Fostering cultural competence: developing an English syllabus for young learners in the Indonesian EFL context with emphasis on local culture to maintain students’ identity

Abstract

Indonesia’s primary school English curriculum has struggled for roughly adecade due to the tensions between national identity and global English proficiency needs , as evidenced by the lackof government-mandated English syllabus. Nevertheless, the most recent Indonesian curriculum, the Emancipated Curriculum, has granted primary school educators the autonomy to create an English syllabus. Therefore, integrating local culture into English subjects can help address the challenges of keeping students’ identities and enhancing their English competency. This study aims to design an English syllabus for elementary schools that includes local culture using the research and development (R&D) method utilizing the Dick and Carey Instructional Design Model. Local culture was integrated into the syllabus in specific topics, following Byram’s cultural classification framework. The results indicated that integrating local culture into the English syllabus not only enables students to preserve their cultural identities but also offers a familiar context, leading to enhanced comprehension of English language. However, the materials with local culture are quite limited, posing difficulty for teachers in disseminating such resources. Consequently, it is recommended that future research endeavors focus on creating English materials that integrate local culture and investigate the impact of local cultural interventions on students’ English achievement, as well as how incorporating local culture might help students preserve their identity.