This iteration of the bi-weekly language learning journal is more of a tri-weekly one, given the extra week of break because of the coronavirus outbreak (and the post is admittedly coming a little late as well because of my energy being expended towards finishing up my honors thesis and other tasks). In this post, I'll touch upon some of the subjects I delved into the week before break, as well as some of the ways in which I reviewed the material independently during the prolonged period. I'll save the whole Zoom meetings with Melisa for next time.
Because of the sheer amount of new content, there was a lot of review to make sure that my understanding was strong and that I could build off of it appropriately. This especially extended to question words and trying the different ways to ask and phrase questions and making them more complex. Similar to English (with few exceptions), question words can go at the beginning or end of the sentence, though the ones that are used in the beginning need to have the suffix -kah attached as a matter of grammatical rules. This refers to 'Siapa' (Who), 'Mana' (Where), 'App' (What), 'Berapa' (How many), and 'Bilakah' (When). I have had to adjust to 'Siapa' being used with 'nama' (name) instead of 'apa', which is a small but surprisingly difficult adjust to both English and Chinese. I also reviewed the precise difference between different translations of ‘where’ (‘Di mana’ for location and ‘Ke mana’ for kinetic movement towards something). I also reviewed the usage of measure words, which I know the importance of from Chinese - these can aid in understanding in a sentence even when words are unknown (e.g. seeing the use of ‘ekor’ somewhere in a sentence would denote that the measured noun refers to an animal. Different usages of interrogative words was mainly the topic of a translation worksheet that Melisa wrote up for me and that I did over break.
I want to emphasize that I am certainly getting more comfortable with affixes and also with determining the roots of words, which helps a lot with understanding written Malay. Colloquial Malay is a little harder for me to unpack, so I am committed to finding more media and different forms where I can practice it. Any language required constant practice and there are certainly things I want to change after this extended break, such as starting to use note card apps like Anki to remember more. It would be a mistake to imply that the two week break was not filled with other disruptions to language learning, but it still managed to reveal to me how important upkeep of independent learning is. This is especially the case since I’m only several weeks from graduating and soon will have to handle this myself without Melisa. I’m confident that my Malay will comfortably sit at the intermediate level by the end of the semester, and I am tempted to take an official test like the OPI to document it (though it night add more stress to what is already a stressful time, with online distance learning, graduation, job hunting, etc.).
Replies
I do not know if you are familiar with the OPI. I have taken it twice. It is exclusively an oral exam. Then they rank you from novice to fluent. My biggest problems with these test is that they are always over a poor phone connection. This difficulty compounds the difficulty of understanding the target language. Perhaps you might want to look for alternative exams.