Article
Originally posted on July 29th, 2008
Learning the Chinese language in this particular setting is extremely different from anything I’ve done before in the subject area. Within the first couple of days, I’ve noticed three major differences that have greatly impacted my studies. At school in America, my class is more than twice as large, which, while it makes it easier to “hide,” it also takes some pressure off of the students. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, only time will tell. My impression so far is that I’m still getting used to the fact that it allows for more interactive methods of teaching. Today, for instance, each member of the class had a distinct phrase, and using these phrases, we had to make sentences that, as a whole, represent a story. This might be more difficult in a class with nearly 20 people. The very first thing that struck me in my Chinese classes at Yucai School was that our teachers began talking to us in Chinese, and they did not stop. At home, my teacher speaks in English to us, for the most part. She only uses Chinese when actuallyteaching us something in Chinese, or in review. This is probably my favorite change. I feel as if listening to Chinese while learning Chinese will only immerse me more. Maybe it gets a little confusing when we have to give definitions, themselves, in Chinese, but I think, for the most part, this will really help. The last, and most significant, change would be the increase in the workload. In an ideal world, every student could forever remember all of the vocabulary we learn and exactly how to use it in specific patterns. Hopefully, though, everyone knows we do not live in an ideal world. My concern with this kind of intensive learning is that I’ll just end up studying for a test, never to remember any of this afterwards. However, that definitely doesn’t have to be the case. I think it’ll take some time for me to find the best method of study, and when I figure out what it is, then I’ll make sure to employ it. I want to walk away from all of this with a lot of things, but a greater knowledge of the Chinese language is high up on that list.