Well I am little late with this past weeks learning reflections, but overall it was a very successful week. It started off meeting with my language partner early in the week and he helped me prepare for my presentation and give me pointers for conducting my research. For instance how to narrow down my search topics and different types of methodologies used when researching for information in Chinese.
I then meet with my TA on Tuesday, Shi Laoshi, even though the article I had picked was a little out of my league, as she directly asked me “Why did you choose this article?” as she found some of the info a bit cryptic and confusing and then conveyed to me that if she had trouble understanding what the author was talking about, there would be no way I would be able to understand what he was talking about, unless I spent days trying to figure out all of the content. So I quickly found a more suitable article online that was much easier for me to understand. I then met with Dai laoshi on Wednesday and this I feel was a very fruitful meeting as well. She gave me tips as to how to read through an article and grab the most pertinent information, which I feel will be extremely useful in my research. As a bonus she set up a meeting with a classmate of mine, Kai, so we could mutually help our reading comprehension in both English and Chinese.
The meeting with Kai was extremely beneficial as he gave me more tips as to how to quickly disseminate what type of article could be useful to read by just examining it for a few minutes. These weekly sessions will be helpful to me and I am looking forward to the next one.
Last on my list is to set up a time with my teacher so we can do some oral recitation practice to help with my pronunciation, speaking flow and such. This should be extremely helpful to me when conducting oral presentations or just plain speaking in general.