Vocabulary and literacy, the effects of traveling
- Home Educating
- 31 July 2015
As traveler family, we have problem of literacy and vocabulary, particularly in relation to the correct language usage. Traveling makes us know the language of area that we visited, it is good for the learning, but it has adverse effect, that is my child lack of knowledge about his correct mother language.
Bahasa Indonesia is our mother language, it has rules and standard to use. Every area of Indonesia develop its own language based on Bahasa Indonesia, different area means different accent and language structures. But the correct Indonesian language have standards as you can see here.
I want my son to know about these standards and use the standards automatically, especially at his writing. But sometimes his writing was not good. I have to teach him in specific way, and I found methods that fit with us:
Everyday I ask my son to read book in Indonesian, one chapter per day. By reading a lot of books, his vocabulary will be added everyday. And, I often asked him to write story in Bahasa Indonesia, then we checked all the structures together, often, he made mistake at vocabulary. When checking the vocabulary, I was not only spell the right character, but also the right sound, from the sound, my son knew how to write words and correct the mistake.
People often said that my son can’t write words perfectly because he seldom talks to others, he is an introvert child. But writing is not related with introvert or not. An introvert child can develop good writing. Writing is about language knowledge. In fact, my son is better in writing English than Indonesian. Maybe just because he like to read books that in English, and still confused with Bahasa Indonesia that has so much accents that he knew through our traveling journey.
However, if the problem persists, we still choose to traveling around than not traveling only to make my son learn language better. There are many things he can learned from traveling, more than just language.
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