MUHAMMAD IRFAN

16416002

ENGLISH SUMMARY AND RESPONSE

A SUMMARY OF “LEARNING THE DOMINANT LANGUAGE”

In “Learning The Dominant Langauge”, Dr. Stephen Wright explains that learning the
dominant language didn’t give significant effect to native people. Dr. Stephen Wright found that
learning dominant language only gave them disadvantages in their daily life. First, Most of them
had low academic thinking. They were difficult to understand about what they read. Their
academic thinking became worse over time. Second, they didn’t have strong grounding. They
didn’t have enough practice . There was no place for them to practice their dominant language
outside the school. So, learning the dominant language for the children is not appropriate.

A RESPONSE OF “LEARNING THE DOMINANT LANGUAGE”

“Learning The Dominant Language” remembered me about native people in Indonesia.

For example, dayak tribes who live in Kalimantan. They live in the deep of the forest. They
never interact with outside people. Someday, outside person came to the dayak tribes’s living
place. Let’s call him John. John came and tried to interact with the dayak. The dayak didn’t
give him response well. Then, John had an idea that he would teach the dayak about official
language in a month in in order to had better communication with him. After a month, John test
the dayak children. John told the dayak children about the recent news and asked them to gave
him a solution. However, none of the dayak children gave response. John knew that most of
them already had an answer but they couldn’t split it out. John concluded that taught the dayak
children about the official language didn’t give significant effect. They still didn’t know how to
interact with the official language. As Dr. Stephen Wright found, it is not appropriate to teach
the native children about the dominant language. It was because there are many important things
to do such as develop the academic thinking, stronger the grounding by learn the basic and
increase social ability to interact with older people.