Speaking English in Indonesia.
As one of the countries that had been colonialized by some European countries, Indonesia never takes foreign languages as its national one. Instead the country that declared its Independence from Japan by 1945 uses Bahasa Indonesia as its one and only national language, though the widespread of local languages lay from east to west into three different time zones.
English as a secondary language is now getting trending for many Indonesian. You can ask any local in Jakarta, Bali or Surabaya and they can communicate in a simple understandable English. Bali has managed to get a lot of international tourists since the late 20th century. Surprisingly Surabayan speaks English slightly better than Jakartan.
English as a second language is taught to students as early as possible. The higher the tuition fee accelerates with the English capability of the educators. Though the majority of the students in state school still get English for at least 90 minutes a week depending on the area. The middle class get English exposure in class and at home.
Low exposure causes low competence, in the long term this will create a huge gap between people who speaks English proficiently and the community where one doesn’t get enough exposure. The question that arises will be how to change the massive low English exposure in the nation. It will be easier if the system of teaching and learning at school to be modernized and 21st century based. However one can’t only hope for the system change in a night.
Exposure not only happens in English classes. English songs, newspapers, books, magazines, blogs, are sources for one’s exposure. The most important thing above all of those is a community where speaking English is simply accepted.
The community where English is widely accepted can be seen in Twitter. Buzzers who use English will construct an English bubble where speaking English is widely accepted. The ugly truth is speaking English in real life is not as widely accepted as communicating in social media.
The people who belong to the community with low to average exposure to English try to to keep up by using their best English which have flaws and often get bullied socially. This creates a falling in confidence and put one’s progress in danger.
Our community has to make peace with grammatical mistakes for learners, one can’t be fluent in English without making mistakes during the learning period. Learning period is a time and place where one gets information, process it, utilize it in daily activity, making mistakes, noticing it and finally be able to communicate English confidently.
