Chinese Lessons
I’ve had about a month of Chinese lessons so far, and I’m tentatively calling it a success. There’s been no quantum leap in my Chinese ability yet – it’s early days – but I can feel some slow and steady progress is occurring. An interesting phenomenon I’ve experienced: I’m still having trouble understanding as usual ( 听不懂), but 5 minutes later, as if a background process in my brain had been quietly started and working away, I’ve suddenly realised what someone was trying to ask or tell me. “Oh, that’s what they wanted!” Hopefully, this 5 minute lag will eventually reduce down to the 500 milliseconds or so I need to have a normal conversation. Gotta start somewhere, it beats the complete timeouts I’ve had until now.
I started off with 1 or 1.5 hour lessons in the mornings when I hoped my brain was freshest. We chose a book to work through (Schaum’s Chinese Vocabulary, which I recommend) but the lessons pretty quickly became work – I got bored of conversations about airports, taxis and hotels, and I think the teacher got bored as well, especially when I was lax in doing my preparation. I also had to spend more time memorizing the book’s vocab and less on ChinesePod and other avenues of study. “Excuse me, which way is Beijing Avenue?” gets dull pretty quickly and I started to fall behind in the preparation. One vaguely racy lesson on underwear wasn’t enough to keep things interesting, so I sat down and had a think about how to keep things on track and make the lessons something to look forward to.
I made the following suggestions. First, use ChinesePod content in the lessons alongside the books. This was the most successful suggestion (see below). However, we also tried number quizzes so I could get used to counting and paying without having to pause to think and I suggested we try some TPR (Total Physical Response).
TPR is a really interesting method – it basically involves being bossed around with simple commands for a while. The theory says – and I have no reason to dispute it – that the brain forms firmer connections under the pressure of responding physically to an immediate command. “Stand up!” “Sit down!” “Give me the glass!”, once repeated a few dozen times, do become second nature without the need to explicitly parse the words in your head. The trick to this method, which of course is not suitable for imparting complicated grammar or advanced vocabulary (“Recite the impact of high unemployment on consumer spending!”), is to find someone who can actually confidently boss you around in a very repetitive way without feeling silly or bored. This is no mean feat and we haven’t had much success there yet. I’ll definitely never forget “站起来！” (stand up) though.
Oriental Pearl by night
Perhaps the best innovation was shifting some of the morning lessons to the evening and getting out and about in the city. My teacher is pretty good and keeping me on track and forcing me to discuss and describe the things I see. At the same time, we’re going for a walk, riding the bus and seeing the city. Makes a great change from sitting and reading or reciting. Not only does it make the lessons something to look forward too, I’m sure the brain benefits from the extra stimulation, and absorbs the new words along with all the new sights and experiences.
That’s probably why the ChinesePod has been so useful as well, as the content is very engaging. My teacher totally gets a kick out of lessons involving gangsters, pick-up artists and zombies. I’ve realized there’s an awful lot of value in making the teacher’s job more fun. For my part I enjoy doing the voices and roleplaying in Chinese – not as good as real roleplaying, but I’m absorbing all the vocab and patterns much better than before.
In the meantime I’ve been doing a lot more Internet chatting in Chinese which is helping. Once my literacy improves a bit, so I don’t have to resort to WenLin all the time, I must hunt down a QQ account.
Is a breakthrough in my ability coming? Only time will tell but I am yet to tire of this whole enterprise, so we’ll see!