When Local Goes Global: English Teachers As Cultivators Of Local Culture In A Globalized Region

With the wave of globalization, English has become a lingua franca in Asia. As such, English has been used between non-native speakers of English with diverse cultures. In Indonesia, English is taught as a foreign language in which the majority of lessons are centered in introducing western cultures. However, there has been a shift in the teaching materials to incorporate local culture content. In the face of this development, this project seeks to discover a means to fulfill a new role of English teachers in Indonesia. Teachers can be cultivators of local culture content by following the process of a small-scale research and development project as the one presented in this paper. Teachers can help learners understand their own culture presented in English so that they can own their English and share the merits of their culture to the region. There are five steps in which teachers can cultivate local culture contents: (1) surveying learners’ needs, (2) discovering the potentials of local culture in learner’s surroundings, (3) designing extra reading materials based on the local culture content, (4) developing the materials attractively based on learners’ needs, and (5) continuously revising the materials to accommodate more localities. By so doing, teachers can propagate their own professional development and prepare their learners for such a unique facet of globalization contemporarily happening in the region. Keywords: local culture, reading, material development, globalized