Learn some useful websites that will help guide you in your Indonesian studies
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Fira: Hi everyone! I’m Fira! |
| Gina: And I’m Gina. Welcome back to IndonesianPod101.com! This is All About, Lesson 11, Top Five Tools for Learning Indonesian. |
| Fira: In this lesson, we’ll list some tools to help your Indonesian studies. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina: Let’s get started! What’s the first tool, Fira? |
| Fira: First is a good online dictionary. There are many of them on the Internet nowadays, but the best one that I’ve found so far is kamus.net. Kamus means "dictionary", so if you can remember that, the website should be easy to remember. It’s K-A-M-U-S-dot-net. |
| Gina: Yes, just go to www.kamus.net and you will find a search field. Beside the search field, you’ll see an English-Indonesian option as well as an Indonesian-English option. The results come up really fast and there are plenty of words in their database. |
| Fira: Next on our list is an Indonesian language resources website, which is hosted by Northern Illinois University, a university that houses many courses featuring languages from Southeast Asia. |
| Gina: Type in s-e-a-s-i-t-e-dot-n-i-u-dot-edu-slash-indonesian. [www.seasite.niu.edu/indonesian/] Don’t forget to include the word “Indonesian” at the end. |
| Fira: This is a really rich resource. There are links on basic and more advanced conversations, descriptions of Indonesian culture, and Indonesian grammar. They even have links to a couple of Indonesian comic strips! |
| Gina: You could spend hours just perusing this stuff! |
| Fira: Yeah, and all of it will be very helpful in the language-learning process. Plus, you can get a lot of tidbits on Indonesian culture this way. |
| Gina: So definitely try this out! |
| Fira: Next, I’d like to introduce bahasakita.com. Bahasa Kita means “Our language” in Indonesian. |
| Gina: How do you type it? |
| Fira: It’s B-A-H-A-S-A-K-I-T-A-dot-com. It’s another resource site. However, unlike the former, you can get updates via networking sites like Twitter and Facebook! |
| Gina: That’s quite amazing! |
| Fira: Another great thing about the bahasakita.com is that they have a lot of topics that we here at IndonesianPod101.com are interested in; grammar, colloquial Indonesian, pronunciation, and so on! It’s all here! |
| Gina: And best of all, this website is free! So give it a try. Okay, Fira, what’s the next? |
| Fira: It’s the Beginning Indonesian website of the University of Victoria. The URL is quite long. Gina, could you read it for listeners? |
| Gina: w-e-b-dot-u-v-i-c-dot-c-a-slash-l-a-n-c-e-n-r-d-slash-Indonesian. [web.uvic.ca/lancenrd/indonesian] What’s special about this site? |
| Fira: There is plenty of material brought together on this one website. It’s readily accessible to the beginner, because you don’t have to have any prior knowledge of Indonesian, before using the site. |
| Gina: That’s perfect! What else does it have? |
| Fira: Well, it also has quizzes and little dialogues with accompanying sound files, so you can work on listening and improving your pronunciation as well! And one more special thing about it is that it’s almost exclusively immersion-based! |
| Gina: Right. Everything is in Indonesian! I know that some of you out there may be skeptical about the use of this site for total beginners, but trust me! It’s very beginner-friendly. There’s an extensive glossary of all the relevant vocabulary you come across, and the quizzes use emoticons to let you know whether your responses are correct or not. |
| Fira: And don’t worry, if you get a question wrong, you can always click on another answer to try again. Also, the quizzes aren’t timed, so you can fill them out at your leisure. |
| Gina: Okay, what’s the last tool, Fira? |
| Fira: It’s Lang-8.com |
| Gina: You can type it as L-A-N-G-dash-8-dot-com. The “eight” is numerical. |
| Fira: Lang-8 is a really neat service. When you’re studying a language, what do you think is really important for improving, Gina? |
| Gina: Practice! |
| Fira: Yes! And what better way to practice, than actually using the language! Lang-8.com is a social network service centered on language learning. |
| Gina: The concept is really neat. People who are studying a foreign language can sign up and start a journal in the language they are studying. So you can sign up and start a journal in Indonesian. |
| Gina: Other users who are native speakers of the language you are studying can correct your journal entries. |
| Fira: So you have a native speaker looking over what you have written and giving you feedback. And this service is free! |
| Gina: There are also communities that you can join to talk about language, culture, interests, and more! |
| Fira: What’s great is that it works for any level. So even if you are just getting started in Indonesian, it would be great practice! |
| Gina: And the feedback you receive is really valuable. We recommend signing up and writing something. |
| Fira: Alright, so we hope you will take advantage of these great tools, and all they have to offer. |
| Gina: We’ve tried them out and we know how good they are, so that’s why we’re passing them on to you! |
| Fira: Remember that the links for all of these sites and programs can be found in the lesson notes. |
| Gina: Let us know what you think of them too! |
Outro |
| Gina: Thank you for listening, everyone. See you next time! |
| Fira: Sampai jumpa lagi |
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