UI graduates 19 foreign students of Bahasa
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Course for Foreign Speakers (BIPA) of the University of Indonesia graduated 19 students at the university's campus on Saturday.
The 19 graduates are part of 92 BIPA students from various countries including Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, India, Taiwan and China.
The ceremony was highlighted by a number of Indonesian dances, a skit on a traditional East Java wedding and gamelan music.
Sapardi Djoko Damono, dean at the university's School of Letters, which oversees BIPA, said at the graduation ceremony that BIPA offers students Bahasa Indonesia Plus.
"It means that apart from learning Bahasa Indonesia intensively, students also learn about social and cultural systems in Indonesia, gamelan musical instruments and traditional dances as extra curricular activities," Sapardi said.
The course itself was first launched in 1966 with regular programs being conducted in three semester: BIPA I, II and III.
BIPA I and II focus on practical matters, while BIPA III focuses on composition, including scientific writing. The lessons range from understanding audio and audiovisuals, conversation, reading, composition and grammar as well as lectures on social and cultural systems.
Felicia Utoro Dewo, the BIPA program coordinator, said the program is focusing on language study for academic purposes. "Students can learn about basic survival language skills to intermediate skills so they can carry an in-depth conversation," Felicia said.
"They can use all the facilities on campus and participate in many of the schools activities," she said.
Felicia said the students of the program are a mixture of diplomats, businessmen, housewives and students of many disciplines.
Obviously their motives for studying Indonesian vary but because the program is quite intensive, from Monday to Friday, they need to be committed, she said.
V. Malingham, one of the three honor graduates, said: "The first two words I heard in Bahasa Indonesia were terima kasih (thank you) at the airport. At that time I could not reply anything."
As an Indian diplomat working in the Indian embassy in the city, he wanted to learn Indonesian but had to juggle the time to fit his studies.
Another honor student, Lee Chan-uk from South Korea said that he came to Indonesia, at the invitation of his friends, in his capacity as a physicist. Later he was interested in learning the language of the country he lived in.
Lee admitted that most Koreans do not have much knowledge about Indonesia but he was sure the condition would improve in the near future in line with the increasing roles the country plays on the international scene.
He even encouraged his wife, whom he married recently, to follow him to Indonesia and learn the language at BIPA too. (22)