Pertanyaan

Read the passage below for questions 81 – 87! Language plays a big role in the life of an individual and also in his/her social context. It functions as a tool in communication process, and also to show the status of the speaker in one’s community. Language also is often associated with one’s ability to communicate. For most people, speaking is as natural as waking up in the morning each day: it’s a sub-conscious action which is rarely noticed. It is often associated with speech, sound, meaning, articulation, symbols and also rules. The definition of language has become a constant debate among linguists. An example of Noam Chomsky’s interpretation of language is that it is associated with the innate capability of human being. In Chomsky’s view, the most distinguishing feature of human language is “productivity” or “creativity”, that is to say, human beings can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences with a limited set of grammatical rules and words. So the most important task for linguistics is to find the generative grammar of human language. Unlike Singapore, Malaysia and Philippine that were colonized by British, Indonesia was by the Dutch, therefore the status of English is a as a foreign language in Indonesia. Since the Dutch colonized Indonesia for more than 350 years, only a handful of Indonesian received the formal education at the beginning of the colonization. The majority of people were illiterate. The schools at that time were only attended by the Dutch’s children and selected children that came from elite families and wealthy people. Western style elementary schools were introduced in 1907 and the junior high school were also established. The English language was first taught in 1914. During that time, English language was introduced by the school but since Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch, most of the upper class children were familiar only with Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesia Language) and Dutch language rather than English since English is not used as a medium of communication. During World War II the Japanese came and colonialized Indonesia and banned English language to be taught in school. After independence, the government set to make English as the foreign language that needed to be learned by the all students in Indonesia. This came into being as English is a Lingua Franca and used by people around the globe, not Dutch. Today, the position of English in Indonesia as a foreign language has risen in its importance and become a compulsory pass subject in examination. Students were formally taught about the basic rules and also structures about English language but it doesn’t act as a medium of communication or instruction in school. Moreover, many were struggling to determine which English they should use, whether British or American. However, the more prevalent issue is that many have not been exposed to the English words, conversations or books. There is still no ’real’ community of English speakers in Indonesia. A lot of people who do speak English are urban dwellers, in big cities or capital cities, generally in Java. English, having the status of a Foreign Language, has yet to go far in terms of its usage as a means of communication; it is a far-fetched and idealistic notion to change this status in the near future. The problem here is that the position of English language as a foreign language in Indonesia affects the students’ motivation of learning English as it is not really being used in day-to-day communication. The students do use English in the formal education at the university level but not as much as the demand of the language on to the society. Since English conversation is rarely used in daily life, the anxiety of using English for communication purposes such as presentations or public speaking is at all time high and has become a stigma for the students. Source: ( http://journal.uad.ac.id/index.php/EduLearn/article/view/4621/pdf_171 ) The word notion in paragraph 2 has the closest meaning to….