For my final cultural artifact, I chose to write about Kampung Inggris Pare. This is the “English Village” in East Java. The purpose of this village is for Indonesian people to learn and immerse themselves in English. Everyone in this village makes an effort to speak English at all times, and most of the buildings here are English “courses.” They are called courses, which actually mean school (they are essentially intensive language schools). I watched a video on one of the many courses offered in this village, which is called Kampung Inggris LC (Language Center).
Even though it is technically a village, it is more akin to a college campus or student complex. Most, if not everyone, who lives in Kampung Inggris Pare is a student. As expected, they are mainly from Indonesia, but there are also students from Malaysia, Thailand, East Timor, and more. These students are typically high school graduates who want to prepare themselves for university or the international workforce by studying English. The main modes of transportation are motorcycles and regular bikes. While many of the buildings are courses, there are still restaurants, food stalls, cafés, various stores, parks, etc. Like I said before, it is very similar to a large college campus! From the video, I also learned that there are various extracurriculars and outside activities offered. Additionally, in school, students are expected to do a lot of difficult things like formal presentations, daily assessments, and more. To my understanding, each individual course has several levels of English classes.
This semester, I am taking an ESL Teaching class, which my language partner, Farida, is coincidentally taking as well. As part of that class, students are expected to get hands-on experience teaching. Farida was able to connect our class to BEC (specifically through her friend, Mr. Fuad, who is a BEC administrator), one of the courses in Kampung Inggris Pare, so I have had personal experience with students there. Actually, BEC was the first course ever offered in Kampung Inggris Pare, and if I remember correctly, Mr. Fuad’s father was the founder and one of the pioneers of Kampung Inggris Pare, which is so amazing to me. The students I taught were in the advanced level, so most of our lessons centered around discussions on various topics in order for them to develop difficult and specific vocabulary (in addition to speaking, listening, pronunciation practice, etc.). Since my job was to teach them English, I unfortunately did not have many opportunities to practice my Bahasa Indonesia with them. However, since our class was mostly discussion based, I learned a lot about Indonesian life and culture from the students. Our topics included housing, empathy, compassion, and goals. From our housing topic, I learned that many of the students in Kampung Inggris Pare live in boarding houses with other students. I especially liked our topic of goals, because I learned a lot about the students’ aspirations. Many of them want to become entrepreneurs and start businesses. Other goals included becoming a teacher, airport worker, and psychologist. Though our discussions, I learned that Indonesian students share a lot of similar interests with American students.
Comments
Kianti, thank you so much for sharing about Kampung Inggris Pare! I had never heard about something like that before, but it sounds wonderful. It is inspiring how students are taking charge of their lives and doing intensive language programs like these to prepare themselves for the world. From your experience of teaching ESL to them, what are some of the biggest challenges for Indonesian students when it comes to learning English? In my country Bangladesh, pronunciation seems to be the biggest challenge because Bengali has really different intonations than English. So, I was wondering if the same applies to Indonesian students.
Hi Kianti, I really enjoyed reading about how East Java and how the people there have put in efforts to immerse themselves in English to learn it. I think it is so awesome that you were able to tie in your language learning experience while also being to teach English to others at the same time while engaging with East Java which is very new but intriguing to me as well!
Hey Kianti! I feel like this is such a cool concept in East Java. It's so fascinating to think that English is such a major part of education in many countries around the world. It's so cool you were able to connect your class to BEC and the fact that Indonesian students have many shared interests is amazing.
This is such a cool concept! I really like the community aspect of the village as everyone shares a common goal of learning a language. I think it's such a beneficial experience engaging with other language learners who can understand the challenges and even provide advice along the way. I wonder if it is similar to a school do they have some sort of grading system or certificate once you complete the courses, or is it more like you just become fluent? I think language learning becomes a much more enjoyable and perhaps more effective experience when you aren't trying to earn a grade, but instead work towards a goal of improving proficiency and ultimately becoming fluent, but of course assessments are necessary to measure progress and help you stay motivated. Honestly, I wish more programs were like this for other subjects besides language learning!
Kianti, that sounds like a really enriching experience to learn Indonesian while learning to teach language at the same time. A few years ago, I also took an ESL teaching class and it really helped me understand my own learning strong suits but was also a great opportunity in meeting new people from different cultures, speaking different languages.