My happy everyday Chinese life... As posted on Facebook

This note will contain the same kind of content that I shared in my previous notes that are titled 'The life of a Chinese learner living in China... ', although it may not be as specific to language learning as previous notes. As far as the title, Chinese people will, from time to time, send me a text message saying 'I wish you happy everyday'. It is a Chinese thing I guess. Although I am not 100% sure, it is a literal translation of 我祝你天天都高兴.

Anyhow, not to brag, but I really feel that my speaking has really improved in the past couple of months. A big reason for this may be all the traveling that I have done in the past few months. I have had opportunities to practice the skills that I have been working on over the past couple of years. Tonight, I was talking to a Chinese friend at a restaurant. When I first met her, her English was way better than my Chinese. Now, the difference is not as great. We spent most of the time talking tonight, and I understood most of her, and she understood me. Actually, I may have passed her, but it is definitely not the blowout that it was when I first met her.

I was able to order water delivery for myself, yet another way that my language learning is allowing me to be more independent. I don't think I made any serious mistake with my Chinese, but it helps if I tell the water company the correct apartment number. I live in apartment 601, not 106. Ha ha ha.

I have changed my studying method (for those of you who care, you can read about it at length on my blog 'amesburygeorgechinesestudy.blogspot.com'). I hope to really improve with my new method.

The thought that I want to leave with today is a little bit of a tirade. I am a little upset with people who are critical to those who cannot speak English well. After living in China for over a year, and spending most of this time studying hours per day, and trying to get things done on a daily basis, and making mistakes all the time and confusing myself and others, I can really say that I truly know what it is like to live in a foreign country where I can't speak the native language well. For those of you who are hard on those who live in the US, but cannot speak English well, come back to me and complain after you have lived abroad in a foreign country. Okay, I'm done, and thats off my chest.

I guess that is all I want to say right now.

The life of a Chinese learner living in China... part 3 As posted on Facebook

At this point in the game, I can do alot in China. In this way, I am fairly independent. As I commented on before, people speak with different accents and dialects. Some are easier to understand than others. With some people, it is like I can't speak Chinese at all. With others, they can understand everything I say. I talk with one Chinese woman who runs a gift shop downtown. She can understand me. I am able to speak what is commonly understood to be the main dialect of Chinese. If I am in Beijing, I can talk with almost anyone. I have a fairly decent vocabulary, but my grammar is awful. From what I'm told, my accent isn't that bad, but not that good either. People are able to understand me. My listening is not that good. I can read some Chinese, but there are limitations to what I can do. I can understand a basic text message from a Chinese friend, but I cannot read a newspaper. What I hope to improve on is listening and grammar. I think that if these things improve, I will be able to speak Chinese quite well. I guess that is all I want to say right now.

The life of a Chinese learner living in China... part 2 As posted on Facebook

Things have improved since my last note. About two or three weeks ago, I was spending time with some friends. I was talking to Charlie, a Chinese man, and like usual, really having trouble communicating. Shortly thereafter, I started talking to him, and I was understanding some of what he said to me. I am not trying to say that after that moment, I was fluent, but I was more confident. I have been spending time at the local store talking to the women that work there. I find that I can express many of my ideas in Chinese, what a great feeling! After so much time of frustration and heartache, my work is paying off. There are many words I do not know, but I have a lot of linguistic tools at my disposal that I can use. Granted, those women have to use some language barrier gymnastics to understand my GaoYuan Hua (高原话） GaoYuan (高原)　is my Chinese name, and hua (话) is one of the Chinese words for language. What I am saying is that I make many mistakes when speaking Chinese that sometimes I feel I am speaking my own dialect of Chinese.
I find that I am better able to express myself if I feel confused, frustrated or upset. These are things I could not do in the past.
Where I live, people speak different types of Chinese. Some people are easier to understand than others. Sometimes, I talk to people whose pronunciation is so different that I cannot understand them at all, and sometimes I want to correct them. The local accent is very difficult for me to understand, it is remarkably different than standard Mandarin. Well, at least I think it is. Perhaps a native speaker may not think so.
I guess that is all I want to say right now.

The life of a Chinese learner living in China... As posted on Facebook

I think that I can understand how hard it is for a foreigner to learn a new language. I have been living in China for 8 months now, and in addition to that, I had studied Chinese for around 10 months while living in the states. I have some experience with this. I must say, it can be difficult at times. Learning Chinese for an English speaker is probably easier than it would be for a Chinese person to learn English in the United States, because many people can speak at least some English. When these Chinese people see a foreigner, they are often friendly and eager to use the little bit of English that they know. This means that they may be willing to be helpful, and patient when I try to speak Chinese. However, there are not many Chinese speakers in the United States, so this is not very likely.

Anyhow, my life in China is filled with constant frustration, confusion, and irritation. Doing any task in the street is always difficult, because my Chinese is not good. I study Chinese for several hours on most days, but I still know very little after all this time. Everyday, the fact that my language skills are poor is immediately apparent. As I learn more Chinese, I find that, in some ways, it actually gets harder to function. When I knew very little, people were more patient with me. Now, people expect me to be able to speak better than I actually can, so they just get frustrated with me. Sometimes, Chinese people, meaning to be helpful, will sometimes throw English words in their Chinese sentence. This causes problems for two reasons; first, their pronunciation is often very poor, so I don't realize that they are trying to speak an English word until later. And second, they will say the English for words that I already understand the Chinese for anyway. In this way, this is no help and serves only to frustrate matters worse.

I recently hired a Chinese person to help me work on my oral Chinese. I am one of the very few Chinese learners whose reading and writing is better than my speaking. For most people, their speaking and listening is good, but they cannot read or write. After my first lesson, I got discouraged because she spent lots of time talking in English. I might have to find a new tutor.

I get so frustrated sometimes. Some days, I might spend a three hour session studying Chinese, then go to the street to do something, and fumble, stumble, and crawl my way through the most basic Chinese interaction. As I said earlier, I am constantly reminded of my poor speaking ability. My reaction sometimes is to simply say 'screw it, this is too hard. Perhaps I will just play video games during my spare time' but I know that if I practice, I will improve. I know this because I am improving. It is very slow, but I am getting better each day. I just have to maintain the regimen of studying that I have been doing since around January or thereabouts.

I know this is not well written, but it is a first draft, and I don't really care to revise and edit. This is what you get. Sorry.