25/01/2009
Students Exchange Program 2008/2009, a joint program between Pandu -Indonesian Language Course and Australian Indonesia Association Victoria District. Click here for more detailed. 

23/12/2008
New articles and exercises at database.

02/07/2008
Behind the scene. Teaching Indonesian Language is not as easy as people might think. Lets hear your favourite instructors said about what it takes to be successful teacher. Click here for getting up-close and personal with Pandu personnel.

22/01/2008
The third Immersion Program was held on January 7-19, 2008. AIA sent three participants to join the program. For further info, click here

28/12/2007
FUN-tastic Award 2007 are dedicated for 5 students with most outrageous behaviour. Click here for the detail.

Behind the Scene : Making the class 

Vivie (The Academic Coordinator)

I've been working with Pandu since 2004. For sure, many experiences happened during that period of time: funny, interesting, or even "miserable". One of my interesting experiences has something to do with application in appropriate vocabulary Bahasa Indonesia. For regular pre-intermediate class, I usually ask the students to write a journal in Bahasa Indonesia -short one only. One of my former students wrote about her trip the night before. Her friend and she rode different motorbikes (back home). She explained that her friend rode so fast that made she left behind. What was so funny is that she wrote "Saya TERBELAKANG" to describe how she was left behind. It is true that "behind" can be translated into "belakang" in Indonesia. Also for prefix "ter-" means "unintentionally being..." However, "belakang" which is mixed up by "ter-" does not exactly produce meaning "left behind", but rather "mentally retarded". I do realize that the mistake accidentally made was merely because she has never exposed to that vocabulary before. Well.., it made me smile, somehow. But I learned something from that experience, that language is not exact thing. Sometimes formula does not work 100 %. There are some exceptions and we have to be aware of it. Some exceptions possess extremely odd meaning. Nothing I can do about it. For all it's worth, I frequently exercise my "wisdom smile" to keep students feel positive for the mistakes they have made.

          
Galang L.
There are some type of intelligence that I know : Cognitive, Emotional, Spiritual, Adversity, etc. However, I want to submit another one: Short-Time Intelligence. It is the term I use to describe those who seem fully understand about some topics but after 20 minutes... voila.... it was swept by river. So, instead of saying "forgetful", I'd rather use my own definition :>

Fortunately I have found the way to cope with it. Being teacher, I have to keep acting out to make the students remember the words given attached with various movement -at least they will remember the movement. I have my own Academy Award winner acting out myself. There were these days i jumped in and down, just to make sure students remembered what the word "kera" -which literally means "monkey"- is. I am personally do not know how my students like me to be: a great teacher or just someone who loves to make fool of himself.   

Jokes always becomes favorite in my class, maybe because me myself love to make jokes. As I always said to my students, I have a big mouth but my talent is bigger -especially to make the class lively. I think it is a-must-do to make the class atmosphere fun and relaxed, since Neuro-linguistic Programming principles assumes that people are absorbing materials more efficiently when they have positive state of emotion.

There is mistake in our lesson book: beginner level. We should have printed "kawin", which means "get married", once instead of two times. When the students shouted protest about it, I replied calmly, "Please don't get annoyed too much, in fact in Indonesia it is okay to get married four times..." All of them getting amused with it.

What it takes to be great teacher?

Hm.., I'd rather not to say it is patience (since I don't have any, errr....). I think creativity will speak more. I remember when facing a student who has extremely short attentional span. It only took 30 minutes for her to start yawning or begging to let me sleep for an hour or two. I knew that continuing the lesson (another 1,5 hour) will feel like the time it took to create the universe for her. So, I closed my lesson book and asked her to take a walk with me around the neighbourhood. We met some people and then I let her to have conversation with them. Sometimes I added some more task to her. Suddenly the student became challenged and started to pick some new things, meanwhile I managed to make sure she conducted conversation on our curriculum basis. Later, she gave a good credit for the way I conducted the lesson which was not conservative nor by the book. In fact we are all of instructors in Pandu are encouraged to do some initiative and not forget to mention - creative actions- when we meet some obstacles. There were times when I took students to pool place to play 9-Ball while studying "numbers and direction" just because the conservative way would not do them better. Sometimes teacher have to work themselves to the bone to make students showing some improvement. Students may make excuse that they could not study well because their limited ability, but to be the teacher responsibility to make students pay full atention to the lesson and show some improvements. We give all ears and hands for students to achieve the best-est they can. In the end, many students did not believe what they could have achieved by studying in our institution. They said it was beyond their expectation, and it always be our pleasure to see the students happy. Cheers......

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