First Chinese Class

I had my first Chinese class today. I reckon it went well. The thing is, my level of oral Chinese is higher than my level of written Chinese. Also, I reckon my pronunciation is isn’t bad for a foreigner, so people reckon my Chinese may be a lot better than it actually is!

The teacher there is very good, since she can explain everything in very simple Chinese. She barely used any English during the class at all! That’s a good skill to have and a lot of people don’t have it! I found that that some people here give up easily if I don’t know the word for something in Chinese, for example in the supermarket. I reckoned if they persevered a it more, the message could get through. Oh well, I guess I just need to learn more Chinese!

Although because the class is all in Chinese, it may be difficult at first, I reckon it’s better in the long run/. Sometimes it seems like the easy way out to run to a dictionary! I want to try and teach that to my Chinese students as well: they should try and explain things if they don’t know the word. This is an important skill!

So, we went through a lot of new words. I knew maybe 60% of the characters already, so that lessened the pain a bit! I am gonna have to study them before going to class on Thursday again!! I reckon going to class is the best way to learn, coupled with talking to students etc. It's enjoyable, challenging and very useful in China!!! I should allso learn to typee so I don't make so many typos in this blog and need a spell checker!