毛毛成为纵火狂者 (Maomao lights fires: Part 2)
那天的晚上和几天以后，毛毛的做梦都盈满橙黄色的火。天天他白日梦了烟，兴奋，混乱。可是他试跟其他的动物讨论的时候，他们都认为毛毛生病了。一只鸟拜访毛毛的树。毛毛说：“那个火灾非常有意思的呢！”
葵花凤头鹦鹉回答：“怎么兴奋啊？火灾很厉害。好在这次火没有扩展 !一个很大的火灾能毁灭我们的树林！”
胖胖也劝毛毛不提到火灾。“有某些动物记起来很严重的过去的火灾。你应该多体贴。” 终于毛毛停止谈论火灾。可是他的脑子仍然在考虑。
可惜，一天以后，毛毛获得一盒火柴。他心中想：“我点很小的火。” 他要提醒自己以前的火灾怎么样。他首先悄悄离开他的树，找树林的一个安静的角。好像他自己知道他会干调皮的一件事。
他擦了一根火柴。明亮的火，那么有趣！另外一根，很好玩！另外一根，另外一根。。。。。毛毛想知道，一个叶子会不会燃烧？ 他把一片叶子摘下来了。紧张，他拿叶子，拿火柴，把他们放得更近。。。。。
你知道吗，桉树叶子有很特别的一个特点？ 里面它们有很多桉树油。桉树油的气味很香，对感冒不错。桉树油也很易燃的。毛毛赶忙知道了。
噼啪！叶子马上被烧掉了。毛毛发现这个结果很满意。他拿另外一片叶子。噼噼啪啪！这次毛毛的爪子被一点儿烧得焦糊，d他扔掉了燃烧着的叶子。但是其他的叶子赶快着火。毛毛的短的胳膊够不到烧着的叶子。他突然恐慌了。他了解他没有办法灭活，决定爬下树为了营救自己！
毛毛到地面以后，他闻到烟。他应该做什么？ 他考虑回家，隐藏自己。然后他记起来朋友的话：“一个很大的火灾能毁灭我们的树林！” 可怜的毛毛想象他的家，他的朋友胖胖都被烧掉。他决定，最好是叫消防队。
“火灾！火灾！消防队！” 其他的动物匆忙得从他们的家跑出来了。他们看到燃烧的树就开始叫消防队。不久消防队来了，6只鸸鹋和一只很大的红色的袋鼠。好在他们很快能灭掉火。
人群聚拢来了。毛毛感觉很宽慰的，可是马上怕他会收到很严重的处罚。
“你就是毛毛啊？” 那只袋鼠，消防队长，走进了毛毛。毛毛担心地点了头。
“那你是那只很勇敢的考拉！棒极了！要是你没有发警报，火灾一定是很厉害的一件事情。” 他对人群说：“你们都应该学习毛毛的榜样！”
很多动物来祝贺毛毛，他感觉很骄傲了。毛毛看到胖胖怀疑地看着他。毛毛短暂地感到羞愧了。然后一个消防员把他的帽子放在毛毛的头上，毛毛马上忘了他的羞耻。
毛毛成为纵火狂者 (Maomao lights fires: Part 1)
This is part one of my children’s story about a Koala who lights bushfires. (In English I would call it “Captain Robot the Pyromaniac Koala.”)
Illustrations by Avril Jean.
一
毛毛是一只考拉。像所有的考拉他住在澳大利亚的树林。他天天都坐在树上，啃着桉树叶。他的生活又安静又无聊，可是大多数考拉很喜欢这样的生活。
毛毛 (Maomao the Koala)
毛毛就是很懒惰的一只动物，可是他很好奇。他的好朋友是一只非常胖的袋熊叫胖胖。袋熊都住在地底下面。胖胖的地洞在毛毛的树的下面。毛毛很喜欢看望胖胖，问他树林的新闻是什么？因为胖胖住在地上，他常常跟各种各样的动物聊天。
对毛毛来说，树林的新闻从来都很没意思。比如说：一只袋鼠告诉他们哪儿有多汁的草，或者一只鸸鹋认为哪儿是下蛋的好地方。真正兴奋的事情很少见。当咀嚼桉树叶的时候，毛毛总是想着去冒险。
某天上午毛毛爬下了他的树为了跟胖胖聊一下天。突然，他们都听到了很大声的尖叫：“火灾！火灾！”树林里马上到处都是混乱。鸟在天空中很大声地叫，动物向四面八方逃跑。毛毛非常兴奋了。他不久闻到了烟味，也感觉一点怕。
胖胖看起来很担心，可是毛毛问了一只跳动得袋鼠，“火灾在哪里？”
“我不知道！”
毛毛对胖胖说：“我要去看看火！”
胖胖摇了摇头。“你疯了吗？火灾太危险的！你要被烧掉啊?”
正当胖胖回答了，毛毛看到了4只鸸鹋。他们带了红色的帽子和带了一条很长的输水软管。消防员！
毛毛兴奋说：“我跟着他们！再见！”胖胖看起来不可思议得。
考拉是很慢的动物，可是毛毛跑得是出人意外快的。他到了火灾的时候，他看到了一棵很高的树。那棵树在熊熊地燃烧着。毛毛看了火，入迷的。
毛毛看了20分钟燃烧的树。终于消防员灭掉了火。那是毛毛的生活里的最兴奋的一天。他很想成为消防员，但是考拉不适合这样的工作。因为他们住在树上，他们的腿很短，和他们跑得 很慢。鸸鹋的腿好长，袋鼠的速度也非常快。可怜的毛毛肯定是世界上最慢的消防员。而且，毛毛太懒惰了，根本做那么重要的工作。他跑着了回家了，马上告诉胖胖他看到了什么。
王先生的第三位妻子 – Mr Wang’s Third Wife
(My first attempt at fiction in Chinese.)
小王是一个犹豫不决的男人。他是小男孩的时候，他从来不能决定他要吃什么样的糖果。他自己思考：“这个糖果是比较甜的，可是那种持续的时间比较长。” 小王就是很聪明的人，可是他易于过度分析某事。他上大学晚了一年，因为他不能决定学习什么好。
对爱情来说，他的问题更厉害。刘淑发现了小王是一个又和蔼的，又慷慨的小伙子，可是他的非决定性使她心烦意乱。四年后，他们终于结婚了。只是因为刘淑的父亲，也是小王的公司的总经理。
小王和刘淑常常辩论他们应该住在哪儿，做什么菜好，哪个电视节目是最好看的？ 小王几乎让刘淑发疯了。可是为孩子争吵是最厉害的。
刘淑说，“我要一个小宝宝。我们为什么拖延？”
小王回答：“现在不是最好的时间。我的工作很忙，如果我们拖延一年，我肯定被提升了。到那时我们生子。”
一年以后，他们再谈论一样的题目。
Bad Chinese strategies, photos and an update
My experiment with learning Chinese was more or less a failure – I’ve definitely made some improvement, but squandered the opportunity by not putting enough time and effort into it outside of the lessons. Partly laziness and partly the constraints of having to live a busy life. (Apologies to my teacher, Elaine.) I’m not giving up, but I’ll have to really think about what strategy I will use in the future. So I can add to the list of Chinese-learning strategies that don’t work:
- Doing nothing and feeling guilty about it
- Living near Chinatown
- Getting a Chinese-speaking girlfriend and hoping for the best
- Watching Crouching Tiger and Gong Fu over and over
- Having daily lessons but not doing the homework and vocab review properly
Water calligraphy at Lu Xun Park
Absence makes the brain grow fonder
My lifestyle is not perfectly conducive to language learning. I have a busy job, several time-consuming extra-curricular activities, and a fair bit of travel. The study is still a priority for me, but occasionally life gets in the way and I fall behind. The last month and a bit I spent in Australia and England, and though I managed to do some Skype lessons with my teacher, I did virtually no review, listened to very few ChinesePod lessons, and did very little homework of any kind.
The result must inevitably be a decline in my facility with the language. The feeling I had, especially on returning to China was quite the opposite – I felt more relaxed and confident speaking Chinese than I did a month before when I had been studying every day. This happened to me once before after a long hiatus. What’s going on? Is the brain using the time to recover and reorganise, or, more likely, one forgets how much one doesn’t know and just gets on with the business of speaking?
I’d really like to know the answer, because it may prove valuable to take breaks from time to time and recover a bit. In the meantime, back to the vocabulary list.
Tone and Colour
Another interesting post over at Sinosplice today on the subject of using colour to learn tones in Mandarin. It seems plausible, but not proven, that colour might be a better way to encode tone information visually than he traditional tone marks – plausible, but not proven.
I’m planning to put it to the test – I’m assembling two vocabular lists which I will study as flashcards only, one list will be colour coded and the other with tone marks as usual. After a week, I’ll see if my retention rates have differed. In general, if I can remember a Chinese word’s spelling but get the tones wrong, I don’t mark it as “known”, so if this method increases retention of tone information, my scores should reflect that. I’ll only test English-Chinese, so I can’t see the colours until I look at the answer. We’ll see if I can glean any useful data. Unfortunately iFlash doesn’t support colour, so it will take a couple of days to make the cards as images.
Interesting to see how the brain works.
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!