I am both a student and a teacher of languages. I’ve heard all kinds of people of all demographics complain about how hard it is to learn a language. I’ve been there too.
I studied Spanish for 6 years and couldn’t speak. I put hours and hours a day into Japanese and it took 3 years to speak. Then I learned conversational Chinese in less than 3 months.
Is Chinese easier? NO
I failed to learn Spanish because I didn’t care enough, it was junior high school. Japanese took so long because I never spoke or formulated my own sentences and didn’t take charge of my own learning process. With chinese I carefully decided what to study based on what would be most useful in a conversation, not only phrases but the grammar found in those phrases
So this time I wanted to see what I could do on a limited schedule with a totally new language. I studied Indonesian for an hour a day, or on very busy days a half ho a day. I used study methods that work for a busy schedule. I had to skip some days so essentially the 30 days were over the course of 50 days.
Methods
All I did was use duolingo (and Mondly), take notes and write blogs, plus interact a bit with the Indonesian community at Hive. That’s it.
At first I realized I was relying too much on apps and the memorization was therefor very slow. I started to make the note taking and reviewing a priority. Every 2-3 days I’d fill a page with what I had studied and on the off days I would review.
I’d tried to write a blog at least every other day. This was where I really got to internalize some of the vocabulary. That and replying to comments.
Results
I have to admit I got a little lazy sometimes. I can speak a bit though! Had I started taking better notes right away, I am sure I’d be at a basic conversational level now.
I must have learned about 500-1000 words but I didn’t spend enough time learning some useful phrases that come up right away. That is why I started with Mondly. I like duolingo a focus on grammar but I do need to learn more common phrases that come up every day.
I would not call myself conversational yet by any means, but I've laid a foundation where I could easily become conversational in a very very short period of time, perhaps one more month of study. I will come back to Indonesian in 3-5 months, after I delve into Spanish, Japanese (getting fluent again since I lost so much), and possibly Cantonese (I've been near-conversational for years) and German. Hopefully by that time I will be able to travel there!
Overall I give myself a B-
Changing my process
I'm really looking forward to trying again with more focus on the note taking and note reviewing. Apps are great tools for learning but they don't work without any kind of context building. I like to use those apps to find things I want to study that are straight from useful conversation.
So my three-fold method of apps, notes and blogging/commenting won't change, just how much time and energy I give each.
Spanish is a language I've studied before. I probably have enough vocab to bypass a lot of the grinding I did with Indonesian so let's see if I can go to a fumbler to conversational in a month!
I will still be doing a little bit of Indonesian practice daily just to keep it fresh in my mind!
I'll be sharing my process, bilingual blogs and thoughts in Hive Cross Culture!. Looking forward to connecting with the Spanish community and hoping to stay in touch with the Indonesian friends I've made.
