I have now had about five weeks of instruction in Mandarin. I have been following the plan set out in my syllabus, and tutoring meetings have been regular every week. I have also created something of a pattern to follow – for the first part of the week, I watch some television and review vocabulary by rewriting and practicing pronunciation for the characters I learned recently, and for the second part, I learn new vocabulary and practice forming sentences and speaking more quickly and “fluently”. I then meet with my tutor on the weekends. As my learning continues, I believe I can expand my practice strategies, and am seeking new ways to do so, but for now, I feel that my system allows me to reinforce topics and accelerate my learning. I have also submitted two cultural posts since my first Language Journal post, and I continue to learn more about Chinese culture during my lessons (especially when I learn about the history of the characters I am introduced to). I am beginning to form a plan for my research project, and I am excited to continue connecting the language I am studying with culture.
The topics I have covered so far include Pinyin and pronunciation, the past and future tense, comparison and numbering, some “survival” phrases and forming questions, and adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions. For the most part, I am able to understand the grammatical concepts when I learn them, although I am struggling in some cases to create the correct order for the sentences I form. My major challenge is memorization, which is somewhat frustrating for me, as I generally trust my ability to memorize without too much difficulty. I remember spoken characters fairly well, and reading is becoming more accessible, but I am coming to realize just how much effort I will need to remember characters in order to write them accurately. As I am trying to learn a large number quickly, I am recognizing the patterns in the writing system, but this also means that it is easier for me to confuse elements of some characters with others. I have also realized that, for quite some time, I have had at least some level of familiarity with Spanish, and I have been able to make inferences about words I did not recognize and circumlocute effectively. However, here, I am a complete beginner, and I have not reached the level where I can quickly form connections and “fill in the blanks” for some of the words I am missing.
I have found that practicing speaking and constructing sentences pushes me to formulate ideas faster, and I believe that my lessons have generally created a good balance between taking time to review errors and working to make my speaking more natural by continuing a conversation despite mistakes. I am working to open more of my lesson time to conversation – for the first few lessons, I needed a good basis in the words I would use and the topics I learned, but I am now hoping to divide the lessons less evenly between review and conversation. I am also planning to create “tests” or quizzes for myself so that I can more clearly identify benchmarks and focus on different vocabulary in turn in order to learn it more successfully. I am excited to continue with my practice and watch my growth as I cover new topics and consistently evaluate strategies that will best help me to learn.
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