Should the Use of Bahasa Indonesia be Allowed in the EFL Classroom?

This paper discusses language policy and planning in the context of Indonesia as a multilingual country. Indonesia becomes the second largest linguistic diversity in the world with 742 local languages (Martí et al., 2005, p. 48) spreading to its 17,508 islands. With such a long history towards the language planning and policy in Indonesia, the Youth Pledge 1926 formulated the national language that was officially called as Bahasa Indonesia derived from Malay language (Paauw, 2009, p. 4). Since 1928, Bahasa Indonesia becomes the official and the national language of the Republic of Indonesia.To answer the challenges of the globalisation era, a language policy was issued by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 1998. It allows English as the first foreign language of the country in which it can be used as the medium of instruction notably to the higher education (Darjowidjojo, 2002, p. 51). This 1998 Official Policy opens up the opportunities to the tertiary level education institutions to compete in serving the monolingual (English-only) environment to the academic atmosphere. However, in practices, as English is still in position as the foreign language, there are only a few exposures occurring in the higher academic institutions. This directing the classroom practices are expected to conduct English-only instruction during the learning activity. It just means that in Indonesian EFL context, the monolingual approach is ideally preferable.Despite the policy in which the English-only environment is desirable in Indonesia, in fact, the use of mother tongue cannot be avoided. Thus, in this paper, I discuss on whether the Indonesian higher education institutions should fully implement the monolingual approach or these tertiary level institutes should still allow the mother tongue (Bahasa Indonesia) as the medium of instruction. To consider it, I use some previous published journal articles that have conducted some research in higher education institutions. The field of language planning could take benefit from a critical assessment of its past performances not only from the real-world approach but also from the construction of a particular discourse on language and society (Blommaert, 1996, p. 215). The journals discussed in this paper are: 1.Manara, C. (2007). The Use of L1 Support: Teachers' and Students' Opinions and Practices in an Indonesian Context. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 4(1), 145-178.2.Usadiati, W. (2009). Contribution of L1 in EFL Teaching. k@ta-Petra Christian University, 11(2), 171.3.Saputra, W. A., & Atmowardoyo, H. (2015). Translanguaging in Indonesian University Classroom Context: A Discourse Analysis at Muhammadiyah University in South Sulawesi. ELT WORLDWIDE, 2(1), 42-62.All the journal articles deal with the language planning and policy in the Indonesian classroom context. The subjects of the research are at the level of the tertiary education in which they have already got some English learning years at school before getting admitted into the university. These subjects are also the ones whom the government through the 1998 Official Policy expected to have the monolingual approach in the classroom practice. Additionally, they also have English subject as the compulsory subject to be taken during their university levels (Achmad, 1997).The first article is such a good initiation to get to know the teachers' and students' perspectives towards the classroom practices, when and for what purposes they use the first language in learning English as a foreign language. It is kind of giving picture from the educational subjects in the level of practices. The second article tries to provide the evidence of the L1 support through the classroom actions. The study results strengthen the argument that the L1 should be still using in the EFL Indonesian classroom to have the effective and efficient outcomes. The last article proposes the way to bridge between the use of L1 and L2 collaboratively in the term called translanguaging.