STUDYING A DIALECT OF MALAY LANGUAGE FAMILY – THE BATAK LANGUAGE , THROUGH FIELDWORK IN INDONESIA: LESSONS FOR FUTURE STUDY IN THE AREA.

All research is field work but field work undertaken to study a dialect of a community ‗foreign‗ to researchers, in an unfamiliar part of the world is a particularly daunting but enriching experience. So much about the language and culture of the people speaking the language, the dynamics of language and culture, the way language changes through contact with the outside world, can be learned through field study in the area. This paper will present a preliminary study on a dialect of Malay language family, that is, the Batak language, spoken by the Batak communities in the island of Sumatera Indonesia in 2010. The study was undertaken as part of a module on Methods and Approaches in Malay Linguistics taught at the National Institute of Education, Singapore (NIE). The first part of the paper will describe the aims and preparation process undertaken before the field trip. This will be followed by explanation on the actual study conducted in the field and its findings in relation to the objective of the research. Lastly, the limitations, accomplishment and implication in doing fieldwork research will be discussed. The issue of research ethics will be highlighted whenever appropriat