Eka Prabawati Rum, Mark Garner, Muhammad Basri
The education system in Indonesia is oriented top-down, from lecturer to students. The lecturer is the controller in the classroom, and the students wait for his/her the lecturer’s instruction. A lecturer must be able to communicate verbally, in writing, and gesture; to use communication and information technology functionally, and to interact effectively with the students have to be addressed. This article examines the role of the lecturers in supporting students’ interpersonal communication skill development in Indonesian EFL Classroom. It reports research conducted in in a private university in Indonesia. A longitudinal ethnographic approach was employed to collect data on (a) lecturers’ perceptions of their own interpersonal communication and (b) the extent to which the pedagogical approaches they adopt help to develop their students’ interpersonal communication skills. The findings demonstrate that there is marked differences in the way the lecturers perceive the interpersonal communication skill development. These differences falls into three categories of lecturers such as (1) Strongly Supportive Lecturers (SSL), (2) Fairly Supportive Lecturers (FSL), and (3) Weekly Supportive Lecturers (WSL). What is evident that the more supportive the lecturers are of interpersonal communication skill development, the more constructivist is their teaching approach, and the more varied are the opportunities they give to their students to develop interpersonal communication skills, the better the students’ interpersonal communication skill development. According to Graham, West and Schaller (1992) teaching requires effective interpersonal communication skills to achieve satisfying outcomes. This study has sought to expand scholarly understanding of Interpersonal Communication Skill in in Indonesian EFL Classroom. © 2020 Asian E F L Journal Press. All rights reserved.
Universitas Negeri Makassar, Indonesia; University of Roehampton, United Kingdom
