I've jotted down my thoughts in a Google Doc, however, I was unsure how to upload the reflections. Hence, I shall post the monthly reflections as comments to this discussion post!
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April
This is a bit of a bittersweet entry to write.
Working with Doro was truly helpful for me. Not only was I able to spend more time with him, I truly do believe he has helped me gain a better understanding of Malay as a language.
This month, we decided to try something different. In many of our sessions, Doro would point out that the word choices I was making “weren’t ones that most native speakers would do.” This reminded me of how I would speak when I first learnt Malay: textbook-like, formal, and strict. However, to truly reach my goal of being more comfortable with conversational Malay, I decided to put this into good use.
I told Doro that my plan for this month was to localize my language use. Instead of adding more vocabulary to my Malay dictionary, this month will be focused on reusing it in different settings, using more conversational methods, or what we call “Bahasa Pasar”. Especially after I concluded my year-long project on Manglish, I thought that this was the next evolution of this task. In many of our sessions, we would talk about how to “localize” the language, learning more slang terms, from jokes to casual insults. This was the epitome of the unconventional methods of learning Malay. However, I found this the most helpful, as this is something you would not learn in a traditional academic setting. Despite not learning in the formal academic method, it was closer to how Malay would be spoken back in Malaysia.
At the same time, I wanted to test my writing abilities. After spending most of our time working on comprehension and conversation, which was the goal of my language learning Journey, I wanted to see how much I could remember from writing essays in elementary school. So, towards the end of each session, I would write a short essay based on stereotypical prompts we would write in school. One such example of this is the autobiographical essays written from the point of view of an inanimate object. The aforementioned “aku sebatang pen” essays. This allowed me to practice my “karangan” writing abilities, while also refreshing on different aspects of Malay, things like idioms and connectives. I found this to be very useful as well.
Unfortunately, this marked the end of our sessions, too. From this journey, I realized the effectiveness of learning through hands-on methods; practising with things I would actually use in daily life, like news articles and food videos, rather than thick textbooks with old historical essays. Not to say that the latter is ineffective, but rather, the first method works best for my learning style and my learning goals. In the future, should I continue this journey, I’d like to continue exploring ways to recapture my love for learning languages through unconventional means. I’d also like to test my abilities against an official benchmark, by doing past papers that I’ve done in high school, to test my Malay. Apart from these hypotheticals, I would like to just show gratitude to both Dr Marsh-Solloway and Doro for learning with me, and accepting these unconventional learning styles. I’ve learnt that language learning does not have to be standardized, so long as you practise and feel comfortable with it.
March
Note to self: never take 5.5 units in your junior year.
March is what I'd like to call crunch time. Everything I've been working towards is now heading into full force. That includes this class and the work that I've done with Doro. This was also when I realised that Doro hasn’t had his payroll figured out, meaning he hasn’t been paid for many of our prior sessions! After working it out with him and Dr Solloway, we continued our work.
This month, I wanted to continue getting more comfortable with Malay media. From watching Malay cartoons to continuing the news route, I wanted to build confidence through learning. As we continued on this journey, I wanted to challenge myself further. I decided to explore ways to engage with more media. With Doro’s theatre project, alongside his drag performances, he uses a lot of music to convey deeper meaning. While there's a level of universality to music, the lyrics add another layer of meaning and emotional connection. After watching his piece, I knew that my Malay had improved because I was able to understand the song lyrics, even crying to it. Hence, I wanted to continue that path. I decided to use music and Malaysian radio to continue learning Malay in a more conversational and relaxed manner. It's also allowed me to balance my heavy course load this semester, which is something I did not anticipate being this challenging.
To sum it all up, this month was focused on learning conversational Malay through everyday settings. Continuing the path of the cooking videos, we watched local cartoons, listened to Malay music, and even listened to talk shows on the radio. Continuing the trajectory, we would pause after parts of it, as he asked me to convey/translate the message back to English. I've noticed slight improvements in my comprehension abilities, however, a big pivotal moment of reflection actually happened while watching Doro’s theater piece again.
I'd like to spend a little bit more time reflecting on the development of my language abilities. When watching the development of Doro’s theatre piece, a big thing he talked about was the universality of the message. Many parts of the play, after reciting something in Malay, he would then translate it into English to allow the audience to understand what was happening. However, in some key, pivotal moments, he chose to keep it in Malay. While most of the audience were able to get the story without understanding it, I was able to understand all of it. Every single word that came out of his mouth, the way it was structured, added a layer of authenticity that I was now able to comprehend. At this moment, I realized that this project/class has been effective in improving my Malay comprehension abilities. I realized a big part of my language learning journey wasn't necessarily relearning the language but rather finding opportunities to practice it with native speakers to get more comfortable with it. Just like a car battery, I just need a jump start.
February
February was a tough month for reasons outside of my control. However, the self directed language journey continues to persevere. I think the hardest part about all of this is dealing with the frustration of language attrition. I spent most of my life knowing how to speak Malay, taking pride in my language abilities despite not being ethnically Malay. As a Malaysian citizen, you are, after all, expected to know the language and be fluent in it. As such, not having the avenue to practice led to the attrition of my language abilities, which made me reflect on my Malaysian identity overall. After spending a year working on a research project exploring language and identity through the Malaysian lens, I realized that this would be a good avenue to explore as part of my research.
February was a month of experimentation. With each lesson, I came into it with a different expectation of how I wanted things to go. After figuring out a baseline of my abilities, I told Doro that I wanted to start learning how to use Malay in a more regular setting, to be able to use the language in my daily life. With our sessions, we decided to use said unconventional methods in use. We cooked roti canai, sotong goreng, and made a traditional Chinese dish too. This, I feel, truly conveys the essence of the multicultural/multiethnic aspect of Malaysian society, bridging cultural gaps through food. In each of the videos, Doro would challenge me by making me instruct the cooking sessions. After watching each step, he would ask me: “Lepas ni buat ape?” or “Okay, what’s the next step?”. I had to fight the urge not to use the English subtitles; after all, I was learning Malay, and Doro knew what I had to do next. In the end, we successfully made a few dishes over the 2 sessions we spent together surrounding food.
The next thing we wanted to do was media. Doro wanted to watch a Malaysian horror movie, while I wanted to combine my journalism major and become more comfortable with reading the news. Hence, we decided to do both, exploring how language can be used in a formal writing setting and an informal, conversational manner. We weren’t able to do both, so we are taking a potential rain check on the movie. However, I was able to interpret basic news stories from local agencies.
At this time, I was also pushing for the completion of my research project: making a film exploring language and identity in Malaysia. After the work I've done with Doro, I realized that he shares similar sentiments to me regarding the relationship between these two concepts. As such, in the middle of one of our sessions, I decided to interview with him and Yue Kin, the other Malaysian on campus. I thought it would be a good use of our time, as a benchmark to reflect on what I've learned so far and how that ties to my identity.
January
Coming into this journey, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Fresh out of SDLC 105, I came in with an expectation/plan of what I’d be learning about; however, having a self-directed course is new. Not having any weekly classes, instead scheduling separate meetings with my language learning partner, well… that’s interesting.
Coming into this class, I knew my language learning style would be unconventional, yet it was something I learnt to embrace while being a part of SDLC 105. Given that I already had a baseline understanding of Malay, I wanted to improve my language fluency, specifically in a conversational setting. When I was younger, I remember being made fun of because my Malay was too textbook-like. It made sense; after all, my background in the language has always been based in an academic setting. Having only taken the language in a classroom setting, I was never really able to communicate effectively with the people who use the language daily. As such, I wanted to take the time to both refresh my knowledge and also learn to be more comfortable with the language overall. That’s where Doro comes in.
As a native speaker, he has a better understanding of the language in both a formal and informal setting. He is ethnically Malay; this is his mother tongue. Given this, I thought it would be best to learn from him. One thing to add is that we are both hands-on learners. In discussion about how we wanted to do this, we discussed wanting to learn the language in a more practical way. Instead of merely reading texts and doing basic vocabulary, we would learn through everyday methods; watching YouTube videos, TV shows, horror movies, music, the news. We both agreed that this would be more effective and beneficial to my needs, which is to learn to use Malay in a more comfortable and “normal” way; not like someone who just learnt the language in school, but rather, someone who is a native speaker of the language.
I like to call this month the ‘baseline’ month. For our first few sessions, we focused on finding the baseline of my knowledge. Doro and I know each other very well, but, we do not know the extent to my language abilities, outside of a few casual conversations here and there, specifically when wanting to talk about things we cannot openly discuss in public (so we use Malay). We spent our time just getting to know where my language abilities stand, especially after not practising it for around 5 years. A good basis I remember we did was through trying to understand as much as I could from a Malay cooking video. We talked about wanting to make roti canai, a traditional Malaysian dish. In the video, he would pause after each step, asking me to translate the words. Embarrassingly, this was when I knew we had work to do, as I was unable to convey a lot of my thoughts. However, this month was important as a baseline, to develop a “curriculum” that both suits my needs, and allows him to teach me what he already knows. I’m excited to see how the rest of my journey will go!