In Reply to: Question on Indonesian levels posted by Alanna on Tuesday, 9. May 2006 at 09:05 Bali Time:
Beginner- no knowledge or a few words phrases that you pick up in Bali. Beginners concentrates on the letter sounds and pronunciation so even if you know a few phrases this is important.
Some beginners courses list them as being for travellers. These usually just teach basic phrases so are not recommended if you want to goi further. They don't always teach the finer points.
Intermediate (me) would be able to converse in simple sentences and read basic text. In this you will begin to learn about grammar, sentence structure etc.
Advanced gets more involved in the more complex grammar ber/me words etc. There are a lot of prefixes, that change the context of words.
You need to understand these to master the language (of course).
Hope that help. It's not exact but my understanding of it.
I enrolled for an intermediate course through TAFE once but foundf they mainly read passages and discussed them. I found this not for me. As I studied by correspondence I wanted more conversational skills. So I just go to Bali every 10 weeks (LOL).