I keep telling myself that I need to sit down with a Indonesian-English dictionary and each week pick a new topic like medical, sports, food etc. and learn all the vocabulary. My laziness on picking up new words has stunted my growth a bit. I’m really good with memorization so it shouldn’t be a problem but I find it quite boring to flip through a normal dictionary.
I was at Millennium Plaza in Medan and saw a small display of English language education books for Indonesians. They were mostly color picture dictionaries for young children. They didn’t really fit what I needed because it was a bit too simplified but then I came across these two picture dictionaries that were exactly what I was looking for. It had enough vocabulary to be practical. The pictures help even as an adult.
Popular Situational Dictionary and Kamus Situasi. They each have categories ranging from city/town life, in the kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom, on the farm, in the workshop, at the beach as well as pages for common verbs and opposite words. It’s great to leave out on my coffee table and study. I’m going to try to pick a couple of pages to learn each week and then go back and keep trying to memorize them.
My housemate has been living in Indonesia for about 3 years and his Indonesian is very good right now. He can communicate effectively with people here but still needs to improve his vocabulary. We both agreed to sit down and test each other. He’ll be a great resource for me because he can answer questions that I have about the language that are difficult for Indonesians to understand. I’ll be able to keep him motivated to continue studying the language since after about 3 years I’m sure he’s hit a wall.