Bahasa Indonesia Courseware puts the Play in Learning
Online audio-based interative materials improve students' listening skills

The Bahasa Indonesia Program, in collaboration with the Centre for Instructional Technology (CIT), has successfully completed its Bahasa Indonesia I online audio-based interactive materials – the first of its kind for Indonesian language teaching.

Independent learning
With this courseware, students have been able to access 75 courseware posted at the website, designed to promote independent learning. Students will get extensive opportunities to listen to Indonesian speech samples from various context with features of phonology, pronunciation and intonation.

Students can access the audio materials and self-correcting exercises at their own time, space and pace, such that the learner’s autonomy is enhanced. A Discussion Forum at the website, as well as on IVLE, increased opportunities for students and teachers to discuss learning issues and to post feedback.

Semi-authentic environment
Many of the materials at the courseware were gathered from Indonesia to create a semi-authentic learning environment for the students. The tasks emphasised activities such as matching pictures with texts, cloze exercises and completing bubble dialogs. The learning materials covered topics such as greetings, salutations, introductions, families and aspects of daily life.

This interactive learning in second language acquisition project was spearheaded by Erlin Barnard, convenor of the Indonesian Program. It is developed in collaboration with a team of instructors – Marjam Budhisetiawan, Liucia Lawu and Fanny Loe.

Listen and learn
While more empirical research needs to be conducted to prove this hypothesis, there is a great need for audio materials in the field of Indonesian teaching, especially in the preparatory training period. With the extensive audio materials on hand, it was a good opportunity to explore how interactive courseware content may enhance teaching and learning process.

In addition, the contents of the online materials also correspond with the on-going oral proficiency material project in collaboration with Molly Burns and Ellen Rafferty at the University of Wisconsin.

Together, these two sets of materials, which are based on the same main dialogs, offer a more holistic approach in the teaching and learning of elementary Indonesian.