Jakarta - The old aphorism "old soldiers never die, they only fade away" doesn`t really apply to Soenjono Dardjowidjojo.
At age 70, Soenjono, now professor emeritus in linguistics, has neither "died" in spirit nor faded away from the linguistic landscape.
A veteran linguist who enjoys international recognition, he has not lost one iota of his charm and eloquence in advancing his ideas for the development of Indonesian linguistics.
Indeed, for young linguists in Indonesia and across the world today, it is perhaps unscholarly not to quote many of his thoughts in their erudite works on linguistic studies and English language teaching.
Born in Kajen, a small village in the Central Javanese town of Pekalongan, Soenjono was the youngest of his fifteen siblings. His father was a village head and his mother an uneducated housewife who wanted her children to receive a high level of education.
Soejono`s academic contributions to Indonesian linguistics have attracted invitations from leading linguists such as Bernard Comrie, Peter Cole and David Gill to collaborate on research projects on Indonesian and the country`s indigenous languages.
Soenjono`s impressive credentials have also had named him a senior scientist at the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
After having been a permanent resident of the United States, for 12 years, Soenjono finally decided to return to Indonesia to work.
"I had achieved the highest academic position as a full professor at the University of Hawaii, and there was no reason for me not to come back to my country," Soenjono said.
After earning his bachelor`s degree in English from STC Yogyakarta, Soenjono was awarded a scholarship from the East West Center in Honolulu to study English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for five and a half years.
Three years after he graduated from Hawaii in 1964, he pursued his Ph.D. at Georgetown University under the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation, majoring in applied linguistics. At the young age of 28, he was awarded his Ph.D.
Soenjono started his career as a lecturer in Indonesian language studies at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, working there from 1968 to 1970.
From 1978 to 1983 he was chairman in the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages at the University of Hawaii where he taught Indonesian and became full professor in Indonesian language and linguistics.
Upon his return, Soenjono was quite surprised that the professorship he obtained from the University of Hawaii was not acknowledged by the Indonesian government: He needed to obtain another professorship from an Indonesian university.
As he taught in different universities in Indonesia, he was granted a professorship three times -- by Jakarta State University, the University of Indonesia and Atma Jaya University.
Soenjono said that unlike the American system, the system of granting a professorship here is based merely on quantity rather than quality.
"You can easily be promoted to professor here if you do Tri Dharma (teaching, research, and community services) in a university regardless of whether the content of the books you wrote and the research you conducted have an impact on scientific contribution, or whether the books are recommended as a compulsory textbook in many universities," he said.
In the United States, he added, the criteria for granting a professorship are very demanding and tough -- not just simply collecting the points accumulated from teaching, research, and community services as has been the case here.
Because of the absence of the tough requirements needed for professorship promotion here, Soenjono has dubbed the product of Indonesian professorship as "professor kiloan" -- one who is promoted to being professor simply because he or she is able to collect the right weight in points obtained from teaching, research and community services.
However, he believes that gradually the system will change to a better one, which considers the quality of research done by the would-be professors.
When lecturing at the University of Hawaii, Soenjono was not happy with the existing Indonesian textbooks at that time.
He then felt obliged to write Sentence Patterns of Indonesia, an influential scholarly work that has become a standard textbook used for teaching Indonesian in many universities in the United States.
In 1982, Soenjono wrote another book, Vocabulary Building in Indonesian, published by the Indonesian Studies Institute at Ohio University.
During his career as a linguist, Soenjono has published countless important works in prestigious international journals, such as the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Pacific Linguistics, Oceanic Linguistics and English Australia Journal.
Among Indonesian linguists, Soenjono is best-known for his Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Standard Grammar), a book he co-authored with other noted Indonesian linguists such as Anton Moeliono, Hasan Alwi and Hans Lapoliwa.
His other important publications that have become references for students of linguistics here are Beberapa Aspek Linguistik Indonesia (Some Aspects of Indonesian Linguistics), Echa: Kisah Pemerolehan Bahasa Anak Indonesia (Echa: A Story of an Indonesian Child Acquiring Language) and Psikolinguistik: Pengantar Pemahaman Bahasa Manusia (Psycholinguistics: An Introduction to Human Language).
Known as a moderate scholar with progressive ideas, Soenjono also created a forum for discussion among young linguists known as Atma Jaya`s Annual Linguistic Conference and Conference of English Studies in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
These forums provided young linguists and local teachers of English an opportunity to share and exchange their ideas related to linguistics, English language studies and language teaching.
Also, as a member of an advisory board of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia, Soenjono was glad to see the proliferation of national-plus schools here, which include English in the curriculum.
He supports the government`s effort to introduce programs for early acquisition of English.
"Introducing English into the school curriculum is a positive sign that our country has shown," he said.
However, he warns that the exposure to English here is not likely to yield an optimal result.
"We can`t expect too much that our students be able to speak good English because the sociolinguistic conditions here are not supportive.
"Students speak English in class, but then they use their native language when interacting with their peers outside of the school and family at home," he said.
Soenjono also expressed his concern that people are still developing a zealous attitude toward English native speakers in learning English as a foreign language, describing it as the failure of our nation.
"We still prefer to be taught by native English speakers to being taught by our local teachers who understand teaching methodology far better than native speakers do." Setiono Sugiharto
Source: http://old.thejakartapost.com (November 04, 2008)
