I had my first Mandarin tutoring session this Friday, and I will have another session today. Entering the meeting, I had a vague outline of my plan to begin my language learning, but I quickly realized that I needed to create more structure in my schedule and delve more into the processes I would use to build my understanding. Last summer, I decided to begin learning Mandarin on Duolingo in my free time, and while I did realize that it was not designed for a necessarily academic program, I was excited to find that I had been able to remember a little vocabulary and proper writing style, as well as come to understand how basic sentences were constructed. However, I knew at the beginning of my class that I lacked pronunciation experience and would need to understand how to practice and apply it. I also wanted to become much more familiar with more words – learning about the word frequency lists gave me a good place to begin learning the words I wanted to memorize. It was encouraging to see that I remembered several of the most common ones from my summer practice (when I had the time, I would write the characters according to the Duolingo writing guide and repeat them to memorize them) but I had at the same time forgotten how to write some of them properly or recognized the character but not necessarily its meaning. I planned to ask for tips on how to acquire more vocabulary. At the beginning of my session, we discussed some plans, but I realized that I still needed to acquire more learning materials; I did want to ask for some recommendations on shows and music that would build my familiarity, and I learned that many Chinese textbooks generally used in classes could sometimes be inefficient or difficult to understand, but I saw that it would be important to have some kind of recommended structure or progression to keep in mind. I also realized that I would need to set more defined and frequent goals to track progress.
I had planned to spend a large part of the first day learning about the phonetic structure and pronunciation, so we progressed through the list of Pinyin symbols and sounds. My musical background was helpful here (it was exciting to see how I might be able to use one of the intelligences last week’s quiz had listed for me), as I was more able to discuss how to produce the difference in certain sounds and distinguish between tones. I also appreciated the following activity, where I matched sounds to their Pinyin characters to construct words, and I did recognize a large gap between my abilities to produce the sounds after being prompted and combine them to create words, so I noted that, for the regular pronunciation practice I want to implement for myself, I should practice both basic sounds and stringing together words to challenge myself to be strong in both aspects. I also learned a little grammar from some of the words, which reminded me to be ready in the second lesson to ask about the forms of grammar and how clearly the rules can be applied. I know that the systems have notable differences – for example, as I understood it, I learned that using “le” at the end of a sentence could signify past tense, but also might function something like the Spanish word “ya” – but I want to be able to compare and contrast various grammar rules and be aware of the ones that I will use most frequently to communicate.
Since my lesson, I have investigated more materials and found various frequency lists, as well as investigated the syllabi for the abroad and Richmond-taught classes I am hoping to take in the future. I also found practice tests that I hope to use to measure myself at different points throughout the semester, and I will ask for advice from other students and professors about their learning journeys. On the whole, I am excited to discover what more I can do both to prepare and to accelerate my learning.
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