TEACHERS’ READINESS TOWARD THE NEW PARADIGM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY

The development of English Language Teaching grows rapidly. The pandemic of Covid-19 became the turning point for teachers' awareness of the need for changes in language teaching practices. The advance in technology also takes an important role in the current trends of Language teaching. A narrative inquiry research method was applied to investigate the teachers' perception of their readiness toward the paradigm shift of English Language Teaching. Eight English teachers from many areas in Indonesia such as Semarang, Lampung, Jombang, Surakarta, Yogyakarta, and Purwokerto participated in this research through in-depth interviews. Then, the data collected were classified into several points regarding the new paradigms of education. The teachers' views on the paradigm shift in Education and the current practice of English Language Teaching were presented in this paper. Finally, teachers as the spearhead of education are required to be lifelong learners who are creative, innovative, and adaptive to the rapid change in world trends.


Introduction
English is the most influential language in the world (Nishanthi, 2018). Established as Lingua Franca, English is the language commonly used in international transactions such as trading, business, and travel (Geckinli & Yılmaz, 2020). Moreover, English can be easily found in our daily life like in electronics, the internet, and in public places. With this growth, the need of learning English has increased significantly.
People learn English to be able to communicate, enlarge their networking, improve their lives, and for many other reasons that focus on the practical use of English (Nishanthi, 2018). This is a real phenomenon showing that people learn English as a means of communication not as subject matter to be mastered. This paradigm shift leads to new trends in English language teaching (ELT).
The trends in English language teaching grow constantly along with the time development and people's needs for English. This change is inseparable from the history of approaches and methods in ELT.
Before the 20 th century, language was seen as a system of structurally related elements (Richard & Rodgers, 2001). The teaching methods used were Grammar Translation Method and Direct Method (Murcia, 2001;Qing-Xue & Jin-fang, 2007;Zhou & Niu, 2015). Both are different methods. The Grammar Translation Method emphasized grammar and the translation of the target language into the mother tongue. Meanwhile, the Direct Method believed that foreign language should be taught as the mother tongue.
A significant change happened during the 20 th century (Richard & Rodgers, 2001). The teaching paradigms fluctuated between accuracy vs. fluency, separated skills vs. integrated skills, and teacher-centered vs. student-centered. The teaching methodology that emerged during this era were audiolingual, the silent way, the suggestopedia, the total physical response, community language learning, and so on (Murcia, 2001).
At the beginning of the 21 st century, the language teaching practice becomes more students-centered, putting the role of the teacher as facilitator and involving four skills called 21 st -century skills, they are cognitive skills, intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, and technical skills (Geisinger, 2016;Larson & Miller, 2011). Some teaching methods in this era are Contextual Teaching and Learning, Cooperative Learning, Collaborative Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, and so on (Kay & Greenhill, 2011).
Today, people are facing digital life (van Laar et al., 2017). Transactions, interactions, and communication go online. Especially after the pandemic of Covid-19, people's life has changed dramatically. Education is one of the most impacted by this pandemic. The teaching and learning activities were fostered to be online. All the academists were required to quickly adapt to this situation. This sudden change, of course, emerged many problems including the teachers' and students' ICT mastery, the curriculum, the facilities supporting online learning, the learning sources, and the risk of learning loss (Harahap et al., 2021).
Through the continuous change in English Language Teaching, knowingly and unknowingly, the paradigms were shifted. The new paradigms in English Language Teaching were briefly summed up by Jacobs and Farrell (2001) as autonomous learning, social learning, curricular integration, meaningful learning, diversity, thinking skills, alternative assessment, and teachers as co-learners. These shifts include how people see a language whether as a subject matter or as a means of communication and also the purpose of people learning a language whether to understand the language or to be able to use the language (Richards, 2006). These changes require teachers to re-evaluate their teaching practice.
Some research on the phenomenon of the education paradigm shift suggested that a new standard of English is needed in which language is learned as a lingua franca that is used globally without ignoring multiculturalism (Jayanti & Norahmi, 2015;Yamin et al., 2022). Other research is concerned with the impact of Covid-19 on education practice. Not merely about the negative effect, but the rapid change in the education system also gave new insight into education in the digital era. The advance of technology plays an important role in this situation. Many innovations created as solutions to this problem such as online learning platforms, easy access to learning sources, gamification, etc (van Laar et al., 2017). Now when the pandemic becomes endemic, these innovation remains the new trends in education. This excellence should be developed to avoid drawbacks to the traditional one (Espino-Díaz et al., 2020;Mujtaba et al., 2021).
This paper aims to explore the Indonesian teachers' perception of the new paradigms in education and what changes they have made in their teaching practice as a response to these shifts. The changes made by the teachers lead to the most applicable method in ELT for this new era. Therefore, additionally, this paper also elaborates on the current trends in the practice of English Language Teaching.

Method
The central focus of this research was digging the information from respondents who are teachers or lecturers handling English Language Classes. A narrative inquiry approach seems to be the best fit for this study, given that it emphasizes human experience and gathers "depth descriptions of life events" of individuals, in keeping with its intended objective (Ary et al., 2010). This method was first introduced by Connelly and Clandinin in 1990. It is qualitative research studying personal and human life experiences and presenting them narratively (Abrar, 2019;Creswell, 2007;Moen, 2006).
To be able to tell a narrative, the participants or storytellers must have a good understanding of the subject. In other words, participants must comprehend the fundamentals of the study to contribute as collaborators (Listiyanto & Fauzi, 2016). Thus, eight respondents for this research were chosen randomly with the inclusion of teaching English Language Classes. The respondents are English teachers and lecturers from many areas of Indonesia such as Semarang, Jombang, Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Purwokerto, and Lampung. This diversity aimed to obtain more general data meaning that the data was not based on the trend in a certain area but could be generalized to a common trend in Indonesia.
The data for this research was collected through in-depth interviews. Following the collection of the data, it was meticulously transcribed, read aloud several times, and connected in a meaningful way to identify similarities and contrasts as well as relate them to the study objectives. The participants were involved by returning the transcription and analysis to collect their views and comments as well as their agreement for anonymity and any ethical issues, which helped to assure the validity and verification of the data interpretation and analysis.

Findings and Discussion
This study referred to the major paradigm shifts proposed by Jacob and Farrell (2001). The teachers' views on the paradigm shift of Education and the current practice of English Language Teaching presented were classified based on eight categories: autonomous learning, social nature of learning, focus on meaning, integrated curriculum, diversity, thinking skills, alternative assessment, and teachers as co-learners.

Autonomous Learners
Learner autonomy refers to the principle that learners should take an increasing amount of responsibility for what they learn and how they learn it (Richard, 2016). To be autonomous, students must have some control over the what and how of the curriculum and feel accountable for both their learning and the learning of those with whom they engage. To use their strengths and improve their deficiencies, learners who are autonomous in their learning are aware of how they learn (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001).
However, many practitioners regard the concept of learner autonomy as being synonymous with self-access and particularly with technology-based learning rather than as being synonymous with teacher-less learning. Since the ability to take responsibility for one's learning is not innate but rather needs to be taught, there would be a great need for guidance if pupils were to attempt to be more autonomous (Masouleh & Jooneghani, 2012).
Based on the result of the interview, most teachers usually use teaching activities that involve the students being active such as group discussion, gamebased learning, mind mapping, role play, project-based learning, and problembased learning. These are primarily student-centered and teacher-less learning with the average student's role being around 50-70% and the teachers' role about 30-50%. Through these activities, students are highly motivated to be active both in asking questions and consulting the task outside of the class since they have a responsibility to accomplish the task. To facilitate self-learning the teachers usually share the soft file/ printout of the materials and also the references (book, website, YouTube channels, etc.). However, the main problems faced by the teachers are the students' mindset that English is difficult, the culture of being passive students, and their awareness of self-responsibility to take charge of their learning. These psychological factors are necessary to be taken into account since to be autonomous students need to realize three basic needs: a sense of interest, a need for competencies, and relatedness (Little, 2007).

The Social Nature of Learning
Learning is a social activity that depends on interpersonal connection rather than being a solitary, private activity (Richards, 2006). This is in line with the theory of constructivism that people construct knowledge through interaction between what is known and the new knowledge, ideas, or experiences obtained. Children do not learn their mother tongue but their language acquisition is a result of their efforts to communicate with their surroundings (Little, 2007). The movement reflects this viewpoint is cooperative learning. Cooperative learning highlights the importance of positive interdependence in which at the same time students are motivated to try hard to assist the group in reaching its goals (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001). Group activities such as team games tournaments think talk write, think pair share, jigsaw, STAD, and task-based instruction are commonly used by teachers to stimulate interaction, peer discussion, and positive interdependence between students.

Curricular Integration
When language is seen as a means of communication, it must be learned by using it in a real-life context in which sometimes many subjects are correlated. Thus, English must not be seen as a stand-alone subject but it is linked to other subjects in the curriculum (Richards, 2006). When several subject areas are taught together, students have greater chances to see the connections between the different subject areas. This idea is commonly found in the school-implemented Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses. This idea can also be implemented in General English courses by applying certain types of syllabi such as text-based syllabi and content-based syllabi.
This integrated curriculum is still considered controversial since it still needed a consensus on the main focus of the learning whether the content or the language used to be emphasized. The other problem is the teachers' content mastery. It seems that an English teacher should master all the subjects just like a primary teacher at elementary school. From the student's perspective, learning a certain material using full English is a new challenge. At the same time, they have to understand the content and interpret it word by word. Sometimes the requirement to use English becomes a barrier for students to be active.

Focus on Meaning
Following the previous notion of curricular integration, cognitive psychology tells us that the process of learning best takes place when the new information is connected and stored in meaningful chunks (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001). Authentic material can be defined as a real language, produced by a real speaker or writer for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort (Gilmore, 2007;Guo, 2012). Authentic materials provide opportunities for English language teachers to adopt various strategies in the classroom so that learners have a chance to learn the language in a novel way (Rao, 2019). Since the focus is the meaning, then language learning should be inductive. Too many corrections from the teacher will distract meaningful interaction and withdraw the students from being active.
Most teachers believe that fluency is the main goal of language learning. However, fluency can be obtained when there is accuracy. Thus, teachers are recommended to use a balance of fluency activities and accuracy and to use accuracy activities to support fluency activities (Richards, 2006).

Diversity
Distinct learners have different learning styles and learning skills. Instead of attempting to fit all students into a single mold, teaching needs to consider this diversity. This has caused a focus on growing students' use and awareness of learning strategies in language education (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001;Richards, 2006). To facilitate this diversity, some teachers apply pre-test. The result of the pre-test can be used to analyze the students' proficiency level as well as their strengths. Teachers usually apply varied learning methods to equip students with different learning strategies. Giving reinforcement to students' achievement is sometimes effective to motivate the students to see their unique characteristics as the strength to be developed.

Thinking Skills
Language needs to be used to foster the growth of higher-order thinking abilities, such as critical and creative thinking. In terms of language instruction, this means that students acquire language not just for its purpose but also so that they can improve and use their critical thinking abilities beyond the language classroom (Richard & Rodgers, 2001). The effort to link the school with the real world is oneway thinking skills and the present paradigm are related. This effort promotes the idea that education should be used to apply knowledge toward creating a better society rather than simply being a collection of simple information to be memorized and then regurgitated on tests (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001).
What the teachers do to stimulate students' critical thinking is for example giving a prompt or topic to discuss, giving a competitive task involving problemsolving, and connecting the learning materials with the implementation in a real situation. The student's language proficiency develops along with the growth of their thinking skills since they need to use language to express their ideas.

Alternative Assessment
The current paradigm sees learning achievement not only from the outcome/ product but also from the process. Therefore, further attempts are being made to develop assessment instruments that mirror real-life conditions and involve thinking skills. These alternate assessment tools are frequently more expensive, time-consuming, and less consistent in their rating. However, they are becoming more popular as a result of dissatisfaction with conventional methods of assessment, which are criticized for failing to adequately document students' proficiency in their second language (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001).
Most teachers agree with the statement above that assessment must be seen from the learning process and product. Components of the scoring include written/ verbal tests, assignment/ project assessments, portfolios, and observation field notes with the proportion depending on the institution's regulation. This attempt aims to motivate the students to appreciate a process and prevent them from doing "anything" for the sake of a "good" score.

Teachers as Co-learners
The concept of teachers as co-learners involves teachers learning along with students (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001). The teachers are seen as a facilitator who constantly experiments with various solutions, or learns by doing. This has sparked interest in action research and other types of classroom exploration in language instruction (Richards, 2006).
Many teachers are aware of the importance of reflective teaching and the need of updating knowledge and skills through training, seminar, or workshop. However, only a few of them have the willingness to do action research in their class to develop the practice of teaching and learning.

Current Trends of ELT
Currently, people live in the era of globalization and digitation. Technology changed the way we express ourselves and interact with the world around us (Finardi, 2015). Almost every part of life in the world has been impacted by globalization, and those sectors are tightly linked by the usage of English as the primary language for communication. Therefore, any consideration of the teaching of English should be linked to them (Kim, 2011).
Current trends of ELT were directed by the paradigm shift in education. First, there is a change in the goals of ELT from focusing solely on developing language skills and mimicking native English speakers to fostering a sense of social responsibility in students. Second, teachers are well aware that teaching English should result in fully competent language users, critical thinkers, and agents of positive social change rather than simply preparing pupils to mimic native English speakers. It is becoming more widely accepted that linguistic, instructional, and intercultural competency, rather than English language proficiency, determines a teacher's quality or efficacy. Third, teachers have a variety of duties and responsibilities in the classroom of the 21 st century, including facilitating student learning and establishing a productive environment where students can get the skills, they will need for the 21 st -century workforce. Another shift is that many teachers no longer do one-on-one lessons. Teachers have the chance to team teach, educate, and work together with colleagues from different disciplines. And the fourth teachers are lifelong learners. They are expected to engage in continuous professional development or professional learning activities from the beginning to the end of their careers (Qoura, Aly A., 2020).
Based on the result of the interview, the teachers stated that the pandemic of covid-19 brought positive impacts on education in the terms of ICT mastery of the teachers themselves and also the students. Moreover, the practice of distance learning during the pandemic gave new knowledge on the online educational platform, online learning media, and much online learning. Some media commonly used were zoom meetings, google classroom, google meet, Google Forms, google site, Microsoft team, Padlet, Duilingo, Quizziz, Puzzle, and so on. To facilitate 21 stcentury skills, most teachers have integrated learning skills (4Cs: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) in their classes. However, only a few teachers have integrated the other skills, namely life skills (flexibility, initiative, social skills, productivity, and leadership) and literacy skills (information literacy, media literacy, and technology literacy). For the most used methods, most teachers applied the students-centered teaching method that requires students' active participation and the use of language as a communication tool such as Task-Based Language Teaching, Blended Learning, DIY Learning, and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).

Conclusion
Drawing from the result of this study, it is concluded that most teachers are aware of the paradigm shift in the English Language Teaching practice. The eight major changes lead to the concept of Communicative Language Teaching in which language is not merely seen as a subject matter but a means of communication. The teacher's role is no more as the main actor in the classroom but as a facilitator to provide the students with different characteristics to obtain meaningful learning experiences that enable the use of language to interact with others. To fulfill the requirement of the 21 st century, learning activities should cover three main skills namely learning skills, life skills, and literacy skills. Advanced technology also plays an important role in the current practice of ELT. To adapt to the rapid change in ELT practice, teachers are recommended to be lifelong learners and to keep updating their knowledge and skills through training, scientific workshop, seminar, and so on.
This research focused only on the teachers' perspective on the paradigm shift of ELT. Based on the result of the study, there were some obstacles faced by the teachers in implementing best practices of language teaching such as the student's motivation to learn autonomously and the teachers' interest to research their class. For further research, it would be fruitful to provide the solution to these problems.
Finally, 21 st -century teachers must be creative, innovative, and adaptive to the rapid change in world trends.