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Philippines, and Singapore. The Expanding Circle involves countries where English is introduced as a foreign language as China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia.
d. Beliefs in relation to materials
Teaching materials is believed to be an important part of most English teaching programs. Teaching materials are used to support the teaching and learning activities. It
refers to a spectrum of educational materials that teachers use in the classroom to support specific learning objectives. “Materials can be categorized broadly into unpublished
materials e.g. teacher-made materials, visual aids, and teachers’ voice and published
materials e.g. resource books and course books” Zacharias, 2003. e.
Beliefs in relation to the use of students’ mother tongue
“Mother tongue is a window into students’ understanding of the concepts being taught” Zacharias, 2003. Mother tongue is used to make sure whether the students
properly understand particular concept of English or not. There are some suggestion for the function of mother tongue in the classroom, such as; checking students’
understanding, giving feedback to individual students, giving instruction, explaining the meaning of new words, explaining the content of reading texts, explaining grammar
concepts, and also the student’s mother tongue should never be used in class. Besides that, Cook 2001 believes that “using mother tongue can be time
efficient in certain situation”. It means that mother tongue can be used as a tool to provide a quick and accurate translation of an English word so that the students
understand the explanation correctly.
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f. Beliefs in relation to the place of English-speaking culture
Seelye 1984:26 believe that “the study of language cannot be divorced from the study of culture”. It means that in the era of World Englishes, culture is very important
for learning English, beside we learn about language, we also must learn about the culture itself because both of them have a relationship each other. Richards 2002 asserts
that “the teaching of English should still include culture but not the culture of English- speaking countries.” English is no longer viewed as the property of the English-speaking
world but is an international commodity
With different beliefs, it can lead to the emergence of differences in varieties of English language teaching that we use. It often serves a different purpose. The varieties of English will
become mutually unintelligible and so undeserving the label English Kachru and Nelson 2001:20.
It might be more useful to focus on the way English is taught since they are the one who deals with English language teaching every day. It is important for English users, including
teachers, to develop a greater tolerance of difference, and the ability to adapt and adjust their expectations according to the interlocutors and settings Jenkins, 2000. Thus, teachers need to
make learners aware of cross-cultural variations embodied in different varieties of English and by maximizing their abilities to negotiate, accommodate and accept plurality of standards Bhatia
1997 cited in Jenkins 2000.
