Indonesian Employees^ Cultural-self Awareness in Indonesian-Japanese Intercultural Workplace Vera Yulianti, Ilza Mayuni, Liliana Muliastuti
Universitas Negeri Jakarta
Universitas Al Azhar Indonesia
Abstract
The international companies require the employees to have intercultural competence as one of the competencies. Foreign language learners should acquire this competency as well as the linguistic ability itself. However, the foreign language learning curriculum tends to neglect this importance, yet not mentioned in the stages of the learner^s and user^s needs analysis, learning objectives setting, and in the learning outcomes assessment. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the intercultural competence of Japanese studies alumni who work in Japanese companies in Jakarta, Indonesia. This study is expected to provide valuable feedback for the Japanese language and culture curriculum used in local universities. Qualitative research methods were conducted through personal-written reflection, depth-in interview, and job interview simulation to assess components of intercultural competence. The participants were sojourn-experienced and inexperienced alumni who recently work at Japanese companies in Jakarta. The findings reveal that participants^ deeper self-knowledge as a critical component of the intercultural competence attained mostly throughout their working experience instead of as the learning outcomes in university. Besides, they claim the religious difference as the challenging aspect of culture that they have to overcome in the Indonesia-Japanese workplace environment, although they are working in their own country. Results also indicate that there should be more efforts to integrate intercultural competence into the Japanese language and culture learning curriculum in local universities.
Keywords: Indonesian, Intercultural Workplace, Japanese Language Learning
