English Teaching in Elementary School: Parents’ Expectation and Reality

Abstract

The need for the teaching of English as a foreign language in
Indonesia has been felt by almost all levels of society, especially in big
cities. Without realizing the schools readiness, society has put a great
expectation on the success of the English teaching. Theories on Second
Language Acquisition suggest that a foreign language should be taught to
children of young age because every individual possesses a language
Acquisition Device, regardless of the age (Chomsky, 1962). Lanneberg
(Krashen, 1988: 72) claimed that children are biologically capable to
learn a language easily due to the elasticity nature of their brain. This
elasticity will stop once the lateralization process takes place in a time
when children usually begin to enter their puberty period. In accordance
to the 1994 National Curriculum, English has been formally introduced to
students of Elementary School. Now, at the dawn of the implementation of
competence Based Curriculum, elementary schools are reformulating
their English syllabuses and materials to respond to parents’
expectations. This paper intends to describe these expectations along with
what the schools have done to respond these expectations based on a
survey conducted on a number of elementary schools in Surabaya.
Furthermore, the paper will also try to verify whether these expectations
are realistic or not and suggest several achievement indicators that are in
line with these realistic expectations.

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