Significance of the Study
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integrated approach in which “listening and comprehension, speaking, reading and comprehension, and writing” received a relatively balanced treatment.
Unfortunately, the glorious years of foreign language learning in the seminary are now said to be history. In a way, the national policy of the
Indonesian government seems to have played a part in the sad story. In the early 1970-s, the Department of Religious Affairs now Ministry of Religious Affairs
issued a xenophobic decree that offered two difficult choices for every foreign missionary: become a holder of an Indonesian passport or leave the country
immediately. Also xenophobic, F.M Parera 2004:15 notes, was a regulation that all the foreign aids for religious purposes should first be notified to the
department. In the aftermath, most white missionaries fled this country. Devoted native speakers of English on duty in the seminary were gone. Also gone were
English textbooks and graded story-books that had regularly entered the shelves of the library of the institution.
To sum up, the seminary has witnessed the ‘rise and fall’ of three foreign languages. Initially, it was Dutch that was abolished from the curriculum for
reasons of nationalism. Then, Latin was relegated from the church service and the curriculum of the seminary, owing to the decree of the Second Vatican Council in
the early 1960-s. The decree stipulated that Latin be no longer ‘the one and only’ language of service of the Catholic Church. Finally, English has been staggering
all along for a number of reasons. Rano Aoh, a student of the late 1990-s, for instance, poured out his disappointment at the failure of the seminary to maintain
the old tradition of good foreign language performance. “We missed the English speaking skill which had always been the pride of the previous generations.
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Another clear proof of our language skill decline was that we were not even able to conduct an English Night or English Day, a showcase in which everyone of the
former classes showed off their English speaking skill,” Rano wrote in “In Aeternum Memorandum 2004:205”.
All the three foreign languages have surely gone past their golden days in the institution. Special notes, however, should be taken about the change of status of
Latin. The relegation of Latin by the Papal government proves to have had a far-reaching repercussion. Since then, every national language or even a local
language such as Nataia has been permitted to be used during the religious ceremony in the Catholic Church. This is presumably the background reason why
in the middle of 1960-s, the Catholic Mission of Flores published a ‘Prayer and Hymn’ book entitled Sua Budju Ngadji which accentuated an amalgam of
Nage languages. The Nataia people enjoyed praying and singing using the book because on
the whole they were familiar with a lot of words and expressions in it. However, they wanted more i.e., a special ‘prayer and hymn’ book of their own in which the
characteristic sounds and expressions representing their ethnic, emotional and cultural pride are prominent.