Producing Indonesian texts
What you must be able to do
You will write in several genres: informal email or message, formal letter, pengumuman, recount, description, opinion piece, and short narrative. Marks come from task fulfilment, organisation, range and accuracy, so a well-structured simple text beats an ambitious broken one.
Concepts to control
- Genre conventions: a formal letter opens Dengan hormat, states purpose, and closes Hormat saya; an informal message opens Hai and closes Sampai jumpa. An opinion piece needs a thesis, two or three reasons with examples, and a conclusion.
- Cohesion: sequence with pertama, kedua, selain itu, di samping itu, namun, oleh karena itu, akhirnya. Vary these rather than repeating dan.
- Tense and aspect without inflection: Indonesian marks time lexically - sudah, telah, sedang, akan, belum, baru saja. Omitting these makes a recount ambiguous.
- Voice: use di- when the actor is unknown or unimportant; keep meN- for active narration.
- Sentence variety: combine simple sentences with yang relative clauses and karena/sehingga clauses.
Traps
- Writing English word order: saya sangat suka sekali (double intensifier) or placing the adjective after yang incorrectly.
- Overusing adalah - it is for definitions, not for every sentence with 'is'.
- Forgetting ke-...-an and peN-...-an nouns, which lift vocabulary range.
- Mixing aku and saya in one formal text.
- Ignoring the word limit or the required number of points.
Worked example
Opinion paragraph: Menurut saya, siswa sebaiknya tidak membawa ponsel ke sekolah. Pertama, ponsel sering mengganggu konsentrasi di kelas. Selain itu, siswa lebih mudah berkomunikasi langsung dengan teman tanpa ponsel. Oleh karena itu, sekolah perlu membuat aturan yang jelas. Note the thesis, two signposted reasons, and a conclusion - a reliable template.
Rule of thumb
Spend two minutes planning the skeleton (opening, three points, closing) and write within structures you can control; accuracy marks are easier to earn than complexity marks.