After I returned from Shanghai in August of 2005, my first focus was too finish my undergraduate studies. I graduated in March 2006 and started working in May. By that time, I made my first attempt to re-learn Mandarin. Luckily I still remembered pinyin and could pronounce all of the tones. I figured this would help me get a solid start.
I found a local Saturday Chinese school in Cerritos. The cost of the course was about $360 for 9 months. Classes were about two hours long, followed by a Chinese related activity afterward (things like Chinese calligraphy was an option). I started in 1st grade; it was quite funny. There was maybe one high school student in the class, but the majority of the students were less than 10 years old.
Our teacher was a college professor of Chinese. It didn't work out too well though. He was too acustomed to having young adults as students that knew how to self-study. He didn't know how to teach young kids. After a few weeks, a new teacher came along and started. She was good. She knew how to attend to little kids and keep their attention. She only spoke Mandarin in class. She used visuals to illustrate new words. Other than only attending class once a week, she helped me a lot. It encouraged me enough to pay for another year.
By 2007, I went into 2nd grade. This time the teacher was a bit different. She taught us characters, but she only spoke in English during class. Too much English actually. I also started attending the adult classes to see what it was like. That didn't work either. Yet another teacher who spoke too much English. It was quite discouraging. So instead of trying to find another class, I knew I need another option. I went back to the school administrators and asked for a refund and just kind of sat around for a bit until I found something better.
That's when eChineseLearning came about and it changed everything for me. More on that in the next blog!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The First One
I probably should have started earlier, but I didn't know what would become of this. About a year ago, I started studying Chinese intensely again. I say "again" because I actually started in Saturday school, followed by Chinese school after regular school, then more Chinese when I entered high school. When I say Chinese, I do mean Mandarin. For a short while I was learning Cantonese, but not as long as Mandarin.
After high school I gave up. I had a strong foundation on the pinyin system and I could read and write simple Mandarin, but I couldn't speak or understand very much. My major in college didn't require a foreign language, so I decided to drop it all together and focus mainly on my engineering courses. At the time, I really saw Mandarin more as a burden than a gift. I already spoke my own Chinese dialect with my parents and I lived in a country that spoke English, so what reason do I have to speak Mandarin? I never knew how short-sighted I was at the time.
When I left the country for the first time in the summer of 2005, it happened to be to Shanghai. I didn't know what to expect...in honesty, I just hoped that I could get around in English. Man I was wrong. I got ripped off right when I stepped out of the airport. I didn't see any real taxis at that particular moment, so a man came up to me and said, "Taxi?" I just went ahead, only to realize later I was not sitting in a Taxi and I was overcharged. My instincts didn't kick in, even though the signs were obvious I was making a bad decision. I couldn't speak Mandarin and I was too scared to do anything. I got lucky though...they did take me to my destination, but I had paid almost twice the amount a regular taxi would have charged me. I was so embarrassed...I couldn't speak about it with anyone.
I spent most of the time, all 5 weeks, relying on other Mandarin speaking students to help me get around. I still could not hold a conversation in Mandarin, but my pronunciation skills improved dramatically. But looking back, I think that if I already spoke Mandarin before visiting Shanghai, I may not have ever realized how important it was to learn another language outside of my comfort zone.
After high school I gave up. I had a strong foundation on the pinyin system and I could read and write simple Mandarin, but I couldn't speak or understand very much. My major in college didn't require a foreign language, so I decided to drop it all together and focus mainly on my engineering courses. At the time, I really saw Mandarin more as a burden than a gift. I already spoke my own Chinese dialect with my parents and I lived in a country that spoke English, so what reason do I have to speak Mandarin? I never knew how short-sighted I was at the time.
When I left the country for the first time in the summer of 2005, it happened to be to Shanghai. I didn't know what to expect...in honesty, I just hoped that I could get around in English. Man I was wrong. I got ripped off right when I stepped out of the airport. I didn't see any real taxis at that particular moment, so a man came up to me and said, "Taxi?" I just went ahead, only to realize later I was not sitting in a Taxi and I was overcharged. My instincts didn't kick in, even though the signs were obvious I was making a bad decision. I couldn't speak Mandarin and I was too scared to do anything. I got lucky though...they did take me to my destination, but I had paid almost twice the amount a regular taxi would have charged me. I was so embarrassed...I couldn't speak about it with anyone.
I spent most of the time, all 5 weeks, relying on other Mandarin speaking students to help me get around. I still could not hold a conversation in Mandarin, but my pronunciation skills improved dramatically. But looking back, I think that if I already spoke Mandarin before visiting Shanghai, I may not have ever realized how important it was to learn another language outside of my comfort zone.
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