This week (week 10), I wrapped up working on my interpretive skills. First I submitted an artifact entitled “Interpretive Formal Reading” in which I attempted to fill out a EU visa application form in Bhasa Indonesia. Then, this week I also handed in “Interpretive Conversational Listening” in which I attempt to follow my language partner's driving instructions to reach my destination. It was difficult to succeed in these tasks. Therefore I believe that their choice was wise given my level of proficiency and past experience. Moreover they were also successfully designed to strengthen a wide set of skills such as written, verbal, formal and informal skills. I would recommend these tasks to anybody wishing to learn a language. Moreover, Arnanto was an extremely useful resource for the completion of these tasks.
While the tasks were challenging my abilities and I learnt a lot, I had considered my interpretive skills to be better than my presentational skills in the self assessment that I did at the start of the course. Therefore I expect the real challenge to my skills to arise when I work on my presentational skills. To help me achieve this goal I also took some time to prepare for the future tasks by meeting Dr. Scinicariello to get an idea of future tasks might be. Given my cultural goals, her input of the various directions I could take my tasks helped me a lot in finalizing the tasks for Artifact number 4 and 5. In my fourth artifact, “Presentational Formal Writing”, I will translate a paragraph from Marx's Das Capital. In my fifth artifact, “Presentational Formal Speaking” I will give a small speech describing a dive into the sea.
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