Bilingual Teaching in Indonesia and Its Advantages

Nowadays, people in Indonesia do believe that Bilingual Teaching is one of the best teaching methods ever. Mostly, the second language which is used in Bilingual teaching instead of Bahasa Indonesia is English. In this case, parents would prefer enrolling their children to a school which is using Bilingual Teaching to the school which does not use Bilingual Teaching. The definition of Bilingual Teaching itself is a teaching method which involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model (Accessed on August 29^th 2010; www.buzzle.com). Furthermore, what makes Bilingual Teaching become one of the parents’ choices? There are several advantages of Bilingual Teaching, three of which are: the knowledge of the students will be increasing, the students will be more sensitive and appreciative of culture, and the last is their speaking ability of the second language will bring the students to the brighter future. 

In the first place, mastering more than one language could lead the students to obtain more information sources in their learning process. As an example is Santa Maria Elementary School, Cirebon. The students are not only studying about language, whether Bahasa Indonesia or English, but also other subjects such as Math, Physics, Biology, etc (Accessed on August 29^th, 2010; sd.santamaria-crb.sch.id).  The students who are from Bilingual classes have the great ability in speaking because every day they are accustomed to communicating with those two languages. Another example is Math. When the students are studying Math, they were challenged to gain a lot of information in two languages, so they would get more references to increase their comprehension about Math and its formula. Moreover, they could answer the questions both in two languages, Bahasa Indonesia and English. Thus, gaining a lot of unlimited information from the books which are using the second language is one of the advantages of Bilingual Teaching to the students.

In the second place, Bilingual Teaching enables the students to be more sensitive and more appreciative of many kinds of culture. In our country, the conventional teaching only uses Bahasa Indonesia as the medium of instruction. Moreover, the students are not using the second language even introduced to its culture. This is what the conventional teaching does not have. Absolutely, we from Asia are different from those from Europe or the United States. In this case, the knowledge that we must have is cross-culture understanding. The cross-culture understanding is something that is presented by Bilingual Teaching. In addition, cross-culture understanding is a basic ability of people to recognize, to interpret, and correctly react to people, incidences or situations that are open to misunderstanding due to cultural differences (August 29^th, 2010; www.kwintessential.co.uk). Some people believe that Bilingual Teaching only makes a wider gap between the citizens and the overseas students. They are absolutely wrong, if we think deeper on how this teaching method could bring a harmony between students in Indonesia and the overseas students.

In the third place, in this globalization era the ability to speak more than one language is very important for the students. Mastering only Bahasa Indonesia is not enough to get the good job. We know that mostly the companies which are looking for the officers through the newspapers require their officers to have the ability at least in English (Accessed August 29^th 2010, Jawa Pos). The companies would prefer hiring someone who has the ability both to speak and write more than one language. Indeed, Bilingual Teaching could answer that question. Two languages which are used in Bilingual Teaching could open the huge work opportunities to the students. Bilingual Teaching helps them communicate effectively, think more flexibly and creatively about many things. Still, the opportunities to study and work abroad will open widely for those who could speak more than one language.

Based on those reasons above, now we know what makes some parents would prefer enrolling their children to a school which is using Bilingual Teaching to the school which does not using Bilingual Teaching. Indeed, Bilingual Teaching is needed because it gives many advantages to the students. Therefore, by giving the nationalism understanding in advance to the students before Bilingual teaching starting is one of the best ways to make the students of Indonesia understand that the purpose of using the second language is not to make them forget their own country but to prepare them in the globalization era by building their country through education.

 Written by

Nurrahma Sutisna P