By Karina Darminto and Vinuri Perera
Being multilingual is an important skill to have nowadays. It comes in handy when job hunting and even in everyday life. What's more, learning a new language is really fun! And what better place to learn a new language than APU, where we’re surrounded by people of all different nationalities. APU offers six different language courses, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Thai, collectively called AP languages. These courses tend to be in high demand during the Course Registration click wars.
We at APU Times decided to ask a few students how their experience taking AP languages has been so far and how they have managed to handle their language classes with their major classes. So, if you are interested in taking a language course, read on to find out about the experiences of some of your fellow students.
Juggling multiple languages
James Martawidjaja is an Indonesian student who had been exempted from his Japanese studies when he entered APU. He has completed Chinese 4 and is now learning Korean 2. His prolonged interest in studying languages started when he was in elementary school.
He had been learning Japanese and Chinese in Indonesia for a total of six years before entering APU. His curiosity and keen interest in Korean pop culture made him interested in learning the Korean language in his third semester.
The process of being a polyglot was not easy nor effortless. Marta has been working on his Japanese and Chinese studies since middle school, oftentimes having a hard time balancing his school work and language learning. The experience was as exhausting as it was rewarding. Nonetheless, being relatively fluent in Japanese and Chinese, he wanted to widen his knowledge by learning Korean.
He started by studying through Duolingo, an application that helps students learn remotely. However, with no clear guidance from the app, he had quite a hard time progressing. It was only when he started taking Korean I from AP Language classes offered in APU that he truly felt progress. Learning a lot of languages at the same time comes naturally to Marta. However, he mentions that it is difficult for him to switch between talking in different languages quickly.
Marta gave several tips on how to learn a new language:
You need to have a clear goal and motivation in order to stay focused. Why do you really want to study that language? Is it just for the sake of taking credits or is it because you genuinely fell in love with that language?
Have a strong foundation of the language. Do not forget to get the basics down.
Don’t be too fixated on the textbook. Watching movies, TV shows, reading newspapers, and listening to music in that language helps a lot. It allows you to be exposed to different sentence structures as well.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are one of the most inevitable things when learning a new language. It is only through mistakes that you will learn. Nobody gets it right the first time.
Be consistent in your studies. Learn actively and indirectly every day. This is very crucial to your language studies.
Language through culture
Miu Hirokawa is a second-semester English-basis student who is currently taking Indonesian 2. She began studying Indonesian because she was interested in the language and had lots of Indonesian friends here at APU. She says that the experience of learning Indonesian at APU is a blast and that all the professors are very kind and helpful. She is also learning a lot about Indonesian culture. She mentioned how a lot of Indonesian vocabulary is similar to English, and because it uses Latin alphabet characters it was easier for her to learn the language.
Miu gave a couple of tips on how to learn effectively in APU’s language classes:
There are probably many students from APU speaking the language you’re studying, so it won’t hurt to ask some of them for help.
Have good relationships with the professors! They are always there to help.
Language learning speedrun
Momoko Watanabe is a Japanese first-semester student who is currently taking Thai 1. She says that she had many Thai friends during her high school years, and that she developed an interest in Thai because the language sounded beautiful. She found this experience quite challenging as the lessons were fast-paced and there was a lot of vocabulary to remember.
Further, as she wasn’t adept in English, she sometimes found it difficult as she had to translate the vocabulary into Japanese in order to understand them. However, she says that she finds Thai to be an interesting language because although the grammar rules are lax, as long as one knows their vocabulary it's possible to communicate.
Momoko further states that as there is little to no homework assignments, time management with other classes has been easy. She recommends Thai for those of you who are interested in Thai culture, or have a great memory and are good at remembering vocabulary quickly. She stresses that active learning is the most important when studying a language.
Momoko gave us some tips on how to learn Thai effectively:
Study the vocabulary thoroughly. Vocabulary is very important in Thai as the grammar rules are lax.
Watching pronunciation guides and other videos on YouTube helps with pronunciation and tones.
Practice speed writing. This will be a necessary skill in class.
Converse to remember
Chuuya Katagiri is a Japanese first-semester student who is currently taking Vietnamese 1. He appears to have started studying Vietnamese because he was interested in South East Asian and Vietnamese cuisine. He says that although he can't speak Vietnamese very well yet, he finds the experience to be very fun and interesting.
According to Chuuya, Vietnamese lessons focus on conversation and a majority of the lessons focus on simple conversations between students. He further states that the grammar is very similar to that of English. He finds that Vietnamese is easy to understand and that there are very few assignments, so time management is not an issue.
Chuuya gave us a few tips on how to learn languages effectively:
Voicing the grammar and vocabulary aloud when memorising is very effective.
More than memorising vocabulary one by one, it is better to memorise sentences and understand how the words are used.
As you can see, there are lots of opportunities to learn new languages at APU. It is arguably one of the best ways to dive into a new culture. So, after reading different student experiences, are you now interested in learning a new language as well?
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