In the last month I have developed more of a schedule with my language partners, meeting twice a week on italki. I have made noticeable language gains and can feel myself becoming much more fluent in conversation again. In the year after my Boren study I did not practice enough--relying only on occasional conversations with Indo friends and news sources in Indonesian to remain in practice.
When I started again I saw myself forgetting really basic words like cepat (fast), tulis (to write), and Monday (hari senin). This would really get in the way of my communication as me and my language partner told travel stories or discussed elements of Indonesian culture. We would go from talking about international relations or the growth of renewable energy in Indonesia to me forgetting a simple adjective like jahat (mean/evil). This was really discouraging at first, but my vocabulary has continued to expand with greater practice and use of flashcards. I hope to get more books in Indonesian shortly, so that I can expand my vocabulary through reading as well.
At this point I had hoped to regain some fluency and I feel that I have, despite some setbacks. There are far fewer awkward pauses and I have barely had to ask for definitions in recent classes. My understanding is still better than my spoken Indonesian, so I hope to improve in that regard during the next moth.
In the last month we have covered a bunch of thematic topics, although most of our lessons have tended to be pretty unstructured conversation about whatever happens to come up. I have enjoyed the flexibility, but also appreciated the chance to dig deeper into certain topical vocab. One topic was local natural medicine (obat jawa), and that brought me back into contact with vocab I haven't used since the very beginning of my Boren scholarship. When trying to think of names of body parts and health conditions, have of what I came up with was Spanish-- keeping languages seperate will be a bit of a challenge since I try to consume a lot of media in Spanish and recently brushed up on my Portuguese before a trip to Portugal. Overall, so far so good though.
Generally I believe that my methods have been effective. The main way I could accelerate my progress would be to simply spend more time on it, but as I finish my last semester I regretably do not have too many extra hours to spare for full immersion. I have tried to make up for this by incorporating Indonesian practice into every day. My girlfriend speaks Indonesian and we try to use it about half the time, ensuring that I practice a few extra hours each week. When I wake up in the morning I am also trying to build the habit of using flashcards to try to re-memorize some of the vocabulary I learned a year ago.
I feel confident, as I enter my third month of SDLC study, that I will make the most out of these lessons to maintain and improve my Indonesian, while also developing language learning habits that can serve me during my career in any language.
Replies