Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Private Islamic schools have been a popular choice for education among Muslims in ASEAN. These education institutions play vital roles in education management and student development. For the Muslim students to become a quality 21st-century citizen, they should possess desirable characteristics with adequate global-scale competing capacity. It is inevitable that one of the qualities required to fulfill such grand-scale adequacy is English proficiency. Since the more people have become competent at English, the more diverse English-speaking individuals are, i.e., not every English-speaking person out there is a native speaker. To address this, private Islamic schools should not continue to employ conventional English teaching strategies. The 21st-century Muslim students deserve a more practical teaching approach that can prepare them for the new challenge of diverse English environments. This study aims to analyze and synthesize English pedagogic countermeasures of private Islamic school teachers against the 21st century learning challenges. Purposively selected, the samples were 9 private Islamic school teachers in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. The data were collected using a semi-structured interview and focus group discussion. The derived qualitative data were then processed with content analysis. The findings revealed 6 ELT strategies that are effective for language acquisition in Islamic environments: new teaching roles and functions; active and collaborative learning; technological integrations; localized learning materials; English communication in other learning areas; and 6) learners’ learning reevaluation. The findings can be adapted as English teaching strategies for Muslim students in both the secular education section and religious schools.