BIPA (Bahasa Indonesia bagi Penutur Asing) or Indonesian Language for Foreign Speaker is a program for foreign speaker to learn Indonesian language in terms of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. This program which is held in domestic and overseas belongs to an effort to improve the function of Indonesian language from national to international. The enthusiasm of foreign people particularly foreign students to learn Indonesian language gets increasing for various purposes, such as having research project, further study, business, or Darma Siswa program and KNB program held by Indonesian government. It means that Indonesian teacher interacts with foreign students who have different cultural background. In this case, Intercultural Competence (IC) in teaching BIPA is required. IC means the ability to communicate effectively within cross cultural situation. There is cultural dimension in foreign language teaching. The aims of this study are to investigate obstacles encountered by Indonesian teachers in teaching BIPA and to explore Intercultural Competence of Indonesian teachers as in teaching BIPA. The data were collected through interview with 5 BIPA teachers, two of them taught BIPA in Poland and America, while the rest taught BIPA at three universities in Surabaya, Indonesia. Since the class is multicultural, they got various obstacles in teaching BIPA such as learning material, teaching strategy, and teaching sources. Meanwhile, BIPA teachers implemented Intercultural Competence in various ways such as varying teaching topic, media, strategy, and so forth.

DOI: doi.org/10.24071/lltc.2018.11