BIPA Teachers’ and Learners’ Perspective on Indonesia-Thailand Culture Parities

Cultural parity is a form of understanding and perspective of someone who has similarities in cultural forms. In BIPA learning, the cultural parity of the first language and target language makes a good learning. This paper aims to describe the perspectives of BIPA teachers and students on the Indonesian-Thai cultural parity and its correlation in the BIPA learning process. This is a qualitative research with ethnographic research. The first step in this research is an exploration study to capture the phenomenon of Indonesian and Thai cultural parity. Data collection techniques used were observation, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews. The subjects of the questionnaire were 22 people consisting of 5 BIPA’ teachers and 17 BIPA’ students from Thailand. The results of the study show that Indonesia and Thailand have similar and shaped cultures. For students and instructors, this cultural equality influences BIPA learning. The teacher’s perspective states that cultural parity will influence the selection of strategies, methods, and teaching materials used in the learning process. Meanwhile, the student’s perspective emphasizes on the existence of cultural parity helps them to understand Indonesian material and culture because in the country of origin they also have similar things. The existence of cultural equality has a positive impact on the process and development of BIPA in Indonesia and in Thailand.