I am very excited by the progress I am making in Indonesian. The switch to meeting synchronously three times a week and having independent assignments twice a week has been especially helpful.
We had our first monthly assignment, part one was to write about why we were studying Indonesian (at least ten lines typed). Farida, my language teacher, then gave us feedback to make sure we were using proper grammar. Once we had these ideas written down, we had to make a video of ourselves talking through the prompt, but the catch was that we do so without reading a script. I had to practice reading through my written version many times, and then I adjusted what I was saying to use vocabulary that felt more natural to me. For example, rather than talk through my original reason for wanting to learn about religious diversity based on my studies, I instead phrased it as wanting to go to diverse places of worship. This sentence construction flowed more naturally so it felt like I was communicating rather than speaking from memorization.
Last week, we talked about occupations (I can now tell everyone that I’m an artist who loves to paint) and places to visit in Indonesia. The landscapes we saw were beautiful, and they make me want to visit! This past week, we learned about animals. While at this moment, I don’t have much need to talk about elephants, lions, and monkeys right now, but the vocabulary was still helpful and allowed us to practice using colors. I think I’m getting a pretty good handle on verbs. I can easily say what I want to do but could expand my adjective and noun vocabulary. My goal this weekend is to work on transferring all this new vocabulary into my vocabulary notebook. When I need to find a word, I’ve been just using the Mango language translator. I think it may be helpful to push myself to use my dictionary so that I am looking at my handwriting, which may aid with memory retention and making sure to review the vocabulary we have covered in past classes to build on. For our daily vocabulary reports, I have noticed that I can use them correctly in a sentence, but I have not been effective in committing these words to my long term memory. This week, my goal is to take these vocabulary memorizations seriously and try some different strategies on testing myself to make sure I remember the words. I have had a hard time remembering numbers greater than ten. Learning how to count big numbers correctly is very important for navigating daily life in Indonesia so that I can buy food at the market. Even for small purchases, the denominations are much bigger than in the United States. A pound of rice may cost 7,000 rupiahs! The other students and I did a role play of being in the market, and it was very tricky to tell the customer how much her items cost. I know that striving to say and hear these numbers accurately will help me in Indonesia so I will do some extra practice during the upcoming weeks!
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