Developing Second and Foreign Language Proficiency: Insight from the learners

Abstract

This paper presents a study of two learners’ experiences in learning Indonesian and English. One of the learners is from the Philippines and the other is from Thailand. As the study was conducted, they were studying in an English language teaching program at an Indonesian university. The two learners maintained quite unique learning experiences in that both of them neither had knowledge of nor communicative skills in Indonesian language prior to coming to Indonesia. Although they faced lots of difficulty at first, both of them were able to communicate in Indonesian language fluently after some period of living and studying in Indonesia. As regards their proficiency in English, however, there was a marked difference in that although both of them had learned English for years prior to their undergraduate study, only one of them managed to develop high level of proficiency in English. Interviews were carried out to reveal their learning experiences and to see the factors that might have shaped their level of proficiency in both Indonesian and English. The results indicated that there were a number of factors that might have strongly shaped the different level of their proficiency.