than English as the only compulsory school subject at school (high school and university). But due to many reasons, such promotion of the bordering languages can not be widely acknowledged by the people in this province. At least the minorities like Dai people would rather choose English and give up learning their own language even though Dai language is very much similar to Thai, Vietnam and Laos languages. So I think whether to teach them English or Esperanto should not come to the first concern. If the future learning groups have their own languages, probably I could first of all raise their awareness of cherishing their own linguistic heritage while teaching them English.

Saluton Li Jia,

Reading from the brief context of the comment, I gather that you are from China. I would suggest you to learn Esperanto and join the Esperantists in China to teach Esperanto in the rural schools. The trend has changed and if you have read the book English Next, you should know the international language would not be English as in the past.

Esperanto no only have the propaedeutic value, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto

Esperanto also has other value. The rural areas lack of resources and English language requires lots of time and resources to learn it, thus, to equip the poor with an international language, Esperanto is the best choice. http://www.mondeto.com/1/post/2011/09/immediate-and-lasting-advantages-of-early-esperanto-1-
brain-building.html

You can type in Chinese 世界语to look at the activities in China. China is a branch of Esperanto International Teacher Association so as Vietnam and Indonesia.

We are building ASEAN to use Esperanto as a common language.

Dankon, Sinjora ENG, for the link to the fascinating article in the Jakarta Post! The comments section is even more intriguing than the actual article …

Don’t worry, the government of Indonesia is all the time liberal if compared with Malaysia as there is no act written English must be taught in schools like Malaysia. Now the government of Indonesia has decided to ‘omit’ teaching English. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/10/11/govt-omit-english-primary-schools.html

In fact, when I talked to my friends in Indonesia, they told me that they can choose to learn many foreign languages like Japanese, German, Chinese, French in the high school.

The wish of many in ASEAN would be the government can introduce Esperanto in the primary school like in China. Nicole has mentioned a very valid point that give an easy start to the children with Esperanto.

I wish my government in Malaysia would hear that voice from Nicole.

Thanks, Li Jia! Please don’t let my post detract you from following your dreams! Setting up a school in a remote area is a noble aspiration and I’m sure much good would come of it. Maybe I’ll even join you 🙂

It is true that 13 years ago, after my graduation, 50 % of BA and BS students could find a good job, say, working as university teachers, but nowadays anyone who wants to be a university teacher would have to have a doctorate degree as one of the required conditions. Take English major students in China for example. Normally there are 120 students in each grade in my university (which is one of the famous comprehensive universities in China’s 211 Project Lists) , and around 20 of them would be an MA students in future. I really wonder how many of them would finally become a PhD student in future. One or two? So chances would be very slow for them to do their PhD study in future, in other words, less than 1% of English majored students would be able to use English to improve their lives.