Now that Quiz #1 has taken place, I feel it's time to record some of my thoughts on the subject of language learning in terms of my personal learning strategy, both merits and shortcomings.
First, a little background on my past experiences with foreign language. My first foray into language learning took place when I was very young. Having been raised in a household where one parent was Jewish, I attended Hebrew school on a regular basis. Here, I was taught the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which allows one to read the (Old Testament) Bible in its original form. This was accomplished through more or less rote memorization, looking at the characters and memorizing their sounds over and over. To this day, after eight years of virtually no use, I can still write, pronounce, and read those characters. Perhaps that is a testament to the power of repetition.
Even so, looking at the same material over and over to forcibly etch it into my memory seemed very foreign to me then. Furthermore, unless one wants to become a religious figure or an archaeologist, there is not too much contemporary usage as ""modern" Hebrew is a very, very different language. Having spent all this time memorizing a language that had little day-to-day use really soured my interest in language learning... For a while.
During middle and high school, I took Spanish for about five years. The choice was between Spanish and French, and Spanish seemed a bit more appealing to me. Even so, without a real personal drive to master the language, I rarely willed myself to continue learning and practicing outside of class. It wasn't until I was about 16 and had quit Spanish that I started to regret my indifference toward learning the language. At 16, I took a trip to Costa Rica. With the rudimentary skills I had, I could have basic conversations with many of the local people, and I wished I had studied harder. It took that trip to realize how useful and interesting a foreign language could be, how many opportunities and connections such knowledge can lead to.
Wu lǎoshī was discussing how stressful language learning can be a couple weeks back. It is really hard to sit down for a long period of time and go over the same material again and again to internalize it. Without a personal interest and a sense of perspective, it is easy to resign oneself to failure. My biggest difficulty is writing the more stroke-intensive characters, and sometimes writing them over and over is the only way to learn. If I wasn't interested, there is no way I could will myself to do this. Little tricks like finding radicals and seeing characters as pictographs is my fallback. For example, I remember jiē (接) by thinking of the two boxlike portions of the character as two people in the backseat of a car. From this, I arrive at the meaning of jiē - "pick up". This may seem totally weird, but it works for me. My approach to Chinese is very pragmatic. Anything that works is useful no matter how bizarre it may seem.
Visiting China is something that I really look forward to, especially the opportunity to speak casually with native Mandarin speakers. I remember one morning walking to class. When I got there, Wu lǎoshī asked me if I had handed something in. I said yes, but she thought I said dui, or "correct" in Mandarin.
"Did you say dui?" Wu lǎoshī asked.
"What?" I replied. We went back and forth with this until I finally made the connection. Before this point, my mind had been thinking in strictly English.
The reason I tell this story is that it made me realize that outside of class, I am always thinking in English. In Chinese class, I am thinking mostly in Chinese. Coming to Chinese class for the first time that week, it took me quite a bit of time to start thinking in Chinese and make the connection that dui = correct! Traveling to China, being surrounded by the culture and language forces one not only to use the language, but also to think accordingly. This is undoubtedly another effective strategy to achieve better Mandarin skills. If there is no opportunity to use a language (as discussed above), it is much harder to learn! What is the incentive in such a case?
Americans have a reputation around the world for our "buy now, cry later" lifestyle. We often want it all now with little work, whether this means getting oneself in debt, using dishonest practices, etc. I have seen very little good come from this mindset, and I think it discourages many people from learning something as expansive as Chinese, which demands the accumulation of piecemeal knowledge to form the big picture. Patience and perseverance are key.
The past is the best predictor of the future; realizing one's past difficulties and troubles is the key to doing something about them in the present day.
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