My first exam in class was actually much easier than I had thought. It was not in dictation form! Instead, for the first question the teacher would read a long sentence and then ask a question about that sentence to test our oral comprehension. Example: "The cat's in the house, the dog's out of the house. Where's the cat." We only need to know the Chinese characters to write the answer.
Other questions were even easier: in one exercise, we have to fill in one-word (one or two character) gaps in a text, which only requires reading skills and the ability to write those two characters. Other exercises include "make up a sentence from two given words" and multiple-choice among multiple sentences to indicate which one is grammatically correct. The funny bonus about all this, is that the text questionaire contains many, many Chinese characters, mostly used in the context of phrases. So if you possess general reading/guessing skills, you can find characters on the questionaire and then just copy those for your answers!
The way our classes are set up is that grammar and (oral/pinyin) vocabulary knowledge usually exceeds students ability to hand-write characters. Therefore, the entire questionaire is rather easy, provided you actually know how to hand-write the characters needed to answer. But you can copy them from the questionaire itself!
Just the day before the exam I had come to the conclusion that handwriting is a rather useless skill. This exam basically confirmed my belief. I will write more about this later. Now have to go to school!
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
12 February 2009
20 January 2009
plan of attack
Classes at my school make slow progress, because they are designed so that students learn to write almost every word which they learn to speak and understand. The major exception are class room expressions which students have to learn very early in order to understand the teacher. Those are not (all) taught in writing.
Indeed, learning of Chinese characters is impossible unless the characters are repeated and reinforced very often. In class this happens mostly through reading from the book where previous characters are reused. I am pretty sure that students forget all the words which are not repeated often and I think those are quite a few words, since not every word can be used in every lesson. Since the characters are so complex, forgetting ones that you don't use very often is unavoidable. Since I do not have time to learn Chinese, I am convinced that I should only spend this valuable to learn characters which are of personal use to me, so I have a good chance of remembering them later. Anything else is just a waste of time (and of much time!), since it bears no long-term result.
As a consequence of this, I will have to expand my spoken vocabulary much faster than the written one, otherwise I will just not learn enough words for even the most basic conversations. That's why bopomofo and pinyin are so important to me.
For the written part, I have to find out for myself which characters are worth learning. I will probably have to skip many characters we do in school, simply because there's no chance of using them often enough later, and therefore no chance of ever remembering them. I am trying to come up with a list of characters worth learning:
Concluding remark: I would much prefer if the school's classes were separate for conversation and writing, so that student's vocabulary and pronunciation would progress faster and effort on reading/writing concentrates on characters that are really read and written often. This would be good for many people, but unfortunately not so for the school's main clientèle: Asian people who come to Taiwan to study at a university. Those youngsters do indeed need to spend all the time, make the big effort to learn to read as well as possible. Poor dudes, they'll need many years!
(As a contrast/comparison: Asian or other students who came to Western countries only need one (yes, one!) or two years of language learning to be able to successfully attend university. As another comparison, some children in any country but China can already read simple and medium texts before they go to school. Chinese kids, however, need for years of education to reach the same level of literacy!)
Indeed, learning of Chinese characters is impossible unless the characters are repeated and reinforced very often. In class this happens mostly through reading from the book where previous characters are reused. I am pretty sure that students forget all the words which are not repeated often and I think those are quite a few words, since not every word can be used in every lesson. Since the characters are so complex, forgetting ones that you don't use very often is unavoidable. Since I do not have time to learn Chinese, I am convinced that I should only spend this valuable to learn characters which are of personal use to me, so I have a good chance of remembering them later. Anything else is just a waste of time (and of much time!), since it bears no long-term result.
As a consequence of this, I will have to expand my spoken vocabulary much faster than the written one, otherwise I will just not learn enough words for even the most basic conversations. That's why bopomofo and pinyin are so important to me.
For the written part, I have to find out for myself which characters are worth learning. I will probably have to skip many characters we do in school, simply because there's no chance of using them often enough later, and therefore no chance of ever remembering them. I am trying to come up with a list of characters worth learning:
- Those on street-signs (traffic signs, as well as shop-signs).
- Those on menus in restaurants and especially in garage kitchens since the latter have a very short menu written in big letters (on a poster, usually) and I go there often.
- Some basic characters talking about "when and where do we meet?" which I can use in text messages on the cell phone or computer.
Concluding remark: I would much prefer if the school's classes were separate for conversation and writing, so that student's vocabulary and pronunciation would progress faster and effort on reading/writing concentrates on characters that are really read and written often. This would be good for many people, but unfortunately not so for the school's main clientèle: Asian people who come to Taiwan to study at a university. Those youngsters do indeed need to spend all the time, make the big effort to learn to read as well as possible. Poor dudes, they'll need many years!
(As a contrast/comparison: Asian or other students who came to Western countries only need one (yes, one!) or two years of language learning to be able to successfully attend university. As another comparison, some children in any country but China can already read simple and medium texts before they go to school. Chinese kids, however, need for years of education to reach the same level of literacy!)
15 January 2009
so here....
In the last four days, I took part in a class of a different level on each day. So I had different class mates on each day! At least, I know a lot of people now!
The simple fact that I already know quite a bit of spoken Chinese, vocabulary and grammar, but almost no writing at all, throw the system out of its rails. Apparently, all classes at the school teach reading and writing together with the spoken language, which means that progress for the vocabulary and grammar is initially very slow. I would suppose that all language schools in Taiwan do the same.
I think the class which I took today is the one in which I will stay. They are still working with the first level book, but are already half through. I think that I know all the oral material in the book (although I have already forgotten much, since I last learned it). So I won't really learn so much new things, but it gives me a fair chance to learn writing, to practice more fluent speaking and listening and to try to actually remember all the words that I already learned. This first-and-a-half level class is my two hour class. All students of this class take the one-hour-class together with another bunch of students who are in a more advanced two-hour-class. This also offers room to catch some more advanced words and expressions.
Overall, I am happy with this outcome. However, I have also noticed that school does not seem to be the place where I can learn many of the words which I want to learn to get around in Taiwan. But I think overall the environment is excellent to permit me learning those words by myself.
Now, it's time to stop blogging and catch up with writing Chinese!
The simple fact that I already know quite a bit of spoken Chinese, vocabulary and grammar, but almost no writing at all, throw the system out of its rails. Apparently, all classes at the school teach reading and writing together with the spoken language, which means that progress for the vocabulary and grammar is initially very slow. I would suppose that all language schools in Taiwan do the same.
I think the class which I took today is the one in which I will stay. They are still working with the first level book, but are already half through. I think that I know all the oral material in the book (although I have already forgotten much, since I last learned it). So I won't really learn so much new things, but it gives me a fair chance to learn writing, to practice more fluent speaking and listening and to try to actually remember all the words that I already learned. This first-and-a-half level class is my two hour class. All students of this class take the one-hour-class together with another bunch of students who are in a more advanced two-hour-class. This also offers room to catch some more advanced words and expressions.
Overall, I am happy with this outcome. However, I have also noticed that school does not seem to be the place where I can learn many of the words which I want to learn to get around in Taiwan. But I think overall the environment is excellent to permit me learning those words by myself.
Now, it's time to stop blogging and catch up with writing Chinese!
13 January 2009
language learning -- the first impression
The school has two teachers for each class, one teaches two hours a day, that's the main class, and the other teaches one more hour per day, that's the practice class where the focus is on exercises and talking. Teachers seem to be very free in how they want to teach, they can use pinyin or bopomofo or both. They also have different books for both of the classes although the book for the one-hour class is not obligatory. One thing that's really good is that the teachers work a lot with dialogue, objects (or pictures of objects) and some role-playing, there is not much English spoken and this seems to be very effective. Much better to associate Chinese words with the things they denote than with words in another language (which for most students is only a foreign language, too!).
Learning the language is really easier, when it interfaces with real life. Once I have eaten, tang2 mien4 I know the difference to gan4 mien4. And also, the word for hot/spicy is very important so I can verify that I can actually eat the food which I buy. It seems that I have to do the discovery of Taiwanese menus and the related vocabulary on my own. First, ask the food sellers what they have, then go home and learn the characters for those words, and then go back and read the menu. Why can I not just translate the menu with a dictionary? Well, because I don't yet have the magic ability to find a Chinese character in the dictionary!
I wonder how long it will take to learn the characters for all the Chinese words which I can already correctly say and understand...
Learning the language is really easier, when it interfaces with real life. Once I have eaten, tang2 mien4 I know the difference to gan4 mien4. And also, the word for hot/spicy is very important so I can verify that I can actually eat the food which I buy. It seems that I have to do the discovery of Taiwanese menus and the related vocabulary on my own. First, ask the food sellers what they have, then go home and learn the characters for those words, and then go back and read the menu. Why can I not just translate the menu with a dictionary? Well, because I don't yet have the magic ability to find a Chinese character in the dictionary!
I wonder how long it will take to learn the characters for all the Chinese words which I can already correctly say and understand...
what now?
As I was talking to the student office today, it turned out that no second level class started this month. I was invited to listen in to the third level class, which I did for two hours today, interleaved with two hours of my first level class. The third level class was really interesting, students seemed to be really fluent in Mandarin when it came to discussions and the vocabulary introduced in the class seemed really advanced to me: the first lesson was about describing faces from the teeth, via lips, nose, eyes, ears and hair with several special attributes introduced for each part of the face. Overall, mostly words which you wouldn't use in your daily life (except if faces were your business).
The atmosphere in the class was really great: students seemed to know each other (probably from taking earlier levels together, although some students just joined the class at this level) and were having much fun together. And those people from all the different parts of the world were mostly talking Mandarin among each other. That's really cool! Although I could not easily keep up with this advanced class it was fun and just from hearing those people and taking part in discussions (which are much slowed down when I speak), I learn a lot.
In the other third level class which I took the teacher was using zhuyin (bopomofo), which I thus saw used for the first time. I already understand a little bit of it and think I could learn it quickly by myself when I need it. However, the larger part of this class consisted in reading example texts and dialogue for some new vocabulary, and this text was entirely written in characters and to my big surprise (if I remember correctly) all the students in the class could read this text and knew all the characters! At this point of the class, I was totally knocked out. I already knew some of the characters, but reading an entire text is still beyond my abilities. (My surprise how well those students could read comes from how little attention the first level teachers seem to pay to the writing of characters.)
Now, after taking both first level and third level classes today, I am pretty sure to belong into the second level. But what should I do now? Take the first level class? Take the third level class? Negotiate a special solution? I know one other person from my class who might be ready for a second level class... probably that's not enough to start such a class, but maybe we could get at least one hour of second level each day and take the other two hours with the first level people. Anyway, when we are bored in the first level class, we spend the time writing characters and one of the teachers will at least write characters on the board, so we can copy them (given some basic knowledge about stroke order which we can acquire ourselves).
So, I'm in for another early-morning meeting with Ms. Li. Once again, let's see how things go.
The atmosphere in the class was really great: students seemed to know each other (probably from taking earlier levels together, although some students just joined the class at this level) and were having much fun together. And those people from all the different parts of the world were mostly talking Mandarin among each other. That's really cool! Although I could not easily keep up with this advanced class it was fun and just from hearing those people and taking part in discussions (which are much slowed down when I speak), I learn a lot.
In the other third level class which I took the teacher was using zhuyin (bopomofo), which I thus saw used for the first time. I already understand a little bit of it and think I could learn it quickly by myself when I need it. However, the larger part of this class consisted in reading example texts and dialogue for some new vocabulary, and this text was entirely written in characters and to my big surprise (if I remember correctly) all the students in the class could read this text and knew all the characters! At this point of the class, I was totally knocked out. I already knew some of the characters, but reading an entire text is still beyond my abilities. (My surprise how well those students could read comes from how little attention the first level teachers seem to pay to the writing of characters.)
Now, after taking both first level and third level classes today, I am pretty sure to belong into the second level. But what should I do now? Take the first level class? Take the third level class? Negotiate a special solution? I know one other person from my class who might be ready for a second level class... probably that's not enough to start such a class, but maybe we could get at least one hour of second level each day and take the other two hours with the first level people. Anyway, when we are bored in the first level class, we spend the time writing characters and one of the teachers will at least write characters on the board, so we can copy them (given some basic knowledge about stroke order which we can acquire ourselves).
So, I'm in for another early-morning meeting with Ms. Li. Once again, let's see how things go.
12 January 2009
start from zero
As I wrote last week, instead of a level assesment test, the teacher just asked me whether I can write and on hearing my "no" sent me to the beginner's class. So, today I was expecting to get a brush-up on pronunciation and the pinyin/zhuyin notations. I think I could really need some perfection of my pronunciation, focusing on some of the similar-sounding sounds (like q, j, ch, zh, z, c) and the tones.
However, unfortunately and surprisingly, our first class today started with a very short introduction for tones (which I admit was useful, because the teacher explained the third tone different from how I know it and I think that helped me), but the she went on teaching us some words with special attention to the tone, but with no attention to the sound. In fact, she was using only Pinyin and assuming that we all know it. Also, I hoped to see some writing, but there was none at all.
So I was a little disappointed and I am questioning what value there is in a mostly oral course when I explicitly stated that I want to learn to write. I also just had a look at my school book and saw that it mostly contains things which I have already learned two or three times over.
So I went to the school's office after lunch and they told me to speak to Ms. Li tomorrow Morning about how to proceed.
I think that learning to write is mostly done at home by yourself and I already started learning the week I arrived here. I just hope that I can attend a class which also talks about writing each character as it is introduced. I have seen that done in other places and I think it doesn't take too much class time away if the teacher just shows the character, talks about it's radical and components and gives a chart of the stroke order.
So much for now, let's see how things go.
However, unfortunately and surprisingly, our first class today started with a very short introduction for tones (which I admit was useful, because the teacher explained the third tone different from how I know it and I think that helped me), but the she went on teaching us some words with special attention to the tone, but with no attention to the sound. In fact, she was using only Pinyin and assuming that we all know it. Also, I hoped to see some writing, but there was none at all.
So I was a little disappointed and I am questioning what value there is in a mostly oral course when I explicitly stated that I want to learn to write. I also just had a look at my school book and saw that it mostly contains things which I have already learned two or three times over.
So I went to the school's office after lunch and they told me to speak to Ms. Li tomorrow Morning about how to proceed.
I think that learning to write is mostly done at home by yourself and I already started learning the week I arrived here. I just hope that I can attend a class which also talks about writing each character as it is introduced. I have seen that done in other places and I think it doesn't take too much class time away if the teacher just shows the character, talks about it's radical and components and gives a chart of the stroke order.
So much for now, let's see how things go.
my classmates in the beginner's course (入門華語)
I've been told that most Chinese language students in Taiwan are Asians. In our class, however, it's fifty-fifty: four Westerners and four Asians. It's an interesting mix of people:
- two Vietnamese girls who just finished High School and want to study in Taiwan later.
- two men from Thailand: one of them disappeared during the first break and the other one is a monk.
- an American girl who also wants to go to College in Taiwan, she did a little Chinese in college in the US and also taught herself writing characters from books.
- a French woman who wants to work in Taiwan, so she can live with her Taiwanese boyfriend.
- a photographer from Turkey who wants to work in Taiwan.
- and a German grad student from Canada who wants to learn Chinese so he can order food in restaurants and write Chinese text messages to his Chinese friends.
07 January 2009
first day of school -- the level test
The school told me that I can show up for the level test "from 1/7 to 1/9 any time between 1-3 in classroom 209". That's already a little strange -- it's more accommodating to students than I have ever seen before.
Now, since I am totally keen to start school, I did of course go on the first day and the earliest time. There was a bunch of other students who looked Chinese (so I didn't think they were students of Chinese language) and they turned out to be Vietnamese.
The teacher greeted us, asked our names and asked how much Chinese we have learned before. The Vietnamese students all just started learning one month ago (or was it three, I don't remember) and so they would do the beginner's course anyway, no test needed.
The teacher asked whether we had already studied Chinese writing and since I hadn't (in fact, I just started self-study on the day I arrived here!), I will also to the beginner's course! No level test needed. We'll see how all of this works out. I don't mind starting from the rules of pronunciation again, because I am still lacking some of the foundations. Since the Computer Linguistics course and some discussions about sounds in English, I am also more aware of how sounds are made in my mouth and hope to make use of that knowledge this time. Also, we will learn zhuyin / bopomofo (the Taiwanese notation for pronunciation, as opposed to the international pinyin), which is useful to communicate with Taiwanese people about pronunciation. The relaxed style that people have here gives me hope that I will later be able to skip some stuff that I know already and make good use of my little time here to learn new stuff. So I don't worry about being in beginner's level.
First day of classes will be next Monday, when we get some equipment from the school and then start at 8:10 in the morning every day until 11. That's gonna be my life for the next three months; until the 10th of April, in fact.
Now, since I am totally keen to start school, I did of course go on the first day and the earliest time. There was a bunch of other students who looked Chinese (so I didn't think they were students of Chinese language) and they turned out to be Vietnamese.
The teacher greeted us, asked our names and asked how much Chinese we have learned before. The Vietnamese students all just started learning one month ago (or was it three, I don't remember) and so they would do the beginner's course anyway, no test needed.
The teacher asked whether we had already studied Chinese writing and since I hadn't (in fact, I just started self-study on the day I arrived here!), I will also to the beginner's course! No level test needed. We'll see how all of this works out. I don't mind starting from the rules of pronunciation again, because I am still lacking some of the foundations. Since the Computer Linguistics course and some discussions about sounds in English, I am also more aware of how sounds are made in my mouth and hope to make use of that knowledge this time. Also, we will learn zhuyin / bopomofo (the Taiwanese notation for pronunciation, as opposed to the international pinyin), which is useful to communicate with Taiwanese people about pronunciation. The relaxed style that people have here gives me hope that I will later be able to skip some stuff that I know already and make good use of my little time here to learn new stuff. So I don't worry about being in beginner's level.
First day of classes will be next Monday, when we get some equipment from the school and then start at 8:10 in the morning every day until 11. That's gonna be my life for the next three months; until the 10th of April, in fact.
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