Artikel untuk Conaplin 2017: Culture Load in ELT Textbooks For Senior High School In Indonesia (Nurmala Sari, Anjarningsih, Junaidi)

Sarah Nurmala Sari1, Harwintha Yuhria Anjarningsih1 and Junaidi1

1Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, Indonesia sarahnurmala@hotmail.com, wintha.salyo@gmail.com, junaidiui@gmail.com

Keywords:        Cultural Dimension, Culture Category; ELT Textbooks, Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia, Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract:           Language and culture coexisting in the society ground the argument of the importance of culture in learning a language. Cultural understanding is argued to be a pathway to achieve intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia states that the basic competence of learning English is to participate in the scene of international communication—which makes ICC an indicator of a successful learning process. Hence, to achieve the goal, a textbook, which becomes a resourceful material for teachers and learners, needs to contain cultural elements. This study examines cultural elements in vocabulary exercises in Senior High School textbooks published by the government. The cultural elements are identified based on Moran’s cultural dimensions and Cortazzi and Jin’s culture categories modified by Chao. The result shows that those textbooks do not really cover a balanced coverage of dimensions and categories of culture, which can hinder learners’ intercultural communicative competence and government’s aim at the same time.   

Artikel untuk Conaplin 2017: Read, miscue, and progress: A preliminary study in characterizing reading development in shallow Indonesian orthography (Anjarningsih)

Harwintha Yuhria Anjarningsih1

1Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, Indonesia wintha.salyo@gmail.com

Keywords:               Reading Development, Indonesian Orthography, Syllabic Complexity, Children’s Literacy.

Abstract:           Understanding what happens when children learn to read Indonesian is very important, in terms of both advancing psycholinguistics and improving practices that are done in educational institutions throughout the country. The current study aimed to characterize the normal development of reading in the under-researched, shallow Indonesian orthography. A total of eighty-two children aged 7-9 years old participated by reading aloud 100 words that are of high frequency, monomorphemic, disyllabic, and controlled for syllable structure (simple, diphthongs, digraphs, and consonant clusters). Reading miscues that were committed by the children showed that simple disyllabic words were mastered at the end of grade one, and diphthongs, digraphs, and consonant clusters were mastered later. Results are interpreted based on the predictability of the mapping between graphemes and phonemes in the Indonesian orthography.