A Survey With Foreigner

It was a busy day. I had to accompany a japanese scientist to our radar site at PUSPIPTEK, Serpong. By the way, talking with a foreigner made some fun for me. Actually, i sometimes did not know what would i say next to him and i also did not speak english fluently. But fortunately, he understood what i'd said. For addition, there were two scientist accompanied us, so i did not have to worry about the miscommunication among us. Thanks to them.

There're few lessons i've got while i was talking directly to the foreigners. The most important one is, you don't have to follow the linguistic rules strictly such as structure or grammars while you are talking. I know, the rules are important in english, but practically, i found it harder to speak english correctly with foreigners. Although i have TOEFL score at 553, but it still hard for me to speak english fluently. Sometimes it's frustating to me. So, the most important thing when you have to speak english to a foreigner is TALK . Yeah, just talk. Do not think to much about the rules in english language. But, if you can speak english correctly and fluently, it will be a big advantage. Of course, this only will be provided by practice and practice. The more you speak english to foreigners, the more and better english you'll have.

The fun side is, usually the foreigners are really happy to speak to us. Even tough we have bad english or the topics are not in our daily job fields. They will feel more exciting if they can speak in Bahasa Indonesia to us . The lunch and dinner time are usually the best times to talk with them. Suprisingly, many foreigners i've met before are indonesian food lovers. It seems that they will eat everything you serve to them, such as gudeg, nasi padang, and even soto or sate ayam. But i think that they don't like sugar too much in their food. They said that sugar would make many deseases in our body if we consumed it too much. In fact, i agree with their opinion.

Well, it's 6:30 pm now, and i have to do salat maghrib. It's a busy day, but it also a fun day for me. I hope that i can speak more english with other foreigners as well as today.