Aim for English

Easy question, not so easy to answer.

Let me illustrate the difficulty by turning the question around and asking “What’s it like, living in Indonesia? Maybe you’d say that all the islands are different, Jakarta’s different from everywhere else, and anyway it all depends how well off you are. A rich family living in Jakarta has a totally different life from a farming family in Flores, for example.

Maybe my initial question should be re-framed. What you really want to know is “What will it be like for me, brought up and educated in Indonesia, to live and study, or work, in London, or Sydney? Or any other reasonable sized city in the US, UK, or indeed any English-speaking country?”

Part of the answer depends on you. What kind of person are you? What do you enjoy doing? What do you like to eat?

See? It really is difficult to generalise. But perhaps I can help a bit by disposing of some common misconceptions.

First, just because the economically advanced English-speaking countries have high levels of overall GDP does not mean that every one of their citizens is “rich” by local standards. There are huge differences in personal wealth, just as there are in Indonesia. These differences have grown a lot over the past two decades, and the poor have become relatively poorer while the rich have become even richer. You will undoubtedly see people living on the streets in any big city, and this may come as a shock to you.

Secondly, not everyone in your country of destination will have your level of education. If you are a university graduate, much less than half of the citizens of whichever country you are going to will have a degree. They may have better English, but lots of them won’t because they too are recent arrivals!

Healthcare is a third problem. The people in the country you are going to will have their own system of healthcare, which gives them high life expectancy and quick access to treatment. But your entitlement to use it is something you need to be clear about before you leave home. Western standards of medicine are high, but they don’t come cheap. You need to know who will pay for your treatment if you get sick, or have an accident.

Fourthly, there is the question of English itself. You will know what level of English you have achieved. You might expect that this will enable you readily to communicate with English-speaking locals.

Oops! Not really. The truth is that in Indonesia all the native English-speaking people you have ever spoken to were already accustomed to communicating with Indonesian people in English. They most likely understood the regular difficulties that Indonesians encounter with English, and made allowances for them. They were certainly deliberately using simplified English, stripped of slang, jokes, or topical references.

In the country you are going to, very very few of the locals will have any experience at all of communicating with non-native English speakers. Their spoken English will be full of slang or shorthand expressions, and may be delivered in a heavy accent. They really won’t know how difficult it is for you to understand them, and may get annoyed if you don’t easily follow what they are saying. (Famously, in Britain it sometimes happens that people speak louder than they need to foreigners, as if the foreign person were deaf, rather than being unfamiliar with their variety of the English language!)

So please expect to spend a few days or weeks getting used to the local mode of speech. You’ll become fluent, but it may take a while.

Sadly there are hundreds more points I could make. In fact, written briefing is not the way to answer the question I posed as the title of this piece. If you are going to live and work or study in an English-speaking country, your preparation needs to include face-to-face question-and-answer time with someone who knows the challenges you will face. If you live in Jakarta, or can get here, the Aim team will be happy to help you plan your transition and clear up your uncertainties, at the same time as they help you with your English.
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