Shobih and His Friends

It is realized that English plays a very important role in the major aspects of life in this globalization era. It is most widely spoken in the world with more than 500 hundred millions people. Therefore, it is ready to assume its role as the global language. Its influence is increasing with the advance of information and technology, which has evidently accelerated the explosion of knowledge. Increasing the speed of communication for various purposes and gradually created as a global culture. This global language will contribute a great deal to one’s success in this information era.

Donough (i993:101) states that, as a skill reading is clearly one of the most important; in fact in many instances around the world, we may argue that reading is the most important language skill, particularly in cases where students have a read English material for their own specialist subject.

English has been taught and learned as a foreign language for years at Indonesian schools beginning from junior secondary school to senior secondary school, even up to university or college. During the colonial Dutch government, English was taught and learned as the second foreign language while Dutch was learned as the first foreign language. However, since Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, the Indonesian government declared a national policy on teaching English language at Indonesian schools (Be, 1993). Since then, as officially stated in the national curriculum, English language has replaced the position of Dutch as the first foreign language that learners had to learn. In other words, since 1945 English language has become one of the compulsory subjects at the Indonesian primary and secondary schools.