A Little Chat with Year 8 Students

An excursion with Year 8 Melville SHS Students to the INDONESIAN CONSULATE? That was what we did this morning (5/8/2009). During that time, we had a little chat with two Melville SHS students. They are Louis and Ethan. Firstly, I want to tell you about my little chat with Louis. Louis said that he started learning Indonesian this year. He thinks that Indonesian people are very busy and hard-workers. He likes to learn Indonesian because it is an interesting language. He also spoke a little Indonesian to me, like "Nama Saya Louis". After talking with him I learnt that its okay for us to learn something new, because it's good to enrich our experiences and our knowledges.

Berbeda dengan Louis, Ethan sudah belajar Bahasa Indonesia sejak duduk di Year 3. Ia tertarik untuk belajar bahasa ini karena katanya, sepertinya menarik untuk mempelajari Bahasa Indonesia. Kata Ethan, Bahasa Indonesia itu keren dan katanya budayanya juga keren. Dan lucunya, waktu saya tanya "apa yang kamu tahu tentang Indonesia?" dia menjawab, "Indonesia punya waterpark yang keren di Bali ..hehe". Ethan juga berbicara bahasa Indonesia kepada saya, seperti "Nama saya Ethan" dan "Apa kabar?".

written by : Natasha and Winnie

Why Building Connection is Important

On the 5th of August 2009, there was an excursion to the Indonesian Consulate with year 8 students who are studying Indonesian at Melville SHS.

We went by bus together and the way to consulate was quite far so I had enough time to ask the teacher that teaches Indonesian in Melville Senior High School how Indonesian is taught to the Melville student, about herself, and how Melville students see Indonesia



The teacher's name is Mrs O'Loughlin. She was born in Malaysia so that's why she studied Indonesian while she was in high school. She teaches the 8,9,10 grades at Melville and she uses videos to teach them about the culture in Indonesia. The first thing she taught at the beginning to the students of Melville was the daily conversation. What makes Indonesian so difficult to teach is the students don't know the importance of learning it. They just feel it just a waste of time. So we can say that we as the delegation from Surabaya should convince them that learning Indonesian is important to build a connection between us as neighbouring countries.