Making connections

In general
Film review
Surfing
Advice column
Shopping quiz

In general:

If possible, obtain some copies of Indonesian young people's magazines and allow your students to browse through them, identifying sections, comparing layout and language used and so on. Ask students to consider questions such as:

Who is the target audience? How can you tell?
In what ways is the magazine designed to be attractive to readers?
What language can you recognise?
What products are advertised in the magazine?
Why do people read magazines?
How does this magazine compare to an Australian magazine for the same audience? What are the similarities and differences?  
Do magazines give an insight into the culture (or one of the sub-cultures) of a country? Why or why not?

Some of the questions above ask students to think about some big issues such as:

• the ways in which personal identity is constructed (particularly for youth magazines);
• construction of group identity (eg around styles of music, particular interest groups) and the nature of 'culture'.
• that magazines are created and crafted texts, designed for particular purposes
• the influence of trans-national companies on local economies and cultures

There are no right or wrong answers, rather an appreciation that cultures are dynamic, constantly changing and made up of many 'sub-cultures'. Also that each individual's understanding and experience of those cultures may well be different.

Even without being able to understand a lot of the language, viewing Indonesian and Australian magazines gives students a chance to reflect on these issues as more 'global' phenomena.

The four sections of Kesan! offer different opportunities to make connections with English and prior learning in Indonesian. The activities below are suggestions only and could be adapted or changed to suit your students. You may only choose to focus on only one section of this learning object rather than all four.

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Film review:

Explore: The genre of film review is something that students could explore in both English and Indonesian. Have students work in pairs or small groups to look briefly at some current film reviews in English and consider what key information is included in the review, what language is used to capture the attention of the reader, and any specific features in layout and design, for example the use of a rating system such as stars. Discuss briefly.

Give students examples of Indonesian film reviews. These are available in various curriculum resources (see Offline Resources) and in online sites such as  http://www.vision.net.id/m_jadwal.php . Click 'resensi' and scroll down to view some reviews of current movies.

Have students perform the same sort of analysis, comparing movie reviews in Indonesia and Australia, and collecting examples of the type of language used. Discuss language. For example, the phrases used to describe the rating system for movies - 5 stars is 'Harus ditonton'; 4 is 'Bagus'; 3 is 'Boleh juga'; 2 is 'Cukuplah'; 1 is 'Hmm...kurang'. Compare this with the Australian ratings. It is very Indonesian to be understated in criticism.

Survey: Have students survey each other to decide on their top five movies. What is your opinion of this movie? Pendapat anda mengenai film ini adalah apa? Students can rate the movies according to the scale above.

Have students brainstorm categories of movies for example:

• action film        =     film laga / film aksi 
• movie thriller     =     film yang mengerikan
• horror movie     =     film kengerian
• comedy film      =    film komidi / film komedi
• children's film    =    film anak
• romantic film    =     film romantik
• documentary    =    film dokumentasi

Students can then ask each other questions such as:

Apakah anda suka film aksi? Do you like action movies?
Favorit anda adalah film macam yang mana? Which type of movie is your favourite?
Anda tidak suka film macam yang mana? Which type of movies do you not like?

You would need to model both questions and answers.

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Surfing:

Surfing is a sport that closely connects Australia and Indonesia, as many Australian tourists visit Indonesia, especially Bali, to surf. There are many good web sites around surfing (see Online Resources section).

Interestingly, Balinese people traditionally feared the ocean and regarded it as a dangerous and evil place where demons dwell. The mountains are the sacred places.

The surfing task is to match captions to photographs. Provide pairs of students with a surfing photograph each (a range of photographs from any location is fine) and ask them to list words that would be useful to describe what they are seeing. Using online or offline dictionaries, ask students to add the Indonesian for each of the words on their list. Allow them to share with another pair and update their lists as required. Collate a class list.

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Advice column:

The concept of an 'agony column' is not really familiar to young people, but most girls and boys are able to relate to the idea of readers sending in their problems and seeking advice.

Have students brainstorm words to describe feelings and emotions, for example, lonely, happy, sad, jealous, angry, anxious. Using online or offline dictionaries, add the Indonesian words for each emotion or feeling.

Use these Indonesian  'emosi' cards (in Word or PDF) and matching English 'emotion' cards (in Word or PDF) to play concentration style matching games, or to play charades where a student is given a card and mimes that emotion for others to guess. (View the teacher set in Word or PDF).

Students working in groups could be given two 'emosi' cards and script short impromptu role plays showing situations that result in characters feeling those emotions.

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Shopping quiz:

The fact that this quiz is about shopping is probably secondary to the fact that it is really about personal identity and young people's quest to find out what kind of person they are. This shopping quiz applies to young Indonesians living in large cities.

Another learning object in this NALSAS series , Mari kita makan, deals with shopping at Indonesian markets.

There are also many web sites that introduce students to the range of shopping places and types in Indonesia. An excellent introductory site written to support foreigners living in Indonesia is http://www.expat.or.id/info/info.html#Shopping
Scroll down to 'shopping for your daily needs'.

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