CRITICAL THINKING ASSESMENT

A CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE TEXT

The text is taken from a book entitled ENGLIS AS A LINGUA FRANCA IN ASEAN: a Multilingual Model. By A. Kirkpatrick, 2012: p. 181.

The truth is that the major role of English in ASEAN is as  a lingua franca. This means that ASEAN speakers will be interacting with people from the region. It follows that a topic area which could be taught through English is  cross-cultural communication and international relations, but with a focus the cultures of ASEAN  member states. Thus the English curriculum needs to be radically redesigned to become one in which local cultures are studies and where a ‘critical cultural consciousness’ is enhanced (Lie 2002/3:72


         TASK

              Write a critical response to the text.Consider these    

          aspects in writing your response: 

                  Ê. Are you in favour or against the idea? What is your stance?

                  Ê.What is the main purpose of your writing?

                  Ê. What is your thesis?

                 Ê. What is (are) your argument(s)

                 Ê. What justification(s) do you give to convince the readers?

CRITICAL RESPONSE

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA IN ASEAN

Lingua franca is any of various languages used as common or commercial languages among peoples of diverse speech. We see that lingua francas tend to contain a large member of non- standard forms. More Lingua franca  can be defined as a common language among  people who do not share a mother tongue. Other said  that “a lingua franca is contact language between person who share neither  a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication (Firth 1996:2)”

Throughout history every country has  lingua  franca. In ASEAN  such as ; Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippine, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Timor all  have their own local languages but  they couldn’t communicate to each other if they are not using language  to unity among them. With English they could study their each  culture togetherness and they can respect each culture and it will be supported them to be more understanding .It can avoid disunity among countries ,enhance cultural mutual respect among them. So English is the spirit of unity in diversity.

The importance adopting  English as unifier of language is for communication  to each other in ASEAN area. One implication of adopting what have called a multilingual model of language in ASEAN  because  English play as language franca  in ASEAN area. In the context that the success multilingual from the ten countries can provide the linguistic benchmark. Adopting English also has implication for the culture  content .Thus  learners  can study the culture of ASEAN is of particular importance as it is rare to find government school in ASEAN teaching  an ASEAN language other than the respective national language. That why  ASEAN have used  in the region's educational curricula. and just Indonesia  is the only one of  the ten countries which doesn’t  have English as a core subject in the primary curricula. while another country some use English  as a medium of instructional in primary school even like Malay, English is currently for math and science in teaching and process learning, Brunei take the bilingual education policy.

 In Indonesia different because Indonesia has Bahasa Indonesia as  the second language  and English  just as foreign language. Therefore the based is different language background, learning   or speaking English often get  some problem as pronunciation features, spelling. Grammatical and writing, To cover all, We need curricula. In curriculum have designed all planned learning for which the school is responsible

If we focus The truth that the major role of English in ASEAN is as  a lingua franca. This means that ASEAN speakers will be interacting with people from the region. It follows that a topic area which could be taught through English is cross-cultural communication and international relations, but with a focus the cultures of ASEAN  member states. Thus the English curriculum needs to be redesigned to become one in which local cultures are studied and where the culture awareness  is  enhanced.