Several reasons why learning to speak English is somehow difficult for Indonesian

Students

English language has been a universal and one of most used languages in the world. Richards &
Roger (1986) states that many people from different parts of the world use English as their agreed
language in their international conferences. English language learning and acquisition have become a
very inevitable need for everyone. Crystal (2000) also agrees that English is a global
language.Consequently, it has clearly been known that learning and mastering English are genuinely
important and necessary to be undertaken by everyone, especially students since they are in
elementary school because it does evidently have some crucial things to do with their careers in the
future. By learning English, a student’s insight and knowledge will gradually be enriched.
In order to be able to compete globally, students are nowadays inevitably urged to adapt to the rapid
development of technology and be able to master at least one of them in order to help them efficiently
do their assignments or even get the jobs they will highly be passionate about as they graduate from
their schools. As the development of technology grows rapidly, there must be at least one language
that has to be stipulated as a language for numerous uses, one of them is as an instruction language in
various kinds of technology so that everyone around the world can understand it and for many
reasons, it is agreed that English language is the one. Despite being agreed as a global language,
learning English, even as a second language, is believed not to be easy to learn, especially for
Indonesian students. This essay will be discussing the reasons why learning English has always been
found so arduous by many Indonesian students.

First of all, it is notable to know how the Indonesian government implemented the English learning
system in Indonesia. The English learning system itself plays a tremendous important role in the
learning activities. It is what will make them able to get a good grasp on what really matters to them.
In Indonesia, all students in every school are taught basic English lessons such as vocabulary,
grammar, as well as sentence patterns. However, they unfortunately have limited opportunities to
practice it in their real lives. At their homes or neighborhoods, for example, little may they speak in
English with their parents or their neighbors. It is because Indonesia uses Indonesian language as its
national and official language so that the people do not feel pushed to speak English in colloquial
ways. Besides, there are still a lot of national schools that do not lead their English teachers to teach
their students in English. The English teachers themselves still use Indonesian language a lot to
deliver the lessons to the students. As a result, the students themselves are not used to think, respond,
and ask the teachers in English since they are unwittingly just being used to using Indonesia as their
responses to their teachers. The students also often find it difficult and hesitant to speak in English
with their friends because the teachers do not really encourage them to feel confident in speaking
English in colloquial ways.

Second, it is undoubtedly well-known that there are hundreds of regional languages around the
territories of Indonesia. Lewis, M. Paul (2009) reveals that there are at least more than 700 living
languages that are spoken in Indonesia. Florey (2010) also found that 10% of the languages over the
world are contributed by Indonesia. It is definitely an astonishing fact that Indonesia is a country with
diverse languages but the inhabitants there live unifiedly and peacefully. On the other hand, however,
this diversity of language is a challenge for some people, especially for students who are learning
English and trying to be fluent in speaking it. Many of them found that one of the hardest things in
learning to speak English is pronouncing some English words. They believe that they always struggle
in pronouncing some English long words, including where the stresses of the words are so that it is
greatly hard for them to sound like native speakers. For some of them who were born in the areas that
the people use local languages, it is actually indeed a big impediment since if their mother tongues are
the regional languages, English becomes their third language as they are first obliged to learn and
comprehend their national language, namely Indonesian language. This obligation of mastering
Indonesian language is already burdened them in mastering English language because their
adaptability in using Indonesian language as their second language in their schools complicates them
in memorizing the correct pronunciations of English words because of the two languages that they
have mastered first.

In addition, being a perfectionist has also been a must for many students in Indonesia and becomes a
boomerang to them, especially to those who are English learners. Their fear of making mistakes,
being laughed at by their friends, and lack of grammar knowledge make them unconfident to speak
English in front of many people due to their uncertainty about their own abilities. Some of the factors
that cause students’ difficulties lie in the affective factors of students and the number of frequency of
practice speaking English as it is mentioned in the previous paragraph above, and psychological
factors (in this case it can be said that the affective factor).

Finally, it can be concluded that there are three main factors that make Indonesian students struggling
in learning speaking English, such as the English learning system they are received in their schools,
their local languages that make them learn English as their third language, and their confidences
themselves in practicing to speak it. Moreover, the process of learning English itself cannot be
separated from the emergence of various difficulties that occur, especially in students. These
difficulties can also be seen from each language skill or as a whole. In class conditions that have
different language competencies, the difficulties faced are also of various reasons. Besides of English
learning in class, student can also learn and get used to speak in English by using it in their daily lives.
Using English as much as possible can improve their English skills. They can intergrate it each other
by listening to a lot of English songs, watching movies, reading English books or stories. By getting
themselves used to use English, a student can learn and get so many great experiences from the
process of learning it and gain their self-confidences.