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and friends to make even better environment for his
first language acquisition.
The second mastered language is English. She
said that it was first introduced when she went to
school. Starting from High School until further
higher studies, English is taught as a part of
communication means. Further, the ability in the
first language supports her to gain the second
language (Silva, 1992). Then, the process of this
literacy is progressively supported and influenced by
the situation around the learners from the childhood
into adulthood (Hedgcock and Ferris, 2009).
As an English teacher, the first speaker is using
Bahasa Indonesia and English in her class. Both
languages are commonly used by electronic and
paper media such as programs at television, radio
and news at newspapers. To get these languages, she
thinks that the process is a combination between
learning and acquisition. The learning was needed at
the first time when she was also learning grammar,
having test to measure her language ability as well
as having serious drill in order to understand parts or
some skills of the languages.
The acquisition also contributes in her process
since both languages are normally heard in her
everyday life, from TV, radio, or even at the formal
activities when she can find it at almost every day.
After her primary school and moving to high
school, English was introduced as one of her
subjects in class. Mostly, it is taught four up to six
hours per week. Until her last academic study at the
university, English is received in the process of
learning. Everything is based on test and academic
achievement. Until now, she considers that she
needs to practice, use and learn English. When she
watches English programs on TVs she still prefers to
have the English subtitles on it.
The discussion was followed by the question of
how good she is in the languages. Confidently, she
says that she is able to use both Bahasa Indonesia
and English very well. However, compared to
Bahasa Indonesia, it is not very much for the
English. Her ability to be bilingual is basically
common particularly who teach English as Second
Language. For most countries like Africa, Latin
America, and Asia where consist of multi ethnic and
cultures, bilingual or even multilingual is generally
owned by people with two or more ethnic groups
speaking different languages (Hornby, 1977).
Her first language at the first time helped her to
understand the second one, since the translation
methods as well as the similarity of grammar
structures helped her a lot. Theoretically, the
influence of first language to the second language
acquisition had by the second speaker is already
known as language transfer (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1999).
Now, she is able to use both languages
interchangeably, and even knows that sometimes
there are some terms that cannot be translated by
either of two.
Beardsmore (1982) and Bialystok (2001) argue
that children become bilingual for many reasons;
such as extended family, immigration, temporary
residence in another country, dislocation, education,
or simply being born in a place where it is assumed
at bilingualism is normal. In line with this argument,
she becomes bilingual for some demands. The first
is education. As mentioned above, the languages
being used at her schools are Bahasa Indonesia and
English. She is also motivated by individual reasons
such as to get better score in the class. Theoretically,
this kind of intension to learn the second language
can be motivated by the incentive, the need, or the
desire that the learners feels to learn the language
(Dulay, et al. 1982). This factor theoretically
influences the speaker to be bilingual.
By being bilingual, a person may have individual
identity as well as attract intergroup relations
(Lambert, 1977). Based on the speaker’s experience,
a bilingual speaker has slightly different status in
social community. She might be called as an
educated person only because of bilingualism. Some
people she knows also have particular special
position in her village, where Bahasa Indonesia is
still considered luxurious for most elderly people.
Additionally, by being bilingual, she may widen her
community by being able to speak to more groups of
people who originally speak different local
languages. This last benefit, furthermore influence
the chance to get more friends, relatives from other
areas, as well as escalating business and trading.
The discussion was then moving to the next
questions, whether there was a problem ever found
and how to overcome it. To respond this question,
she needs to think a little bit longer to answer. She
then decided to give one example of what happened
long ago.
When she was around 15, and she was just at
year 9 at high school, she and her parent went to
relatives in a village where electricity was not there,
yet. The village was located at mountain range, and
there was no easy road to get there. Mostly people
spoke in different dialect in slightly different accent.
She found that she cannot communicate very
well with her relative there, especially when the
language accent is somewhat different. Bahasa
Indonesia also did not help much since mostly she
had to speak with elderly that speaking in that
language was considered rude.
According to Beardsmore (1982) one of the
problems of being bilingual is that connected with
anomie. It is a condition where someone feels
personal disorientation, anxiety and social isolation.
It can be said that the speaker experiences this
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