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Dear all,

There are four announcements today:

Testimonials – Terima Kasih

This is number one. I don’t know if you have ever looked at our testimonials, but we, the «Indonesian Way» team, feel truely honoured that we have received so many wonderful testimonials. It is hard to believe, but so far «Indonesian Way» has received a rating of 4.9 out of 5 points. This is wonderful! Thank you so much.

Quizzes for Each Module

We have just finished adding a new component to «The Indonesian Way»: you can now take a test after each of the eight modules. Each of the eight quizzes has twenty questions, and after each test you will receive a grade. If you don’t get an A or B, don’t be too frustrated. The tests may be on the difficult side. Let me know what you think of them. If you get an A then you can be very proud of your achievement!

To access the eight quizzes, you have to log in to The Indonesian Way. They are in the navigation bar to the left, always afer the last lesson of each module.

Find the Word

You certainly know the word search puzzles where you have to find hidden words among a square full with letters. Now we are adding them to «The Indonesian Way». Each lesson will soon have one lesson.

Gamification of «The Indonesian Way»

Have you ever heard of gamification? This seems to be one of the most recent trends in educational technologies. I am sure you know this already from online games, but it is relatively new in education.

When you complete certain tasks, you get credits, but you can also loose credits, for instance by not logging in at least once a week. We have just started and don’t yet know exactly where this will lead to, but the purpose is to increase motivation by offering badges for completing challenging tasks. Learners who receive most badges will receive certificates and other incentives. This will take some time to implement, so stay tuned!

Honolulu, 12-August-2019

I would like to call your attention to a brand new dictionary that has become available through the Internet as an Open Access Publication:

Title of Publication: A Dictionary of Indonesian Prepositional Constructions
Authors: dr.Totok Suhardijanto (Universitas Indonesia, Depok), Miel Slager, m.hum. (formerly Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
Date: 22 October 2019
Download link: https://zenodo.org/record/3515813#.Xa7A3uj7SuA

I have personally examined the dictionary and was quite impressed. The world of Indonesian prepositions is not quite as complex as English prepositions which are a nightmare to any learner. Yet, most learners, including some of the most advanced learners, struggle with prepositions such as akan and atas. And please note that it is not correct to use sama to substitute any preposition. While it is true that sama is a very versatile preposition, you can only use it in colloquial speech.

So, go ahead and download this very impressive dictionary and use it, especially once you have finished with «The Indonesian Way&raquo and you progress to Aneka Baca, Baca Yuk, or Serba Serbi Nusantara which are our textbooks for intermediate and advanced Indonesian.

Note that the book was launched on 22 October 2019, just 5 days ago. So hurry up and become one of the very first users 🙂

One of the authors, Miel Slager, also is a long-time member of Indonesian Online!

A few weeks ago, Stuart, one of the indonesian-online subscribers, wrote to me complaining that
“it is quite difficult to keep track of what lesson has been completed and get an understanding of how you are going.”

No doubt, Stuart is right, and this shortcoming has bothered me for a long time. So I took his suggestions by heart and asked my developer whether he could come up with a solution.

So, this is what he has done: 1.) First of all, in the navigation list in the sidebar where all lessons are listed by number, all lessons that you visited before, are highlighted in red. Look at the picture, Here it is indicated that I already looked at Lesson 48, but none of the other Bahasa Indonesia lessons.

This alone is already very helpful. But the developer did more: 2.) Now, by default, whenever you log in to Indonesian Online, it takes you back to the page that you last visited.

Without any doubt, content-wise Indonesian-Online stands well above all its competitors. Even big names such as Duolingo, Babbel, or Rosetta Stone, fade when compared against Indonesian Online (content and price-wise). However, when it comes to design, these companies often do have an advantage.

This is mainly due to the fact that most coding is done by myself, the principal author, with the assistance of Age, who is located in Bandung, and who also runs the tutorials.

Hiring a developer is expensive and with the limited revenues at our disposal, we typically hire a developer only when my limited expertise in html doesn’t allow me to do something myself.

With the implementation of these new functionalities, we should have narrowed the distance to our competitors.

Remember where to log in and log out? Right on the main page it says Login/out in big letters as can be seen on the image.

Once you are logged in, a pop-up window will appear where you type in your credentials: your username or your email address, and your password.

Do you see “Remember me?” in the image to the left? If you check this box, you will not be logged out for the next 60 days. I use this all the time as I hate to be logged out too soon, but this method also has its drawbacks.

Obviously, you don’t want to activate this on a public computer. You should also NOT activate this if you want to take advantage of our new feature which will remember the last page you have visited. Remember that it will only take you back to the last page before you logged out.

So it’s probably a good idea to log out once you are done for the day.

And a final note, an alternative way to log in, which comes very handy in case the front-page login does not work (which can happen), is by typing in:

This is the most reliable way to log in and out, or change your password.

We’ve achieved another milestone! – interesting that even in 2020, more than a century after the mile was replaced by the kilometre, we still use this ancient expression. Indonesia actually adopted the metrical system very late. It was introduced in 1923 but became compulsory only in 1938. Before that they used the imperial system and the mile was called batu.

But, no, we don’t want to talk about the metrical system in Indonesia. Today we want to celebrate with you another milestone that we have achieved:

Anak Jalanan

Many years ago I came across a series recorded by Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, more precisely by the Indonesian section (seksi Indonesia) of Radio Nederland. Juliana, a journalist from Radio Nederland, observed a group of street children in Yogyakarta, and tracked their development over the years. This resulted in a very interesting series of recordings, for which we were given the permission from Radio Nederland to use them as teaching materials.

We made this material available online, but over the years the technology changes and what was state of the art in 2005 has now sunken into oblivion.

We like the materials so much that we decided to give «Aku Anak Siapa: Anak Jalanan di Yogyakarta» a complete overhaul.

Not only did we change the “engine” from the now completely outdated HotPotatoes from the University of Victoria to h5p, but we added new exercises, new sound files, and we also added many more entries to the vocabulary list.

We also added a new vocabulary list in alphabetic order, and, most important, we added a downloadable deck for Anki – a software that makes it much easier remembering vocabulary items.

«Aku Anak Siapa: Anak Jalanan di Yogyakarta» is not for beginners, but for advanced learners. Present users of «Baca Yuk» and «Serba Serbi Nusantara» will substantially benefit from the Anak Jalanan materials.

«Aku Anak Siapa: Anak Jalanan di Yogyakarta» is a nice introduction into the world of colloquial Indonesian using exclusively authentic materials. It hence perfectly complements «Baca Yuk» and «Serba Serbi Nusantara», which also use authentic materials, but predominantly in formal Indonesian.

«Aku Anak Siapa» is included in the Platinum and Bahan Tingkat Atas subscriptions. Everyone else can purchase the new Anak Jalanan materials for as little as $20, which is a 50% discount, and which is only available to current users of Indonesian-Online. This offer expires on 1 February at 24:00 HST.

If you want to get an idea how this course is structured, we invite you to have a look at the Table of Contents. There you can access the first five lessons for free ao that you can test the materials before you buy them.

So, as you see, the “Indonesian Online” team is constantly adding new materials.

But we also always strive to better the existing materials. In a few weeks we will make an announcement of changes to «The Indonesian Way».

And finally, please do not forget to tell us what you are missing. This feedback is extremely important to us. You can use the form, which is included in the right sidebar, or you can email us directly at [email protected].

Terima kasih, Mahalo, Thank you,

20 January 2020

Everybody wants to become a better, more successful learner. But how can we do that? Here is an interesting article.

In this world full of misinformation it is important if we can rely on newspapers that are trustworthy. One of the better newspapers of that kind is The Guardian, an independent daily British newspaper, which has a British, an Australian, a US, and an international online edition, all accessible through theguardian.com.

The Guardian has today (16/2/2020) posted a very interesting article which is relevant for all of us, especially for those who are currently enrolled at a university, and who want to become more successful learners.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/16/neuroscience-become-a-super-learner-scientific-research-better-learning-long-term-memory