教学相长　Docendo Discimus

The moment @11:30 a.m. in Kade 10 made my day! I really enjoy talking to you all and am very grateful that you appreciate and see what I tried to get across. “Vision is Understanding!” That is utterly true~ I have no words to describe how I felt but would like to thank you for seeing what I tried to do.  Thank you, Vielen Dank, Arigatoo, Xiexie ni 谢谢你! My honor and my pleasure to know you all ~ Have a great day and keep on P2-blogging!

I ever said to the class of Individualization I in Spring 2008, “believe me or not, those who choose to learn Chinese and can be at your current level are either of Irish, German, eastern european, Jewish, and Asian or south east Asian heritages.”  They looked at each other, and found out “Oh, ja, it seems like it’s true in this class.”  These heritages embrace hardworking ethics, embody overcoming difficulties. Chinese, a 4th category language, is difficult to master and it requires those students who love to overcome hardship to do more. [more to come….]

“Chinese is so frustrating sometimes”, “learning Chinese has really taught me how to be more patient“, “我老觉得我的意思已经表达很清楚了，但是她总是认为我解释地不太清楚，应该具体一点；What does this sentence mean? Can you say a little bit more?“, “intranslatibility”, “manage time”, … Teaching and learning a 4th category language, like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, are more than just coping with a language. It’s about how to manage our E.Q., how to manage time, how to 知己知彼 know yourself and others, it’s about the Art of War toward oneself. It’s a journey. I teach, I learn, and I learn, I think, then I exist.  If we acknowledge the fact that learning and teaching these languages could be so frustrating, then we accept the emotion, and channel it into a better learning strategy with hardworking ethics and attitudes toward overcoming the “Chinese” mountain, “Japanese” barrier, or “Arabic” marathon.  They are indeed lingusitically unrelevant, culturally distant languages to English, therefore, for those who are learning these language, I SALUTE TO YOU ALL!! So I learn from what you learned, and I teach because I care to know what you know, what you don’t know, what you think you know, what you think you don’t know, or what you don’t even know that you know … then we are “docendo discimus”~