Breakdown of Selepas sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
Questions & Answers about Selepas sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
All three are very close in meaning and basically correspond to “after”:
- selepas – standard, neutral, common in both spoken and written Malay
- lepas – more informal/colloquial; you’ll hear it a lot in everyday speech
- sesudah – also standard, but sounds a little more formal or bookish in many contexts
In this sentence, you could say:
- Lepas sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur. (more casual)
- Sesudah sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur. (slightly more formal)
All are grammatically correct; the main difference is formality and style rather than meaning.
Malay often places time expressions at the beginning of the sentence to set the context early. This is very natural:
- Selepas sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
You can also move the time phrase later:
- Saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur selepas sekolah.
Both are correct. The version with Selepas sekolah at the beginning slightly emphasizes when the action happens, while the later placement is more neutral. In everyday speech, both orders are commonly used.
All three relate to how often something happens:
- selalu – “always” or “often”, depending on context
- Saya selalu buat kerja rumah. = I always/often do homework.
- selalunya – usually, generally (describes what normally happens)
- Saya selalunya buat kerja rumah. = I usually do homework.
- biasanya – usually, normally (very close in meaning to selalunya)
- Biasanya saya buat kerja rumah.
In your sentence, selalunya suggests a habitual but not absolute routine – it’s what you normally do after school, but not necessarily every single time. You could replace it with biasanya without really changing the meaning:
- Selepas sekolah, saya biasanya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
Buat is the root verb, and membuat is the meN- prefixed form of the same verb.
- buat – very common in everyday spoken Malay; completely acceptable and natural in conversation.
- membuat – more formal; often seen in writing, official contexts, or careful speech.
So:
- Saya selalunya buat kerja rumah… (very natural in speech)
- Saya selalunya membuat kerja rumah… (more formal, e.g. in essays)
Both are grammatically correct; your sentence uses the more conversational style.
Literally, kerja rumah is “work (of) the house”, but in most school-related contexts it actually means homework (assignments given by a teacher to do at home).
Common uses:
- kerja rumah – most commonly “homework” in a school context
- kerja sekolah – also “schoolwork/homework”; a bit clearer if you want to stress it’s from school
- kerja rumah tangga / kerja-kerja rumah – “housework” (chores like cleaning, cooking, etc.)
In your sentence, because of sekolah earlier in the sentence and the typical pattern, kerja rumah is naturally understood as homework, not cleaning the house.
Malay prepositions work roughly like this here:
- di – at/in a location (no movement implied)
- di bilik tidur = in/at the bedroom
- ke – to (movement towards a place)
- Saya pergi ke bilik tidur. = I go to the bedroom.
- pada – “on/at” in more abstract or formal senses; rarely used for plain physical location like this.
- dalam – in/inside (emphasizing the inside of something)
- dalam bilik tidur = inside the bedroom (slight extra emphasis on being inside)
In your sentence, you’re describing where you do your homework, not movement, so di bilik tidur is the natural choice.
On its own, that sounds incomplete or odd, because Malay usually keeps the subject pronoun in simple statements like this.
However, in a conversation where the subject is already very clear, people sometimes drop saya:
- A: Selepas sekolah kamu buat apa? (What do you do after school?)
- B: Selepas sekolah, selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
Here, dropping saya is possible because it’s obvious who is speaking. For a standalone sentence, especially in writing or exercises, it’s better (and more natural) to keep saya.
Malay does not mark tense (past/present/future) on the verb the way English does. Instead, it uses:
- time expressions – e.g. selepas sekolah (after school)
- adverbs of frequency – e.g. selalunya (usually)
Together, Selepas sekolah + selalunya signal a habitual action, which in English is usually expressed with the present simple (“I usually do my homework…”).
The same structure could refer to past habits if the time word changes, e.g.:
- Dulu, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
= In the past, I usually did my homework in the bedroom.
The comma is a punctuation choice, not a grammatical requirement of Malay itself.
- Selepas sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
- Selepas sekolah saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
Both are acceptable. The comma simply marks a pause after the introductory time phrase, which can make the sentence clearer and more natural to read, especially in written form. In formal writing, the comma is generally recommended.
Yes, that is natural and grammatical. Some points:
- Biasanya at the start is very common:
Biasanya, saya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur selepas sekolah. - You moved selepas sekolah to the end; that’s fine and still clear.
Meaning-wise, it’s almost the same:
- Selepas sekolah, saya selalunya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur.
- Biasanya saya buat kerja rumah di bilik tidur selepas sekolah.
Both describe a usual after-school routine; the differences are mostly in rhythm and which part of the sentence feels slightly more emphasized (time vs typicality), but in everyday use they’re effectively interchangeable.