Friday, December 11, 2015

Sekapur sirih

//reposted from https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/id/en/status

We are finally open for construction! I know it has been six months after we said it was our next goal when the EN/ID course graduated from beta, but we hope you'll stay patient with us. This is a massive undertaking and we want to plan the course really carefully.

Unsurprisingly, there aren't a lot of literature available out there that we can use as a comparison in teaching Indonesian. So, yeah, I think we will have a really good time figuring out the best way to solve this challenge. We are currently reviewing the literature for this. If you know of a good material to teach Indonesian systematically, you can leave us a tip here.

But why should we keep all the fun to ourselves? When the course was open for construction we also gained access to all the backlogged applications from a year ago, which puts the total at 350 today. If you are a fluent Indonesian and English speaker, why not try applying to be part of our team? We are thinking to expand the team when we hit the first milestone of phase 1. Now is a good time to apply!

Here are a couple of tips when you are applying (I'm taking cues from the Dutch team for this).

Application Do's:
  • Try to make your application stand out. Why are you the one we want? What will you add?
  • Tell us about your linguistic background. How well do you know English and Indonesian? Flaunting your expertise, certificates, and achievements is okay!
  • Describe your professional experience (in translation/in teaching/in interpretation...), if applicable.
  • Let us know why you want to be on the team. :)
  • Super advice!: Keep your Duolingo streak up! Consistency is key. Be helpful and/or active in our forums!
Application Dont's:
  • Do not write an application shorter than 5 lines.
  • Do not submit an applicaiton with typos, grammar and spelling mistakes (double-check!).
  • Do not apply via the contributors' streams. Apply via the incubator website. We'll look at your application then.

Tabik!