I have really been enjoying the new weekly schedule with Farida. Meeting three times a week and doing my independent study of the language for the other two days is much less stressful and easier to balance than meeting for five times each week. Our classes are beginning to focus more towards actually using the language as I am growing more capable of doing so.
We have learned a lot about various animals or binatang, especially animals in Indonesia. Some of these, such as ayam or chicken, I believe will be particularly useful to a daily life in Indonesia. Other animals, like babirusa, I don’t believe I will be encountering any time soon, but they are very helpful for remembering the words for pig and deer (babi and rusa, respectively). We read out loud a monologue about a day at the zoo and followed up with questions to ensure our comprehension of the reading. During this, I also learned essential words for describing when a thing occurred, such as kemarin, tadi malam, and seminggu yang lalu (yesterday, last night, and a week ago, respectively). Since Indonesian does not have a specific verb tense for the past, I think these words will be very important for me to communicate that a thing has occurred already, and when it occurred. I still find this to be a very strange thing about Indonesian! We have also had many dialogues and written components about which animals we like, don’t like, and wish that we could have as a pet. I particularly enjoy this because I am a penyayang binatang (animal lover) so the material keeps me quite engaged!
We also talked about tourist places (tempat wisata), such as beaches, mountains, parks, etc. There are so many places in Indonesia that I’d like to visit! We went over all of the common colors in Indonesian, which seem to be similar to the English colors thankfully. We have also discussed the currency in Indonesia, rupiah, and practiced scenarios of buying items at a supermarket. I particularly enjoy applying the language in context-based dialogues, although I am quite terrible at it! I am also very bad at my listening of Indonesian; somehow it all sounds the same until I see it written out. I think that this will improve with time and more listening practice, although it is truly the slowest part of my language acquisition at this point. Fortunately, every Monday we have listening exercises. I plan to begin reviewing these listening exercises and practicing them alone to attempt to internalize the sound of the language. I also have created a spotify playlist for Indonesian songs that I enjoy, so that I can adapt my ear to the language a bit better.
The sentences that I report at the beginning of each lesson are becoming more complex as well! For example, today I said “aku dan teman-temanku olahraga setiap hari karena kami ingin sehat,” which means “My friends and I exercise every day because we want to be healthy”. It’s exciting to be able to express more complex ideas in Indonesian, especially as I learn more prepositions and transition words in Indonesian.
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