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Location: Malang, Indonesia
Dates of program: June 12 - August 13, 2012
Hosting institution: Universitas Negeri Malang
Language offered: Indonesian
Levels offered: Beginning, intermediate and advanced

Program Structure

The CLS Program in Indonesia provides an intensive language learning environment. Students receive a minimum of 20 hours per week of formal classroom instruction by trained and experienced teachers. Classes focus on improving students’ skills in listening, reading, writing, speaking, and spoken interaction. Participants are also required to take part in organized semi-formal and informal learning activities that promote interaction with the host community and culture. These activities will support the formal classroom instruction.

In order to achieve this, classes utilize authentic materials that will be selected based on local cultural contexts, current events, and students’ interests. Students may also be asked to take regular quizzes, write essays, give oral presentations, and attend individual or group tutorials.

A beginning level class in Malang.

Students also participate in a variety of cultural enrichment lectures and activities. Excursions and extracurricular activities focused on topics such as martial arts, batik painting, Javanese traditional music (gamelan) and dances offer students the opportunity to practice their language skills and learn more about the local culture.

Students are housed with local host families, who give them an opportunity to experience life in an Indonesian family and develop their language skills outside of class. Families provide two meals (breakfast and dinner) for students every day. On weekdays, lunches will be provided by at the institute after students finish classes. Students receive stipends to cover weekend lunches.

Outcomes

In 2010, the CLS Program adopted the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) as an additional measure of the effectiveness and quality of the institutes overseas. Before the program, students take a diagnostic OPI test; at the end of their 8-week course of study, they take an ACTFL-certified post-program OPI assessment. The scores on these tests give students a concrete, widely-recognized measure of their speaking skills in Indonesian.

Student Activities

Participant Samantha Wapnick organized a small reforestation project while participating in the CLS Program in 2010. The project began after she and other CLS students met with officials about environmental issues. Noting a need for reforestation, Samantha collected donations that were used to purchase more than 100 trees in an arboretum that houses the water source for the Brantas River, a primary water source for Java. Samantha and three other CLS students went to the arboretum and planted 70 trees with local school children and had a discussion with them about the importance of trees for water and survival.

Alumni Highlights

Emily Gasser (CLS Malang, Indonesia ’10) has been an active member of the Indonesia academic community, co-organizing the Sixth Biannual Northeast Conference on Indonesian Studies last year. This summer she returned to Indonesia to attend a linguistics conference and to do pre-dissertation research on endangered languages in east Indonesia.

Ingrid Specht (CLS Malang, Indonesia ’10) is a Presidential Management Fellow at the State Department’s Office of Environmental Policy.

Jacob Ricks (CLS Malang, Indonesia ’10) received a research Fulbright. He was based in Jogjakarta Special Administrative Region researching how the government promotes farmer organizations for water resource management.

Chris Crow (CLS Malang, Indonesia ’10) received an ETA Fulbright grant for 2011-2012. He taught English in a high school in Saparua, Maluku in Indonesia.

Judith Tulkoff (CLS Malang, Indonesia ’10) received an ETA Fulbright grant to teach English in Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi in Indonesia. In addition to teaching conversational English to high school students, she established the school's first English literary magazine and democratically-elected editorial board.

Wyatt Gordon (CLS Malang, Indonesia ’10) received a Boren scholarship to continue studying Indonesian in 2011-2012.

Program Highlights

View videos, read highlights, and more on the CLS Blog!

Alumni Ambassadors

Emily Jenkins, '11	Kiley Boone, '10