Timor-Leste has one of the youngest populations in the world, with an estimated 42 per cent below the age of 18 in 2022, and a total population of 1.3 million. The official languages are Tetum, widely spoken, and Portuguese, spoken by less than 10 per cent of the population. Working languages officially recognized in the Timor-Leste constitution are English and Bahasa Indonesia. Progress has been made in improving living standards in Timor-Leste, yet poverty levels remain high. Hence, students usually have limited financial resources.

Several reasons motivate students to learn Bahasa Indonesia. Among them, the past common history of Timor-Leste and Indonesia, the geographical proximity of Indonesia, and the offer of free of charge courses and plenty of scholarships by the Indonesia Cultural Center in Timor-Leste (Pusat Budaya Indonesia). Many of the students who are taking language course in Indonesia Cultural Center are financially low, what limits the resources needed during the teaching and learning processes, such as completing tasks, outclass activities, and supplement materials, among others.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning, making learning inclusive and transformative for everyone. The UDL framework supports education institutions and professionals to enhance engagement (stimulate interest and motivation for learning), representation (present information and content in different ways), and action and expression (differentiate the ways that students can express what they know). Bloom's taxonomy provides a complementary framework for drafting learning outcomes, curriculum assessment and analysis, evaluation, and overall is a metacognitive learning framework.

This paper aims to investigate how the motivation to learn Bahasa Indonesia in Timor-Leste affects the learning outcomes, and what are the major constraints derived from the financial restrictions on the students’ side affecting the learning process, so that to design the best approach and strategies in teaching foreign language for low resource students, considering the UDL principles and framework together with the Bloom’s Taxonomy. In our study, of qualitative nature, the research questions were:
i) does the student’s type of motivation to learn Bahasa Indonesia affect their performance in learning the language?
ii) what are the major constraints that derive from the financial restrictions on the students’ side affecting the learning process?

We gathered data from questionnaires and interviews to 30 students in the Indonesia Cultural Center in Timor-Leste. Content analysis of interpretative nature was applied.

By responding the research questions, the paper advances the understanding on the barriers to learning a foreign language in Timor-Leste, and to design the best approach and strategies in teaching language for low resource students, to be applied both to the students and teachers.

Keywords: Bahasa, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Education, Indonesia, language, low resources, motivation, strategy, teaching, Timor-Leste, UDL.