This article reviews the significant and diverse range of research on English language education in Indonesia in the eight-year period 2011–2019. It brings together a body of research consisting of 108 sources, ranging from journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings and doctorate dissertations, to inform the international research and practice community. The contributions cover primary education, secondary education and tertiary education in highly diverse Indonesia where 707 living languages co-exist and struggle to find space in its linguistic ecology. The discussion will provide insights into how factors such as educational policies, ideologies as well as sociocultural and religious values are in contestation in shaping research into and the practice of English language education in the complex, dynamic and polycentric sociolinguistic situation of Indonesia, which has been recently conceptualized as superglossia (Zein, 2020). It is hoped our insights will help inform other multilingual contexts facing the unprecedented need for transforming English language education in this increasingly globalized world.

Abstract:Since 2005, Indonesia has administered the National Examination (NE), from which the result is used as a basis to decide the students' exit from secondary schools. As a high stake testing, the NE has caused various washback effects, both positive and negative. Consequently, the existence of the NE has been accompanied by heated debates and controversies. The pros believe that the NE may improve secondary education standards, while the cons argue that the NE will create injustice and unnecessary anxiety among the students. However, both the pros and cons base their arguments on common sense not supported by a sound reasoning. The present study tries to explore the washback effects of the English National Examination (ENE) in Indonesian secondary education context, involving three Secondary Schools categorized based on their NE achievement. The results of the study indicate that English teachers and students from the schools involved have different perceptions on the ENE. The English National Examination has an influential impact on teachers' teaching in the aspect of: activity/time arrangement, teaching materials, teaching contents, teaching methods, teaching strategies, ways of assessing, and on the feelings and attitudes of the students. The ENE also affects the students' learning in the classroom in which teachers mainly teach to test, practice the test and develop test-taking strategies. The dimensions of the washback effect of the ENE on both English teachers and students are negative and positive, strong, specific and for a short period time.

Considered important for global competitiveness like ASEAN Economic Society, the English proficiency of Indonesian students is unfortunately not satisfactory yet. This condition is, one of which, due to low teachers’ professionalism and students’ motivation for English learning. The motivation of students may become weak because they have not found ways to identify, drive and sustain it. Of the various studies on motivation and challenges in EFL practice in the Indonesian context, research specifically addressing how learners find motivation triggers synergized into project-based learning for sustainable and continuous English learning is still limited. This survey and interview study investigates the motivation of Senior High School (SHS) students in West Java province of Indonesia on English learning and how to drive their motivation through a collaborative project as mandated by the 2013 National Curriculum. Results of questionnaires, interviews and document analysis show that despite having integrative and instrumental motivation to learn English, the participating SHS students show low investment as indicated by low learning enthusiasm in the classroom and poor English performance. This low motivation is also related to some socioeconomic status such as school geographical location, classroom learning situation, and parental supports. The study recommends students’ involvement in a cooperative learning project which can direct and energize their English learning motivation so that they can have increased motivation, good English proficiency and become global citizens with high competitiveness.

This article delineates a case study investigating the development of levels of reflection encapsulated in reflective teaching practice of four Indonesian EFL pre-service teachers during their field teaching. Data were garnered mainly through their reflective teaching journals and were analysed using thematic analysis technique to identify the emerging themes in level of reflection and to extract their narratives of experience. The findings indicated that regarding framework of level of reflection, the EFL pre-service teachers' level of reflectivity is mostly in the range of dialogic reflection Level 3 and dialogic reflection Level 4. Within the range of dialogic reflection, the pre-service teachers revealed the ability to further describe, analyse and evaluate their instructional practices. No one, however, indicated the quality of critical reflection since it requires more experiences as invested in time and field teaching exposure.

Recent understanding as strongly believed by studies investigating the interactive or interpersonal meanings of images in such printed texts as textbooks and picturebooks shows that interpersonal relation can be established not only through verbal sentences as the primarily representational mode of our experiences but can also be represented through visual forms such as photographs and pictures. Further, studies on how meanings are represented through verbal and visual modes have revealed how readers' experiences and readers' social roles in relation to the content of the texts are constructed. The construction of readers' social roles through the use of images in printed texts has been regarded to be parallel with how interactants' social position is enacted in direct communication relying on the use of verbal sentences. In Indonesian contexts, however, studies on how verbal and visual modes represent experiences and construct social position of the interactants seem to be underexplored. The present study examined three Indonesian picturebooks using the perspectives of multimodality and reported how the children's experiences were represented through the verbal and the visual modes used, and how these two semiotic resources represented the social relationship between the characters in the picturebook and the potential readers of the books. The examination of the verbal texts has been focused on the clauses as the building blocks of the texts by identifying the participants, process types, circumstances, and clause types. The examination of the pictures has been focused on such visual elements as who/what are in the picture, what activities taking place, the attributes possessed by the represented participants, and the circumstances. In addition, how the represented participants address the viewers was also examined. The results of the analysis show that ideationally the narrative is mostly centered around the activities done by and to children, which are presented as an offer to the readers. Verbally and visually the represented participants are socially equal to the children readers. The three picturebooks are excellent examples of picturebooks that present a narrative of Indonesian children designed for young readers because of their simple vocabulary, simply-constructed Indonesian grammar employed, and simple yet interesting plot they deal with.