The English Use of Indonesian Students in Australia: Expectations, Perceptions, and Strategies

This paper explores the use of English in Australia based on the perspectives of Indonesian students. Studies on perception, expectations, and strategies on social experience have been carried out. However, most of these studies have not established models that consider the relationship among the three elements of expectations, perceptions, and strategies of Indonesian students in the host country, particularly in Australia. This paper attempts to capture the holistic picture of English varieties in the Australian higher education context to draw upon the three elements. Demographic questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews were employed to obtain data from fifteen Indonesian students studying in three universities in Melbourne, Australia. This paper's findings suggested that Indonesian students' expectations, perceptions, and strategies varied due to limited awareness regarding English varieties, culture gaps between Australia and Indonesia, and the prominent role of individual self-reflection. It is hoped that this paper may shed light on people’s understanding of the challenges, experiences, and the general wellbeing of international students who choose to study in Australia for their tertiary education.


Introduction
The trend of studying abroad, particularly regarding tertiary education, has become more prominent. Many students go abroad to study in the host countries, mostly English-speaking countries, such as Australia. For years, as one of the overseas study destinations, Australia has undergone an increasing number of international students. According to the Department of Education and Training [DET] (2016, para. 1), over 230.000 international students in December 2016 were enrolled in Australia's several universities.
Of these numbers, Indonesia becomes one of the top ten countries among foreign countries of student enrollment in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (International Student Enrollment Data, 2016). Indonesian students choose Australia due to its abundant lists of world-class universities, conducive campus atmosphere, and relatively close distance from Indonesia (Novera, 2004). In academic situations such as classrooms filled with multilingual and multicultural backgrounds, Indonesian students communicate using English to their fellow Indonesian counterparts and international students and Australian classmates.
Many studies have been conducted in examining international students, especially in terms of profiling their sociolinguistic repertoire. Most of the studies were carried out in American (e.g., Mukminin, 2012;Lopez & Bui, 2014) and European (e.g., Thao, 2015) higher education contexts than in the Australian context. The studies have reviewed international students in embedded in the context between multilingual and multicultural backgrounds become characteristics of intercultural communication interaction (Zhu, 2014). Indonesian international students mainly connect with other people using English during intercultural communication as they reside in dense suburbs where people have different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Also, they interact daily with a large number of learners who come from varied nationalities. Therefore, it is expected that Indonesian students are being exposed to varieties of English during the academic and social life.

Competences in Intercultural Communication
The rapid development of English and the dynamics of contact among people from different cultural backgrounds demand certain competence types to facilitate successful and smooth intercultural communication. 'Metacultural competence' is defined as "competence that enables interlocutors to communicate and negotiate their cultural conceptualizations during the process of intercultural communication" (Sharifian, 2013, pp. 7-8). Sharifian further explained that meta cultural competence is employed 'through the use of conceptual negotiation strategies' and it comprises three main components such as 'variation awareness', 'explication strategy', and 'negotiation strategy ' (pp. 7-8). For instance, this process is reflected when two language communities incorporate English to encode their cultural conceptualizations.
Another competence regarding learning English has been proposed by Canagarajah (2006) and termed 'multidialectal competence'. Canagarajah asserted that 'in a context where we have to constantly shuttle between different varieties of [of English] and communities, proficiency becomes complex', and that 'one needs the capacity to negotiate diverse varieties to facilitate communication' (p. 233). He underlined that an individual does not have to be 'proficient' in all English varieties and emphasizes negotiation skills such as speech accommodation in ELF and intercultural communication. Xu (2017) explained that the concept of 'proficiency in EIL appears to require more than just mastery of grammar and lexicon in EIL context', but rather as to 'exploring the various system of cultural conceptualizations and practice' (p. 709) in embracing one's communicative strategies during EIL communication. The awareness of differences across cultures and the development of negotiation abilities among students is essential in intercultural communication.

Studies on Expectations, Perceptions, and Strategies
Several studies have explored perceptions, expectations, and the use of strategies in an academic setting (e.g., Pudyastuti & Atma, 2014;He, 2013;Bjorkman, 2011). Using a survey research design, Pudyastuti and Atma (2014) highlighted EFL teachers' perceptions of Englishes.
Twenty-two EFL teachers were participated to fill the survey to elicit their voices and preferences concerning teaching preference using English varieties. Their findings indicated that although most participants had positive perceptions about Englishes, they also generated awareness that other English varieties could be incorporated into the English teaching practice. Therefore, there has to be research exploring the strategies carried out by the Indonesian students when interacting with other English varieties. Thus, this research attempts to fill the gap by exploring the expectations, perceptions, and strategies of Indonesian students' English use, particularly those studying in Australia.
Moreover, in He's (2013) study, He investigated the reasons for Chinese's foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA). Employing a questionnaire survey and focused interview, comprehensive data from 332 participants at two universities in China were obtained. He found 14 primary reasons regarding the Chinese students' FLSA and a comparison between teachers' and students' perceptions. Based on the findings, students' perceptions affected how students acquired language during language learning. He (2013) argued that understanding the reasons is an essential phase in minimizing the FLSA and improving learning effectiveness.
Another research is undertaken by Bjorkman (2011) to investigate the role of pragmatic strategies in English as a lingua franca context in Swedish higher education. The data comprises comprehensive lectures and student group-work sessions at a Swedish technical university adopting a corpus-based study. The findings showed that lecturers used fewer pragmatic strategies than students who employed more during group-work sessions. Repetition was considered a prominent strategy employed by either students or teachers in class.
Meanwhile, studies regarding the expectation involving Indonesian international students in Australian tertiary education are still limited. Novera (2004) undertook research examining Indonesian postgraduate students in Australia. Her study investigated 25 Indonesian postgraduate students in terms of their adjustment experiences during their studies in Australia.
Her research confirmed that cultural issues were apparent during Indonesian postgraduate students' academic journey using a qualitative-based open-ended questionnaire. The study results

Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning
Volume 6, No. 1, January 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/720 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 7 revealed that academic English was the main problem faced by Indonesian students and Australian academic requirements. The research conducted by Novera (2004) examined the adjustment experiences of Indonesian students in Australia without considering the elements of perceptions, expectations, and strategies to overcome academic English. Therefore, the present explores the above three elements focusing on English use, particularly among Indonesian students in Australia.
Additionally, despite many studies on perception, expectations, and strategies, most of these studies have not established models that consider the relationship among Indonesian students' expectations, perceptions, and strategies in the host country. By examining students from similar cultural backgrounds, this paper explores, describes, and proposes a model of Indonesian students' expectations, perceptions, and strategies regarding the use of English in Australia.

Method
This research employed qualitative interpretation since the qualitative approach underlines the descriptive, understanding, and clarification part of a human experience (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 126). Dörnyei (2007) also defines qualitative research as "fundamentally interpretive" (p.38) since the researcher's interpretation of the data was involved in processing the research outcome. Therefore, the qualitative method could elaborate on this study's topic since it attempted to explore the Indonesian student's English use experiences regarding expectations, perceptions, and strategies.

Respondents
Fifteen participants (seven males and eight females) agreed to participate in the study. All of them were postgraduate students in three major universities in the state of Victoria, Australia.
Adapted from Dörnyei and Csizér (2012), the participants' criteria were based on their study length, with a minimum of five months' stay in Melbourne, Australia. These fifteen participants had stayed and studied in Australia for at least nine months up to 1.5 years. It was done to delve into a more in-depth experience regarding English among the participants over some time. Their names are displayed anonymously. Further details and demographic information of the participants are presented in the Table. 1 to protect the participants' identity.

Instruments
A demographic questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used to obtain the data.
All participants in the study were self-selected or voluntarily. They were contacted through their leaders of Indonesian society and the postgraduate student community on their campuses. The questionnaire asked participants to provide additional contact information if they were willing to participate in a follow-up interview. The questionnaire comprised questions providing detailed information about participants, namely age group, gender, prior English learning experiences, and length of stay in Australia.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit data from the participants and confirmed some information from the demographic questionnaire. The interviews were conducted to obtain general ideas as well as in-depth information from each participant. Each one-on-one interview lasted between 30 minutes and 45 minutes. To ensure that all participants amplified their voice, they were given the flexibility to respond to interview questions in Indonesian or English. The data were transcribed selectively to address the research questions of the present study. During the transcribing phase, the researcher contacted the participants through email to ensure their reliability and accuracy.

[Participant 2]
From the response above, participants mainly considered the spoken aspect of the English varieties. Indonesian students had the general expectation that English in Australia was only different because it was 'thicker' than British English. They did not expect differences in the use of English in Australia in terms of vocabulary, grammar. Also, this study participants expected that English in Australia was more casual and informal, especially during the academic setting.
As seen in the following response:

Perceptions
The most noticeable perceptions were that most participants generated self-reflection concerning English and related their experiences in acknowledging the English variety in Australia. These self-reflections influenced how they perceived the language and shaped their awareness of the English.

Strategies
All responses were categorized into two main groups considering the third research question addressing strategies: (1) strategies to minimise the miscommunication in comprehending the English use, and (2) strategies to enhance and improve intercultural communication. In the first group, most participants tended to clarify and ask the counterparts directly when they discovered unclear statements or words. These unclear statements included the English variety that the counterparts used. It included questions such as 'Could you please explain the sentence again?'.
As seen in the following excerpt: The second group dealt with improving intercultural communication that almost half of the participants (six out of 15) tended to familiarize themselves with the culture of the counterparts (either Australian or international students) first and took the initiative to start the conversation (e.g., raising questions in classroom situations). These participants considered that cultural distinctions could generate possible bondings in mediating the issues in their English use, such as miscommunication and misunderstanding. According to them, these strategies were useful to increase their self-esteem to play a role not only in the academic situation but also daily, as described in the following: I usually familiarize myself with the culture of my counterparts here so that you can respect each other. And also, I tried to mingle with Australians to make it easier to communicate with them.

[Participant 11]
Indonesian students had tendencies to generate self-reflection on improving their strategies to communicate with others using English. These reflections allowed them to incorporate other factors, such as comfortability and 'pressure' from Australian counterparts that can influence their communication and interactions. For instance, one participant mentioned that he needed to see whether to feel comfortable before exchanging and sharing information; otherwise, he would not have much interest or willingness to do so. While other participants experienced the psychological burden when having a conversation using English with the locals. Interestingly, although all these reflections articulated by the participants seem to be negative, they immediately entailed supportive and positive influence for the participants to improve their English communication skills, as seen in the following: (e.g., in the response uttered by participant S2-1) indicated by more than half of the participants (eight out of 15). Another notable strategy falls in the type of "repeating strategy". According to the previous study findings, repetition as one of the pragmatics strategies was the most frequently used by students (Bjorkman, 2011). Since Indonesian international students reside in an English as a Lingua Franca atmosphere, for instance, Australia, applying these strategies during intercultural communication is essential for their English language learning and essential for developing their communicative competence in the Australian society's daily interactions.
Given the current changing sociolinguistic profile of English in Australia, it is thus recommended that Indonesian students need to develop multidialectal competence (Canagarajah, 2006) and meta cultural competence (Sharifian, 2013;Xu, 2017) for dealing with how individuals can express and negotiate cultural conceptualization among the speakers of English in the process of intercultural communication. It can be argued that negotiation strategy and explication strategy would bridge miscommunication and misunderstanding among Indonesian students.

Conclusion and Implication
The present study on exploring expectations, perceptions, and strategies regarding English use in Australia among Indonesian students found that students' responses had changed over time and were diverse. They varied due to limited awareness regarding varieties of English, significant gaps of culture between Australia and Indonesia, and the role of individual selfreflection. The majority of participants expected that Australians would speak British English since Australia was historically a British colony, and it was one of the UK's Commonwealth countries. The findings also indicated that most participants generated self-reflections in perceiving the English use. They employed self-reflections to highlight the influence of English during their studies and daily communication.
The strategies accomplished by participants to solve miscommunication also indicated similarities and differences. Those were categorized as clarifying or asking unclear statements,

Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning
Volume 6, No. 1, January 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/720 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527 repeating sentences, searching word synonym/paraphrasing, and seeking help and support from fellow international, Australian, and Indonesian students. Of these, 'clarifying or asking' was the most frequently used strategy.
Since this study is still limited at identifying specific responses on expectation, perception, and strategies regarding English use, future studies should employ different methods to attain more detailed results. This study only involved limited participants; thus, it might not touch the holistic picture of this study's three main aspects. Despite the limitations, this study can be considered one of the materials for future English language programs and in-house training to prepare students prior to departure. Further study is suggested to involve other research subjects from EFL countries other than Indonesia, such as China and Japan, which also dominate international students' prevalence in Australia.