Sue Cooper presents a case study and suggests treatment for a common, yet debilitating condition that afflicts many students. 

WAH, BAHASA INGGRIS MEMBINGUNGKAN!

Whenever I mark my Year II & I2 students' written work, I am struck by the errors they make in Indonesian which are solely due to the confusing nature of the English language. I am sure I am not the only Indonesian teacher who tears his/ her hair out when students attempting to express themselves assume that each English word only has one equivalent in Indonesian. To. give three very common examples: TO can be KE or KEPADA; FOR can be UNTUK, LAMA or BAGI; GET can be MENDAPAT,  MENERIMA or MENJADI. There are heaps of confusing English words out there!

Having addressed these problems piecemeal in the past, I decided to try and give my students a more complete picture that they could try to memorise and refer to when they are writing in Indonesian Obviously I would like them to try and think in Indonesian but, before they can do that effectively they need to be aware of the nuances of language that create pitfalls for them. So I took all the vocabulary errors from this year's writing so far and compiled a chart of the most common. The students received a blank chart with a problematic English word in each square; I armed myself with all the solutions and examples to reinforce the differences.

I decided to devote a whole double period to helping the class to compile their reference sheet. I read example sentences in English containing the problem words and asked them to tell me which Indonesian word I should use. It took the whole 80 minutes and although the first 20 minutes (predictably) was characterised by yawns and blank expressions, after that the students really got the hang of it and were starting to latch on very quickly.

I would now like to reinforce the exercise by providing specific writing challenges for each new topic we cover. For example my students will write about their new topic, "Lingkungan", whilst simultaneously practising the problematic vocabulary. This should, to coin a phrase, Membunuh dua ekor burung dengan sebuah batu" Oh maaf ya, maksudnya Selama menyelam

I would be delighted hear from anyone who has extra problem words to add to the list. Just email me

Downloads

• Translation Activity Sheets

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