An Indonesian Adventure

An Indonesian Adventure - Dominic Brunaccioni

So much for Basque learning! I realize now that my Language Exchange Program (LEP) at American University may be a better use of my time for the language log, however, I am still very much wanting to learn Basque and am excited to go this summer. Keeping this in mind, though, my LEP started last week and I got to meet my Language Exchange partner. I am teaching him English, and he is teaching me Indonesian. When I arrived, I saw only freshmen, sophomores, and other young faces. I expected that I would have a fellow freshman teaching me Indonesian. Well, to my surprise, my partner is actually a graduate student at American University for a major in youth education. It was the exact opposite of what I was expecting. Yay for subverting my expectations!

His name is Paskalis Kaipman, and he is from Papua, Indonesia. The island is split by Indonesia on the left, and Papua New Guinea on the right. Per most Indonesians, Paskalis knows a language native to Papua, and Indonesian itself. Unfortunately, our first meeting is tomorrow so I have no Indonesian to share with you all. What I do have is what I’m teaching for him tomorrow. What I immediately thought of was why Paskalis was at the LEP for English. His English seemed perfectly fine to me. More importantly, what was a college freshman such as myself going to do for him?

As it turns out, Paskalis needs help with advanced English, specifically academic research words and comprehensive sentence structure. So what I needed to do is read his papers and spot out some funky stuff. Yay for more reading! I thought it would be cool to share with you all what I noticed from his work.

Here are some things I noticed from his 2019 first semester final paper, “Applying Cooperative Learning to Middle Schools in Papua Province of Indonesia with Multicultural Societies”.

Original: “Both developed and developing countries are concerning on the standard of education as it derives every sectors to improve its qualities and quantities.”

Edited: “All countries, both developed and third-world, are concerned about the standards of their education, as global efforts have been made to improve educational qualities and quantities.”

Original: “What is interesting in this paper is schools in Papua Province of Indonesia may face challenges in applying cooperative learning because of the diverse cultures and religious values.”

Edited: “What is noteworthy is that schools in the province of Papua in Indonesia may face challenges in applying cooperative learning because of the diverse cultures and religious values that exist there.”