English Education of Elementary Schools in Indonesia Written English Communicative Competence of Indonesian Elementary School English Learners

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c. English Education of Elementary Schools in Indonesia

It is mentioned in the previous chapter that the English education in elementary school of Indonesia has responded in ambivalence. There has been a long dispute on the status and role of English in the national education. Some agree to make its role more important, some disagree to do so because of their fear of its effect on the national culture and nationalism. Started from 1994, Indonesian government allowed English to have an increasing role in the national education. Unfortunately, educational stakeholders did not manage it properly. They conduct English teaching enthusiastically but ignoring the ideal requirements needed to have an effective English teaching and learning. This results on the government’s disappointment. For the sake of nationalism and justice, the government, presently, decide to abolish English from formal elementary school’s curriculum. This decision, actually, is not popular and is against most of the pupils’ parents who still hope and insist on keeping English in the curriculum of elementary school level. The dispute and the controversy, definitely, have created in- conducive atmosphere for elementary school English teaching-learning process. With the uncertainty situation, the role and function of English teaching and learning in the elementary school level of education is supposed to be only a matter of introduction or to lay a foundation for the pupils’ secondary school English teaching and it should be conducted with a deep concern on the young learners’ characteristics and needs. 76

d. Written English Communicative Competence of Indonesian Elementary School English Learners

To develop an effective testing instrument, the researcher decides to take Mc Kay’s theory of communicative English competence for young learners that she adapts from Bachman and Palmer’s theory of language ability as the underlying theory. Mc Kay puts examples of indicators of language ability of reading and writing as follows: READING ABILITY Aspects of language ability Indicators Description

1. Organizatio nal