International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 182

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
and 1987 cited in Huda, 1999). In actual classroom practice, however, the notion of
“communicative competence” was misinterpreted and taught by most teachers as “oral
skills”. This misunderstanding, in turn, caused controversy among English teachers and
experts.
Building on the lessons learned from these two failed attempts, current ELT in
Indonesia adopts communicative language principles under the 1994 English syllabus, which
brings to the forefront the notion of “meaningfulness approach”. Huda (1999) has
interpreted this approach in two ways: 1) meaning-based instruction, and 2) meaningful
instruction. Meaning-based instruction starts from the notion of language as a means to
express and understand meaning. As meaning is determined by language scope and is also
defined by social contexts. ELT should be targeted to develop students’ ability to understand
and express meaning in the context of language used for communicative purposes.
Language learning is meaningful if students learn expressions at the discourse level as
opposed to isolated words. To this end, the presentation of learning materials must be in
the context of specific situations because meaning changes in different contexts.
The second interpretation of the “meaningfulness approach” is that instruction
should be meaningful to learners. Language instruction is meaningful if it is relevant to a
learner’s needs and demands. The relevance of English instruction to the needs of learners
as a group is ensured when what is being taught to — and engaged by – learners is
somehow related to what they think is important and useful. To this end, the selection and
presentation of learning materials should be made with reference to what is generally of
interest to learners (horizontal relevance) and/or what is likely to be needed by learners in
the near future (vertical relevance). To make the whole learning activity authentic, all
language components and linguistic macro skills should be integrated, and treatment of any
linguistic aspect or skill is to be made in the context of the whole discourse.
While, at the theoretical level, the goals seem reasonably clear, remaining at issue
here is how classroom teachers as front-line players can translate the ides as originally
conceived by the syllabus designers. The issue of teachers’ ability to translate principles into
classroom practice becomes important because it is the classroom teachers who will
determine what happens — and does not happen — in the classroom. Another issue of
concern is the kind and focus of the tests administered to assess the relative success of the
instruction. The issue of test format and emphasis is important because we have learned
from research and experience that grade is important to both teachers and students. That is
to say, tests, as research has established, will drive instruction. The biggest challenge then is
to empower classroom teachers so that they are productively involved in the design of
course syllabi and assessment instruments.

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