Teaching English To Young Learners In Indonesia: Essential Requirements

D of education in Indonesia has encouraged local governments to make their own decisions relative to some portion of curricular space in the form of the use of some learning hours for what has become known as “local contents” (Jalal & Musthafa, 2001). As result of this decetralized decision-making, since last decade, public interest in English for Young Learnes (EYL) has become enhanced. This is evidenced in increasing number of district and city governments all over the country which offer English classes at the elementary school level. While decisions to teach English to elementary school pupils have been made, requirements for teachers to be able to teach English well at this level are seldom discussed in public fora. As results, our knowledge about this important issue is very limited. To make things even more worrisome, from day to day observation we can easily find cases which indicate that elementary school English teachers lack professional support and opportunities for inservice training. In addition, the current practice seems to have been guided by a very serious misconception—that is that teaching English to elementary school children does not require the same English proficiency as teaching English at a more advanced level. If not appropriately rectified, this mis-informed program implementation is bound to failure. This article shall bring to fore what accomplished teachers of English to young learners should know and be able to do so that program planners have a relatively clear understanding of all the components necessary to create a positive environment for English teaching and learning at elementary school level in Indonesia. More specifically, using current learning theories stemming from socio-cultural perspectives (e.g., Vygotsky, Bruner, Corsaro, and Dyson) the bulk of the required knowledge base and skills has been synthesized from multiple sources and these requirements will be organized into five pillars relative to (1) who children are, (2) how the children learn, (3) how the children learn a language, (4) how Indonesian children learn English as a foreign language, and (5) how teachers can facilitate children learning English as a foreign language.