So I, at least for the timebeing, have returned to the original title format that I used when I started this blog. Anyhow, a few days ago, I decided to develop a more focused plan of study. It is rather ambitious, and seems a bit too much right now. I will go ahead and describe the plan that I have designed...
- I plan to study an upper-intermediate and an advanced Chinesepod lesson each week
- Work my paper flashcards and Anki every day- specifically, I want to catch up on my hanzi deck. Right now, I have about a 650 card backlog (yeah, and lately it has been whipping my ass).
- Do some type of practice test once per week, either out of the HSK exam book, or on Chinesepod.
- Continue to transcribe the Qing wen lessons to my notebook
- work on listening extensively, i.e, while on the treadmill at the gym, I will listen to Advanced level lessons.
- other stuff to a lesser extent than before.
Well, I started off strong, but yesterday and today, I just... basically... Don't fucking feel like studying Chinese... period.... Yeah... so I am going to put my notebooks down and ... like do no more studying related work at all this evening. I hope I feel better about this tomorrow than I did today, or I may need to rethink my priorities, or scale-back the plan that I have.
Thats all for tonight.
Showing posts with label frustration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frustration. Show all posts
Friday, July 26, 2013
Sunday, June 6, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
01 year 03 week into study
What a frustrating few days. My computer is acting weird, specifically, it takes forever for the words that I type to show up. This will be a short update. I have flashcards for about 322 terms, acquisition on about 285 or so, and proficiency on about 190. I did only a few podcast lessons. this is too frustrating, I guess this is it for now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)