Saturday School

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!