Day 3 hari berapa?

Well, it's day three. I was able to get the day begun with my note cards and with studying before I had to go to work, so that made it easy to go through the day. I've covered a lot of the previous vocabulary, recalling about 115 words without having to flip over my cards. Utilizing hidden moments ALWAYS having a memory tool is working out wonderfully.

Before I continue, here's the rules and plan for Day 3:

1.       Read the next two chapters (ie. 5-6) of your course book. It will give you the basic understanding you will need to proceed forward and start making sentences that work.

2.       Write in your notebook and on the flashcards all the vocabulary from those chapters

3.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

4.       Study flashcards before going to bed

I will admit, chapters 5 and 6 were harder to understand than the previous chapters. I'm glad that tomorrow I start reading from the newspaper and not rushing through chapters anymore. It's getting rough to follow along with the grammar lessons when I'm trying to cover 2 chapters in a 1 hours period.

But Chapter 5 was all about numbers. The lesson, like most coursebooks assume is necessary just out the gate, was on prices and costs. It was good to see a comparison in price, like an Rp 1.500 ruler, because it gives context to the economic situations the future situations of the characters will be in. It seems like Indonesia is on fairly the same level as South Korea, which was great to discover.

Chapter 6, on the other hand, was about days and dates. Nothing screws up language learners faster than the days of the week and the months of the year. Consider also that the coursebook spent an entire page explaining Islamic prayer custom so that the times of the day would be relevant to me. Well, I learned something about Islam.

In the end, numbers and days of the week are the 2 things most likely to snap a new learner of the language, so encountering both on the same day feels very much like I ran into a screen door and feel really stupid. However, I'm gonna push through, just as Barry Farber suggests. Rule #1: Never take a day off. If I don't learn those words today, or tomorrow, or the next hundred times I look at the cards, I will be learning more and more that will sink in.

ONWARD I MARCH.