European BIPA Learners’ Motivation and Orientation to Learn Bahasa Indonesia

Abstract

The declaration of bahasa Indonesia as one of the official languages in the general conference UNESCO is a great step to the development of bahasa Indonesia. As a modern language, bahasa Indonesia has developed well in the present time. The number of users has significantly risen to 300 million worldwide. Bahasa Indonesia is currently at the internationalization stage. There are 54 countries that the Indonesian Government has facilitated teaching bahasa Indonesia, some of which are in Europe. Why Europeans want to learn bahasa Indonesia or BIPA (Bahasa Indonesia for Speakers of Other Languages) is interesting.  This study oversees the motivation and orientation of European learners towards bahasa Indonesia. This research uses a questionnaire as the instrument by adapting the Attitude and Motivation Test Battery (AMTB). There are 32 respondents from 7 countries: Netherlands, Bulgaria, Germany, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, and Türkiye. The respondents are from different levels of BIPA learners ages 19—64. The theory used in this study is Gardner's theory of integrative orientations and instrumental orientations. As a result, European BIPA learners are highly motivated to learn bahasa Indonesia and the actual orientation is included in integrative orientation, which shows that they want to positively be integrated into the Indonesian and bahasa Indonesia users' community. The study results align with the official languages declaration in UNESCO's General Conference, which is also in accordance with the desire of the Indonesian people to make bahasa Indonesia the world's lingua franca.