Learning L3 English Early: A Danger to L1 Indonesian Language Acquisition?

Abstract

Since the future of the world is English, many countries now include English in their primary education curriculum, so language proficiency can be achieved more quickly and effectively. As two or more languages knowledge are competing linguistically in the brain, the early introduction to English means putting the other languages known by the Indonesian English language learners in a competition. On the other hand, despite its controversy, bilingualism and multilingualism, when achieved fully and proportionally, is cognitively and socially beneficial. This article reviews the potential effects of including English early in the Indonesian curriculum and the recommendation for the Indonesian’s future multilingual education and research. The discussion resulted in some important conclusions. Firstly, considering the Indonesian-English far typological distance, learning English requires some time and cognitive effort. For Indonesian bilinguals/multilingual, this means early introduction to English means higher confidence in producing the language verbally later on. During this early learning of English, the Indonesian language (and any other ethnic language that forms the speaker’s identity should also be used simultaneously to create the same purpose; a sense of belonging towards and confidence in using the language(s). In short, multilingualism that includes foreign language instruction; national and minority language use and maintainance, should be enhanced and normalised from childhood.

Factors That Hinder English Speaking Development in Mia Islamic Boarding School

“…The study also revealed that learning facilities have a positive impact on students' language learning achievement because it affects the learners' motivation to learn a language. This finding is also relevant to what is mentioned in the Background Section, that most students are unprepared to express themselves in a foreign language daily (Irnanda, 2021) and they express it by pointing out the facility problem as the root problem. Students in MIA are not allowed phones and also do not have a multimedia room that can support more interactive and fun learning.…”

“…There has been controversy surrounding a particular regulation due to the fact that the languages being enforced are not familiar to the majority of the students. Specifically, English is a foreign language that is widely considered difficult to master by Indonesian-speaking learners (Lamb, 2007a;Lamb 2007b;Irnanda & Sarair, 2022). Many boarding schools disregard the fact that the students come from a zero-English environment and mostly are graduates of public primary schools that do not provide basic English lessons.…”

“…Many boarding schools disregard the fact that the students come from a zero-English environment and mostly are graduates of public primary schools that do not provide basic English lessons. English is not a compulsory subject in Indonesian primary schools (Afifah, 2017), which means that there are no governmenttrained English teachers available to support English learning at the primary level to ensure that Indonesian 7 graders are ready to learn English at the secondary level (Irnanda, 2021), regardless of the types of institutions they choose. Therefore, the boarding school's foreign-language daily use is more likely to create problems than offer solutions for teaching and learning the English language in Indonesia.…”