INTERNET AND LANGUAGE TEACHING IN INDONESIA; ITS DEVELOPMENTS AND PROBLEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF ITB LANGUAGE CENTRE

In this paper the writer is going to share the experiences of using CALL especially Internet in the teaching of English to ITB students at ITB Language Centre and Department of Sosioteknologi. The writer is also going to share his experiences in running CALL workshops in Indonesia and overseas..
ITB Language Centre started programming a cyber self-study for ITB students in 1998. The site was popular but then the site itself faced many problems; relating the activities in the cyber self-study with the students’ needs and classroom activities, teachers’ knowledge of internet and the developments of the site are going to be discussed. Considering the weaknesses of cyber self-study, mailing lists were used to support the teaching of academic writing and technical writing. These mailing lists have advantages and disadvantages to be discussed. The recent use of ‘bloggers or blogs’ in teaching writing will also be discussed and shared.
To complete the sharing of the use of internet in teaching English at ITB, the writer is also going to share the positive results of CALL workshops at some universities, such as Universitas Negeri Papua, Universitas Cenderawsih, Universitas Pattimura, Universitas Haluoleo, Universitas Negeri Jakarta and many more.

Introduction
The internet offers many new remarkable facilities and new ways of communication. Yet the speed with which new product, hardware updates and software development are delivered and adapted for use by companies, universities and by individual means that it’s difficult even for the most committed enthusiast to keep abreast of the market and an eye on the opportunities now emerging.

The resources available in cyber – space are growing daily: so too do the opportunities for ELT professionals in many fields. And, whatever area of ELT business one’s engaged with commercial development, materials creation, publishing, as an agent or provider, teacher, or student – there now exist some exciting opportunities ahead.

The internet is dominated by two main activities: first the exchange electronic mail (email) and second, viewing – and sometimes interacting material on the World Wide Web (WWW). Both kinds of Internet use are discussed here, together with a variety of related activities relevant to ELT.



The idea of developing CALL at ITB
In the late 1990s ITB Language Centre established a Local Area Network (LAN) with 5 computers connected to the internet through campus network. In the year of 2000 a website was designed for the language centre, and published at http://www.lc.itb.ac.id which was previously published at a free domain (http://www.geocities.com/eltcitb and http://uptitb.tripod.com). The interactive site for self study (cyber self study) was started to be designed to give students more practice outside classroom and the language centre. The design of the cyber self study is to provide more self access materials that are not available at the self access centre. The cyber self study was also introduced to ELTECs (English language Teaching Contacts Scheme, http://www.britishcouncil.org/eltecs.htm) east Asia members interested in IT in 2000 in Chiang Mai and in 2002 in Bangkok.
In the self access centre students are able to use the available facilities, such as watching CNN, BBC or other TV programs and read English books, magazines and journals. The students can also do grammar, listening, writing and reading exercises designed for self study. The idea of establishing resource centre with self study materials is premised on ideas about empowering learners since most of the students enrolling at the language centre are adult learners. Hiemstra, R. (1991) points out that research in self-directed learning (SDL) during the past 25 years has demonstrated that most of adult learners prefer to take considerable responsibility for their own learning. The students of the language centre can use the facilities at the resource centre from 09.00 – 20.00 from Monday to Friday, and they usually study at the resource centre before their class.
www.lc.itb.ac.id/selfstudy.htm
This cyber self study site is mainly categorized into three sub-heading; Lesson, Quiz and other pages. Under lesson heading, students can access frequently asked materials such as the use of articles, subject-verb agreement, countable uncountable rules and many more. This site is intended to give accessible materials related to classroom activities.
Under the Academic Writing button www.lc.itb.ac.id/writing/academicwriting.htm there are useful materials for students who have problem with writing in term of generating ideas, grammar rules, writing a draft and even punctuations. This page is linked to Purdue University Writing Lab. http://owl.english.purdue.edu. Under the Free Lesson (reading), the students are directed to open http://www.english-to-go/tolesson.htm where they can practice reading and check the answer after doing the exercises. The material on this page is updated weekly. This page is also good for a reading teacher who needs supplementary materials.
Under the subject verb agreement, count and non count nouns and adverb order, present perfect, articles, adjectives and scientific presentation button students can study these materials on their own. One of the reasons to have such page is to provide students with materials which they keep asking from semester to semester. In short this page is specially designed to respond to frequently asked questions from students.

Interactive Quiz
The idea of developing interactive quiz was inspired by the self directed learning material at the resource centre where the students can choose various materials for self study. Students have the freedom to choose the materials, time, space and the phase of study in the resource centre. In other words, students have the complete control and responsibility of their learning. Even they score, evaluate or check their own work. Computers have become a “home” for most ITB students. They have to use computer in dealing with their subjects such as math, writing assignments, simulation and even programming for certain departments. Realizing that they are much more at home with keyboard, mouse, monitor, and discs than they are with pencil, paper and books, interactive quizzes are developed. The role of these pages are to provide exercises that can be done anytime, anywhere they like with the help of computer connected to the internet. The quizzes are classified into several buttons such as writing, quizzes for TOEFL class, reading, conversation, vocabulary, and various quizzes from all over the world. These exercises are written for students taking courses at ITB Language centre. Some are product of the teachers and some are links to various existing sites. All of the interactive quizzes provide instant feedback in various forms depending on the type of software used.

Other pages
This page consists of various links to ELT sites which are useful and worthwhile for students;
 grammar (http://www.drgrammar.org/)
 reading (http://www.readingsoft.com/)
 practice your English (http://www.englishpractice.com/)
 English as Global language (http://www.globalenglish.com/)
 An Online Textbook for Technical Writing
o (http://www.io.com/~hcexres/tcm1603/acchtml/acctoc.html)
 Learning Oral English Online (http://www.rong-chang.com/book/)
 Idioms in Conversation (http://www.comenius.com/idioms/)
 News, Stories, song you can download (http://www.efl.net/)
 CNNSF (http://literacynet.org/cnnsf)
 English for Petroleum (http://www.naturalgas.org/)


Introducing the site to students
Orientation about the site (www.lc.itb.ac.id) to the students is conducted at the beginning of the class together with the orientation on how to be an independent learner, and how to use the resource centre. The orientation is conducted by the class teacher and course programmer at the Resource Centre and ended by doing some exercises from the site (www.lc.itb.ac.id/selfstudy.htm). The self study site is also announced and advised to be visited by ITB students taking academic writing, technical writing, academic presentation, seminar presentation, and reading class at Socio-technology Department. Not only the students but also the English teachers have the orientation about what available in the web so that the teachers can give input in term of content. The site is updated from time to time.

A simple survey
A counter to tract the number of visitors was installed on February 2000 and the number of visitors (clicks) was 135458 (April 23, 2005). A survey was conducted to find out the usefulness of the website. The survey was conducted in 2003 at ITB Language centre. There are 605 respondents, they were students of ITB language centre who were taking English classes. They were from ITB and various universities and high schools around Bandung, and were asked to complete the questionnaire. The result of the questionnaire shows;

 5% of the respondents visited the course information, 30% the cyber self study (lesson), 80% the cyber self study (quiz) and only 2% visited the bulletin board.

 80% found out about www.lc.itb.ac.id from the orientation by the class teacher, 10% from friends, 8% from www.itb.ac.id internal search engine and 2% other sources.

 When they were asked to rate from 0 – 10 with 0 being poor, 5 being good, and 10 being excellent;
o 80% rated 8, 18% rated 6 and 2% rated 5 for content
o 10% rated 8, 60% rated 7, 15% rated 5, 10% rated 4, 5% rated 3 for visual attractiveness.
o 20% rated 8, 5% rated 7, 40% rated 6, 20% rated 5 and 15% rated 4 for ease the browsing the website
o 10% rated 7, 10% rated 6, 50% rated 5 and 30% rated 4 for overall design/layout.
o 2% rated 9, 70% rated 8, 8% rated 7, 10% rated 6 and 10% rated 5 for the usefulness of the website.
o 12% rated 9, 60% rated 8, 8% rated 7, 10% rated 6 and 10% rated 5 for the usefulness of the website links.

Similar survey was conducted in at the end of semester I and II in 2004. The respondents were 710 ITB first year students. The result of the questionnaire shows similar result with the one conducted previously at ITB language centre.

 25% of the respondents visited the course information, 30% the cyber self study (lesson), 40% the cyber self study (quiz) and only 20% visited the bulletin board.

 70% found out about www.lc.itb.ac.id from the orientation by the class teacher, 10% from friends, 18% from www.itb.ac.id (internal search engine) and 2% other sources.

 When they were asked to rate from 0 – 10 with 0 being poor, 5 being good, and 10 being excellent;
o 70% rated 8, 8% rated 6, 20% rated 5, and 2% rated 4 for content
o 2% rated 8, 16% rated 7, 6% rated 6, 14% rated 5, 24% rated 4, 28% rated 3 and 10% rated 2 for visual attractiveness.
o 10% rated 8, 5% rated 7, 40% rated 6, 20% rated 5 and 25% rated 4 for ease the browsing the website
o 3% rated 7, 8% rated 6, 35% rated 5, 30% rated 4 and 24% rated 3 for overall design/layout.
o 1% rated 9, 30% rated 8, 18% rated 7, 15% rated 6, 10% rated 5, 24% rated 4 and 2% rated 3 for the usefulness of the website.
o 8% rated 9, 48% rated 8, 18% rated 7, 10% rated 6 and 16% rated 5 for the usefulness of the website links.

The result of both surveys shows that the students visit the web especially the cyber self study and find it useful. The improvements and changes are done when necessary, such as adding the exercises, checking the active links, improving the layout or content.

Links for English teacher
The idea of having these pages was inspired by a workshop attended by the writer in Hong Kong in 1999 sponsored by the British Council Jakarta. At that time a workshop on “using internet for teaching elementary and secondary school” showed how rich with authentic materials, articles on ELT and many more useful reading materials related to ELT the internet has. The internet also provides medium to draw on many resources and perhaps the most valuable contribution of the internet to English Language Teaching is its role in facilitating teacher’s access to professional material, contacts and resources (Warschauer, 2000). Under the category of “Links for English Teacher’ there are useful links to various sites such as ELT articles, lesson plans and materials, bilingual education, linguistics, business English, drama, quiz, teacher training and many more. These sites were introduced to ITB English teachers and updated from time to time when they come across good ELT sites. Unfortunately these pages were dormant since 2002.

The development of cyber self study in Indonesia
The cyber self study for the first time was introduced in 2000 at a seminar on “Testing and Evaluation in the context of Undergraduate English Language Teaching in Indonesia” at ITB (www.lc.itb.ac.id/selfstudy.htm) and similar site was developed by Pusat Pelatihan Bahasa Universitas Gajah Mada (http://ppb-ugm.tripod.com/ppbugm/home.htm) and introduced in the same occasion. The second time was at the TEFLIN Conference in the same year in Jakarta. Started with these two events, many language centers showed interest in designing similar sites. Five English Language Teaching Centers (ELTC) from eastern part of Indonesia under the funding of CIDA conducted series of workshops on Internet and English language Teaching. The first workshop was held at ITB for 1 week as an introduction. Then each ELTC conducted several workshops at their center in the year of 2001 – 2003. As a result of these activities then several sites on ELT in Indonesia were designed;
www.geocities.com/eltckendari/index.htm; (ELTC UNHALU)
www.geocities.com/eltcmanado/index.htm; (ELTC UNSRAT)
www.geocities.com/ababarakati/index.htm; (ABBA BARAKATI Kendari)
http://eltc-uncen.tripod.com (ELTC UNCEN)
http://eltc-unipa.tripod.com (ELTC UNIPA)
In helping those centres in developing cyber self study materials, an interactive site for creating quiz is published at http://sby4.tripod.com with log in password ‘gumawang’. With minimum knowledge of web designed, this site is quite easy to be used. Some of the sites mentioned are developing well and some are in the stage of dormant. For example, ELTC UNHALU has also developed SAC online using local area network and one of the staff has initiated a website for ELT journal http://www.geocities.com/language_journal and also a website for NUESP www.geocities.com/nuesp_indonesia. Other ELTCs have similar problem in developing the sites. Most of the train teachers in web designed and cyber self study are continuing their studies for master degrees overseas and the LAN at each centre is still being developed. With financial and and academic support from CIDA in the past and now FKSU, these centers will potentially give significant contribution to the development of the use of internet in ELT. There will be interesting development of internet and ELT in Indonesia. Some other centers have conducted similar training but have minimum support from the institution, such as Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Riau and Universitas Sriwijaya. In developing such sites commitment, funding and support from the institution are needed. It seems that they are aware of the potential but not ready to develop and explore the use of internet for ELT institutionally and letting the staff to develop and explore by themselves.

Mailing list
Other development of IT is mailing list. How to create a mailing list was also introduced to ELTCs for teaching purposes. By setting a mailing list students can easily communicate to each other and to their teacher outside class. Discussion can be generated outside the class before classroom discussion or a follow up discussion could be done after class activities. An example of this kind is fisika2000@yahoogroups.com where students and teacher generate discussion before technical writing class, discussing follow up activities after class or teacher assigns tasks to students via mailing list. Another mailing list introduced to ELTCs was eltc2000@yahoogroups.com. Initially the mailing list of eltc2000@yahoogroups.com was intended only for communication among the member of ELTC under the support of FKSU. It was founded in August 2000, with 10 members. It was used to communicate among the members to discuss meetings and workshops held at one of the centre. Right now the member of this mailing list grows up to 178 not only limited to ELTCs members and it is now used for communicating issues related to ELT including sharing teaching materials. Most of the members are English teachers from Indonesia. Another Indonesian English teachers’ mailing list is itbconf2002@yahoogroups.com founded in July 2001. The initial intention of having this mailing list was to send email about British Council – ITB – university of Leeds conference which is held once every two years. Now this mailing list is also used to communicate other national and international seminars. The member of this mailing list is 312.

Web Log
One of the disadvantages of mailing list for teaching is limited space in the mail account. It is difficult to imagine of having a mailing list for technical writing with 30 – 40 students in the class. The teacher and students will receive at least 30 similar emails in a week. By week 4, there will be 30 x 4 = 120 mail.
Considering the disadvantages of mailing list for teaching purposes, the use of web log is possibly a good idea and worth trying. Web log or popularly known as blog is a web page that serves a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. This easily designed web page can be created for free at www.blogger.com. At the moment the writer is doing experiment in teaching several classes using web log. The main reasons for using web log are among others;
 it is easy to be designed
 it is free
 it takes just minutes to create
 it is user friendly
 it gives flexibility in setting
 it can be used as a discussion board

One of the sites is http://dephan.blogspot.com. This site is specially designed for students from ministry of defense who are going to continue their post graduate study in defense management which is going to be delivered in English. They have to take intensive English classes at ITB language centre. In encouraging the students to read and write for real purposes out side the class, this site was designed. This site is an open site, where anyone can participate in the discussion. Tasks and reading texts are posted and students write comments on the website. Similar web log was designed for intensive pre-departure course at http://bappenas.blogspot.com.
Other web logs used for tutorial in teaching academic writing (2 credits), technical writing (3 credits) and critical reading and writing (4 credits) are http://acjati.blogspot.com, http://acf.blogspot.com, http://twjati.blogspot.com, and http://sbmjati.blogspot.com. These web logs are restricted to member; only the member of the class can write comments or posting comments. To be a member of one of these classes, student must have a personal web log, and they are encourage to write a personal journal in their own web log, and visit a good example of web log for practice writing, http://dianehome.blogspot.com created by a Taiwanese taking intensive course in Canada. Sharing web log with a advanced writing and grammar class http://ievcc.blogspot.com/ is an interesting experience. The students taking the advanced writing and grammar using http://ievcc.blogspot.com/ are also advised to visit http://acjati.blogspot.com, http://acf.blogspot.com, http://twjati.blogspot.com, and http://sbmjati.blogspot.com by their teacher. A direct result of this collaboration, students from ITB and Canada communicate using emails and writing comments on their personal web log. Since the writer is in the middle of doing this experiment, questionnaire to evaluate these web logs has not been properly conducted yet.
To exercise the ease of creating web log at www.blogger.com , an online course was set up for free using http://teaching-writing-online.blogspot.com with 15 participants. The course was designed for four weeks with at least twice a week of instruction using email (blogger_jati@yahoogroups.com) and web log. By the end of week three all participants have their own web log and ready to use it for teaching purposes. With this experience the writer is planning to run similar free online course in designing interactive quiz using http://sby4.tripod.com

Conclusion
When English teachers become aware of new development in technology or pedagogical theory, the first reaction is frequently “Sound good!”, and the second “but?” There is almost invariably conflict between the ideals stimulated by the technological innovation and the practical matters which must be taken into consideration for effective implementation of those ideals. Cyber self study, links for teachers, mailing list, and web log are only simple examples of how to use and integrate internet in English language teaching. Internet creates a new responsibility for English teacher to be aware of the power of the resource and to explore ways of putting it to use in improving the learning environment.

Bibliography

Chapelle, A. C. (2001). Computer Applications in Second language Acquisition, Foundation for teaching, testing, and research. Cambridge University Press.

Crytal, D. (2001). Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press.
Dunkel, P. (Ed.). (1991). Computer-assisted language learning and testing: Research issues and practice. New York, NY: Newbury House.
Hardisty, D., & Windeatt, S. (1989) CALL. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Healey, D., & Johnson, N. (Ed.). (1995). 1995 TESOL CALL interest section software list. Alexandria, VA: TESOL Publications.
Hiemstra, R. (1991). Self-directed learning for older adults. In American Association of Retired Persons, Resourceful aging: Today and tomorrow (Volume V, Lifelong Education, Conference Proceedings), Washington, D.C.: American Association of Retired Persons.
Higgins, J. (1988). Language, learners and computers. London: Longman.
Jones, C., & Fortescue, S. (1987). Using computers in the language classroom. London: Longman.
Kenning, M.-M., & Kenning, M. J. (1990). Computers and language learning: Current theory and practice. New York: Ellis Horwood.
Schank, R. C., & Cleary, C. (1995). Engines for education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Warschauer. M, Heidi Shetzer, and Christine meloni (2000). Internet for English Teaching. TESOL.