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It has been two weeks and it is time to write another biweekly journal. Though it is still roughly early on into the semester, I have been actively working on my Korean learning journey. These two weeks in particular I challenged myself and tried to watch the Korean news with my parents. This was definitely a struggle because on news platforms the news anchors would use very difficult words and terminology relevant to the topic at hand. As a result, I found myself struggling to understand some of the things they were talking about. One segment I was able to understand was the segment regarding the Coronavirus. The spread does not seem to be slowing down in the US, but in Korea, they are handling the situation a lot better than we are. 

In addition to this practice, I also was able to learn through my lesson with Vivian. For this lesson, we went over the Korean slang and talked about some of the common slang used in Korea. I found that I was able to identify a majority of the examples she prepared but there were some that I did not know. Moving forward, I will try to practice and learn more about Korean slang, and I will try to incorporate it into my conversation with my parents and other Korean speaking people. 

Being a remote student, I find that it is a lot easier for me to practice and work on my Korean. One aspect of this is because I live with my parents who are native Korean speakers. As a result, whenever I had questions about anything I was trying to say or just any question in general, I would ask them about it. I feel as though it is beneficial for both me and my parents because while I am practicing Korean, they get to practice speaking and understanding English. However, I try my best to speak only Korean in the house, but I find it to be difficult at times to accurately portray what I want to say. Therefore, moving forward I would like to work on a couple of things.

Looking ahead to these next two weeks, I will work on a couple of things. I want to expand my vocabulary by asking my parents every day for a word in Korean that I may not have known about. I will do this in order to expand my vocabulary. In addition, I will practice my Korean by actively trying to only speak Korean in the house. Lastly, I will work on my comprehension by challenging myself to watch more Korean news and Korean entertainment programs. I found this to be an effective method to improve my understanding of the Korean language. I will update you on how these challenges go in the next biweekly journal.

Podcast Interview with my language partner. podcast.m4a

https://urcapture.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f15a6cd4-d4a8-4c25-b260-ac37012b7d40

See presentation here: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WovPB3wj1oiaMU9tfV-X5RG0qjyRj08AhSLoDbzSJ-Y/edit?usp=sharing

See this google drive folder for the videos: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1g2DtonhFFlbgNZe_xrhOU-nGBeIZyriA?usp=sharing

Final.pptx

For this week's meeting, I was able to wrap up what I've learned for this semester by taking a test over the things I learned in the past few weeks. Even though from the journals, the things I learned weren't organized and there were also some repetitive activities, my primary goal since the beginning of this semester was to build foundations for speaking, reading and listening. By revisiting the alphabet over and over again, I finally was able to spell words and read texts in Korean (It's been too long). Also, in the group meetings, we were watching the "Reply 1994" from the well-known "Reply" series. By watching this, I was able to practice my ability to speak naturally and get used to listening to native speakers talk (Even though the characters in the drama speak Korean with heavy accents). 

Learning languages using TV dramas is not uncommon. For many Chinese, the main sources for learning English could just be "Friends." Similarly, learning Korean with "Reply" series could be an entertaining and effective approach. Jannette was able to give me some tips on how to learn Korean through watching TV series. 

Learning to read Korean is definitely the first step. Once you've learned how to read Korean, you could use Korean subtitles that would enhance your reading skills. And you could also turn the subtitles off so that your listening skills could be enhanced.

Focus is also important. It’s easy to leave the TV on in the background, especially when it’s in Korean and you don’t understand everything that’s going on. It’s also easy to miss a lot of what’s happening on the screen if you’re busy trying to catch all the subtitles as they appear. Unless you focus on what’s happening and what’s being said, you won’t learn much of anything. At the end of a television learning session, you should feel a bit tired. After all, you’re studying! And while using your favorite TV show to learn Korean is a fun way to study, it still involves a bit of work to stay focused.

In order to keep your focus, it’s best to watch the TV series in segments, rather than trying to watch it in a single sitting. That way, you can fast forward or rewind as many times as you need to make sure you really understand what you’re hearing. nd have the chance to write down any useful vocabulary or phrases.

Once is never enough. If you really want to make the material your own, you’ll want to watch each segment more than once. Watch it once without subtitles, then again with English subtitles, then again with Korean subtitles. Write down the phrases you find useful in Korean, and then watch it again with English subtitles to check your translations. Finally, watch it once more without subtitles. Mix it up and dive deep.

When using a movie or TV show as a resource, engaging with the material is a good way to make your study time active rather than passive. Mimic the actors, fill in parts of the dialogue with your own responses, or even copy their body language.

Recently, through conversations with my friends, I discovered a piece of Brazilian culture or society that was new to me. Similar to the Italian lottery, there is a game in Brazil called Jogo de Bicho (or Animal Game). It is a type of gambling and is illegal in Brazil. The game consists of numbers from 1-24 which each correspond to an animal. For example, 1 is the Ostrich, 2 is an Eagle, 3 is a Donkey, and so on.

            The reason I heard about it was because my friend was telling me about how the number 24 is generally avoided in Brazil, almost to painstaking lengths, because the animal it corresponds with in Jogo de Bicho is the deer (veado). In Brazil, veado is pejorative slang for homosexuality. An already existing slang term exists, viado, and because they are pronounced almost the same, the deer is associated with gay men. In society, many people will take lengths to either avoid or incorporate that number. Politicians wanting to appeal to the LGBTQ crowd will use it in the telephone number for their campaign, while others will make sure it does not appear in their phone number. In the Brazilian Senate, out of 81 senators, the cabinet 24 does not exist. Senators and other government officials are issued special license plates, and there is no plate with 24 on it. Sports players will often avoid that jersey number as well, and after Kobe Bryant’s death (number 24 for the Lakers), Brazil saw a large response of anti-homophobia protests. It came up in my own conversations as a friend sent a picture of his birthday cake. He was turning 24, and instead of putting the numbers 2 and 4, his family had put 23 mais um, or 23 plus one.

            The betting can be superstitious, and various connotations evolved with different animals. Seeing different animals or symbols in one’s dreams can be taken as a sign to bet on that number, but perhaps the most interesting one is the elephant. It is said to be associated with death, so any accident or loss of life when a multiple of the elephant’s numbers appear, the bankers and operators see a heavy flow of bets on that number. However, if too many people bet on one number, it is removed from the lottery to prevent the bookies from bankrupting and having to draw on their personal funds to repay.

            Other impacts of the animals from Jogo de bicho are found in various football (or soccer) clubs. One called Treze Futebol Clube, or Football Club Thirteen, have a rooster as their mascot because the rooster is the animal for 13 in Jogo de bicho.

Solo Leveling or  나 혼자만 레벨업 (Na Honjaman Rebereop) is a South Korean web novel written by Chugong. The story follows Sung Jin-woo, the weakest hunter in all of South Korea, who supposedly died but awoke with newfound powers. Like Sung Jin-woo, others hunters have supernatural abilities that they use to seal portals that appear around the world. However, Sung Jin-woo's powers seem to follow a video game system where he can complete quests for rewards, items, weapons, and information. We observe as Sung Jin-woo investigates this power in depth and how this transformation affects his personal life and the world of hunters in general. I won't spoil any plot points so if you want to see how this story pans out Solo Leveling is available to read in Korean at Kakao Page. The interesting thing is that the web novel itself has been adapted into a webtoon/digital comic on Kakao Page and thus is much more visually enticing. The web novel itself is quite good and is far ahead of the current web comic. Solo Leveling is also available in English on certain websites. The official source for the English translation is Tappytoon Comics. So even if there are people here that are not learning Korean, Solo Leveling is still a good read.

As for why I chose to cover Solo Leveling for my authentic cultural artifact, I really enjoyed exploring language through entertainment. What better way to stay engaged in a language then if the content itself is engaging. Although most of my reading of Solo Leveling had been in English ( I read this before starting Korean SDLC ), I intend to reread Solo Leveling using the Korean that I have built up so far. It will take more time to process the dialogue since I will have to jump to a translation machine every once in a while. Despite that, I think that I can learn Korean using this web novel/comic. 

One of the reasons that I enjoyed Solo Leveling was because of its fantastic art direction. Their illustrations are done by Dubu (Redice Studio). This studio works on a variety of manhwas and has shown great work consistently. The action sequences have dynamic long screen spreads that are often background worthy. The story, although not original, is quite interesting in how it brings the world of video games into an already fantastical world. This combinations feels very much like a fun thought experiment about what we would do if we had a second chance at life. I am sure many people have entertained this idea in their daydreams and Solo Leveling takes that idea and adds fantastic visuals to our vague imaginations. I would say that the weakest part of this work is the characters in that they aren't that complex. There is not anything ground breaking in how they handle characters and the premise does feel a bit recycled. Despite this, I still find myself wanting more content every week. I would suggest Solo Leveling to anyone who enjoys a power fantasy story and appreciates clean digital art.

During this session, So Myung and I mostly worked on the final podcast interview. We outlined the topics that we wanted to cover that we studied over the course of the semester into a Google Docs and took time from the meeting to record our podcast. It was quite fun to go over all the topics that we had touched on and I was surprised by how much content we covered. We mostly went over topics chronologically and focused on the subjects that we really enjoyed. Of course my favorite section was the section where we talked about Korean cuisine. That is why I made my final cultural presentation in SDLC 105 about Korean cuisine. It was really interesting to hear So Myung's experience in teaching Korean and what she enjoyed about the process and what topics really piqued her interest. If I remember correctly, her favorite topic was covering the Korean number systems (there are two of which) and the Korean time system. These two ideas go hand in hand since the Korean time system utilizes both Korean number systems. She mentioned that her presentation was on Korean number systems and it was fun for her to revisit her previous presentations for information and she was ecstatic that a student was adamant on learning the complex Korean number systems. I did not shy away from this topic since I knew that numbers was a fundamental topic necessary for fluency in a language. Even if the Korean number systems made little sense at first, it was very fun to learn about its complexities. 

Besides the podcast, we also talked about what Korean dramas we have been getting into. I have noticed that this is a popular topic in the Ning Blog posts (some of it is just me giving reviews lol). We mentioned Hospital Playlist and the Reply series as possible suggestions for me to watch in terms of just entertainment and I suggested Kingdom, which I have already done so in my blog as both a horror thriller and also an educational piece on historical Korean politics.

Hi, everyone! Here is the link to my presentation on BASL (because there are gifs towards the end, I am just pasting the  link).

Here are also some of the resources I used in my project and one of the diagrams I found useful.

• The BASL Project
• Washington Post
• The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL
• ASLized
• Black Deaf History Month
• What is it like to be DEAF?
• deafvideo.tv (video question and forum asking about if there is a BASL dictionary online)

Since coming home two weeks ago, I had ample opportunities to use Vietnamese to communicate with my family and friends. I had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and sister and we talked a lot about the food we made, about school and work in Vietnamese. Afterward, we conversed remotely with my extended family, and, as expected, I was bombarded with a bunch of questions from my relatives. We talked a lot about how school is going and how my education was affected by COVID-19 as well as graduation plans. I do not remember the last time I spoke using just Vietnamese for such a long period of time in one day. It was unexpectedly exhausting. When I restarted my meeting with my language partner afterward, we discussed what we did over break in Vietnamese and we went over words that I didn’t understand. 

• Phân tâm [fəŋ˧˧ təm˧˧] -- distraction or distract
• Thảo luận [tʰaːw˨˩˦ lwəŋ˨˩˨] -- discussion or discuss
• Tham khảo [tʰaːm˧˧ kʰaːw˨˩] -- consult, refer, or reference
• Bạc phận [ɓaːk˨˩˨ fəŋ˨˩˨] -- misfortune

In order to keep up with these words and future new words, my partner and I created an Anki deck that I can access for learning or to expand at any time. 

Additionally, we also talked about my future plans. Since next semester is my final semester, we talked a lot about what I want to do after graduation. The first thing I want to do is find a job, but I am also considering graduate school. However, if I do decide to go to graduate school, I want to take a gap year and do some travelling to gain some experience, so we ended up talking about that extensively. 

For my first destination, I want to visit my mom’s hometown -- quê hương [we˧˧ hɨəŋ˧˧], a village --  quê [we˧˧], near the city of Phan Thiết [fan.tʰíət]. Phan Thiết is a coastal city in southern Vietnam known for its fishing industry and seafood manufacturing, especially the production of fish sauce -- nước mắm [nɨək˧˥ mam˧˥]. Vietnamese nước mắm are usually made from a combination of fermented fishes such as anchovies, mackerel, scabbard fish and salt, and it usually has a pungent smell. My partner and I talked about how my family used to be one of the many residents in the region that produced nước mắm. My grandfather was a fisherman and my grandmother would used to use his catches to make nước mắm for personal use as well as to sell. However, when big manufacturers began moving into the area, most families were forced out of the business and my family was no exception.

We got really interested in how nước mắm is made so my partner and I watched a how it’s made video. Apparently, each region in Vietnam has its own nước mắm recipe and flavor, and Phan Thiết’s nước mắm is unique in that it has a slightly sweet aftertaste. After the video, we talked about the various ways nước mắm is a staple ingredient in Vietnamese cuisine. I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion, and I think that talking about topics I'm interested in is a great way to learn a language.

Podcast%20Interview%20SDLAP.m4a

I took the COM2 exam two weeks ago and I passed! Jenna and I did not meet during Thanksgiving break because we had no classes anyway. This past week Jenna and I met on Friday to talk about what I want to do for the next semester. I talked about my short-term goals since I met my long-term goal of passing the COM2 exam. An idea that I had was to take the Korean efficiency exam to gain a certificate of bilingual language in Korean. I will definitely think about this before the next semester begins and decide whether I want to pursue this route next semester. Another idea I had was to focus on my writing and reading more by going over a short novel in Korean. I could read one chapter a week and every lesson I can talk about what I read and write a short summary of each chapter free hand to improve my writing.

Furthermore, Jenna and I talked about my cultural presentation topic. I had an idea in the past about researching Korean healthcare and how it differs from healthcare in the United States. I think this is a very interesting topic to research because of my background in chemistry and pre-med. I am excited to finish my cultural presentation and Jenna thought it was a great topic to explore. Other than that, Jenna and I did not spend too much time this week because it was the last class of the semester. We also plan on doing the recorded podcast in the next week before the semester ends. Overall, I am very pleased with the progress of my Korean this past semester. Jenna is a great teacher, and I am very excited to continue studying Korean next semester. I have seen huge improvements in my writing and reading, as well as my speaking and listening. I think the biggest improvement that I saw was in my Korean writing. At the beginning of the semester, I was barely able to write a paragraph in less than 10 minutes and I would usually make 20-30 mistakes in spelling, spacing, and grammar. As the semester progressed and I kept practicing writing in Korean with Jenna, I saw huge improvements in my spelling and grammar in Korean writing. I was making less than 10 mistakes, sometimes 5, in a whole paragraph response. I have learned many strategies and skills to more efficiently write and speak in Korean that Jenna has shown me in the past semester. I am a lot more confident in my Korean language abilities all thanks to Jenna. I hope to continue to improve next semester and can’t wait to see what I will learn.

For my last cultural post, I decided to find an article in Korean and read and understand the story. I went on google and searched up “Korean news articles” and found a website that had many articles in Korean. It is a popular news website for Koreans and there was no English anywhere on the website. Finding an article itself was a very educational task. I had to read through many article titles and understand what they were saying. I wanted to find an article that interested me, something about sports. So, I went to the top main subcategories of news and read each of them out loud. It took a couple of minutes, but I was finally able to find the category for sports in Korean. I knew exactly what it was in Korean but identifying it amongst many other phrases and words in Korean was pretty difficult. After finding the sports news articles, I read through a couple of the headlines to find an article that I was interested in reading about. After just a few minutes of looking through different article headlines, I found one about Maradona that caught my eye. Maradona, a very esteemed and respected Argentinian soccer player died recently. I thought this would be a great read for me and took about 1 hour to read through and understand the whole article. It was hard because there were many terms that I did not know such as heart attack and heaven, but after reading through it all, I learned many new phrases and words in Korean related to sports. The article talks about how Maradona died from a heart attack and how he was considered one of the most successful soccer players in the world and in the history of soccer. Maradona was only 60 years old but had many visits to the hospital in recent years. The article talks about how Maradona was the MVP of the 1986 world cup and other significant awards he has won in the past. It was really interesting to read about Maradona’s death and memorial article in Korean and on the Korean news website. I read an article the other day about this on ESPN and the structure and content are similar. It is cool to me how Korean articles and news channels talk about America and other nations often. While looking for other articles on the website, I saw many articles related to the United States as well as Trump. This was very interesting to see because of how often the Korean news articles are related to American news. This is not true in America, where we don’t have articles on Korea that often. Furthermore, I was very fascinated by how they cited CNN and ESPN in the article. This also supports my previous observation of how the United States in very important in other countries’ news articles. Taking time to read and understand every word in this article definitely helped my ability in writing and reading. I recognized many words, but I also learned many other words. I think the most important thing that this article helped me with is recognizing the bachims and the spellings of commonly misspelled words.

https://www.donga.com/news/Inter/article/all/20201126/104152590/1?ref=main

What a semester!

I have always been interested in ASL because I wanted to communicate with more people and because I enjoyed the thought of communicating without words. Now that I’ve had one semester of learning ASL from the wonderful Reba, I am very satisfied with how much information I absorbed. Of course, I am still at a novice level and nowhere near fluent, but I do think I have come a long way since the beginning of September.

Since we did have our break during these two weeks, I wasn’t able to meet with Reba all four times. Instead, I reviewed some old recordings our lessons. This way, I wouldn’t lose too much of the vocabulary I tried so hard to remember and learn. Some things I did notice as I analyzed these videos were that I would overuse the words “uh huh” and “yes” throughout our lessons. Even though I did understand at that time, I feel that this made it difficult for me to interpret the situation when I watch the videos again. I wish I had narrated some parts of the lessons so that in the next year, I can watch and understand immediately, or I could show this to my family, and they could also learn right away. That being said, I guess I do have to realize that doing so would’ve been too difficult for me to understand and explain at the same time.

An activity I do very frequently whenever I remember and have time is just fingerspelling random terms I see. Whether it’s during lectures and I see a complex word on the slide or if I’m watching a show and I see a cool word in the subtitles, I will try to fingerspell it to myself as quickly as possible without making any mistakes. This is good practice since I am can use letters such as “q” and “x” which are not as common as “e” or “s”. Another practicing tool that Faith introduced to me is asl.ms. I haven’t been using it often, but I will make an effort to do so because it will help me find the correct word when I see someone fingerspell. I am still on the slow level, but I can sometimes get the medium level speed too!

For our last session, Reba and I did some more review and just practicing overall. Even though I did review by watching the videos, I still was very much out of practice and her signing seemed much faster than before. A new thing I learned was a short, mini introduction to ASL grammar. In English, we would say that “the cat and dog is asleep”, but in ASL, the words “the”, “and”, and “is” are not used. This was a challenge because when I sign, I still speak and directly sign my words. We didn’t dive deeply into sentence structures, but I hope to learn them in the near future. Although my official classes with Reba has ended, she welcomed me to email, text, or call her to check in and practice ASL with her!

This week, we completed the A1 level of the textbook and are now starting A2. Hurray! I am very impressed that we have made it this far. The first thing we learned about in this new unit was Indonesian slang. When not in a formal setting like school or businesses, most Indonesians do not use the official Bahasa language structures for greetings. Instead of Bagaimana kabarmu? They may say ngamain? Slang is usually shorter and often includes leaving out the pronouns. Knowing slang will help us connect with students and teachers outside of class if we are ETAs in Indonesia. As of right now, though, I think I will focus on memorizing the official language rules because the patterns are much clearer and easier to internalize than the slang. Plus, I think it is better to accidentally speak too formally to teenagers than too informally to elders or professionals because they may become insulted. 

We have also been expanding our language about the family this week. Now, I am able to talk about sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, and cousins. This is good, because I personally have a very large extended family. I like that we are reviewing these lessons again more indepth because knowing how to address family members will be important for navigating interactions with my host community. I liked that Farida showed us a picture of her family for this lesson. 

During language table class this week we got a list of kata hubung, which are conjunctions. These words were very helpful. I have already been pretty comfortable with dan (and), tapi (but), atau (or), and karena (because), but was excited to learn vocabulary for words like so (it’s begitu) that I always accidentally say in English. While conjunctions are not the most important part of speech for conveying meaning - one can speak in simple sentences and be able to communicate -- they definitely help the conversation flow more smoothly, and make speaking a bit easier. 

On Friday, we chose topics for our final exam - conducting in interview in Bahasa Indonesia with a native speaker. Since I study geography, like to visit new places, and often paint outside when I go to new places, I decided to focus my presentation on tempat yang umum dan wisata, or public and tourism places. I think this is also a good topic, because I can ask my interviewee which places I should visit if I go to Indonesia. It was funny, because Madelyn chose a similar topic. I think we both like jalan-jalan di luar (walking outside). Our final exam will consist of three parts: 1) the reasons we want to choose this topic and drafting of interview questions 2) the interview itself for 10 minutes 3) a conclusion about what we learned from the interview. I appreciate that during the drafting phase, Farida provided real-time feedback on our questions, making sure they are grammatically correct and all set for the interview, which we will be conducting after Thanksgiving break. 

During the next couple of weeks, we will continue meeting for lessons, with a special emphasis on preparing for our upcoming interview and final exam. I trust that we will be prepared to do well and am excited to meet some of Farida’s friends. 

Somehow, it is the final day of class with Farida! I didn’t realize we did not have formal classes after the break, so it was a surprise when she told us that this was our last meeting together. I have very much enjoyed learning together.
This week, we have spent a lot of time preparing for our upcoming interview. Farida asked us questions about the process, and we responded in Indonesian. Some of the questions included: Have you reached out to your speaking partner? Yes, I emailed Lisana. Have you chosen a date yet? Not yet, but I will. Are you nervous? Very much. Conversations are stressful. Do you think this is a good final excitement? Yes, even if I am nervous, I think this will push me out of my comfort zone and challenge me to use the languages (speaking, after all, is the key to becoming fluent and also the reason I am learning the language in the first place.) What will you do if you don’t understand something? I will ask them to speak very slowly or repeat. I will do my very best to speak only in Indonesian. I’m happy we talked through these things and think that the interview will go well. After our conversation, we had two guests who come to our class: extra speaking practice! We had to do practice interviews with Farida’s friend. The first one I did was a little tricky because there were internet troubles and we had difficulty hearing and understanding one another. There were several moments of awkward silence. The second interview went much smoother. Since Farida’s friends are also language instructors, they know how to speak slowly and clearly, so we understand them. Her friends were supportive as we did our best to speak the new language. From this practice interview, I had some insights on how I can best prepare for the final conversation. First, I realized that even as I want the native speakers to talk slowly and clearly, I was asking relatively complicated questions and speaking pretty fast when I asked them. I think it is important that as a beginning speaker of Bahasa Indonesia, to use simple sentence constructions and seek to clearly and slowly articulate my questions. I plan to go back in and edit these. Second, I need to make sure that I know how to ask the basic questions: How do you say _ in Bahasa Indonesia? What does _mean? Can you repeat that? These questions are so important for continuing the conversation while remaining in the target language. There were a couple of moments during the practice interviews when my mind went blank and these questions would have been very helpful.
Our speaking assignment this Tuesday was to film the first part of our final exam and answer the question of what our interview topic is and why we chose it. I am writing about public places and tourism sites because I like geography. I also find myself using this vocabulary pretty often and feel pretty comfortable with it. During the next weeks, I will contact Lisana to schedule my interview, revise my questions, and practice vocabulary related to places so that I am all set for the final exam!

It’s the week of my interview, and it went very well! As noted in the previous post, I planned to revise the questions and practice speaking, both of which I accomplished. I first simplified the wording for my questions. Then I arranged them so that they could build off of each other and into two main sections: questions about public places and tourism. I started with a question about where she lived and then went on to talk about the public places nearby. The next questions were about the beach, and then I asked about her experiences in traveling and visiting tourism sites in Indonesia and other countries. I felt like this format flowed much better, and I was able to brainstorm some of the possible answers she may give. I also realized that conducting an interview is much less stressful than an unscripted conversation because I am the one asking the questions, rather than being asked the questions (that’s usually the most stressful part for me!). I was able to have responses prepared to my questions that I could add to the conversation and keep it going. After drafting the interview questions, I also compiled a list of important words in questions in case I got into a pickle of not understanding something. These were accessible on my word document. I then talked through the questions several times to make sure I felt comfortable with everything. I recorded myself so that I could practice with the zoom room setting. I felt pretty good about our interview at 7:30 am on 3 December 2020. It’s the week of my interview, and it went very well! As noted in the previous post, I planned to revise the questions and practice speaking, both of which I accomplished. I first simplified the wording for my questions. Then I arranged them so that they could build off of each other and into two main sections: questions about public places and tourism. I started with a question about where she lived and then went on to talk about the public places nearby. The next questions were about the beach, and then I asked about her experiences in traveling and visiting tourism sites in Indonesia and other countries. I felt like this format flowed much better, and I was able to brainstorm some of the possible answers she may give. I also realized that conducting an interview is much less stressful than an unscripted conversation because I am the one asking the questions, rather than being asked the questions (that’s usually the most stressful part for me!). I was able to have responses prepared to my questions that I could add to the conversation and keep it going. After drafting the interview questions, I also compiled a list of important words in questions in case I got into a pickle of not understanding something. These were accessible on my word document. I then talked through the questions several times to make sure I felt comfortable with everything. I recorded myself so that I could practice with the zoom room setting. I felt pretty good about our interview at 7:30 am on 3 December 2020.  Since Daylight Savings Time, Farida has been 11 hours ahead of us, and since Lisana is one of Farida’s friends I assumed she was in the time zone. It turned out that assumption was incorrect. When I logged onto zoom at 7:30 am, I was a bit confused because Lisana was not there! It turns out that she lives in a different part of the country and was a full 12 hours ahead. Fortunately, I was already awake and didn’t miss the meeting. We ended up talking at 8:30 instead. The interview went very well. I started recording the meeting right away but accidentally forgot to check the time. We ended up talking for 13 minutes, even though I think we only had to do 8-10 minutes. I’m happy the conversation lasted that long. Lisana was very kind, engaging, and spoke slowly and clearly. I learned that she lived near Jakarta and likes to talk to friends at the park. She goes to the beach during breaks and takes photographs there because the landscape is beautiful. I shared how I also like to swim at the beach and paint. We then discussed the best places to visit in Indonesia, such as Bali, and how both the United States and Indonesia have nice landscapes. I’m happy I had the opportunity to talk with Lisana and was able to understand almost everything she said. I had to show this listening comprehension during the final section of the final exam. In my conclusion video, I was able to articulate these. I just uploaded the videos today, so I have officially completed Bahasa Indonesia for the semester. It has been a lovely learning experience, and I have learned so much about language and Indonesian culture and places!

This week began a bit stressful because Farida informed us that we had a big midterm exam two days before the test (it was on the syllabus that I should have been paying more attention to). I was a bit worried about this assessment because she did not give us specific guidelines of what to focus on studying. I decided the best method was to go back through all of my vocabulary, neaten up my dictionary, and then go through the past powerpoint presentations. I made sure I knew how to introduce myself, talk about my family, describe objects using colors, and use a wide range of verbs. The exam itself was not terrible. I felt comfortable with the listening section because the speaker spoke very slowly and said predictable words. The reading section was a bit harder, though, because the vocabulary in the matching section included words about daily routines that I was not as familiar with. I did my best, though, and gave an educated guess. The writing section felt like it went well, though it turned out that I had misread the instructions. Rather than answering the questions individually, we were supposed to write an invitation for a birthday party. We went over the correct format for our responses in class the next day. The speaking section also went quite smoothly. We could choose from a couple of different topics, so I decided to speak about my family because I am quite comfortable with that vocabulary. I described my younger brother and sister and their hobbies quite easily. Having this midterm exam helped me to reflect on how much I’ve learned so far and consider the places where I can improve, such as reading directions carefully and trying to use context clues when I don’t understand something. I will say as an aside that the physical conditions of the exam were challenging. I usually zoom into class outside because I need to be near the gym because my next class starts at the same time Bahasa Indonesia class ends, but it was very, very, cold that morning. My hands were freezing and I had a lot of trouble concentrating on the exam. From this experience, I know that physical conditions affect my ability to use language effectively and will seek in the future to find lebih hangat, or warmer places to work on my assignments.  Content wise, during these two weeks we have been learning about the habits of Indonesian teenagers, and foods in Indonesia. There are fortunately a lot of cognates, but I’m happy we were able to go over the list of foods so that I can talk about more than bananas, or pisang-pisang, which is one of my favorite go-to words. I often use it when we make up sentences and I need a noun.  In the following weeks, I will continue to practice reading, and studying the vocabulary I was less comfortable with. I will make sure that I am reading directions carefully but also be open to making and learning from my mistakes.