我的英文反思

Still a little worried I bit off more than I can chew with my paper topic. Keeping all the relationships straight, and describing them in Chinese is not easy. I think part of my problem is at times I am clinging to English; when I get to a complicated part of the paper, I start trying to think it out in English and then translate–this leads to some really convoluted grammar. So this week I am trying to let the Chinese flow, focus more on thinking and writing naturally in Chinese rather than worrying about whether my grammar is formal enough, or if I am including all the facts I might if I were to describe what I am writing about in English.

My research is interesting, but I am starting to get frustrated with, and sometimes tired of writing the paper, as I feel that my grammar just isn’t up to snuff sometimes as I struggle to describe complex relationships.  Hopefully by muddling through I will lean something that I will retain.

I did get a good laugh out of another humbling aspect of the paper.  I began the pages I wrote for monday with some introductory comments, what you might give the heading “Introduction” to in an English essay, but I used 入门, which many of you may already know is more like introductory 101.

I think the ability to laugh at oneself is actually quite important, otherwise the fear of perpetual embarassment  would prevent us from improving.  I look at this way, if I am not at least occasionally saying/writing something stupid I am probably not pushing myself hard enough to make real progress and besides humility is good.

Sorry for the late post.  It was a busy weekend trying to work on the paper and prepare our presentation on 改革开放,　so if I ｗｅｒｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｏｒｔ　ｏｆ　ｐｅｒｓｏｎ　ｔｏ　ｍａｋｅ　ｅｘｃｕｓｅｓ　Ｉ guess I would point to that.    However, attempting to manage my time gave me something to write about.  Ｗｈｅｎ　Ｉ would read over what I　ｈａｄ　ｗｒｉｔｔｅｎ　ｉｎ　Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　Ｉ tried to do it out loud and make my pronunciation more “authentic” thinking about where a native speaker would pause.  In addition to helping with my pronunciation I am hoping this will keep my already pathetic speaking abilities from atrophying while I focus on writing my paper.

I was thinking of my friends who are into building cars and computers ( the two have a lot in common although you get dirty building cars so that is obviously cooler, but coolness is not what I am writing about–you all know I am no expert there).   This reminded me of the many conversations I half comprehended hanging out in the garage with my gear-head friends talking about how if you change the exhaust any more, you should really change the transmission, or if you give it anymore torque you will have to start reinforcing the suspension, etc. (you don’t have to really get it or be interested the point of hanging out in the garage is more that no one’s wife is there, and there is a fridge full of beer).  I have had similar experiences with people advising me on customizing my computer.

It got me thinking about language.  I notice to get the most out of any skill, it helps that the others are at least close in level. For example, hhen I learn a lot of written vocabulary, but don’t practice using it in a sentence I out loud, I am not getting the most out of this new knowledge and I am more likely to forget it once I move on another set of vocabulary terms.  Obviously time doesn’t always allow, but rather than concentrating on just one skill, I found that using the script I can go through individual sentences practice using terms I still don’t understand in both writing and then trying to use the sentences I wrote aloud and elaborate on them having a sort of dialogue with myself, then go back to the scene and bring it all together reading it aloud until it becomes fluid.  Of course this makes my neighbors think I am crazy sitting on my porch going on to myself in Chinese, but that’s a small price to pay.

So I was trying to explain prepositions to a friend of mine who has not a native speaker: why do you say you are “in” Monterey not “at.”  I struggled with it saying how sometimes you would use and not at for emphasis, but couldn’t find a real rule.  Last night I talked to a friend who had taught third grade who also couldn’t adequately explain the concept. We finally agreed that although there is a rule, the the faster way to learn it is simply repetition–eventually like us the kids would know whether or not it “sounded right” regardless of whether they could explain the grammatical rules involved.  We both agreed that if such a rule did exist, learning and applying it would probably take more time than developing such an intuitive understanding.

How does this relate to our class?  I think there are many similar concepts in Chinese.  Obviously this is part of what is good about the authentic materials we are using.  Obviously the right materials are only half of the equation, developing an intuitive understanding also takes a lot of repetition and time, this unfortunately as far as I know is still unavoidable if you want to not just be intelligible, but also not sound so “wierd” to a native speaker.

Before I set up my reflection blog I had sent this email to 戴老师：

“I believe my strongest points are reading and writing, as those are easiest for me to work on on my own. Although, even in writing I think my grammar still needs some work, and the number of patterns I know and can remember are not that great. I think grammar is an even bigger weakness when I am speaking, as
I often feel limited in the number of ways that I can express a concept or idea, or have difficulty using more than short sentences. I imagine that this will improve with repetition and practice, and hopefully my use of spoken and written grammar will become more intuitive. I think this is an important area for me to try to work on this semester.

I would also like to improve my listening. I still often catch myself having to go back and interpret what someone said or think about the meaning of a word or phrase that I would understand if I saw it in writing. Again, I am sure this is something that will improve with practice. I also think being able to watch the video clips once I get my new computer will help as well.

The other day I was trying to think what to write about, and looked at some of my classmates’ blogs.  All very interesting, but I found one post by Lee to be particularly so.  He talked about one of his teachers having him memorize new vocabulary by writing the characters a few times and then trying to use them in a sentence.  I think this is a great idea, as I use a similar method myself and it seems to work well as long as I have the time.

This in turn made me think about my process of learning Chinese.  When I first started I was only using audio materials as I thought the important thing for my purposes was to be able to speak and understand what people are saying.  However, once I was actually in China I realized how limited my abilities were (that I didn’t really know anything!), and realized I needed to use written materials to learn grammar and expand my vocabulary if I was to hope to be able to express more complex concepts.  However, I still was foolish enough to believe that I could just learn to use pinyin.  It was easy to harbor this idea since I believed that it would take forever to learn enough characters for it to be useful.  Eventually I realized how limiting this strategy was as well and started learning han zi.  I started simply writing characters out of a book grouped by stroke numbers or radicals 10 times each.  However, not many of them stuck, which is why I decided to try less repetition, but using them in context.

This experience has taught me a few things: 1) memorization is always necessary, but simple repetition is not as effective as using things in context; 2) if you think something is impossible it is: I started out thinking that learning hanzi was impossible or at least impractical–once I decided to do it I realized it was just a matter of investing the time; 3) reviewing vocabulary in context, trying to use it in a sentence, or otherwise communicate with someone, also allows you to work on complementary skills: when I try to write sentences with new vocabulary, as I try to build more complex sentences that use multiple sheng ci as I also notice areas where I am unsure of the proper grammar to use (maybe this can be a good use for my little notebook). Along the way I have reached many points where I realized that my Chinese was not as good as I thought, and had to reformulate my approach.

If I were a better writer, this is where I would craft an elegant metaphor about how this reflects the choices we make in life whenever we are faced with a choice between despairing over difficult circumstances, or thinking about what we can do differently, accepting our circumstances and starting anew, but I need to go study Chinese so I’ll just say I hope everyone has a good weekend.

It’s been a good week.  I finally got my new computer, so it has been easier to use the on-line materials, which should make things easier.  I am starting to feel more comfortable using the new vocabulary in class.  However, I still wonder whether I will ever absorb the subtleties of Chinese grammar.  For example, when I got my my homework back yesterday, I had a little trouble understanding one of the grammar patterns I had used.  that day it was easy because it was one I had recently reviewed, but a few days later the concept was already cloudy again.  Hopefully like vocabulary I will retain a little each time as long as I keep reviewing.  Other than that I feel like I am making good progress, but am a little worried about how much more difficult the class will be as the semester progresses, I have more work in other classes and can’t spend most of my time on Chinese.

The other thing I noticed that was interesting is how much harder it is to speak a sentence than to think it.  I can always hear what I want to say very clearly, but when there are a lot of 生词involved the pronunciation gets garbled on the way to my mouth, or the grammar disintegrates,   sort of interesting although occasionally mildly humiliating.