The winner, Labid bin Bashar from Bangladesh, is an international student of the Developing Country Partnership (KNB) program at ITB. He is currently listed as a student pursuing a master’s degree majoring in Instrumentation and Control, Faculty of Industrial Technology (FTI). Labid is the only winner who is a student receiving the KNB scholarship. He was able to compete with other participants who were BIPA students who had been studying Indonesian for longer.

To ITB’s Public Relations Officer, Tuesday (1/12/2021), Labid said he was very excited to participate in the competition. He admitted that he had practiced honing his Indonesian language skills for ten days, which was recorded in a 4-minute video specifically for the competition. From participating in the competition, he got many benefits. Labid felt his confidence had improved. Lastly, he can quickly raise the accuracy of his pronunciation, which is quite challenging to achieve for the average student. “I am proud because I was able to pass the competition and become a representative of ITB international students,” he explained.

He said learning a new language took years. So he was surprised at the results of learning Indonesian in less than a year. He told me that he had previously studied German, and the results were not good.

At first, in learning, he applied the strategy of memorizing vocabulary, but it didn’t work. Finally, he imitates the way of language acquisition in infants, namely learning by listening. “Then I started listening to course materials and YouTube videos for at least 1 hour a day. Then I listened to the same audio several times,” he said.

However, he also still faced some difficulties while studying. Especially the use of the prefix “me-” in Indonesian. But after continuing to practice, he could say that Indonesian is easier. “I really enjoy learning this language,” he said.

Labid learns Indonesian through the BIPA program organized by ITB. He felt that the learning process by BIPA tutors was very efficient, thus speeding up the learning process. In addition, it teaches through interesting sites and applications and provides material on how to practice independently outside of lecture hours. “They manage the system from a different point of view so students can learn faster,” he said.

As her tutor, Roslina Sawitri expressed her appreciation for Labid’s achievements. He feels proud because he can teach Indonesian to foreign speakers. During class implementation, the tutors at BIPA ITB usually use the Zoom application. Tutors also often use exciting applications such as nearpod, Kahoot!, wordwall, learningapps, live worksheets, padlets, and videos. In addition, the BIPA program also provides a culture class which this semester discusses Tana Toraja culture and manners in Indonesia. “KBM video recordings are always available H+1 for students who can’t take live classes,” he concluded.