Teaching Bahasa Indonesia Using Rendra’s Ballad Nyanyian Angsa (Swan Song)

Many young Bahasa Indonesia (BI) teachers teaching BI as a foreign language lack experience with instructional materials because there have not been enough BI textbooks for this purpose. Apart from this, students may need something more interesting and fresher. It is, therefore, necessary for teachers to be innovative and creative in developing instructional materials like using poems. For vocabulary (kosa kata), one has to think of words in relation to, for example, collocation as in ‘makanan cepat saji’, connotation as in “makan hati’, appropriateness as in not using ‘kamu’ or ‘kau’ for an older or respectful person, etc. For reading comprehension, since the poem is for advanced level, tasks created should approximate those that can be handled by native speakers of BI, for example, “Siapakah yang dimaksudkan dengan ‘seorang lelaki’ dalam puisi itu?”; for expressions, one can ask question like “Apakah makna ‘Malaikat penjaga Firdaus’ dalam puisi itu?”; for grammar (tata bahasa), one can create tasks, for example, on the affix /ke-an/ or the infix /-i-/ like in gigi>gerigi, etc. The poem may be dramatized with students assigned to play the role of a certain character, or students may also be assigned to produce a video. For values in the poem, students may be assigned to find issues related to the Seven Deadly Sins. To conclude, one can see that Nyanyian Angsa can be created with imagination to result in very effective instructional materials.