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Neglected Human-Nature Interaction in Indonesian Materials for US Students

Fri, March 17, 10:30am to 12:30pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: 4th Floor, Leaside

Abstract

Indonesia is the country with the second largest biodiversity in the world. Yet most, if not all, of the Indonesian teaching materials are created and developed to train students only to be socially and culturally appropriate, particularly with many urban communities of the country. We expose our students to visual images of various Indonesian communities in different regions, but we fail to incorporate in their language learning aspects of nature that contribute to the people’s way of thinking and speech.

With the current materials, the mastery of the language proficiency is heavily biased towards inter-human interactions, especially of the urban areas. The interaction with and the harmony between the communities and nature have been neglected. This paper tries to address the extent to which current Indonesian textbooks used in the US fail to consider aspects of nature that might have a crucial impact on language proficiency. It suggests ways to incorporate nature into language teaching materials.

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