Readers Respond Rethinking the Maintenance of CLT in Indonesia: A Response to Ariatna’s “The Need for Maintaining CLT in Indonesia” EKA FADILAH Widya Kartika University In his article, Ariatna (2016) recommends maintaining communicative language teaching (CLT) in Indonesia despite the impediments of inadequate teacher expertise, low student participation, large class size, and limited teaching time— impediments situated in the context of a grammar-based syllabus and a noncommunicative examination. I agree with a few of his points but disagree with others where he has not viewed CLT through the broader lens of the social, economic, cultural, and ideological context of English-language education in Indonesia. In addition, I am rather alarmed by his radical recommendation that the status of English in Indonesia be changed from English as a foreign language (EFL) to English as a second language (ESL) as a means of enhancing CLT. In my view, such a recommendation can only be made after careful consideration of both the practical aspects and the broader implications of the concept of CLT. The radical shift in English teaching methodology from the audio-lingual method (ALM) to CLT has created an enthusiasm for CLT that does not always befit the context in which it is implemented (Bax, 2003). The Indonesian English curriculum has undergone eight revisions, and seen a number of English-language teaching methods come and go: the grammar-translation method, direct method, audio-lingual method, CLT, and the genre-based approach (Lie, 2007). TESOL Journal 0.0, xxxx 2017 1 © 2017 TESOL International Association doi: 10.1002/tesj.341