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Free-voluntary reading is the panacea
Like other countries such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan where the first language is not English, Indonesia is also suffering from a so-called English fever
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Like other countries such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan where the first language is not English, Indonesia is also suffering from a so-called English fever. The symptoms are clear — a strong desire to learn English at an early age.
The popular remedies often sought to cure English fever in the country and elsewhere are: Adding English for young learners in school curriculum, sending children to bilingual schools, hiring native speakers as tutors and sending children abroad.
There is nothing harmful about these options if one wishes to develop his/her English proficiency. Yet, there are serious impediments. First, not all learners can study abroad or in bilingual schools or afford to have English native speakers as a tutor. Only the upper middle-class can enjoy such opportunities; the middle-class and below are usually left out.
Second, it takes a lot of effort to design a language curriculum that matches young learners’ linguistic needs, not to mention the teaching materials and learning facilities available.
Third, learning English formally at school puts students in a high anxiety environment, which hinders the acquisition of the language. Very often, because of the demands of the curriculum, teachers force their students to speak and to write without being aware that they haven’t had sufficient language input to do so.
Fourth, the most serious problem is that early, heavy exposure to English will threaten students’ first language development.
To overcome these problems, Free-Voluntary Reading (FVR), or recreational reading, is proposed as the most effective remedy for dealing with English fever.
It is well-established that we acquire a language, such as English, by understanding the messages (inputs) we hear, not by producing it through speaking and writing. Thus, forcing students to speak and to write without enough learning inputs in the form of reading will only increase learning anxiety. It is reading that becomes the cause (not the result) of language acquisition.
Initially introduced by Steve Krashen, an American linguist, FVR has been proven as an extremely powerful form of learning, which can effectively help accelerate language acquisition.
FVR is radically different from other types of reading as it has been used in the traditional reading approach in the national curriculum. It is light and easily comprehensible; it is self-selected; it is done voluntarily with no “accountability”, no tests, no book reports; and it is done for pleasure for the reader’s own sake, not for reward.
The obvious advantage of FVR is that it motivates and encourages learners to be autonomous language acquirers. Research has demonstrated that FVR has tremendous effects on language and literacy development. In addition, research in language acquisition has made a case for the efficacy of FVR in that it was found as the strongest predictor of success in language acquisition.
Furthermore, FVR leads students to the path of pleasure and students are given the freedom to choose what interests them most. They are allowed to read for their own pleasure in a low anxiety environment without being haunted by an exam.
They are not afflicted by pain — they don’t have to read to solve mundane activities like homework and they don’t have to memorize a bulk of vocabulary. Neither do they have to scrutinize notoriously complex grammatical points.
Grammatical and vocabulary knowledge are unconsciously acquired if reading offers pleasure and is done in a low-anxiety environment. The conventional wisdom of “no pain, no gain” doesn’t hold true with FVR. From the early stages of learning, learners are pampered with something pleasant that also has educational benefits.
Thus, FVR is consistent with the Pleasure Hypothesis, which claims that what is good for language and literacy development is perceived to be pleasant by the acquirer and the teacher.
A final point worth mentioning is that students are not banned from reading books written in their first language, as research has consistently showed that literacy skill in the first language transfers automatically across languages.
The cure for English fever then should be an activity which does not harm the students’ first language development, is relatively cheap, easy to find and can be accessed by everyone. Most importantly, FVR meets all these conditions and offers tremendous pleasure in learning.
The writer is the chief-editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and teaches English composition at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta.
