Students on three-week language tutorial in Indonesia

For the first time in 16 years, Charles Darwin University will send students to Kupang, Indonesia, to help them improve their Indonesian language skills.

Ten students have secured scholarships to take part in the AsiaBound program, where they will meet Indonesian students who they have been talking with online as part of their course.

The CDU students conversed in both Bahasa Indonesia and English to students from Kupang’s University of Nusa Cendana in an online platform called uniBRIDGE.

Indonesian Studies lecturer Nathan Franklin said students would attend the Kupang university for three weeks and partake in excursions to local and rural villages.

“This program will be very helpful to students from both countries,” Mr Franklin said.

“It’s the whole in-country experience. It’s a full-immersion program.”

Mr Franklin said Kupang was not a tourist destination but reflected the way most ordinary Indonesian citizens lived.

He said Indonesia was home to about 250 million people, who all spoke a common language, and had the largest economy in South-east Asia.

“Proximity alone doesn’t mean Australia will automatically benefit from Asia’s economic rise,” he said. “There must be at least some cultural and linguistic understanding of the region.”

The program will run from June 23 to July 11.

CDU has also been awarded 30 scholarships for its 2015 In-Country Program in Lombok, Indonesia, as part of the Federal Government’s New Colombo Plan.