A Pilot Study:
Empowerment on Learning
Bahasa Indonesia in India
Wildan M Muttaqin,*
Abstract
The paper aims to convey the
motive of Indian students learning Bahasa Indonesia in both Jawaharlal
Nehru University and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia. Since India as
multilingual country, it is very important then to know and see person to
person’s
motives on
studying foriegn language especially Bahasa Indonesia.
Through this program directly or indirectly leads students to pay more attenion
of Indian students getting to know Indonesia. The unit of analysis is a text as
the answer of interview prepared by the writers as a means of collecting data.
The participants or interviewees are twelve students. Meanwhile, the analysis
focuses on three issues such as motive of learning Bahasa Indonesia, how
to empower the students through Bahasa Indonesia, and difficulties on
learning Bahasa Indonesia. There are three findings of the study. First,
the motive of learning bahasa is rational, ideological, and extra-rational.
Second, the way how to empower students is by teaching culture instead of
language itself. Last, the students have the same difficulties on learning Bahasa
Indonesia such as; pronunciation, standard and nonstandard words or
expressions, and the method of teaching bahasa.
Keywords:
Pilot Study, Empowerment, Bahasa Indonesia, Learning
A. Introduction
One of the biggest multi-lingual countries
in the world is India. As a multilingual
country, India has many varieties of
language both as vernacular and national language similar as Indonesia. Indians have been using more
than one language simultaneously and the influence of one language to the others could be seen in almost all the
languages in the form of loan words. The States in India have never been
linguistically homogeneous. There has been always some forms of multilingualism, between
languages or dialects or both. At present there is not a single State or Union Territory that is
monolingual. For example, the state of Haryana. This state may be divided into
six or more linguistic or dialectal regions. There is an accepted standard
dialect of Hindi that is recognized and used as the official language of the
state.
These
situations are continued and developed not only in term of social and cultural
life but also in academic atmosphere. Nowdays India is
already having a carreer focussed higher study system where foreign language is
also included one of the most desired streams as it is directly linked with the
multinational companies coming to India, tourism, academic collaborations,
translations and interpretaions. Also they play a very important role in
enhancing country’s export-import business. For instance,
at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) there is a School of Language, Literature
and Culture Studies (SLL&CS) which carries out learning and teaching process
of foriegn langauges such as, Urdu, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Germany, France,
Spain and Bahasa Indonesia. Besides, the language is taught at the
Embassy of the Republic Indonesia for those who have no time to study regularly in JNU or for
students outside of JNU.
The students studying
there have various social and cultural background that will influence the
achievement of learning it. Some students have got jobs already such as
librarian, security, professional dancer but for others don’t have it yet. Therefore. its very pertinent to
understand an individual’s interest as why he or she should opt Bahasa
Indonesia as one of their carreer making tools. The study is then very significant to explore why do
they learn Bahasa Indonesia at JNU and the Embassy. So this paper aims
to convey the motives of
learning and teaching a language especially Bahasa Indonesia and how to make
students more powerful during learning it.
B. Theoretical Framework
There are two fundemental terms to comprehend this study; empowerment and
learning. First, empowerment is the process of increasing the spiritual,
political, and social strength of individual and communities. Empowerment also
includes encouraging and developing the skills. It refers to accelarate and
also to develop the self identity, access to knowledge and information’s,
ability to shnage, capacity building,
increasing self confidence and esteem and realising pontentials (Selvam and
Murthy, 2012:205). Second, the word learning in this paper means to both
learning and teaching situation. Rahman (2002:38-40) argues that the term
learning is similar as demand for learning a language. When people are willing
to learn a language, they demand it. On the other hands, teaching processes are
as the response toward the demand.
Learning a language is as a market regulation like supply and demand.
He
also explains that there are
four reasons why people learning or teaching a language. Those are rational, resistance, ideological, and
extra-rational. First, he asserts that rational means people learn a
language is due to empower one’s self by acquiring the potential to obtain
employment. Second, resistance is the teaching or learning of one’s
ethnic language in order to oppose the power of a language supremacy. Third,
ideological reason signifies learning language as the transmission of ideas,
values, and perception of reality which create or influence one’s world view
through language teaching, especially language texts. Fourth,
extra-rational is purely gratifies one emotionally. In short, people are
willing to learn languages other than their own instruments for the fulfillment
of economic or social goals’ but this does not happen without their feeling a
sense loss, of alienation from their roots of betrayal (Laitin 1992:32).
Another
perspective to understand why people learning a language is that language a
social fact or social semiotic (Halliday,1994). Since they live in any society they
won’t be able to neglect the role and existance of a language. People do social
activities like transactional and interactional acts to fulfill or meet of
their need in their life with the language as well (Brown and Yule, 1992:12).
By learning language is also as means of access to the sources of power. In
accordance with Anderson (2006:21), there are some various sources of power as
wealth, social status, formal office, organisation, weapons, popuation and so
forth. People still believe that one of the ways to gain the source of power is through mastering a language
especially foriegn language. It is due capable to expand the acess of reaching
the power.
C. Methodology
This study is a pilot study of
the descriptive qualitative
research. This means as a small-scale set of observations
undertaken to decide how and whether to launch and improve a full-scale project of
learning and teaching of Bahasa Indonesia in India. The methods of
collecting data used are
interview. Sugiyono (2012:231) says that the interview method used is to get
preliminary data and over come the limition of the participants. The participants
of Bahasa Indonesia class are six students of the Embassy class and
twelve students at JNU. He
further suggests the criteria of composing questions for interview such as;
asking experience, opinion, feeling, knowledge and emotion. Based on the
criteria, we designed
eight questions that should be answered by the students. The interview is
semi-structured interview, the interviewer has general idea of where he or she
wants the interview to go, and what should come out of it, but does not enter
interview with list of predermined questions (Nunan, 1992:149). Data analysis are
done by using Miles and Huberman model; data reduction, data display, conclusion/verification
(Sugiyono 2012:232).
D. Data Presentation & Discussion
Generally the situation of the students learning Bahasa
Indonesia both at JNU and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in India
will be described and analyzed as follows:
1. Data Presentation
The data are taken by the
reasechers through semi-structured interview and consist of nine questions. The
answer of questions is elaborated in detail in
the discussion section but the questions are formulated in data
presentation section in the following:
a. Do you like learning any language?
b. Do you like learning Bahasa Indonesia?
c. Why do you like learning Bahasa Indonesia?
d. After mastering/knowing Bahasa Indonesia very well, what
will you do further in the future?
e. Do you have some ideas/suggestions to make
learning-teaching Bahasa Indonesia more interesting?
f.
What do you
think? There more and more students from India willing to study Bahasa
Indonesia at higher education especially Jawaharlal Nehru University.
g. What do you thin? If Bahasa Indonesia will be official
language of ASEAN.
h. Do you have some difficulties of learning bahasa
Indonesia?
2. Discussion
At this section, we will
discuss the answer regarding the above questions and classify them orderly as
presented below:
a. Experience and Opinion
Surprisingly most students
state that they didn’t enjoy learning Bahasa Indonesia when the learning
and teaching prcesses focusing on word by word or text oriented. In contrary, they
need to know more information about culture and have a contact with Indonesian
community or people during the class session. They are very happy if there is a
native speaker and condusive environment of learning bahasa. Some of their
statements will be presented below:
Question (5):
Do you have some ideas/suggestions
to make teaching bahasa Indonesia more interesting?
Answer (5):
...Bahasa could be more
inetersting in learning with some cultural performances and with music. It
should be more practical than reading a book....
...Teacher should be native
Indonesian because learning language is not only need to learn but we have to learn everything about
Indonesia like songs, movies, friends with Indonesians and talk with Bahasa
Indonesia...
...Students could be invited to
volunteer in any conference, meeting or in the embassy itself so to shape their
listening and speaking skills...
b. Feeling and sense
To
know the motives of
learning Bahasa Indonesia, the students are
given several questions.
Most students say that they want to make a good career by mastering it. This
reason is categorized as rational. There are seven students who explicitely realize their
feeling that they want to get a job as at the Embassy of the Republic of
Indonesia in New Delhi. Other two students are going to find a job at Indian
company in South Africa. Rest of students asserts that they love to exposure their
thought with Indonesian people and as a passion on learning language
(ideological and extra-rational). The
data is deliberated as follows:
Question (2&3):
Do you like learning Bahasa and
why do you learn Bahasa Indonesia?
Answer (2&3):
... Yes of course. There are
many reasons behind my interest in learning Bahasa Indonesia; (a) learning new
language always excite me, (b) since Bahasa Indonesia is becoming an important
language in the countries of South East Asia, I believe one should have some
knowledge about bahasa, (c) the people of Indonesia is quite unique and
beautiful. They are calm and warm hearted which make a big reason for my
initerest (d) learning bahasa makes me feel like one of them...
...Yes I do like learning Bahasa
Indonesia, as we all know that it is one the fast growing languages in the world.
It is one of my favourite language...
...Yes I would like to learn Bahasa
Indonesia because there are two things. First where I am working, it is a
required as an official language. Second, learning Bahasa Indonesia is quite
interesting. It is not only because of profession but also passion...
c. Knowledge
To explore the students’
understanding of Bahasa Indonesia, we composed five questions. They reply their point of view regarding their
personal information of Bahasa Indonesia. There are two fascinating issues
of it; the phenomena are increasing number of students eager to study Bahasa
Indonesia at JNU and possiblity of Bahasa Indonesia as official language
of ASEAN. These will be presented below:
Questions (1,4,6,7&8):
...do you like learning any
language?...
...after knowing bahasa, then
what will you do further?...
...what
do you think if bahasa becomes an official language in ASEAN in the future?...
...what
do you think if there more and more Indian students learning bahasa at JNU?..
...do
you have difficulties of learning bahasa? If yes, then could you mention
them!...
Answers (1,4,6,7&8)
All
students say yes for question number one and they want to visit Indonesia after
knowing Bahasa Indonesia (question number 4). It makes
sense because more and more people speak Bahasa Indonesia. The students have
similar difficulties on learning Bahasa Indonesia. They have problems on
pronunciation, the method of teaching and to distinguish formal and informal
words of Bahasa Indonesia.
E. Conclusion
Based on the
data presentation and analysis above, it could be concluded as follows:
1. The students’
motive of learning Bahasa Indonesia is rational, ideological, and
extra-rational reasons.
2. To empower the students comptence on mastering Indonesian
language and acces for job opportunity, the students need more contact, culture
perfomances, and native Indonesian teacher during the learning and teaching
process.
3. Most students feel that learning bahasa Indonesia is
exciting but at the same time they have some difficulties in three areas such
as; pronunciation, formal and informal word or expression, and the method used
on teaching and learning process.
References
Anderson, Benedict R.O’G. 2006. Language and Power:
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Brown,
Gillian and George Yule. 1992. Discourse Analysis. Jakarta.
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Govinda, R and Rashmi Diwan. 2003. Community Participation
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Halliday,M.A.K.1994. Language as Social Semiotic: The
social interpretation of language and meaning.Melbourne. Edward Arnold.
Loseke, Donileen R. 2013. Methodological Thinking: Basic
Principles of Social Research Design. New Delhi. Sage Publication.
Nunan,
David. 1992.
Research Methods in Language
Learning. Cambridge.
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Rahman, Tariq. 2002. Language, Ideology, and Power:
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Oxford University Press.
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Attitude and Skills Progress. Delhi. Navyug Books International.
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Penelitian Kuantitatif, Kualitatif, dan R&D. Bandung Alfabeta
Wildan M
Muttaqin
completed MA TESL at the English and Foreign Language (EFL) University
Hyderabad, India. Born in Solo, Central Java. Graduated from State Islamic
Institute (IAIN) Surakarta, and Oregon State University,USA (English Language
Institute- Short Course Program). He has been teaching English at State Islamic
Institute of Surakarta since 2010.He can be reached at hellowildan@gmail.com
.JPG)
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