Local Story
The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History
The Massie-Kahahawai case of 1931–1932 shook the Territory of Hawai‘i to its very core. Thalia Massie, a young Navy wife, alleged that she had been kidnapped and raped by “some Hawaiian boys” in Waikīkī. A few days later, five young men stood accused of her rape. Mishandling of evidence and contradictory testimony led to a mistrial, but before a second trial could be convened, one of the accused, Horace Ida, was kidnapped and beaten by a group of Navy men and a second, Joseph Kahahawai, lay dead from a gunshot wound. Thalia’s husband, Thomas Massie; her mother, Grace Fortescue; and two Navy men were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, despite witnesses who saw them kidnap Kahahawai and the later discovery of his body in Massie’s car. Under pressure from Congress and the Navy, territorial governor Lawrence McCully Judd commuted their sentences. After spending only an hour in the governor’s office at ‘Iolani Palace, the four were set free.
Local Story is a close examination of how Native Hawaiians, Asian immigrants, and others responded to challenges posed by the military and federal government during the case’s investigation and aftermath. In addition to providing a concise account of events as they unfolded, the book shows how this historical narrative has been told and retold in later decades to affirm a local identity among descendants of working-class Native Hawaiians, Asians, and others—in fact, this understanding of the term “local” in the islands dates from the Massie-Kahahawai case. It looks at the racial and sexual tensions in pre–World War II Hawai‘i that kept local men and white women apart and at the uneasy relationship between federal and military officials and territorial administrators. Lastly, it examines the revival of interest in the case in the last few decades: true crime accounts, a fictionalized TV mini-series, and, most recently, a play and a documentary—all spurring the formation of new collective memories about the Massie-Kahahawai case.
Historian John Rosa makes a compelling case for returning to the infamous 1930s Massie case that rocked the Hawaiian Islands and garnered national attention. . . . this slim book is relevant for courses on Hawai‘i’s history, localism and power, and race and the law. Its attention to geography through the mapping of race, class, and gender upon the topography of Honolulu provides an excellent case study in critical geography and contributes to the scholarship on history and culture.
Introduction
Let’s Speak Indonesian: Ayo Berbahasa Indonesia is an introductory text that guides the learner from the novice to the intermediate-high level of Indonesian oral proficiency skills using the communicative approach. The communicative pedagogical framework results in a text that is designed for in-class use, not for individual (self) study. Each lesson teaches several language functions or speech acts, thereby enabling the student to communicate in a variety of social contexts. While teaching oral communication, the text also addresses the three modes of communication, i.e., the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational, promoted by the Standards movement. Students listen and interpret the dialogues presented at the beginning of each lesson, engage in interpersonal communication via role-play exercises and group work, and
finally make presentations based on group discussions.
Classroom Interaction
The text is written to create a student-focused classroom where students playan active and central role in classroom interactions, while the teacher is the facilitator and consultant. Most class time is devoted to pair or group work with students interacting primarily with each other. Second-language acquisition research has shown that students learn best when they are actively engaged in “real” communication and when they are at ease with their conversational
partners. Thus, the two benefits derived from the student-centered classroom are that the students have more time to actively participate, and they are more relaxed, speaking with peers rather than with the teacher.
The materials are rich with illustrations, diagrams, and photographs in order to bring Indonesian culture to the student and to diminish the need for translation during the process of language acquisition. In the early lessons, cognates from English are occasionally used instead of more commonly used Indonesian terms in order to avoid translation. The objective here is to give the beginning language learner confidence in his/her ability to understand Indonesian without the aid of an English translation and to develop his/her learning strategies for tolerating ambiguity and guessing from context. The practice of using English loan words in the early lessons rapidly decreases as the learner gains control of more Indonesian vocabulary. To aid the transition to Indonesian in the classroom, the student instructional language for the exercises is given in
English for the first four units; it then shifts to Indonesian once the students are comfortable with the format and types of exercises used in the text.
Finally, the text is designed for Indonesian to be the medium of instruction in the classroom. In order to maximize the time spent by students in meaningful communicative tasks, students come to class prepared, having read the lesson objectives and the cultural notes. Since the primary objective of this text is to teach oral proficiency, not grammatical accuracy; the teacher should not be overly concerned about student “mistakes.” With sufficient comprehensible input and practice, students will acquire the correct language patterns.
Instructors are encouraged to use other teaching materials that are specifically designed to develop grammatical accuracy.
The Teacher’s Role
Despite the student-centered management strategy, the teacher’s role remains crucial; at the beginning of a lesson, the teacher introduces the lesson and guides the students through any preparation needed for the lesson’s objectives. Then, while the students are engaged in small-group work, the teacher circulates around the class to keep the students on task, offering help to those who need it, observing common problems, and assessing learning progress. At
the end of the group work, the teacher will often bring the class back together for group reports, a class check on the lesson’s objectives, a description of homework assignments, or plans for the next day. Small-group reporting from the ayo berkomunikasi exercises is especially useful and interesting to the whole class because students are inherently interested in the meaningful exchanges of their peers. Since some of the ayo berkomunikasi tasks entail homework, such lessons can not be completed until the next class session. Prior to the lesson, students should familiarize themselves with the lesson objectives by reading the English-language segments of the lesson and listening to the dialogue.
The Organizing Principle of the Text
This book consists of fifteen thematic (topical) units that address the speaking (functional) needs of the novice to intermediate learner and the interests of university students. Research studies have demonstrated that using functional topics rather than grammatical structures as the organizing principle yields far better results when one is learning oral proficiency skills. The fifteen thematic units of the two-volume text begin with topics about the self such as making acquaintances, visiting friends and family, and daily activities; they then move on to topics of more general interest such as hobbies, eating out, shopping, and studying at the university; finally, they shift to topics of wider social interest such as travel, health issues, career goals, Islamic rituals and celebrations, and work. Each thematic unit is opened with a photograph to contextualize
the topic; note that the photograph does not represent the characters or specific settings discussed in the lesson. Within each unit there are three lessons, each of which teaches four or five language functions or speech acts. A speech act is an utterance that accomplishes a social task; e.g., speech acts are used to offer a greeting, make a request, or register a complaint. The speech act may be one word or a sentence or two. For example, in English an apology may be
the one word “Sorry” or the two sentences, “I’m sorry I forgot your birthday. It just slipped my mind.” Learning which speech acts are appropriate in different social contexts requires learning the social and cultural rules of a society. A student of English, for example, would need to learn when the appropriate greeting is “Hi” as opposed to “Hello. How are you?”
Each lesson has the following structure:
■ In this lesson you will learn: A list of the language functions taught in the lesson.
■ Dialog: A presentation of the language functions in context with accompanying digitized conversations.
■ Persiapan (optional): A pre-teaching of key vocabulary items.
■ Ayo Berlatih: A set of exercises to develop accuracy in using the language functions.
■ Ayo Berkomunikasi: A set of exercises to develop fluency in using the language functions in communicative contexts.
■ Kosakata: A list of the key, new vocabulary items with their English translations.
■ Cultural Notes: Notes to aid the student in understanding the cultural context as well as the cultural values and beliefs implied in the dialogue.
In this lesson you will learn: This segment presents a list of the language functions and examples of them in Indonesian. For example, two of the language functions in lesson one are how to greet people at different times of the day and how to make (and accept) an offer. After studying the lesson, the student should be able to use all of the language functions listed in this section in personalized and communicative contexts.
Dialog: Each lesson begins with a conversation in which the language functions are presented in a culturally appropriate context so that the students can derive the meaning of these language functions from the context. In addition, the students learn intonation and stress patterns and the appropriate language use for different social relations from the dialogue. The dialogue is then followed by a set of questions or activities to check comprehension.
Persiapan (optional): This section is included whenever there is new vocabulary or a concept that is crucial to the lesson that needs pre-teaching. For example, in lesson 1.1, the times of the day in Indonesia are presented in this section so that the student will be able to accurately and appropriately use the Indonesian greetings specific for the different times of the day. In this section, illustrations and/or diagrams are frequently used in order to facilitate comprehension without the use of translation.
Ayo Berlatih: This section offers a set of controlled exercises where the student develops accuracy in using the language functions. At this point the student exercises are more mechanical (although they are not substitution drills) to allow the student to build accuracy in using the language pattern. While the lesson’s ultimate objective is to teach communicative language use, at the beginning stages the student must develop accuracy while building the underlying skills of pronunciation, intonation, syntax, and sociolinguistic appropriateness. The student must first demonstrate some control over the pattern before using it in an open-ended, communicative task. Thus, in order to balance the need for both accuracy and fluency, the ayo berlatih section precedes the ayo berkomunikasi section. In both of these sections, students work in pairs or in small groups (often 3–5 people) performing the activities. The teacher can determine the number in the small groups depending on class size.
Ayo Berkomunikasi: This section offers a set of more open-ended communicative tasks to develop fluency in using the language functions. As the students gain control over the language patterns, they are given more challenging tasks that require them to create meaningful language exchanges. Often the activities in this section involve an information gap where the students are forced to exchange information and create answers. Other questions are open-ended; thus, the students are forced to create appropriate answers. The teacher should encourage the students to produce as much language as they can; the answer’s length and content will vary, reflecting the personal backgrounds of the students. The ayo berkomunikasi section allows the student to develop fluency while using the language to communicate personal messages where the primary focus is on the meaning and not on the form of the language exchange. Of course, there will be mistakes, but students need time to practice expressing their own thoughts in order to effectively learn the language. There will be other lessons in the curriculum that focus on grammatical accuracy.
Kosakata: The vocabulary list in each lesson includes important terms that appear in the dialogue and the exercises but have not appeared previously in the text. Vocabulary items that have already appeared in prior lessons will not be included in the kosakata but will be accessible in the glossary. Items found in the directions for exercises or in the teacher instructional boxes are not included in the kosakata. In the first six units the vocabulary items are listed as they appear in the dialogue or the exercises (i.e., in the derivative form). For example, if the word membantu is used, it will appear as membantu in the vocabulary list rather than merely in the root form of the word, bantu. In the glossary, root words are listed followed by the derivative forms that have been used in the text and their definitions. In addition, translations of the vocabulary items given in the lessons are those which are context appropriate to the lesson. For example, in lesson 1.2 apa is used as a yes/no question marker; thus, the definition is given as such. The translation of apa as “what” is not given here but only later in the lesson where that meaning is taught. In the
glossary, all of the common meanings for a word are given.
Cultural Notes: These notes present the social, cultural, and/or political context of the meanings of words or phrases so that the student can acquire a deeper understanding of how the language is used in a particular context. An understanding of the cultural context broadens the student’s understanding and aids in his or her overall language learning.
The Variety of Indonesian Used in the Textbook
The variety of Indonesian language used in this text is a relaxed variety of standard Indonesian that is often used by the educated middle class when speaking with strangers. The local, ethnic languages around the country affect how Indonesian is spoken around the country. Since this text cannot teach the numerous local varieties of Indonesian, nor do we wish to teach a formal, bookish Indonesian, we have selected this relaxed variety of Indonesian that does not characterize any one locale, but rather is found throughout the country in contexts where strangers or people from different language areas converse. While most of the dialogues use an informal register, some are set in more formal contexts, demanding a more formal register. Thus, register variation, which is an important aspect of Indonesian, is taught in a number of the later lessons. Although authentic dialogues would ideally be used in an oral proficiency textbook, because of the necessity for controlling for language functions, syntax, and vocabulary, we offer semi-authentic, scripted dialogues composed by native speakers. One final note: popular, colloquial varieties of Indonesian such as bahasa gaul are not taught in this text. The authors believe that an introduction to bahasa gaul would make a wonderful addition to a curriculum for advanced speakers, but at the introductory level it is important to build a foundation based on an informal variety of standard Indonesian.
