A Lifelong Learner: Learning Bahasa Indonesia

I arrived in Indonesia back in July to work at JIS, Jakarta International School. My first unit with my new Grade 4 class was 'Learning to Learn ' about exploring our passions. This was a great opportunity to share with my students my passion for learning languages (sadly a passion that doesn't equate to skill) and discuss how I intended to try and learn Bahasa Indonesia. In our unit we talked about thinking about how we became skilled at something and how we can transfer these skills to other areas. We talked about how 'practise makes perfect' and about our learning styles. I shared with them how I am a kinasthetic learner and how I need to make sense of my learning by creating something. So here are a few ways I explored learning Bahasa Indonesia and creating different products to help me, utilising different technologies along the way. 




Even before coming to Indonesia I downloaded free podcasts from Learning Indonesian from iTunes. I have found this very useful, especially if you start at 1.00 minute  and skip the repetitive intro!


I downloaded an app Indonesian Flashcards. Firstly I downloaded the basic version but later downloaded the full version. This has different activities to read, write and hear the different word lists they have.

Once in Jakarta, I engaged a tutor to come to my house twice a week. Pak Paul goes through a text book with me and we practice basic conversational Bahasa and basic grammar.

Our school very generously gives us money to help us learn the local language. As such I spent my October break in Yogyajakarta, attending language Colorado Language School I spent four hours a day having 1:1 lessons with the ever friendly and patient Ibu Eni and Ibu Elia. Even when I carelessly sprained my ankle at Prambanan Temple the lesson continued and they were kind enough to come to my hotel room to continue the lessons. I would recomend this school highly as the teachers were excellent and I felt we covered a lot. Despite 4 hours of 1:1 lessons the time flew.

Coming back to Jakarta I should have dived in to practising with everyone I meet but sadly I didn't. I don't know if it's my British reserve or my lack of self-confidence that stopped me from doing this. I think a bit of both.

So I continued practising with the theory at least.  To help me understand Indonesian grammar further I used a strategy I learned from Real  Spelling and made matrices in Word with the root words. As you can see from this matrix for the root word <beli>, different prefixes and suffixes can be added to it. `the matrix has to be read from left to right and every suffix can not be used all the time. Still these matrices are to help me remember the root word and think about the word families and help me expand my vocabulary by creating other words from the root word, e..g.  beli = buy, membeli = buy, membelikan = buy for, dibeli = be bought,  terbeli = bought etc. 

I also made mindmaps using Mindmeister.com to help me remember some of the vocabulary and how it's connected.

I also wanted to create some simple flashcards, as I know how a ring bound stack of words on cardboard helped me increase my Japanese vocabulary when I was learning that. I wanted an app that I could use on both my iPhone and iPad and that I would be able to share resources with others. Flashcards best suited my needs. I downloaded the free version but soon ran out of space and upgraded to the Student version with the capacity of 500 cards for each deck you create. You can download pre-made cards from Quizlet etc. or share yours which I thought might be useful for other friends learning Bahasa.   I uploaded all the vocabulary I had learned on my course and can now easily flip through these on my phone when I'm stuck in Jakarta traffic! 



Trying to utilise social media to help me learn I I also joined Learning Indonesian's Facebook page and followed Bahasa Indonesia on Twitter. 



So now, I just have to get out there and learn Indonesian the old fashioned way, and talk to people!  I do feel that learning something completely new really helps give me empathy for my students and lets me understand the trials and tribulations they go through. Just like the my Grade 4 students, I know what I have to do to improve myself and reach my goal, so now, I just have to give it a shot!