On trying to learn Chinese...part 2...

What a difference a few months can make. I was just looking at my original post about learning Chinese and I feel like my relationship with the language has completely changed. To that end, I would like to extend credit to the two people who have made the biggest difference. The first would be my Chinese tutor Patrick (his English name, of course, come to think of it, I don't actually know his Chinese name, dammit), and the other would be my wonderfully ambitious wife. The first wouldn't exist as a part of our lives without the prodding enthusiasm of the other, so to that, I say "謝謝, Andrea!"

Back in November, Andrea had barely made it back from her trip to Chengdu, and pretty much the first point of order was how we needed to find a tutor and really begin working on learning Chinese. By this point, I had already been in Taiwan for three months, and my DIY learning ambitions had yielded little in the way of results.  So after a "Tutor Wanted" post on the very useful Tealit website and a couple emails later, we were off to a nearby coffee shop to begin the first real step towards learning Chinese.

The last time I began learning a new language was middle school, and it's funny to think how my goals with learning a language have changed between now and then. When a mere 13 years old, figuring out how to swear in another language brings all sorts of excitement; indeed the joy of learning how to be proficiently profane in a non-English vernacular carried well into my European adventure oh so long ago. These days, however, I'm more concerned with learning key phrases for classroom management and how to ask where the nearest Thai restaurant is.

Though I am happy with the progress I am making, I feel like every new door I open into an understanding of the language drops me off into a hallway with ten more doors that I have yet to explore. It feels like an enormous task, and I am lucky to have Andrea preventing me from slipping into my often procrastinating habits. I have also discovered that I really love writing Chinese characters. I am pretty sure that character writing is going to be the motivating factor in pushing myself to learn Chinese. There have already been several days where I've found myself content to spend a morning writing the same characters over and over again, trying to make sure I get the stroke order correct (yes, each character has a recommended stroke order to maximize writing efficiency), and making it look as close to the book example as possible. I am not an artist in any sense of the word, so practicing character writing is a good exercise in feeling like I can draw something that actually looks interesting. Here is the end result of one of my practice sessions:

 

Any sort of real comfort listening to and speaking Chinese is still a ways off, but with our current multi-tiered approach to learning, I feel really good about the direction our language acquisition is heading.

On trying to learn Chinese...

As many or most of you may know, Chinese (Mandarin) is a tonal language where words that look the same in Pinyin have completely different meanings depending on the tone you use. The easiest example is "ma." It can mean "horse" using one tone, "mom" using another, and I think it can also mean to scold someone. I've been using flashcards to learn Chinese characters, and each card has a phrase to showcase the use of the character. It's been a slow process but I am picking up on some Chinese and am able to recognize more and more characters all the time. I can't piece them together into anything coherent, but I'm working on it.

One thing that helps is having three native Chinese speakers in the English office. Good for me, but perhaps bad for them as I think I'm actually driving one of my co-workers, Linda, rather batty by practicing Chinese phrases on her in my terrible monotone, American dude trying to speak Chinese, accent. One of my other co-workers, Min-hsien, has spent a lot of time around foreigners and so she can understand what i'm trying to say pretty easily. Linda, however, just looks at me with an incredulous look that says "what the hell are you trying to say?" What makes things so difficult is the fact that when she repeats the correct pronunciation back to me, to my untrained ears, it really doesn't sound so different. This has also happened in a couple stores where I have actually asked for something in Chinese and they just give me a blank look. When I finally say it correct enough to understand, they repeat it back to me in what pretty much sounds like exactly what I just said. In response to this, I have learned the Chinese equivalent to "That's what I said."

"Na shi wo shuo de."

I'm sure I butchered that, but what more can you do when trying to learn a language? The tonal subtleties are definitely going to be the biggest mountain to climb in my Chinese language acquisition, but I've definitely been enjoying trying to learn it.

While it's going to be a long process, I guess when I can finally start passing the Linda test I'll know I'm on the right track. Wish me luck, because it is not going to be easy.

And a month has now passed...

...since I first left Portland and I sometimes feel as if I'm still waiting for the full gravity of how far I am away from home to hit me. My other thought is that maybe it already has, and it wasn't as climactic as what I initially anticipated. I think it is easy to sometimes confuse what you think you should feel with what you actually do. Bleh, this is not the venue for going into a stream of conscience ramble about the complexity of emotional thought (well, it would have been a ramble if I had kept typing the last five minutes of what was going on through my brain, but I'm keeping the babble filter on while writing about my time in Taiwan).

Well, now that it's taken me twenty minutes to write a short paragraph about my self-assumed subdued emotional reaction to a new environment, I suppose I will move on. But first let us pause for a moment of inspiration:



Taipei is amazing. I feel incredibly lucky to be here, and that is further accentuated by my getting to work in what has so far been (and by so far, I'm not assuming it will change, it's just a reflection on things so far) a very positive and supportive environment to teach in. The last two weeks were the first in which I had a regular teaching schedule and was really able to start interacting with students and get a feel for what their English speaking level is, and if the lessons I had prepared would be effective.

Before I go too far into talking about the teaching itself, I should probably give a little background about my school. Penglai is a public elementary school that is in its third year of having foreign teachers as part of its English Wonderland. There are six teachers that teach as part of this program, three foreign teachers (Me, Dan, and Willem), and three from Taiwan (Renee, Minhsien, and Linda). Of us six, Minhsien is the only teacher to have been at Penglai for all three years of the English Wonderland program.

While we do teach regular lessons, the thing that sets Penglai apart from almost all other schools in Taipei, is the scenario center on the top floor of the school. The goal (or my interpretation anyway) of Penglai's English language program is to give students exposure to real world scenarios and give them the vocabulary and potential dialogue necessary to interact in English in one of these scenarios (such as a restaurant, clothes store, airport, etc.). Each class is split into two forty minute periods, with a short break in between. I can't make a sweeping generalization about what my overall teaching style is going to be, but so far I have been using the first period to focus on vocab and introduce the dialogue in the regular classrooms set aside for us,



and have been using the second period to try and get the students into the scenario center (below is the clothes store).



I have been very impressed with the students' participation in acting out the scenarios with each other and being willing to volunteer (I use that term loosely, as I am more than willing to volunteer students if necessary) to perform in front of their peers. I am fully aware of how difficult learning a second language is, and their engagement in the lessons so far has been very encouraging. Penglai's English program is a cyclical process, and students spend four weeks on a scenario, and then move onto the next one. I keep teaching the same scenarios to the same grade levels, but I will be working with different students throughout the semester.

Everything is still very new, and I find myself frequently updating my lesson as I try them in the classroom and see what works and what doesn't. After a summer of not working with kids, it's definitely been a re-learning process in establishing classroom management strategies and trying to make my lesson both fun and informative. Luckily, I have a whole school year to keep improving. Oh yeah, and thank you PowerPoint for helping me create visually effective vocabulary lessons.

Other highlights of my time in Taipei over the last couple of weeks have included seeing temples:





Getting out of the city proper:





and exploring relics of a country's complex colonial history:



This last month has been a very positive start, and it only leaves me looking forward to the rest of the year ahead, and what may lay beyond it...