Bahasa Indonesia Book 2: Introduction to Indonesian Language and Culture

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I'm really satisfied with this book! After three months of self-study, I was already able to communicate about everyday life issues in Bahasa Indonesia! It's well articulated and well done, really! You shouldn't miss this book! A+!

Most language learning books are quite similar. No one writing a book is going to make a breakthrough in teaching a foreign language. The trick is to write a book in a way that the reader will be interested and will not give up. The format of this wook is exactly that. It tells short stories in every chapter. Readers are naturally intrigued about what will happen next, so if the book is written well, readers will keep on going. An interesting story will also make it easier to remember the vocabulary, as it creates easier associations in the learner's mind. An interesting thread stays longer in someone's mind, so that it makes it easier to retrieve a particular sentence. The book does not overburden the reader with grammar explanations. Grammar explanations are necessary indeed, but they should never surpass the story or conversational section. The natural way of learning does not involve understanding why things are said one way or another, although the adult's mind tends to always want to understand "why." The natural way or acquiring a language, however, takes about 7 years of constant exposure. In order to accelerate this, memorization techniques and grammatical explanations are commonly used as tools to teach a language. As these tools are artificial, it is best to reduce them to the minimum level. This book follows quite well the above precepts and allows the learner to immerse himself in a story and start acquiring the language.

This is a great, inexpensive book for Indonesian. I was hoping for a it more about Indonesian because of the title, but it is still very good. I DO miss any audio supplements for the text. The text is easy to read, I do find my self flipping through the text to earlier parts because sometimes the words you learn are not carried through all the lessons. Maybe my problem, not the books. The text seems to be natural. There are not a lot of "stutter sentences" I have seen in many language books. I like it alot.

this book has a good amount of vocabulary and gives good explainations for every exercise. sometimes, infact you feel like you're reading the same thing over and over. the only problems i have are, there are no answers for the homework problems which consist of ten questions per chapter in addition to the regular exercises, the other is that i have not yet been able to find the tapes which would be a good accompaniment to the text. so far, though, i like what i've seen.

This book is ideal for the absolute beginner who wants a systematic introduction to the Indonesian language without overload. The 18 chapters are carefully structured so that each text can be understood with the words and grammar that have been covered up to that point. There are lots of exercises involving word substition that help the student to gain fluency. (I found this very useful, as I was learning on my own without a teacher.) After you have completed the book you are able to ask questions, tell the time, and say a lot else besides, and you get a good grounding in grammar including, for example, the object focus (kind of passive, very often used in Indonesian) which will stand you in good stead later. By the very nature of the book, the quantity of vocabulary covered is not overwhelming, but there is a 24 page Indonesian to English mini-dictionary at the back, and the second book (Bahasa Indonesia : Book 2 : Introduction to Indonesian Language and Culture) makes up for this deficit.