SOCIOLUNGISTIC IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

As an English teacher in one of vocational schools in Tapaktuan, I used to be more available on practicing the target language (English) in the classroom where the students are also expected to use the language communicatively in field work and society. However, teaching English for spesific purposes requires a good communication skill both writen and spoken language. Therefore, a good communication skill has something to do with culture and social understanding where the language is widely used.

Discussing about language teaching in relation with sociolinguistic, I refers to some experts who are commonly known as sociolinguist. It has led us to 1980’s work by Hudson, he concluded that language cannot be split from social behaviour for some reasons. The most familiar reason which is more interesting to discuss is that language has social function, both as a means of communication and also as the way of identifying social group.

Dealing with the situation above, Fox (1999) said that language and culture were depending on demographic of individual. It indicates that language and culture cannot be saperated because language itself is a culture. This becomes a chalenge for teachers to teach English for students who have different background of culture and society, and more complecated chalenge is about how teachers cover The main goal of language teaching in general. The goal is that language leaners master the target language in a very effective way.

On the other hand, Spitzberg (1988) provides some solution in teaching foreign language especially English languae teaching. He believe that communication competence is the ability to interact with other people in an accurate, comprehensible, fluent and appropriate to the context or topic being mentioned. As a result, he suggested that teaching foreign language should be set in a very authentic situation due to the cultural and social value of native English.

I found some cases related to variety of L1 students who learn English as foreign language. For example, the way acehnese students refer a “bad personality” is different from those refered by chinese students. Chinese used to call “bad eggs” for “bad person”. On the other hand, asking someone’s age is impolite in English culture, but it is an honor in Acehnese culture to distinguish older person from the younger one.

Therefore, teachers need to acquire sociolinguistic process of a language which can affect foreign language learners. Students should be exsposed to the standard language varieties existed in order to allow them to understand their culture and values when it is compared to English culture and values. And the most importantly, teachers should always be there to assure students that there is no inferiority when it come to learning a new language. So teachers themselves have to know sociolinguistic of a language is regarded in multilingual society.