Being in China is great for learning Chinese. I am motivated to find out what all the signs around me mean, not to mention trying to understand what people are saying and trying to speak to them myself. Today however, I hit a rough patch. This happens every now and then. I lose motivation, overwhelmed by the enormous challenge that is the Chinese language.
I don't have a Chinese teacher because I want to see how far I can get on my own. I believe this way is harder and will take me a longer time, but in the long-term it will be the most beneficial thing I can do. If I achieve it it means that I will have learnt how to teach myself a language from scratch, and I can then apply those skills to other languages, not to mention teaching other people languages from scratch. Of course I do use internet resources and I have some very useful apps on my Ipod (thank you mama for making me bring the Ipod even though I kept saying I didn't want to - you were right again!) which help me along the way. My favourite app was free. It's an English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary, where you can write Chinese characters in, and get the definition. Very very useful.
My technique up until this point has been to learn phrases and the associated Chinese characters. Fr one reason or another I have decided to switch tact. Now what I will do is learn 5 nouns a day and 1 verb including their characters. I like concrete nouns that I can touch (bed, pen, book), so they are what I will be starting with. Today's words were: bed, pen, hair, face and tap. The verb was 'to touch'. I've also organised a conversation exchange next week in which I hope to say all the words I've memorised to my study buddy and see whether he can decipher what I mean. Actually, even if I say all the words correctly (tones and all) he still may not understand. This is because as a language, Chinese has very few syllables compared to other languages. Context therefore is usually essential to understanding meaning.
I don't have a Chinese teacher because I want to see how far I can get on my own. I believe this way is harder and will take me a longer time, but in the long-term it will be the most beneficial thing I can do. If I achieve it it means that I will have learnt how to teach myself a language from scratch, and I can then apply those skills to other languages, not to mention teaching other people languages from scratch. Of course I do use internet resources and I have some very useful apps on my Ipod (thank you mama for making me bring the Ipod even though I kept saying I didn't want to - you were right again!) which help me along the way. My favourite app was free. It's an English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary, where you can write Chinese characters in, and get the definition. Very very useful.
My technique up until this point has been to learn phrases and the associated Chinese characters. Fr one reason or another I have decided to switch tact. Now what I will do is learn 5 nouns a day and 1 verb including their characters. I like concrete nouns that I can touch (bed, pen, book), so they are what I will be starting with. Today's words were: bed, pen, hair, face and tap. The verb was 'to touch'. I've also organised a conversation exchange next week in which I hope to say all the words I've memorised to my study buddy and see whether he can decipher what I mean. Actually, even if I say all the words correctly (tones and all) he still may not understand. This is because as a language, Chinese has very few syllables compared to other languages. Context therefore is usually essential to understanding meaning.
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