Teaching Indonesian to anglophone schoolchildren and undergraduates en masse as we are attempting to do in this country is a novel educational endeavour. Teaching Indonesian as a foreign language began in other parts of the world, however, and Indonesian is currently being taught in a number of other places. It is worthwhile to step back and see what we are doing in the context of an historical and global perspective.

Unfortunately, virtually nothing appears to have been published in monograph form or in academic journals on the subject of Indonesian language teaching as an historical or world-wide phenomenon. The main sources of information are conference papers from the Kongres Bahasa Nasional, held every five years; and the Kongres Internasional Pengajaran Bahasa Indonesia untuk Penutur Asing, which have been held irregularly.

According to Alwi 1995, Indonesian as a FL is taught in at least 29 countries, ie, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany,India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, U.K., U.S.A., the Vatican,Vietnam. Thailand can be added to this list (Nimmanupap 1998). This survey is necessarily limited to the countries where activities related to Indonesian language are important from an historical or global perspective.

According to Chambert-Loir 1998, the French were the first to teach Malay as a FL. Malay was taught from 1841, together with Arabic, Persian and Turkish, at the Ecole National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales Vivantes (ENLOV), which later became the Institut Nasional des langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO). These were the four important languages of Islam in the 18th century. A prolific French scholar, Pierre Favre, published Tata Bahasa Java [Javanese grammar] in 1866; Kamus Jawa-Prancis [Javanese-French dictionary] in 1870; Kamus Melayu-Prancis [Malay-French dictionary] in 1875; Tata Bahasa Melayu [Malay grammar] in 1876; and Kamus Prancis-Melayu [French-Malay dictionary] in 1880.

The Malay-French dictionary produced by Favre deserves mention because of its uniqueness as an artefact of scholarship on Malay language. This dictionary, 1900 pages in length, gives the sources of words borrowed or derived from other languages in the languages and actual scripts of Arabic, Sanskrit and Chinese. Furthermore family terms are listed in Javanese, Batak, Makassarese and Tagalog

languages and scripts.

Chambert-Loir relates that from 1933 the teaching of Malay in France went into decline, probably because of a focus of French scholarship on the languages of Indochina. From 1958, native speakers were employed as assistants to improve students' pronunciation. In the 1970s Pierre Labrousse and Farida Soemargono produced a set of new teaching materials. At present the course consists of two levels. The first level has three years, and students gain a diploma. At the second level, students can gain undergraduate or masters level degrees. Numbers of students are approximately 40 in first year, 25 in second year, 14 in third year, and only about 6 at the second level. There are four lecturers, one French and three native speakers.

According to Steinhauer 1998, the relationship between the Dutch colonial regime and the spread of Malay in the Dutch East Indies is very close. In the second half of the 19th century the colonization of the world by European powers increased and intensified, and in line with this trend, Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia became more intensive, more direct and more varied. But the Dutch could not carry out their government programs without involving the Indonesian population as a workforce, so from the middle of the 19th century education of the indigenous people became part of the colonial government's activities. Of course, what was taught was what suited the colonial power. Two views competed about whether the Indonesians should learn Dutch but a negative view prevailed. It was thought that if the Indonesians obtained 'modern' knowledge through learning Dutch, they would become unsettled. Therefore the Malay language, which from the beginning had been the main language of communication between the Dutch and the local populations, was chosen as the language of instruction in most state educational institutions. This policy was to contribute to the acceptance of Indonesian as the national language at a later date.

Because of the importance of Malay to the implementation of colonial rule, Dutch employees and soldiers who were sent to Indonesia were required to learn it. As a result of this language policy, a number of important studies of the language appeared before the first world war, by De Hollander (1845), Gerth van Wijk (1889), Spat (1900-1901), Tendeloo (1901) and Van Ophuijsen (1910).

The teaching of Indonesian as a discipline at tertiary level in the Netherlands has become concentrated at the University of Leiden, but there are many other types of Indonesian language courses in the Netherlands, though there are apparently no statistics available to document the extent and nature of these programs. However, Steinhauer 1998 offers a summary of the nature and aims of these non-award courses of study, based on his own observations.

First, the learning of Indonesian in the Netherlands presents a particular pattern because of the nature of the learners. In comparison with most other countries, there is a greater proportion of the Dutch population with a direct connection or interest in Indonesia. Steinhauer identifies seven major types of learner in the Netherlands:

The most important centres for acculturation courses, which cater mainly for people such as diplomats and business people with professional reasons for learning Indonesian, are the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT) [Royal Institute of the Tropics] in Amsterdam and the InterConsultancy Bureau (ICB) in Leiden, which is part of Leiden University. The ICB offers courses that are tailored to the needs of the institutions or individual learners, and uses teaching materials that it has developed itself.

The Instituut voor Indonesische Cursussen (IIC) [Institute for Indonesian language courses] in Leiden offers courses not only in Leiden but in other places in the Netherlands for non-professional participants. The IIC also operates book stores that specialise in books about Indonesia and Indonesian-language publications. As well, the IIC has developed teaching materials, in particular a coursebook in two volumes, Selamat Datang (Jung et al. 1995-96), which emphasises everyday situations and speech, with only basic grammar.

Selamat Datang is the coursebook mainly used by the Volksuniversiteit [Open University] as well, in courses offered in several places.

Indonesian by distance education is offered by Leidse Onderwijs Instellingen (LOI) [Leiden Institute of Education]. This is a more challenging course with a strong focus on grammar.

The most popular distance education course in Indonesian is one developed by graduates of Leiden University's Indonesian program in cooperation with graduates of the University of Indonesia's Dutch program. It is shown on national television, and offers a balance of language, culture and lifestyle elements. In 1998 it was being re-run for the third time by popular demand.

Heritage language programs are also conducted for children of Moluccan soldiers who supported the Dutch and migrated to the Netherlands in 1950 after Indonesia gained independence. These are based on folk stories from the region, but tend to be offered in Malay or in the dialect of the local Ambonese community rather than in modern Indonesian.

Besides the non-award programs described above, Indonesian is also taught at the University of Leiden in the School of South East Asian and Oceanic Languages and Cultures. Although Indonesian is an important focus of the offerings at Leiden, Javanese has always been considered of at least equal importance because of the large number of speakers of Javanese, its long history as a written language, and its literature, which spans at least ten centuries. The view is that because of Javanese cultural predominance, no one can understand Indonesia without knowing about Java.

From being focused solely on language and literature, the program at Leiden has expanded in recent years to include an area studies type of program called Indonesiologie. There are now two programs offered, one called Indonesiologie, within which students can choose to specialise in management if they wish, and another program of Indonesian language and culture, which is a contemporary version of the old-style literature-based program. Students in both programs study a course based entirely on Indonesia-related subjects for four years. The total number of students enrolled in the two programs each year is between 15 and 25. Only about half of these complete the degree.

Other tertiary students from different academic disciplines and from the other Dutch universities as well can study Indonesian language as an elective one-year subject. The number of students enrolled in this subject is generally about 40-50 in the first semester. The drop-out rate in this subject is high, with only about 20 surviving to the end of the second semester.

According to Steinhauer 1998, lack of suitable teaching materials for Indonesian at tertiary level is a major problem.

Malay was first taught in Japan at the Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku [Tokyo University of Foreign Studies] from 1908. Alwi 1995 mentions that Japan was actually the second country to teach Indonesian (as opposed to Malay), which began at Tenri Daigaku [Tenri University] in 1925. Degrees majoring in Indonesian are presently offered at five Japanese universities: Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku, Tenri Daigaku , Osaka Gaikokugo Daigaku [Osaka University of Foreign Studies], Kyoto Sangyo Daigaku [Kyoto Sango University] and Setsunan Daigaku [Setsunan University]. The total number of students enrolled in Indonesian programs at these universities is approximately 600, and Indonesian can be studied to MA level at Tokyo and Osaka Universities. As well, there are about 20 other universities which offer Indonesian as an elective subject or second language subject, in which more than 2000 students are enrolled. Indonesian is not taught in Japanese schools.

Interest in South East Asia, particularly Indonesia, has increased in recent years, and there are a number of other non-award courses offered by other universities, language schools and other institutions. There are around 20 of these, with about 600 students of all ages participating (Sato 1995).

The Japanese have been quite productive in publishing books about Indonesian language and translations of Indonesian literature. According to research conducted by Yamaguchi Masao, a scholar at Setsunan University, the oldest books, a Malay-Japanese dictionary and a book of dialogues in Malay with Japanese translations, were published in 1908 and 1910. By the end of the Second World War more than 100 books had been published, including grammars, readers, language texts, dialogues, linguistic texts, dictionaries, etc. Many books have been published since then as well. Shigeru 1988 lists 20 language texts, linguistic texts and dictionaries published between 1974 and 1988. About 30 works of literature had been translated into Japanese by 1988, including poetry, novels and short stories. As well, 'countless' books and journal articles have been written by Japanese researchers about Indonesia. There is a national association of Indonesianists called Nihon Indoneshia Gakkai, which publishes proceedings of its annual conferences. Associations of university students of Indonesian language and culture are also very active.

The motivations of Japanese people to study Indonesian vary, but on the whole the reasons appear to come down to a wish to be able to communicate with Indonesian people, either for business purposes or to pursue personal contacts. Amongst university students and scholars there are learners with more scholarly interests. It can be concluded that the interest in Japan in learning Indonesian stems generally from a perception of regional involvement and a desire to be involved in future developments, on the part of students.

Though Sato 1995 lists 13 dictionaries and 18 coursebooks that are used in Japanese universities, including some venerable English-language publications (Sarumpaet and Hendrata 1970; Almatsier 1974; Dardjowidjojo 1982; Wolff and Oetomo 1987), better language coursebooks (particularly for intermediate to advanced levels), more audiovisual aids and up-to-date dictionaries are said to be urgently needed. A further problem is lack of access to Indonesian-language publications. (Presumably the internet has alleviated this last difficulty.) The stylistic variations of Indonesian, the plethora of new words, idioms and abbreviations, and the unsystematic nature of Indonesian grammar are all evidently a source of great frustration to Japanese learners. As well, more expert native speakers are needed to assist with teaching, and very few of them are available in Japan.

The United States was the first of the English-speaking nations to teach Indonesian, although, according to Soemarmo 1988, no historical account of Indonesian language teaching in the US has been written.

According to Collins 1998, in 1805 an account of the experiences of David Woodard was published, including a Malay vocabulary. David Woodard was a Bostonian who was shipwrecked and imprisoned for nearly two years in Donggala, Central Sulawesi. His dictionary attests the use of Malay in the coastal area of Sulawesi that was outside colonial influence at that time.

However, American interest in the Malay language really only began with the expansion of American power in the Pacific at the end of the nineteenth century. Charles Payson Gurley Scott's etymological study 'The Malayan Words in English', which was published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society in 1886 and 1887, was an example of quality scientific research. At about the same time Cornell University offered Malay as a subject, but it lapsed (Collins 1998).

American interest in the study of Malay was not reawakened until World War II. In 1943, the American War Department published Malay: A Guide to the Spoken Language. The teaching of Malay language was pioneered in the US by Professor Isidore Dyen in 1948 at Yale University in the United States. But academic study of Indonesian can be said to have actually begun in 1952 when Professor John Echols set up an Indonesian program as part of the Southeast Asian Studies program (SEAP) at Cornell University (ibid).

Besides Cornell and Yale, Indonesian is also taught at the universities of Arizona State, California (Berkeley), Hawaii, Michigan, Northern Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin (ibid).

Soemarmo 1988 reports a survey of teachers and learners of Indonesian, which found that in the whole of the US there were no more than 100 learners of Indonesian language in any one year, and there had been little change in numbers over the previous decade. Furthermore, Soemarmo found that most teachers of Indonesian were using the Wolff's teaching materials (Wolff 1984 and 1986), which were based on audiolingual methodology, because no textbooks based on newer methodology were available. Wolff's teaching materials, which appeared from 1975 (Wolff 1975) have had a profound affect on the teaching of Indonesian in the United States and elsewhere. They are based on audiolingual methodology, but also have extensive grammar notes and sentence-based exercises, as well as reading passages. Prior to the TIFL materials, they were the most complete course materials for learning Indonesian.

According to Somarmo, the goals of Indonesian teaching in the US are strongly focused towards conversational ability and reading ability. He reports that the level of achievement of students of Indonesian in the US is very satisfying, in that after 9 months of study most learners can function in Indonesian -- which, he emphasises, is not true of other FL teaching and learning in the US. However, he expresses a wish for higher proficiency, particularly in advanced students. He presses for the development of new Indonesian teaching materials along the line of English-language ESL materials.

Mackie 1991 reports that in the US the scope for undergraduate language courses is relatively limited (unlike Australia), but the demand at the postgraduate level is quite substantial. Cornell and Wisconsin have good though overworked language teachers, but few others have any comparable strength. However, the pooling of resources that has resulted in the annual Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) courses has gone some distance towards meeting the most immediate needs, and further experiments along these lines are more likely than introducing new courses in the conventional university language departments (eg the Consortium of Teachers of Indonesia (COTI). This means, however, that only an infinitesimal proportion of all American undergraduates have an opportunity to take courses on Southeast Asian languages and literature.

Further, the emphasis on graduate studies in the US greatly influences the overall level of teaching and research on Asian countries, leading to a generally more specialist orientation. This specialist orientation is a problem for Southeast Asianists in the US because they are often working in universities with no area studies programs and they are expected to publish in mainstream disciplinary journals of direct interest to their colleagues in the discipline. The 'hegemonic grip' of disciplines is greater in the US than in Europe or Japan (Mackie 1991).

Collins 1998 reports a recent change of focus in Indonesian studies in the US from economics, colonial policy and war, to traditional linguistics (ie, research in comparative/historical linguistics, studies of syntax and lexicography); sociolinguistics (multilingualism in Indonesia and the social history of the Indonesian language); and pedagogy (CALL projects, an authentic reading materials project, an authentic video material listening proficiency project and a task-based instruction project). He laments the lack of funding for pure linguistics and ascribes the government's willingness to fund projects to improve pedagogy to commercial motives: the ability to speak Indonesia is seen as a commercial commodity which can bring profit to Americans by sharpening American efforts to compete as a global economic force. Indonesia's image as a Southeast Asian 'mini-dragon' is thus the only thing that is supporting research into Indonesian language, and that is limited to the area of pedagogy.

Contacts between China and Indonesia go back thousands of years. In 1961, Indonesian archeologists uncovered Chinese coins dating from the Han Dynasty, which was founded in 261 BC. In the chronicles of the Han Dynasty it is recorded that ships were built and journeys made overseas. It appears that these coins date from the period 140-87 BC, and that Indonesia-China contacts therefore go back at least to that period (Huang 1998; Liang 1988).

In the Tang Dynasty (7th to 10th centuries AD) official contacts between China and Indonesia were already close. A Buddhist monk named Yi Jing (I-tsing) spent decades in Sumatra during the Sriwijaya period to study language and religion. On a journey to India in 671, Yi Jing spent 6 months in Sriwijaya studying Sanskrit in preparation for studying Buddhism in India. After studying Buddhism in India, Yi Jing returned to Sriwijaya in 685-686, staying for another 12 years. In 689 he went to China and brought back four monks to study Sanskrit and techniques of translation. Two of these monks chose to stay in Sriwijaya. The other two returned to China withYi Jing in 695 and became one of the four important translators and disseminators of Buddhist scholarship.

Yi Jing mentions the "Kunyun language" in his book, and notes that a priest named Yun Qi had spent decades in Sriwijaya and had mastered it. It appears that "Kunyun" refers to the language which has been found on inscriptions in the Palembang area which date from the 7th century. Although written in the Pallawa script from South India and mixed with Sanskrit loan-words, that language is Old Malay. Thus in the 7th century there were Chinese students of Malay.

According to Liang 1988, the discipline of Indonesian language was opened in the Faculty of Eastern Languages at Peking University in 1950, because at that time there was a big demand for translations in China due to increasing contacts with Indonesia. At one stage Indonesian had the most enrolments in the faculty. The staff were experienced and the method of teaching was effective. Many visitors from Indonesia expressed admiration at the standard reached by the students. In 1956 Indonesian studies was added to language studies. Regarding research, in the 1950s some grammar analyses were produced; in the 1960s the history of Indonesian culture was researched and frequent publications about Indonesia appeared in the media. As well, many works of Indonesian literature were translated into Chinese and were popular with the public. Indonesian novels such as Salah Asuhan sold well and received critical acclaim. So the language and literature of Indonesia began to be known in China. Following the visits of President Soekarno in 1956 and 1960 and several cultural missions, Indonesian cultural became popular with all levels of society, to the point where Indonesian songs are still popular and Indonesian films are frequently screened in cinemas. A number of other universities began teaching Indonesian language.

All this was destroyed by the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. The period of cold relations between Indonesia and China during the New Order regime (up to the early 1980s) was also a bad time for Indonesianists in China, but the discipline has revived and is gradually being built up again in Peking University, the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages and the Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages. A new Indonesian-Chinese dictionary was produced in the 1980s, and new language curriculum materials are being planned and prepared. The main areas of research interest to scholars of Indonesian language are descriptive linguistics of Indonesian and other topics relevant to language teaching, but Indonesian literature in translation has found a much wider audience. Since China was opened again to new ideas from the outside world, there is tremendous interest in the literature of other developing nations, particularly other Asian countries (Liang 1988).

According to Rivai 1995 and 1998, Indonesia had more contact with Italy in the age of exploration than it has since. A number of Italian explorers and naturalists travelled in the Malay/Indonesian world from the 13th to the 19th centuries, though other parts of Asia always received more attention from Italians. The thing of chief interest with regard to Indonesian is that studies were done of local languages in various places, which can be identified as Malay, thus lending support to the picture of Indonesian as the lingua franca of the area in that time.

Indonesian was first taught in 1950 at IsMeo (Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente) in Rome, but since 1970 it has stopped because of insufficient enrolments. It was introduced in 1964 at the Instituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, which is now the only university now offering an Indonesian language and literature program in Italy. The Instituto Universitario Orientale was founded in 1732 and is one of the oldest universities in Italy. It is well known as a centre for the study of Asia and Africa. Students can follow a 2-year or a 4-year program majoring in Indonesian language and literature (Rivai 1998).

Indonesian language tuition is available in a small way in a number of other universities as well. The Vatican conducts its own program of Indonesian language and culture for members of the priesthood who are going to be posted to Indonesia. A few other institutions also offer language courses. There are also considerable numbers of Italians who learn Indonesian privately through self-study with books (ibid).

Thirty-five languages are taught at the Instituto Universitario Orientale, which has a Faculty of Language, a Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, a Faculty of Social and Political Studies and a School of Islam. Although Indonesian was introduced on the basis that it is one of the languages of the Islamic world, it is taught in the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy. There are two courses, Indonesian Language and Literature and Indonesian Language, the latter designed to allow students from other faculties to study the language. All students who major in Indonesian also major in another language, due to the almost complete lack of employment opportunities for graduates of Indonesian (ibid).

Lack of application and poor attendance on the part of students is a problem, partly due to the fact that attendance at lectures is not compulsory in Italy. The main motivation of students for learning Indonesian is because they expect it to be 'easy' (Indonesian is particularly accessible for Italian speakers because the phonetic systems of the two languages are similar); because of the exotic appeal of the Malay/Indonesian world; or because of a wish to study something 'different'. The level of knowledge about Indonesia in the general community is low in Italy. Chinese, Arabic and Japanese and Indian languages have higher enrolments than Indonesian (ibid).

The main difficulty experienced in teaching Indonesian in Italy is the lack of suitable teaching materials. The textbooks that are available are mostly in English and badly out of date, so that they present a misleading picture to learners. Good dictionaries are also sorely needed (ibid).

According to Nothofer 1998 and Nothofer and Pradopo 1988, research into Malay/Indonesian and the teaching of Malay/Indonesian in German universities was begun by a German scholar, Otto Dempwolff, who is also well known as a pioneer historical linguist in the field of Austronesian languages. He headed the discipline of Indonesian languages which was set up in 1931 in Hamburg. He put together the first Malay/Indonesian grammar in German in 1941.

As Germany was divided after the second World War, the teaching of Indonesian proceeded separately until reunification. Dealing with former West Germany first, between the 1950s and the 1970s Indonesian was taught at the universities of Hamburg, Cologne, Bonn and Frankfurt. The actual language teaching was done by native speaker lecturers who compiled their own teaching materials. The publication of Wolff's and Johns' coursebooks (Wolff 1975 and Johns 1977) marked a new period in the teaching of Indonesian in Germany. Although these coursebooks were meant for English speakers, they could be utilised by German students because the lessons were based on conversations, the grammatical explanations were not too technical and the grammatical exercises and language laboratory exercises were clearly explained. This meant that a new emphasis on oral language became possible, and also meant that language laboratories became an integral part of the teaching of Indonesian in Germany.

Because of the availability of the new teaching materials, the University of Cologne set up an intensive course in Indonesian for participants from various German universities in 1976. Most of the participants intended to visit Indonesia to conduct field research in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history and the like. There was enough interest for this intensive course to be repeated annually for three years. By then the academics in Cologne had concluded that an Indonesian coursebook for German speakers was badly needed, for three reasons:

A project to produce a coursebook for German learners was begun in the early 1980s, with funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. Volume 1 of Bahasa Indonesia. Indonesisch für Deutsche appeared in 1985 and volume 2 in 1987. By the end of 1992, 5000 copies had been sold. It was used in several intensive courses at the University of Frankfurt in the 1980s.

At the same time a new development occurred: Indonesian language began to be taught not only in the four universities where it had been offered as a field of study, but also in other universities which specialise in sociology, history, anthropology and Asian studies.

Also in the 1980s, the first good-quality German-Indonesian dictionary was published. Translations of Indonesian literature also began to appear from the early 1980s and are now much used as teaching materials. Indonesian is now taught at Bonn, Passau, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Bremen, Göttingen, München, Bielefeld and Mainz, with programs to Masters level at most of them. The total number of students is reported by Nothofer 1998 has amounting to approximately 440.

In former East Germany, three institutions of higher education have taught Indonesian since World War II: Berlin, Jena and Leipzig. Student numbers are very small. Progress was hampered by three factors:

These points make it clear that East German academics suffered from being forced to work in isolation from Western countries and from Indonesia for neary 30 years, in contrast to West German academics, who had access to English-language coursebooks and to newer methodological concepts, as well as ongoing contact with Indonesia.

Chung 1998 reports that Indonesian/Malay is taught in South Korea at two universities, the Hankuk and Pusan Foreign Language Universities, and also at a foreign language academy in Pusan. Between 1964 to 1991 a total of approximately 1150 students with majors in Indonesian/Malay language and culture graduated from the two Korean universities -- which works out to an average of 43 graduates per year. Unfortunately, however, few of them have been able to obtain work using their qualifications. It seems that Korean firms -- like Australian ones -- do not employ people for their language skills.

Although Indonesian was not taught in the U.K. until 1967, there is a long history of British involvement with the Malay language, summarised in Kratz 1998. In 1614 an English-Malay vocabulary by Spalding was published. In 1701 an English-Malay dictionary with a brief grammar by Bowre appeared. In 1812 a dictionary and grammar by Marsden were published.

Since the London Agreement between Britain and the Netherlands in 1824, which rationalised the two countries' colonial possessions, the attention of British researchers has been directed more to the Malay peninsula than to the Indonesian archipelago. Surprisingly, that attention came almost entirely from outside universities, from colonial office employees, not academics, until the middle of this century (Kratz 1998).

Indonesian was introduced at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 1967. Until the present time the SOAS has been the only educational institution in the UK offering Malay and Indonesian language and literature from beginner to doctoral level. SOAS offers specialised degrees along the lines of Leiden University. Due to lack of teaching staff, however, Indonesian cannot be studied as a specialised degree, but only in combination with Malay, Dutch, Arabic, anthropology, economics, music, history, geography, law, politics and comparative religion.

Until recently, the study of Malay and Indonesian traditional literature has been emphasised.

Total enrolments in Indonesian and Malay language are about 30, but only a small proportion of these major in Malay or Indonesian.

As will be clear from the above, the study of Indonesian language is not flourishing strongly in a number of the places where it is taking place. In some programs the study of Indonesian at tertiary level seems marked by a mismatch in focus which looks away from the most interesting developments in Indonesia, with consequent low enrolments. To recapitulate, in the Netherlands there seem to be considerable numbers of people who are learning Indonesian for non-academic purposes and a much smaller number who devote themselves to a highly specialised program of study. In Japan there is both popular and scholarly interest and strong enrolments, but the programs are hampered by poorly designed teaching materials. In the United States, where Indonesian is learned largely as a post-graduate specialisation, numbers are small, but the calibre of students can be said to be high. In the UK the calibre of students may also be high but numbers are extremely few. China is in a recovery phase. In Germany there is modest but healthy growth with a strong research component. In South Korea the virtually total lack of employment opportunities is a signals a cloudy future for Indonesian language studies.

The lack of well-presented, up-to-date teaching materials and resources, particularly the lack of good dictionaries, is a constant theme in these reports. It is evident that the teaching and learning of Indonesian language throughout the world are much hampered by a dearth of curriculum and resource materials, particularly in comparison with languages like English and Japanese, which are supported by much healthier conditions for language materials publication.

Looking at the teaching of Indonesian as a foreign language in other countries makes it clearer that in Australia we have something dynamic happening, which reflects our different purposes and the particular aims of our students.