Revisiting the first presentation in my self-directed Indonesian language learning plan has allowed me to see how much I have improved and what I still need to work on. Overall, things are going well so far! I have become more confident in my vocabulary and in recognizing cognates between English and Indonesian. I have been practicing Indonesian through apps like Duolingo and online games for about 30 minutes a day, and I have practiced much more vocabulary than I originally anticipated. Common/frequency words in Indonesian were one task in my original plan, but I have since broken this down into two tasks because there is so much linguistic ground to cover. Learning about the phonetic alphabet and how sounds are produced has given me valuable insight into the mechanics of spoken Indonesian. For example, the “rolling R” or trill sound (which doesn’t exist in English) is how every R is pronounced in Indonesian, so I have been doing exercises to train myself to pronounce the trill. Class discussions have improved my understanding of linguistic structure by allowing me to hear my classmates' experiences learning their target languages. Although no one in my class is learning Indonesian, hearing our different experiences learning our target languages has allowed me to compare and contrast linguistic structures. My engagement with the Indonesian language and culture has mostly been through music, movies, and social media. I have followed Indonesian social media influencers and try to read their comments without translating them into English. I also have been listening to Indonesian music daily, trying to read and understand the lyrics. To improve my communicative competence, I need to strengthen my discourse competence. My current plan focuses on grammatical competence, but discourse competence will allow me to string together the vocabulary I have learned in a meaningful way.
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