A psycholinguistics class went viral because of a video exposing the students presenting their material discussing how psychology correlates with linguistics aspects in local languages as their mother tongue such as Javanese, Sundanese, and Buginese language. It was on everyone’s lips on the internet. Tatang Hariri, Ph.D, as the lecturer in that class, gave his view.
“Well, I need to clarify that the language referred to is not the local language, but their first language. However, since most of the students are Indonesian whose first language is the local language, it might seem as though I am asking them to use the local language,” Tatang clarified. He said that the main point of this process is about language proficiency.
Because of globalization and technological advancement, local language proficiency will decline as foreign languages permeate various aspects of life. Diaspora students might be also compelled to abandon the local language in order to adapt to new communities. They tend to use Indonesian as the national language to communicate with people from other regions. This issue can be observed in the academic field as well. The students use foreign languages for academic purposes such as looking for references and writing scholarly works. “Because of those reasons, I ask the students to present their material in their local language to help them maintain their first language,” Tatang argued.
Tatang explained that it is not the first time he asked the student to use their first language or the local language in their presentation. It has been more than five years since the first time but this time, thanks to the technology, the class went viral. The psycholinguistics class is not the only class in which he asked the students to use their first language to present their material. The students who joined contrastive linguistics also had to do the same learning process.
Zalfah, a student from contrastive linguistics class, and Rizal, a student from psycholinguistics class affirmed that this method is interesting yet challenging. “It was good that I can maintain my proficiency and I can introduce my local language that other students probably don’t know about,” said Rizal. “I also think that using local language in public, in an academic field, is quite important. It challenged me to be able to present the correct one and it made me think that the language should be spoken by the next generation,” Zalfah added. Vina also mentioned that this method boosted her pride in using her local language. “Some people will laugh at people who speak in Javanese with ngapak dialect. It is kind of an insult which made me embarrassed to speak in that dialect. But through this class, I can proudly present that-ngapak-dialect and I feel more confident and respected,” told Vina. In the class, the other students would not be lost in understanding because the presenter showed the material through PowerPoint and written in Indonesian or English.
“The point is I expect that the students will be confident enough to present their own culture through the language. I encourage them to be proud of their language and culture. And through this process, it is sort of an introduction to other cultures,” Tatang explained. He ended by asking us, “If not us, who else will preserve it?”
