English Proficiency of Secondary School Teachers in Indonesia.

Responding to the growing need to foster communicative abilities in English, schools in In-donesia are driven to make their students proficient in English. However, the majority of English teachers themselves are still not prepared to use English as a means of communica-tion; improving their English proficiency has thus become a matter of concern. As the first phase of a larger-scale study, this present study focuses on teachers’ English proficiency. Da-ta for this study were collected from 149 secondary school teachers of English from five re-gions (Palembang, Yogyakarta-Sleman, Surabaya, Ruteng, and Maluku). They were asked to self-assess their English proficiencies based on the ACTFL (American Council on the Teach-ing of Foreign Languages) guidelines as well as to do an English Proficiency assessment. Fif-ty-two of these participants were teachers who were completing an in-service professional education program in Surabaya. The teachers assessed their proficiencies in interpersonal communication, presentational speaking, presentational writing, interpretive listening, and interpretive reading. The English Proficiency assessment includes syllabus-oriented items, General English items, and an essay. The study also conducted in-depth interviews of select-ed teachers. This study found that there is a gap between the teachers’ perception of their communicative abilities in English and their actual English proficiency