Communicative Approach in the Five Curricula of English Subject for Secondary Schools: A Paradox in English Language Teaching in Indonesia

The English curriculum implemented in the Indonesian secondary schools has undergone some development in the past few decades. The development is meant to ensure that the curriculum remains up to date with the development of English language teaching theories and practices in the world. This paper discusses the English curricula which were developed in 1984, 1994, 2004, and 2006 and critically analyses the communicative approach that has been implemented in Indonesian secondary schools. The newest 2013 curriculum is also discussed, but only superficially as the curriculum was just officially implemented at national level in the end of 2019. The writers finally offer some recommendations for future curriculum developers and government officials in order to improve English language teaching and learning in Indonesia.

structures of the language, non-contextual vocabulary items, and other activities that are far from the real purpose of communicative approach (Lie, 2007;Madya, 2008;Marcellino, 2008;Mattarima & Hamdan, 2011). The facts show the contradiction between the principles of the communicative approach and the actual implementation in classrooms. No wonder Indonesian students still find it difficult to speak English communicatively (Lie, 2007;Madya, 2007;Renandya & Widodo, 2016).
The Indonesian government has tried hard to develop and implement a new curriculum has caused problems in its implementation as English teachers find it hard to meet the demands of the curriculum while at the same time, they have to prepare their students for the national examination. This paper discusses each curriculum and critically analyses its communicative approach that has been implemented in Indonesian secondary schools. To begin with, the writers first review the five curricula based on the historical perspectives of English language teaching and curriculum development in Indonesia. The writers, then, critically discuss issues with the communicative approach in the theoretical and practical concepts.
The writers finally offer some recommendations for curriculum developers and government officials in order to improve English language teaching and learning in Indonesia.

BRIEF REVIEW OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN THE ENGLISH CURRICULA OF INDONESIAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS The 1984 English Curriculum
The 1984 English curriculum for secondary schools adopted an initial version of the communicative approach with an emphasis on the development of reading skills (Huda, 1999). This was due to the lack of a linguistic environment that could enable real oral-aural communication in English. Because English is not used in Indonesia either socially or for official communication, as it is in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, but is viewed as just a foreign language, it is only taught in schools as a subject for study, not as a tool for communication. The limitations of the linguistic environment in Indonesia deprive students of the opportunity of learning and using more spoken English for oral communication (Huda, 1999), even though the government, through the 1984 English curriculum, expected that the objective of the teaching was to restore the true goal of English teaching, that is, "meaningfulness and communicative functions" (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1986and 1987, as cited in Huda, 1999. The 1984 curriculum seemed to be a reaction or correction to the errors and problems found in the implementation of the previous curriculum (the 1975 curriculum), especially in the development of the teaching materials as reported by the British Council (1975).
Unfortunately, the syllabus and textbooks in that era still used the structural approach, where the main focus was on learners' competence in the grammatical structure of the English language (Huda, 1999). Therefore, mismatches occurred between government expectations and what happened in the classroom, as found by Huda (1999) in his survey of 26 provinces in Indonesia.
With regard to the format of the curriculum document, the 1984 curriculum is written in a column format, in which the columns refer to curricular objectives, instructional objectives, instructional materials, lesson programs and techniques of teaching, resource materials, and assessment (Huda, 1999). Each curricular objective is developed into several instructional objectives, and each instructional objective is then developed into topics and sub-topics. Although this format makes clear relationships between objectives, materials, and techniques, the syllabus is very rigid (Huda, 1999;Yulia, 2014). Teachers and textbook writers do not seem to be allowed any creativity in writing or using syllabuses and textbooks (Huda, 1999). Huda (1999) makes a pertinent observation about the changes from the 1984 curriculum to the 1994 curriculum:

The 1994 English Curriculum
The claim that the 1984 syllabus adopted a communicative competence approach has created a number of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. One of the serious misinterpretations is that English instruction in secondary schools is targeted toward the acquisition of oral communicative competence. The term "communicative competence" seems to be a source of misinterpretation. Therefore, in the statement of objectives in the 1994 syllabus, the phrase "communicative competence" is avoided, although the objective is still the development of competence to communicate in English. Similarly, the term "communicative competence approach" will also be avoided, in spite of the fact that the syllabus has the elements of notional, functional, and situational syllabi. Instead, a new term has been invented to describe the teaching approach and method which is suitable to achieve the objective. The approach to teaching is labelled the "meaningful approach". (p. 124) The 1994 English curriculum was developed by a team that consisted of English teaching specialists, curriculum specialists, practicing teachers and school system authorities, and was also based on the 1987-1990 national surveys on the teaching of English in the secondary schools in 26 provinces in Indonesia (Huda, 1999). The development of the curriculum was conducted in three stages: (1) research, evaluation, and writing stage, (2) preparation stage, and (3) implementation stage (Huda, 1999). The goal of the curriculum was broadened to include listening, speaking and writing skills, but the main focus was still to develop reading skills in English, with a vocabulary level of 1000 words for junior high school and 2500 words for senior high school. It was suggested at this time that the English curriculum should be suitable for varying sociogeographical needs, so three versions of the English syllabus were planned: (1) national content, which would be implemented nationally, (2) enrichment content, which would be implemented with students who have achieved the level of the national content, and (3) local content, which would satisfy regional or local needs (Huda, 1999).
As a significant shift in curriculum renewal, the Local Content Curriculum (LCC) was introduced and implemented in the 1994 curriculum (Yue, et al., 2006). In consequence, the curriculum devoted 20% of the time to locally designed subjects (Yulia, 2014), which meant a shift from the centralized curriculum (pre-1994) that had been implemented in the previous era to a focus on locally needed subjects, such as topics on agriculture, information technology, or home industries. Unfortunately, Bjork (2006, p. 140) found in his research that the shifts were only superficial, as "instructors continued to use the curricular materials and instructional methods they had relied on for years; only the titles of those classes or the manner in which they were configured (such as the sequence of topics presented) had been altered".
A new flexible syllabus development format was introduced in this curriculum to avoid the problems that had occurred in the previous curriculum. Textbook writers and teachers could change the sequence of the syllabus items, which was in a default order set by the curriculum developer (Huda, 1999). However, problems and questions still arose as to which format provided the best guide without sacrificing the creativity of either the teachers or the textbook writers. curricula, the difference, as noted in Huda (1999), was in the explicitness of the term "communicative competence approach" used. In the previous curricula that term was not used, in order to avoid serious misinterpretations and misunderstandings. However, in the 2004 curriculum, the English curriculum developers incorporated the Communicative Competence model proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995), which consisted of five subcompetences: linguistic competence, sociocultural competence, actional competence, strategic competence, and discourse competence (Agustien, 2004).
As the main goal of this model of Communicative Competence focuses on discourse competence, the curriculum developers also incorporated the Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) Genre-Based Approach (GBA) proposed by Halliday (Emilia, 2005;Halliday, 1994). Agustien (2004) argues that since the government employed a competence-based curriculum and the relevant approach to teaching English in Indonesia by using Communicative Competence (CC) concepts, then the generic structures of both conversational and written texts should be introduced into the curriculum. These generic structures of conversational and written texts are features of the GBA and are in line with the discourse competence of CC (Agustien, 2004(Agustien, , 2006. Agustien (2004) argues: In short, at junior high level, learners are expected to learn daily expressions, especially fixed expressions and idioms that are needed in daily lives to accompany their actions when playing at the school yards, when attending the class, when interacting with their friends, etc. They should be encouraged to read English for fun and to collect English that they like from different sources, such as fairy tales, jokes etc. At the senior high level, they develop those skills further and they move to more distant communications involving subtleties or nuances of meaning: interpersonal, ideational, and textual meanings." (p. 3)  (2) text types (genres) in the curriculum were divided into two groups and simplified (Agustien, 2006). The main differences between the 2004 English curriculum and the 2006 curriculum were in the main document that described the core standards and their indicators and also in the model syllabus. In addition, many components that had been present in the 2004 English curriculum main document were omitted in the 2006 English curriculum. The competence indicators, essential learning materials, and appendices were withdrawn, leaving only the standards and basic competences stipulated by the Board of National Standards of Education (BNSE or Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan/BSNP) (Sukyadi, 2015). The competence indicators were withdrawn to give autonomy to the teachers and schools to develop the curriculum to suit their local contexts, and to avoid the controversies that occurred with the 2004 curriculum when the new GBA approach was introduced. BNSE expected teachers and schools to have more opportunity to develop their own curriculum to be able to cater for local needs when implementing the Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (School-Based Curriculum) (Sukyadi, 2015;Widodo, 2016). Some sub-competences were mentioned in the 2004 curriculum documents as indicators to be attained, while the 2006 curriculum documents focused more on the language skills indicators (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) to be attained, rather than mentioning the sub-competences of Communicative Competence (CC); likewise, the model syllabuses of the 2006 curriculum rarely mention the subcompetences of CC.

The 2013 Curriculum
In 2013, the Ministry of National Education (MONE) introduced yet another new curriculum, but they had been motivated by the increasing concerns among Indonesians about a rising flood of immorality and intolerance among Indonesian youths (Kennedy, 2014). This new curriculum adopted aspects of character education in almost all of the subjects. In addition to character education, the 2013 curriculum aimed to improve Indonesian education by reducing and changing the required subjects. At the primary level, the Ministry cut the required subjects from ten to six; and English, science, and IT classes were eliminated in favour of more time for classes viewed as character-boosting, such as Bahasa Indonesia, civics, and religious studies. At the secondary level, teaching hours in English and IT classes were reduced in favour of history and local language classes (Kennedy, 2014).
With regard to English language teaching and learning for secondary education, Widodo (2016) states that the 2013 curriculum does not detail key elements, such as curriculum materials, pedagogy, and assessment, based on relevant theories of language, language learning, and language teaching. Instead, engaging learning and teaching are framed in a form of scientific inquiry (the 'Scientific Approach') or discovery learning, which follows five steps: observing, questioning, exploring or experimenting, associating, and communicating. Further, Widodo (2016) states: The nature of the current curriculum is highly prescriptive in that it dictates what and how to teach and learn English within the remit of predetermined competences. Both core and basic competences are set based on the ideological and political agenda. These competences do not reflect communicative language competence and the totality of competences that students have to develop to become competent users of English. (pp. 138-139) It seems that this new curriculum has not only brought in totally new concepts beyond the known and established language teaching approaches, but also returned to the era when teachers were spoon-fed with the prescribed curriculum, as in the pre-2006 curricula. There have been a lot of problems and difficulties from the initial stages of the curriculum implementation up to the present. Among other things, the problems lie in the fact that the curriculum documents were not ready on time to be disseminated, which consequently created confusion and misunderstanding among teachers and their schools (Rachman, 2014). Up to the end of 2014, there were still some schools that had not received the curriculum documents: 19% of the elementary schools, 32% of the junior high schools, and 22% of the senior high schools around Indonesia (Rachman, 2014).
Another problem is that the content of the curriculum documents does not seem to be comprehensive and complete, which creates more burden for the teachers in implementing it (Rachman, 2014). These problems continue even now. Theoretical issues, as it is explained in the section below, concern the most appropriate approach of ELT for secondary education in Indonesia. Clearly, Communicative Competence and the Genre-Based Approach that were adopted (as explained above) have not achieved as planned. There are two main reasons for this failure. First, even though the five sub-competences in the new model adopted were combined into one discourse competence as stated in the 2004 Curriculum, they still appeared to be a burden for the teachers to implement, and the embedded Genre-Based Approach (as stated in the 2004 and 2006 Curricula) was even more difficult. These two new concepts should be thoroughly learned and practised by the teachers before they implement them in their classrooms. The curriculum developers should also seek other approaches that would suit the education contexts in Indonesia.

LANGUAGE TEACHING Paradox in the Theoretical Concepts
Some of the benefits of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) have been criticised by some as rather questionable and inconsistent, and they could be regarded as the weaknesses of the approach rather than its strengths (Didenko & Pichugova, 2016).
The proponents of the various theories and concepts underlying CLT have never come to agree on some fundamental issues, such as actually defining Communicative Competence. Three different models of Communicative Competence were produced by Canale and Swain (1980), Celce-Murcia et al. (1995), and Bachman and Palmer (1996) during more than ten years of studies, but whether such models have made CLT more manageable in classroom application seems doubtful (Brown, Tarone, Swan, & Ellis, Rod, 2007;Butler, 2011;Swan, 1985;Vongxay, 2013). Didenko and Pichugova (2016) argue that one reason why CLT failed to achieve its ideal goal is that it attempted to embrace so many language-related disciplines at once. This is based on Thomson's (1996) and Widdowson's (2009) argument that those who adopted the models and principles of CLT from mainly the linguistic theories simply omitted unattractive or ambiguous parts, producing a fragmented and confusing mixture of misconceptions about models and conflicting ideas, like teaching no grammar at all, or teaching only speaking.
There is considerable criticism of CLT, which is based on evidence that CLT has failed to fulfil its many promises to innovate language teaching. One foremost issue is the lack of real communicativeness in the approach (Didenko & Pichugova, 2016;Kumaravadivelu, 2006;Nunan, 1987Nunan, , 2003. Nunan (1987) argues that CLT teachers cannot manage to create real-life communication in their classes as well as to create conditions conducive for developing communication skills. Seedhouse (1996) states that the goal of CLT to replicate genuine or natural communication rather than typical or traditional communication styles in classroom communications is both paradoxical and unattainable. He argues that it would be more satisfactory to take an institutional discourse approach, where classroom discourse is regarded as an institutional variety of discourse, in which interactional elements correspond appropriately to institutional goals (1996, p. 16). Kumaravadivelu (2006) adds that CLT cannot promote authentic communication, because, based on his study, CLT has failed to describe classroom interaction as genuinely communicative.
Another reason why CLT failed to fulfil its promises is its inability to fit into certain contexts (Didenko & Pichugova, 2016); likewise, studies from various countries reported by Kumaravadivelu (2006) showed general dissatisfaction has arisen as a result of the lack of compatibility of CLT with local contexts. CLT implementation has turned out to be actually distressing at times for teachers and students alike, especially in EFL contexts where both the teachers and the students were non-native speakers of English, even in cases when it was backed by governments and institutional authorities (Butler, 2011;M. Chang, 2011;Didenko & Pichugova, 2016;Drame, 2009;Huda, 1999;Lie, 2007;Madya, 2008;Marcellino, 2008;Mattarima & Hamdan, 2011;Musa, Lie, & Azman, 2012;Vongxay, 2013;Yulia, 2014). Most researchers believe that differences in culture between differing teaching and learning communities present a very difficult hurdle for CLT practices as national language policies (B. M. Chang, 2011;Lie, 2007;Madya, 2008Madya, , 2007 Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 103-105) summarise criticisms of CLT as follows: • It promotes fossilisation. The promise that the communicative classroom activities would help learners develop both communicative and linguistic competence did not always happen. In the early stages of learning, it was reported that students often developed fluency at the expense of accuracy, resulting in students with good communication skills but a poor command of grammar and a high level of fossilisation (Higgs & Clifford, 1982).
• It reflects "native-speakerism". The teaching methods developed in the countries of English origin reflect the kinds of learners who study in institutes and universities serving students who generally have instrumental reasons for learning English, namely for academic or professional purposes or as new settlers, and the teaching methods also reflect its cultures of English origin as well. Such learners' needs may be very different from learners learning English in state-based educational programs in other parts of the world. Holliday (1994) points out that most literature on CLT reflects primarily the understandings of countries of English origin about teaching, learning, teachers, and classrooms. In these contexts, English language teaching tends to be instrumentally oriented; while in non-English-speaking countries, English is taught as part of a wider curriculum and is influenced and constrained by wider educational, institutional, and community forces, quite different from those in the English-speaking countries.
• It is not applicable in different cultures of learning. Attempts to implement CLT in non-European settings have often been less than successful due to different assumptions about the nature of teaching and learning that learners in countries such as China, East Asia, and other contexts bring to learning (Ahmad & Rao, 2012).
• It reflects a Western-based top-down approach to innovation. Kumaravadivelu (2012) argues that the communicative syllabus and common procedures for its implementation do not capture the diversity of students' needs and goals.
To conclude, CLT appeared at a time when language teaching in many parts of the world wanted a paradigm shift, since language teaching methods such as situational language teaching and audiolingualism were no longer felt to be appropriate methodologies. CLT emerged to those who sought a more naturalistic and humanistic approach to language teaching, where the interactive processes of communication were the priority goal (Richards & Rodgers, 2014). However, this approach did not always go smoothly without criticisms as has been mentioned above.

Paradox in the Practical Concepts
Despite the continuous changes in the curriculum, the concern of most English teachers remains unchanged. English teaching still deals mainly with the complex structures of the language, long reading passages, too technical vocabulary items, and other activities that are far from the real purpose of the current curriculum. The facts show the contradiction between the principles of the communicative approach and the actual implementation in classrooms (Lie, 2007;Madya, 2007;Marcellino, 2008;Mattarima & Hamdan, 2011;Sukyadi, 2015;Widodo, 2016).
As gaining communicative competence requires certain enabling conditions in order that it can be applied effectively-such as, the existence or good language models from whom students can learn language, a great deal of exposure to the language in the real-life situations, the involvement in meaningful communication-we have seen from the beginning of the curriculum implementation to date that such conditions are potentially contradictive with the language learning environment in Indonesia. The theoretical understanding on a supportive language environment might not be well translated into practice in educational fields, particularly in the classrooms (Bjork, 2005(Bjork, , 2013Huda, 1999;Madya, 2007;Marcellino, 2008;Mattarima & Hamdan, 2011).
One of the main features of communicative language teaching is its focus on learners. Richards and Rodgers (2014) state that in a communicative language teachingbased classroom, language teaching should be learner-centred and responsive to their needs and interests. Indonesians, in general, including most teachers and students, are not accustomed to the idea that learning activities are more student-generated than teacherinitiated. The widely held belief is that teaching is passing down knowledge from teachers to students, that teacher knows everything, and that student is knowledge recipient from teacher. Because of such beliefs, it is very unrealistic to hope that the students will be very active in their learning situations. In fact, Indonesian classrooms are renowned as unidirectional and quiet ones (Bjork, 2013;Djalal et al., 2009;Huda, 1999;Sadtono, 1997;Widodo, 2016).
In addition to the absence of the enabling conditions (such as communicative activities in the classrooms), these students have had a pre-structured attitude that the measure of being good or not good students is judged from their obedience to the guru (teacher), who must be digugu (trusted with everything they say) and ditiru (imitated).
Being a good student also means taking for granted whatever the teacher gives without questioning mind. Shifting the role of the teachers as learning conductors to teaching facilitators is also much easier to be said than to be done. Teachers are considered school time parents for Indonesian students, and being "parents" means that they should always play a leading role in the classroom (Bjork, 2005(Bjork, , 2013Djalal et al., 2009).
The number of teaching materials that support the implementation of communicative competence at schools is limited. This is in contrast to private language courses that generally have stronger financial resource than formal schools. Being financially established, they can provide decent facilities to support English language learning. Moreover, Indonesian senior high school teachers' quality in research is relatively low (Bjork, 2005(Bjork, , 2013. The teachers do not have enough opportunities to research their teachings or even to keep up to date with the research in English teaching areas (Bjork, 2013;Djalal et al., 2009). Consequently, their classroom management skills are low and, most importantly, they may find it hard to translate the idea of communicative competence model into the actions. This leads to a situation in which no significant change takes place on the way they teach and nurture the students' learning.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENT OF CLT TOWARDS THE 21 ST CENTURY
The early communicative approach considered target language-based communicative competence to be essential in order for foreign language learners to participate fully in the target language culture (native-speakerism). It was this monolithic perception of language and culture that has made the early paradigm utopian in character and, therefore, failed to reflect the lingua franca status of English language (Braine, 2010;Byram, 2008). This early paradigm of CLT is difficult to implement when English is increasingly used throughout the world by speakers of many different first languages.
English has become the international language of communication in the twenty-first century, and within a short period of time the number of people who speak English as a non-native language may exceed the number of its native speakers (Braine, 2010;Renandya & Widodo, 2016).
It is becoming apparent that real communicative activities ought to be redefined in relation to the reality of English as an International Language (EIL) (Byram, 2008;Renandya & Widodo, 2016). This involves not only the uses of English that are real for its native speakers in English-speaking countries, but also the uses of English that are real for its non-native speakers in communities served by languages other than English (Alptekin, 2002;Braine, 2010). Therefore, the conventional early model of CLT, with its strict adherence to native speaker norms within the target language culture, would appear to be invalid in cross-cultural settings (Byram, 1997;Renandya & Widodo, 2016).

Nowadays CLT should view English as a means of international and intercultural communication involving the following criteria:
• Intercultural communicative competence should be developed among EIL learners by equipping them with linguistic and cultural behaviour which will enable them to communicate effectively with others, and also by equipping them with an awareness of differences, and with strategies for coping with such differences (Byram, 2012;Coperías-Aguilar, 2002;Hyde, 1998).
• Instructional materials and activities should have suitable discourse samples involving native and non-native speaker interactions, as well as interactions between non-native speakers (Coste, Moore, & Zarate, 2009;Widdowson, 2007).
• Appropriate integration of technology in the classroom encourages students to use language in different ways and brings real-world issues into the classroom (Richards, 2006). Learners from different parts of the world can get connected and exchange ideas. Many students may know more than their teachers about how to use technology, and yet they need proper guidance from their teachers on how to select, analyse, and utilise the right information to achieve their learning goals. The classroom activities currently applied in CLT can also provide new roles for students and teachers in classrooms; now, students take part in cooperative classroom activities where they learn from their peers by doing pair or group tasks (Richards, 2006).
The above examples bring the chance of plurilingualism and plurilingual education to 21 st -century language learners who already have some intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 2008(Byram, , 2012. Plurilingual competence is the capacity to successively acquire and use different competences in different languages, at different levels of proficiency and for different functions. The central purpose of plurilingual education is to develop this competence (Beacco & Byram, 2007). The concept of plurilingual competence refers to the Council of Europe's standard distinction between plurilingualism and multilingualism (Council of Europe, 2001): plurilingualism is the ability to use more than one languageand accordingly involves seeing languages from the standpoint of speakers and learners (Beacco, Byram, Cavalli, Coste, & Cuenat, 2010). Multilingualism, on the other hand, refers to the presence of several languages in a given geographical area, regardless of who speaks them; speakers in this geographical area may not be equally proficient in each of the different varieties represented (Beacco & Byram, 2007). Beacco et al. (2010) argue that this approach would be incomplete without the pluricultural and intercultural dimension: Pluriculturality is the desire and ability to identify with several cultures, and participate in them. Interculturality is the ability to experience another culture and analyse that experience. The intercultural competence acquired from doing this helps individuals to understand cultural difference better, establish cognitive and affective links between past and future experiences of that difference, mediate between members of two (or more) social groups and their cultures, and question the assumptions of their own cultural group and milieu. (Beacco et al, 2010, pp. 16) Therefore, nowadays Communicative Competence (CC) would more appropriately be termed Intercultural Communicative Competence as has already been argued by Michael Byram since 1997(Byram, 1997.

APPROACHES TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE 21 ST CENTURY
There are some core and essential skills required in education in the 21 st century.
These comprise skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success in 21 st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. This is part of a growing international movement focusing on the skills required for students to master in preparation for success in a rapidly changing, digital society. Many of these skills are also associated with deeper learning, which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork. These skills differ from traditional academic skills in that they are not primarily content-knowledge-based (Bellanca, 2014).
In 2002 a national organisation in the United States made up of non-profit foundations and private companies, called The Partnership for 21 st Century Skills, proposed the need for these 21 st century skills for every student (Bellanca, 2014;Dede, 2009). This organisation, popularly called P21, defines 21 st century skills as a blend of content knowledge, specific skills, expertise, and literacies necessary to succeed in work and life (Ledward & Hirata, 2011). These skills are more than mere technological literacy; in addition, they include proficiency in critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and team work (Paige, 2009). Based on the three main areas of skills mentioned above, there are seven key skills, named 7Cs skills, proposed by the senior members of the organisation (Trilling & Fadel, 2009): (1) critical thinking and problem solving; (2) creativity and innovation; (3) collaboration, teamwork, and leadership; (4) cross-cultural understanding; (5) communication and media literacy; (6) computing and ICT literacy; and (7) career and learning self-reliance.
Regarding the integration of these 21 st century skills into English language teaching and learning, Yilin Sun (2016, pp. 1-6) proposed nine strategies to empower ELT professionals: Strategy 1 -Value the changing perspectives on ELT: English language teaching and learning have undergone many changes over the past 50 years, which have become increasingly apparent in the past 20 years. Code-switching once was seen as language error, but now has been recognised as a valuable bilingual and translanguaging resource.
An accent, instead of being viewed as deficiency, now reflects identity. The purpose of English language learning has moved away from copying native speakers as closely as possible to successful use of skills and strategies to be effective and competent communicators for a world-wide work force.
Strategy 2 -Embrace changes in goals of English teaching and learning: with the changing perspectives on ELT, the goals of ELT have also changed from focusing solely on developing language skills and mimicking native English speakers to also fostering a sense of social responsibility in students.
Strategy 3 -Integrate 21 st century teaching-learning approaches: the 7Cs skills (mentioned above) proposed by Trilling and Fadel (2009) have been implemented by more schools particularly in the USA in recent years. In addition, eclecticism in ELT is becoming more popular nowadays (Brown, 2007;Kumaravadivelu, 2001Kumaravadivelu, , 2012. Eclecticism involves the use of a wide variety of language learning activities, each of which may have very different characteristics and may be motivated by different underlying assumptions.   Cook (1992Cook ( , 2012Cook ( , 2016, some scholars (Choong, 2006;Doyle, 2015;Hall, Cheng, & Carlson, 2006;MacKenzie, 2012;Scott, 2015) have introduced an expanded view of communicative competence as "multi-competence" in second language acquisition and learning. Other scholars, including Michael Byram (1997), have focused on the importance of intercultural communicative competence in English as a foreign language teaching and learning (Byram, 2008(Byram, , 2012Corbett, 2003;López-Rocha, 2016;Sercu et al., 2005). The implication here is that when teaching intercultural communicative competence, teachers need to teach both local and international cultures. The goal is to produce effective language users to use English as a global Lingua Franca, not just learners who mimic the "inner-circle" countries' language and culture.
Strategy 6 -Teach and learn in a 21 st -century context: in a globalised world, it is not uncommon to form a team of, say, four people from different continents in a collaborative project. Hence, educators need to be aware of the changes to better prepare students with 21 st -century skills to compete in the competitive workforce; so both language teachers and learners should understand and use all the 7Cs skills.
Strategy 7 -Apply macro strategies to enhance assessment: Standards-based assessment programs which measure success based on student learning (achievement of standards), rather than on compliance rules, have been implemented by many schools nowadays. However, as Darling-Hammond et al. (2003) have advocated, the reform of assessment of student learning needs "top-down support for bottom-up reform." This strategy seeks to empower teachers and principals at the "bottom" of the system to solve problems more effectively by organising intensive professional development and creating a culture of shared norms of practice from the "top" and "bottom" simultaneously. This strategy wrestles with outside influences to use them to the advantage of "inside" purposes without being carried off course by the force of their momentum. Once this happens, educators will be empowered to apply macro strategies to enhance assessment.
Macro strategies refer to overall plans obtained from L2 related pedagogical, experiential and theoretical knowledge (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). The assessment tools should be designed to engage students in active learning and demonstrate their skills in real-world performance-based projects. With ready-made materials available at the stroke of a key it is possible to bring real life into the classroom.

Strategy 9 -Embrace changing roles and increasing responsibilities of teachers:
Teachers have multiple roles and responsibilities as facilitators of student learning and creators of a productive classroom environment in which students can develop the skills they will need for the 21 st century workforce. Nowadays, many teachers benefit when they integrate content and project-based approaches, and changes in classrooms such as shared teaching, team teaching, and collaboration with other teachers. In this innovative approach, excellent resources and opportunities are provided for educators. Teachers need to embrace new ideas to effectively teach in our ever-changing societies. This also prepares teachers to be reflective practitioners and constructive social agents in the world of globalising the English language (Sun, 2014).
The focus of language education in the 21 st century is no longer simply on grammar, memorisation and learning by rote, but rather using language and cultural knowledge as a means to communicate and connect to others around the globe (Eaton, 2010;Kumaravadivelu, 2012;Savignon, 2007). Technology has transcended geographical and physical boundaries when students learn to use language and cultural skills to reach the world around them (Eaton, 2010). Learning is typically focussed on the types of competencies which include digital literacy, cultural competence, inventiveness, emotional awareness, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and problem solving (Abentao, Castillo, Atitiw, & Asuncion, 2018). Abentao et al. (2018) argue that many innovative ideas and policies need to be developed to meet the needs of culturally diverse classrooms because people from different locations, especially non-English speakers, are learning the English language in order to compete in the career world, and, therefore, suggest educational institutions should make every classroom multicultural, more learnercentred, more collaborative and more technologically driven.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Curriculum developers should consider both technical issues (practical problems) and theoretical issues when developing a curriculum innovation. Technical issues may be resolved by monitoring and supervising whether every school meets the national standards in education equally. These issues are very difficult to resolve, as there is a wide disparity in socioeconomic backgrounds in every province in Indonesia, especially between the provinces on Java island and outside Java island. The national examination is, consequently, not set on an equal footing for every region (Lie, 2007).
Another technical issue concerns the format and development of the curriculum documents themselves. Government authorities such as CCD and BNSE should professionally and continuously review and monitor the process of publishing and disseminating the curriculum documents and their companion documents to the hands of the forefront implementers, the classroom teachers. These authorities should not confuse the teachers when a new curriculum as a new education innovation is ready to be implemented; otherwise, this innovation will not achieve what it is intended to achieve. Widodo (2016), for example, questioned the theoretical foundation of the new 2013 curriculum when he found that this curriculum was more driven by ideological and political agendas than pedagogical reasons. Teachers are fed with this new curriculum that has been determined as in the pre-2006 curriculum era but with a completely new concept outside the language teaching approach that is well known and established. There have been many problems and difficulties during the implementation of this new 2013 curriculum to date. Among other things, the problem lies in the fact that curriculum documents are not ready on time for dissemination, which consequently creates confusion and misunderstanding among teachers and their schools (Rachman, 2014). Indeed, new 2013 curriculum amendments are still happening. Therefore, any future curriculum should be 'friendlier' for the implementers and the users.
Recommendations and key ideas suggested by EFL researchers and English teacher organisations, such as TEFLIN (The Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia), should also be heard, as this organisation consists of Indonesian English teachers and English lecturers in teachers' colleges, who are the forefront implementers of any English curriculum innovation. As Emilia (2005) and Korompot (2012) suggested in their studies, since teachers are the most important implementers of any curriculum innovations developed by the government, their voices and their roles should be heard in developing and improving the curriculum. They are not just the objects but the subjects for the improvement of the country's education.
The second reason is the mismatch discussed earlier between the goal of the national examination policy imposed by the government and the objectives of the curricula to enable high school graduates to have communicative competence. Any approach implemented should be streamlined and suited to the objectives of the national examination, until such time as the aims and form of this exam may be considered. The five sub-competences can be reduced into whichever competences are relevant and important, and the Genre-Based Approach can be postponed until the teachers have fully understood and can teach it.