The Readiness of Teaching English to Young Learners in Indonesia

This study attempted to investigate teachers, students, and schools' readiness in conducting English programs for young learners in Indonesia. Therefore, the participants of this study were from three aspects, as mentioned above. There were two levels of schools involved in this study. Those were elementary and pre-school levels consisted of 10 elementary school teachers, pre-school teachers, elementary and preschool students, elementary and pre-school schools in several areas of Indonesia. The data were collected through the questionnaire and focused on their readiness to conduct English at their level. This study showed that students’ readiness to learn English was very high even though they often encounter obstacles or difficulties in the process of learning English in class. Meanwhile, facilities readiness to support the teaching-learning English process was not fully complete; the conditions and facilities were limited. On the other hand, the teacher readiness was high, although they lack confidence in using English in the classroom, and it was found that the teacher's educational background became one of the reasons. Additionally, teacher training was stated to be needed to develop their professionalism. However, they also stated that they had not joined that training yet. Therefore, less professional development training became a factor in decreasing the teacher readiness to teach at elementary and kindergarten levels.


INTRODUCTION
English is an international language widely used in many countries. Crystal (2003) stated that English could be seen as a symbol of globalization, diversification, and progress.
Additionally, he also argued that it is used in many fields of society. Therefore, its role could be maintained as a world-wide audience achievement tool. The use of English may indicate the progress of globalization of a country. Likewise, Lie (2017) believed that English is in line with the political power, privilege, and social prestige since many other countries included English in their school curricula.
In Indonesia, English has been included in the curriculum as a subject. However, it is only included and introduced in the secondary school.
Besides, Wahyudi (2018) presented that the formal curriculum allows English to be a formal subject in grades seven to twelve and university. Therefore, we can conclude that English becomes a formal subject for secondary to varsity students.
However, globalization makes the parents and society demands improvement from time to time.
As a result, there is also a policy that discuss about English subject in the primary school. The Decree of the Ministry of Education and Culture No. 22/2006 about The Structure of National Curriculum described that English could be a local content subject in primary schools. This policy makes English become an option for primary school. Therefore, they can free to choose English to be in their curriculum or not. The undeniable globalization and parents demand finally to deliver English as a need for everyone.
In line with Chang (2012) believed that introducing English at an early age had become a trend and a competition among the non-native countries. As a result, many elementary schools or even pre-schools hold an English program to offer society in preparing their children with English. Lie (2017) presented that many English courses and English classes are flourishing in attracting children and their families starting from the middle class until the higher-class family. In a similar vein, Zein (2017) argued that there is a tendency for parents to enroll their children in a school that offers English. However, the competition of them only based on their affordance causes an imbalance standard offer to society because of their different capability to hold English programs on their institution. Supriyanti (2012) described that there are public and private schools of elementary. The number of them can consider the English program well. Vroom and Seaman (2014) found that teachers in private schools generally conduct sustainable professional development activities. It indicates that private schools are ready to hold an English program. Yuwono and Harbon (2010)  Teaching English for young learners need many considerations. Similarly, Chang (2012) stated that the policymakers should always consider how the children begin to learn English based on their age. It can be said that age considers many things for schools to hold an English program. Reflecting on the above discussion, this study was aimed to investigate the teachers', students' and school 1372 The Readiness of Teaching English to Young Learners in Indonesia -Syifa Dwi Mutiah, Minkhatun Nakhriyah, Nida Husna HR, Didin Nuruddin Hidayat, Farida Hamid DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v4i4.541 Jurnal The research question of this study will be mentioned as below: 1. How is the teachers' readiness to teach English for young learners?
2. How is the children readiness to learn English in their school?
3. How is the school's readiness to conduct an English program?

Children and language development
Teaching English to young learners needs to consider the learners' age either because of different ages they had makes different competence they perform too. Some of the development can be described as below. Fahriany (2018) believed that the critical age of learning language still becomes a speculation in society.
She states that children's age in learning a second language begins from six until twelve years old. Piaget (1970)  Furthermore, they like the material of the subject related to their daily life and around them. New young learners will be proud when their teacher teaches them about their own, and it is long-term in their memory to remember the subject.
When the young children grow to 10 years old, they are processing change to reciprocity, which their attention does not in themselves.
However, they try to give others (Donaldson, 1978& Hughes, 1986, cited in Uysal & Yavuz (2015. They need to involve in hands-on experiences for effective learning.

Teaching English to Young Learners
Related to language learning, the most important thing to understand is that language learning becomes an acquisition process to achieve communication skills. One of the important factors in teaching English to young learners is the teachers' profile because they should introduce a foreign language to young learners, which is a second language for them.  (Supriyanti, 2012).

Advantages
Language acquisition is a process that takes place in a child's brain when he gets his first  Grigg (2015), a child should have mastered his or her mother tongue before being introduced to additional languages.

Indonesia
This part attempts to present the teaching English to young learners, especially in Indonesia.
Talking about language teaching in Indonesia will automatically bring us to know the position of English subject in Indonesia. English lesson has been implemented in some schools since 1992, and its position is a local content subject (Zein, 2017

Student's readiness
In this study, the survey results about the students' readiness are divided into three, as mentioned in the resulting survey above, firstly from their motivation, then their characteristics, and the last one from using the media side.  Indonesia -Syifa Dwi Mutiah, Minkhatun Nakhriyah, Nida Husna HR, Didin Nuruddin Hidayat, Farida Hamid DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v4i4.541 process. It means their motivation to learn English is very high even though they often encounter obstacles or difficulties in learning English in class. They always try to ask questions when the teacher asks questions about the English language they are studying.

Student's motivation
They also help each other when their friend finds difficulties in learning English, as shown in survey numbers 7 and 8.

Characters of young children in study English
There were three components of characteristics of young children in learning abilities in the English language and continues to be creative, such as through decorating the classroom by giving names in English.

Discussion
The aspect of language competency of teachers was relatively high, especially in teachers' ability to listen to children' English speaking. Furthermore, thy also make their teacher a role model of English speakers in the classroom. However, the teacher did not use English during their teaching activity; it is about 70%. This became a gap between students' impressions about their teacher and the reality that they did not use English during the learning process. Zein (2017) found that English teachers at the elementary school level did not use English in their teaching activities for several reasons.
Firstly, their lack of confidence. This makes the teacher misguided the right pronunciations of English to their students. Second, the demand from the student to use their first language. Third, the teacher tends to focus only on those who do not understand the meaning of teachers' English speaking. Therefore, it makes them who have enough Basic English did not develop maximally.
Besides, Zein (2016) also found that the teacher who is not confident with their English tends to have difficulty using language for instruction.
Meanwhile, Musthafa (2010) stated that children learn and acquire knowledge from their direct experience. Then, they pursued it through their sense and experience. It can be said that young learners need to experience English as like as their real environment created by the teachers.
Contrary to reality, the data showed that the teachers did not use English regularly in the classroom while they believe that they become models for many students. This becomes a gap between students' opinions of their teachers as their role model and the teachers' lack of English usage in the classroom. Young learners need teachers to be ideal models to speak English (Sayer, P., & Ban, 2014;Yussof & Sun, 2020).
However, the teachers tend to do code-switching in the classroom. Thus, it decreased the number of students' vocabulary. Besides, this research showed the lowest number of teachers' English usage in the classrooms while it was highest in the students' opinion about them as the role model.

Young learners need much exposure to use
English by experiencing the English environment built by the teachers. This is supported by Sunyakul and Teo (2020). They reported that English for young learner teachers in a Boot 1382 The Readiness of Teaching English to Young Learners in Indonesia -Syifa Dwi Mutiah, Minkhatun Nakhriyah, Nida Husna HR, Didin Nuruddin Hidayat, Farida Hamid DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v4i4 Indonesia -Syifa Dwi Mutiah, Minkhatun Nakhriyah, Nida Husna HR, Didin Nuruddin Hidayat, Farida Hamid DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v4i4.541 teach English based on the curriculum provided.  (Piaget, 1970). One line from the results survey about young learners' character, which includes cognitive development in language by students' cognitive abilities that they were able to read, group some vocabularies, write in English form (Chaer, 2009 Curtain and Dahlberg (2000) reminded that if teaching English does not involve the target language, it will be difficult to be conveyed by the students. In the end, it will affect the process of acquiring the language itself. Therefore, it is essential that the prepared facilities can support the process.

Teaching English for young learners in
Indonesia is a part of introducing English to them.
It should also consider many things before conducting English at the young learner level. The consideration may come from the aspect that 1385 The Readiness of Teaching English to Young Learners in Indonesia -Syifa Dwi Mutiah, Minkhatun Nakhriyah, Nida Husna HR, Didin Nuruddin Hidayat, Farida Hamid DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v4i4.541 supports the learning and teaching process, whether the supporting aspects have ready or not.
The readiness of teachers can affect the students' readiness. In comparison, the readiness of school will affect the teacher readiness. The readiness of them is connected. Therefore, the factor that influences the readiness of those aspects should be prioritized by the English program holder. The teacher lack of confidence in using English affects the students' pronunciation correctness since young learners tend to make a teacher role model