Born and raised in Indonesia, as a Chinese-Indonesian, my first language is Indonesian. My grandparents immigrated from China to Indonesia, so Mandarin was their first language. My parents used to be fluent in Mandarin when they were little, but now they are starting to forget many words because they barely speak Mandarin anymore. However, being labeled as Chinese-Indonesian, my parents still insisted me to learn Mandarin.
So when I was in middle school, I learned Mandarin for 3 years. I struggled a lot in speaking Mandarin because it has 4 different tones and many words of the same meaning are only differentiated by the tone. Because I rarely converse in Mandarin, I started to lose interest in learning Mandarin. I learn best when I can apply what I learn into my daily life. Through that learning style, I hope that I can continue to be interested in the language. My learning style is best suited with practical learning activities. I want to talk to my language partner as if he/she was my friend and we are just having a casual conversation like I would with my friends. Looking the FIRE model, I value practical knowledge. I want to learn through experience (actually having conversations with Koreans) rather than just memorizing vocabularies. I believe that speaking Korean regularly will help me to improve and retain the things that I learn. When I started to learn English I had a completely different experience. I really enjoyed learning English because I actually speak English in my daily life with my friends and teachers. That way, I was able to apply what I learn and continue to improve my English inside and outside of class.
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