Days 7 and 8 saya sudah bisa belajar sedikit-sedikit saja

Di Convention saya berusaha belajar bahasa Indonesia tapi sebab waktu tidak punya, saya sudah bisa belajar sedikit-sedikit saja = At the convention, I tried to study Indonesian, but because there wasn't any time, I was only able to study alittle. (I made this sentence myself, I hope it actually is correct)

The worst thing about having a blog about studying or having a blog in general is that you are required to post daily, which requires internet. And when your Hotel's internet stops working and you call the front desk and they tell you to call tech support and you call tech support but they have you leave a message (probably because all the other guests are also calling) and it takes them 2 days to get it turned back on, that makes it impossible. How dare my internet blog tether me to the internet and require that I restrict myself.

In order to keep myself from ranting about self-imposed regulations based on lifestyle choices, here's the rules for days 7 and 8.

Day 7 (Review Day)

1. Review your notebook and flashcards, note how much you've learned in 6 days.
2. Review Chapters 1-9 of your course book.
3. OPTIONAL: Complete lesson 2 of your language audio.
4. Utilize hidden time to study flashcards
5. Study flashcards before going to bed

Days 8-30 (Remember that every 7th day is a review day)

60 minute study block plan
15 minutes	Read 1 chapter of your course book
10 minutes	Read newspaper (magazine) and highlight
15 minutes	Learn 15 new nouns and supporting words
10 minutes	Learn at least 1 major grammar rule
5 minutes	Study 5 new verbs and conjugations
5 minutes	Study new phrases from your phrase book

As you noticed, from this point forward, we're basically repeating all the same actions as day 6 remembering to review every 7th day (this would be the 14th, 21st, and the 28th this month). So that means the rules for day 8 actually look like this:

1. Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.
2. After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 10 of your course book.
3. Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter
4. Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper
5. Study your Phrasebook
6. Find your Language Audio files and start with lesson 3. Repeat lesson 3 as much as you want.
7. Utilize hidden time to study flashcards
8. Study flashcards before going to bed

So, I reviewed like I was supposed to on day 7 and found that I had 354 new vocabulary words to study, which added to the original 120 I had already pushed into my brain, I'm up to 474 vocabulary words to learn. I'm guessing that I'm likely to know about 1800 words by the time I finish this 1 month of language learning, which would put me right on the threshold of the intermediate language group if we were following traditional  methods of distinguishing a person's understanding of a language. However, without speaking practice, my skills would be far belong that of an "Intermediate" person I would think, so by my count, I'd still be a beginner, but a solid beginning (ie 100 level courses would mean nothing to me).

Day 8 was different. I spent the entire day walking around DC in the heat (100 degrees) and high humidity. By the time I got back to my hotel room, I was barely able to stay awake, let alone study. I had to drink tons of water just to move (it's bad when you feel like your whole body is swelling). I did manage to finish the last paragraph of my news article and read chapter 10. It covered the helping verbs like "can" and "try." So, now I can try to make sentences like this one. <-

I'm still iffy on numbers, and studying 474 vocabulary words in a week's time is ridiculous. I understand now why traditional schools of language in America break them down, but by breaking down the vocabulary in only 30 a week, then a student only covers 1 chapter a week, which means that it takes a whole year to cover a book that, for all intents and purposes, makes him still only a weak intermediate individual at the end. I'm not solely basing that last assessment off vocabulary, for there is grammar parts to consider, pronunciation and speaking. So, 1 year in a language school would put a student on par with me when it comes to vocabulary, probably higher than me when it comes to pronunciation and speaking, but on par (at best as I am reading news articles) when it comes to reading and listening.

The difference? Traditional student = 1 year down, $1000 dollars spent. Me and the language challenge = 1 month down, $100 spent.

I think we see who would win this debate.