My self-directed Bahasa Indonesia class this semester started a bit late because there were delays with finding a language partner. Sadly, my language partner from last semester was only available for the 2020-21 school year due to the end of her Fulbright Program. Because we got a chance to become friends last semester and she knew a lot about me and my language level, it would have been convenient to continue learning with her, though I am excited to learn with my new language partner, Juliani/Julie. She is currently out of town, so we have been meeting virtually until she comes back on 9/20.
Through our first meeting and some preliminary assignments, Julie has a sense of my Bahasa level as a heritage learner. As such, she wants to focus on refining my Bahasa Indonesia through reading articles, books, and other materials. There will be more of a focus on reading and writing rather than listening and speaking. My first assignments consisted of reading two articles on the pronoun ‘anda’ (you), watching an Indonesian film, and creating a short presentation on a topic of my choice.
She chose the articles on the pronoun ‘you’ because it is seen as the neutral pronoun that can be used with those of a higher and lower status. Of course, in English we only have one ‘you’ pronoun, so I understand why she would want to emphasize this at first. However, through my Japanese studies, I am already familiar with the concept of politeness and hierarchy in language (especially pronouns). For the movie, she had me choose between the comedy-drama Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens or the biographical movie Kartini. As I had already studied Lady Kartini in the previous semester (and watched scenes from the movie), I decided to watch the former. Julie suggested that I watch it either without captions or using the Bahasa Indonesia ones, and I chose to watch it with Bahasa subtitles. However, there were times where I did not understand a scene, so I used English captions sparingly for better context. Lastly, Julie asked me to create a short (only written) presentation about any topic to practice my writing skills. I chose to do it on music and was able to present it to her and receive feedback.
Something I want to work on is improving my formal vocabulary. I noticed this while writing my presentation because I felt that I kept repeating certain transition words or using the informal versions of words. Also, during our latest meeting, she had me read an article aloud and later translate it aloud as well. My biggest issue doing that was not knowing key vocabulary, so I would understand most of the words in a sentence, but not know the most important verb or subject. Thus, I only grasped fragments and ended up not knowing the meaning of the sentence as a whole. For me, it was definitely frustrating to be able to understand 90% of a sentence, but still completely miss the point/meaning.
Comments