A single regional common market of ASEAN countries will be created when
the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) comes into force in less than three years.
Under the AEC, there will be a free transfer of professionals in eight fields,
namely, tourism, medicine, dentistry, engineering, architecture, surveying and
accounting.
It cannot be predicted how much
this will affect people’s lives. Still, it is crucial to prepare our students
and future generations since they will have to compete with people from
neighboring ASEAN countries for careers.
A recent conference at the
National University of Singapore was a perfect venue to discuss the matter.
Themed “Culture in Foreign Language Learning: Framing and Reframing the Issue”,
the event provided teachers from ASEAN countries with a chance to find
university partners to conduct teaching and research collaboration as part of
their preparations for the AEC.
Indeed, during the three-day
conference, discourses on culture and foreign-language teaching and discussions
on the importance of understanding ASEAN cultures and languages as well as
English for employment for national competitiveness spilled over into lunch and
dinner times.
Should developing students’
competence in the cultures and languages of ASEAN countries and English be
considered important leading up to AEC, the question is what the students have
done so far.
A new friend who is an English
lecturer from a very reputable university in Thailand told me that her
university had just opened its first PhD program in English language teaching
(ELT). She said globalization and the fast approaching AEC would surely demand
a tremendous explosion of English-related work around ASEAN specifically and
the world generally. There is an increasing need for proficient English
teachers and users and it has made the study of English as an international
language more important than ever. What is its relevance for Indonesia then?
Opening more PhD programs in ELT
in Indonesia and learning ASEAN languages looks pressing for Indonesia, but
there is a more attainable goal to pursue that has something to do with our ELT
curriculum and the way we teach culture.
Andy Kirkpatrick, a chair
professor of English as an international language at the Hong Kong Institute of
Education stated that the ELT curriculum in Indonesia (and other parts of Asia)
needs to include information about the cultures and people of ASEAN and the Asian
region instead of informing students about the cultures of English native
speakers, and ask students to be ready to discuss their own cultures and issues
they deem important in English. Kirkpatrick also highlighted the need to build
learners’ intercultural competence through learning English.
Developing our students’
intercultural competence requires us to change the types of culture that we
teach and the way we teach culture. We tend to think that when we learn
English, we must only learn about foreign cultures, especially American and
British culture. However, it should not be the case anymore. We also have to
teach about the cultures of ASEAN countries.
When we teach culture to our
English students, we should refrain from overloading the students with cultural
facts about American and British culture, which usually happens in many
English-language classrooms here. Such a method will only lead to the
stereotyping of people from other countries. Instead, teachers need to actively
guide learners to reflect on cultural differences and similarities in order not
to be judgmental.
By doing so, teachers can help
learners escape from “bad” and “good” cultures but lead the students to realize
what seems to be “right” in their culture might be “wrong” in other cultures
and vice versa. In other words, by changing the way we teach culture in our
classes, we teachers can cultivate the notion of tolerance, which many,
including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, believe to be one of the fruits
of education.
The AEC is unquestionably a work
in progress which will bring challenges and opportunities. Our task is to be
prepared for that. Some efforts toward the AEC can take shape in big projects
such as joint research with universities from other ASEAN countries or to open
more PhD programs and classes on ASEAN languages.
Yet, some tasks can be simpler
and produce quicker results, such as adding a new component to our curriculum
which is to learn the cultures of ASEAN countries and change the way we teach
culture. This does not require much of a budget but a strong will to work hard
and learn more about how to develop students’ intercultural competence.
Should we decline to prepare
ourselves now, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for being left behind
when the AEC comes.
Lidya Siregar
The writer lectures at the faculty of english letters, Maranatha
University in Bandung.
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