The lessons are well constructed: I have four teachers, originating from China, Singapore and Taiwan. They basically all have the same things to do, and when one stops, the other just goes on where we had ended up. But it’s good to have different teachers: each of them has a somewhat different style. Each lesson is intense for the amount of drilling in it. A fellow student characterized it as “they want us to learn the language like a baby”, which I think is indeed the best way to become fluent in a language. All the time, we are asked to repeat the teacher – as a class or individually. Mistakes are corrected right away. Since the tone of a word can make the difference between “asking” and “kissing”, pronunciation is very important.
We are also asked all the time to compose simple sentences and pronounce them. Since we only know about fifty words, you can imagine they all come down to the same. So far I have resisted the temptation to use one of the more interesting phrases Yiran taught me.
We learn ten new characters every day, and up until now that seems quite doable. Though I wonder how it will be like when the characters keep piling up and become more and more elaborate. But actually, if you know a few basic ones, you can use them to ‘build’ the more complicated characters. I already learnt how to write my name in Chinese: 古小荷 (this may not display on your computer if you don’t have Chinese installed).
I am lucky that I already studied a bit of the language with self-teaching and learnt things from Yiran, and can exercise with her every day. The ones that had no background at all in the language are having a very tough time, since everything is new. A Japanese student told me that she couldn’t sleep after the first day of lessons – so many new impressions.
Meanwhile I am tempted to start using what I learnt in everyday life, when ordering food or taking a taxi, but I am hindered by the fact that I am white and people thus automatically assume I only speak English. I am not sure what is worse: the Asian people in the class are constantly talked to in Chinese, in the assumption that they will understand. Well, that could be a motive in itself to learn the language.
We are also asked all the time to compose simple sentences and pronounce them. Since we only know about fifty words, you can imagine they all come down to the same. So far I have resisted the temptation to use one of the more interesting phrases Yiran taught me.
We learn ten new characters every day, and up until now that seems quite doable. Though I wonder how it will be like when the characters keep piling up and become more and more elaborate. But actually, if you know a few basic ones, you can use them to ‘build’ the more complicated characters. I already learnt how to write my name in Chinese: 古小荷 (this may not display on your computer if you don’t have Chinese installed).
I am lucky that I already studied a bit of the language with self-teaching and learnt things from Yiran, and can exercise with her every day. The ones that had no background at all in the language are having a very tough time, since everything is new. A Japanese student told me that she couldn’t sleep after the first day of lessons – so many new impressions.
Meanwhile I am tempted to start using what I learnt in everyday life, when ordering food or taking a taxi, but I am hindered by the fact that I am white and people thus automatically assume I only speak English. I am not sure what is worse: the Asian people in the class are constantly talked to in Chinese, in the assumption that they will understand. Well, that could be a motive in itself to learn the language.