Chinese Language And Literature Degree

Mid terms are all done.  For the most part they went pretty well.  Not really a huge amount to share at the moment, we're in a routine as far as classes go, learning lots across the board. 

I've been trying to be a bit more active in increasing my input.  I started reading the first Harry Potter, and I'm a few pages away from finishing.  I marked characters I didn't know so that I could come back and learn the new words, and I've noticed that I've gone from multiple characters being marked in each paragraph near the start of the book, to sometimes 2/3 pages with nothing marked at all.  I've also been really encouraged to see lots of the stuff coming up in class appearing in the book, thus further cementing both the term in question, and it's usefulness for me at this point in time.  I'm not yet sure what I will read next. 

I am doing a lot of running at the moment, which looks like 4/5 treadmill runs a week, for anything up to 3 hours per session right now, simply because it's too cold to run outside.  The plus side of this is that the treadmills in my gym have TVs, so I have been watching various TV shows.  As with my reading, I have again found that lots of the things I have been learning in class are coming up. 

All in all I am feeling pretty encouraged right now!  There is a very long way to go, but there is also noticeable improvement. 

So I am going to add a few photos of the campus to this post as was requested, and then hopefully (if I can move my fingers enough to take a picture!), I will grab some of the same shots in mid winter so people can compare. 

I should probably update my blog at the end of each week rather than the start, so I might change that once I start back.  This is our last week before we have a week off.  Things are continuing to go well.  Yesterday one of my teachers lost it at some of the Korean guys at the back.  They were talking all the way through class and it was very distracting for those of us who actually want to learn, or paid our own money to come and study, rather than coming on mummy and daddy's money.  I was speaking to the teacher about it today and she said they won't be here much longer - they are being given one more chance.  But at the rate most of them are missing class they won't be allowed to sit their final exams in January anyway. 

The highlight of last week was a really good method (or at least I thought it was) of learning vocab given by one of our teachers, after we covered some in class.  We hit nouns, firstly what we could see around us in the classroom and all of our stationary, then then things that we have in our rooms.  He said this is a great way for us to learn the names of new things, but then he said don't just leave it at that, learn the measure word for each item, and verbs commonly associated with it, so we did that too.  I have also started doing this in my own room and it has been really helpful.  For example I looked at my scales and learned 体重器 and 称量，although I still need to learn the measure word for scales!

The method I use for my own learning is pretty much rote memorization (which fits really well with the education system here) until I feel I know the word and hanzi (including tones of course), and then after 2 or 3 days of getting the words (5-7 at a time, as many time as needed/possible per day), at which point I put it into one of my anki decks.  I try and go through my decks every day, although there are the odd days that I miss for various reasons.  If I run out of words to learn then I go through the books I have and look for things I don't know, although with this new way of learning household items etc, I don't think I will struggle to find new vocabulary for the foreseeable future!

It looks like a couple of the photos failed to upload, but these ones will do for now.  The building with all of the flags outside it is where I study.  This is just a snippet of the campus, it's really big.  There is also another campus, possible even two, although I have never been to them.

I was asked in the last post to list the books that we are using this year, so here they are:

综合 - Bridge, a practical intermediate Chinese course (I) (Beijing Language and Culture University Press)

口语 - Intermediate spoken Chinese 1 (Peking University Press)

写作 - Road to Success.  Upper Elementary Reading and Writing 1. (Beijing Language and Culture University Press)

听力 - I left this book at uni, but it's the listening book of the same series as 写作

汉字学 - The Culture of Chinese Characters (Beijing Language and Culture University Press)

阅读 - Read This Way 1 (Beijing Language and Culture University Press）

中国概况 - A Survey of China (Beijing Language and Culture University Press)

I would recommend all of the books.  The speaking book is probably the least useful in a sense, being as we don't actually do much from the book, aside from the exercises.  The exercises themselves are great.  I really like the 综合 and 阅读 books.  Both the books and the teaching methods of those two teachers fit really well with my learning style.  They will go through a certain number of the new words, explaining the meaning and use of each one, giving examples and having us create sentences.  Then we will go through the portion of the text which includes the words we have just studied.  The key words/grammar constructs have more time spent on them when we are in the text.  The pace is steady so that we have time to really digest everything.  One of the things I find hard about Chinese (and there are a lot) is small differences in meaning/use of words.  Being taught in this way really helps me with that.  I am talking about the difference between 忽然 and 突然 for example.

This week is 国庆节 and so I have the week off.  Next week for listening I have to prepare a dialogue with a friend which includes 9 sentences that were given to us.  Then I have to choose one of 7 small topics to give a 'presentation' on.  I think I am going to do 'differences in lifestyle between England and China'.  Because our class is big, this is only to be around 2 minutes long.  Such a time limit makes it harder I think, but still it is a great chance to be up the front practicing again.  We are not allowed to have notes of any form outside of our ppt, and if people want to opt out they are allowed to do so.  If you opt out 3 or more times in a semester you are not allowed to sit the exams. 

I really enjoyed the first year of study, and this year is so much better already!

I am now two weeks into year 2 of my 4 year degree program.  The level has increased notably!  The content of each class is considerably more than it was, and we now have 7 subjects instead of the 4 we had last year.  We now have speaking, listening, reading, comprehensive, writing, general survey of China, and character study.  Our class has also increased in size to 44 students, so it's absolutely massive.  These are students who have studied at HIT for a year, switched major etc.  We now have more Russians, one student from Turkmenistan, and lots more Thai and Korean students.  I'm not sure how I feel about the number of students.  Obviously it's way too many, and although it won't impact listening much, I think it will affect how much I get to speak to some degree.  The flip side of this is that interaction is generally by choice, and some people just seem to scared to say anything, and so I've been speaking/reading in class just as much, if not more than last year. 

The China survey class is quite interesting, and I am definitely looking forward to learning more about the history, geography and culture of China.  Character study is fun, but probably the hardest class of them all.  This is because we are looking at stuff like myths regarding the origin of Hanzi, and so of course there are lots of new words, a large portion of which appear to be fairly specialist, and probably not all that useful to us at this point in time.  Along with writing and listening, we only have one class per week of these subjects.

Speaking is great, as we now have our comp teacher from last year, and he is all about us speaking all the time.  He's already had us up the front talking which is great practice.  Our teacher last year was terrible, and we hardly ever talked in class, so this is really refreshing, and I feel like it is only going to help my speaking.  I'm still not a fan of listening, but at least we only have one class a week now.  Comprehensive is awesome, and I love the new teacher that we have for it, her teaching style is excellent. 

Nothing too specific for this first update, just a general overview.  I will give more details on what I am learning in the following updates. 

First semester is over and exams are finished!  It feels strange to be entering into my big break now, rather than in between years, but it's still a very welcome break.  I was very pleased with how my exams went, and finished with 94, 96, 98 and 99, in speaking, comprehensive, listening and reading/writing respectively.  Obviously those are pretty good grades, but to be honest I don't think they are all that meaningful, and while I do of course want to score high in my exams, the emphasis has to be on actually being able to effectively use Chinese!  I enjoy exams as they are great for showing me my limits and areas that need the most work, but with something as vast as a language I think it is hard to put together a 2 hour test, especially at this point in our learning.  Although I think it changes in the future, our speaking final didn't even have any speaking on it! 

Stand out things across my exams - TONES!  Still the hardest thing for me is distinguishing tones that I hear.  The only reason I was able to do so well on my listening was because I knew the majority of the words that came up in the pinyin sentences, and so was able to mark the tones on them before even hearing them on the audio.  Other than just continuing to listen as much as possible, I am not sure what else I can do to get better at this.

Knowing when something is wrong - although I haven't seen the graded exams, I imagine this was the section I dropped most marks on in my speaking test.  We were given 10-15 sentences to change, and told that some are right and some are wrong.  I only left one sentence unedited.  While I don't think I had too much trouble writing correct sentences, I felt that I probably edited some which were actually written correctly, because I simply wasn't sure enough.

Reading/writing - while I love pretty much everything about Chinese, this is definitely the part I enjoy most.  It's also the part I can do the most self study on!  I was a little bit nervous about this exam as I hadn't been to class, and while I had studied plenty of extra stuff, I wasn't sure that I had spent enough time making sure I did actually know the content in the book.  Thankfully I was fine, and the extra stuff I have been doing has also paid off, as it meant I knew almost all of the characters across all 4 exams (there are always characters included that we haven't learned, which will steadily increase over the next period, until we have learned a lot more in our own time).  It feels good to get a head start here, and I want to try and keep this up.

All in all I am really pleased, and encouraged to keep cracking away and working hard!  I'm not sure how much I will get done over the break, but I am not going to punish myself if I don't do a ton!  My family are here and so we are going to be spending lots of time out and about, and having fun sledging in the snow here!  I am trying to do at least something every day though, even if it is just reading over a text.  I am also taking new vocabulary/characters and putting them into sentences, which I send to a Chinese friend to edit (trying to hit an average of 5 a day), then put into Pleco flashcards and reread those sentences every day to absorb the new stuff.  This is to try and continue to build up my base of characters, as well as new vocabulary.

I know this post is getting a bit long, but I have to say I am feeling the effectiveness of some of the things Imron wrote in a couple of threads.  Since getting rid of my Anki decks and starting to only input vocabulary that I am actually reading, all of the new words have been coming up again and again!  I heard one word in a song, so made a sentence to learn it, then saw it in a notice on the door of our building.  I can definitely see the truth in words that are important for me to learn now appearing frequently in real life, and how an SRS is meant to mimic that process.  Very cool!

Hey guys, sorry it’s been so long since I did an update.

I graduated successfully with a 92 average, which was number one, but honestly it basically feels meaningless. My final thesis was on the 3 body problem.

Doing the final year and a half online was a disaster, and my Chinese went downhill massively - thanks covid.

All the student had to speak, which meant we got about 3 minutes per class to actually use Chinese. Time differences also made it challenging. 
 

Glad that I graduated of course. I guess the question is, would I recommend this degree to anyone else? Probably not, but it depends on what you want to get out of it. My classmates were all young and were basically there to party and end up with a degree, I was there to learn Chinese. In person was better by far. Also important to recognize it was a Chinese language and literature degree. Classes on Chinese mythology were a waste of time for what I wanted, and my time would have been better used doing self study on stuff I would actually use.

I also really struggled with being treated like a child - things like having attendance taken at every lecture. In England you can attend lectures if you want, but exam results are what matter. If you fail then that’s on you, if you can pass without attending class then it’s all good, but that just wasn’t an option for us in China, to the point where you wouldn’t get a visa if you missed a certain amount of classes.

I’m glad I did it as I learnt a lot, but if I could go back in time I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

 Well it's been a very long time since I've posted an update, so here goes.  Just finished up the first semester of 4th year, one more to go which starts at the beginning of March.  Should be graduating in July.  We are still in Cambodia, for obvious reasons.  I feel like my Chinese has gone downhill, simply because online classes just aren't the same as actually being there, and the environment here is nothing like as helpful for learning as being in China.

Some classes were a complete waste of time.  Learning about world literature in Chinese is interesting to a degree, but something I will probably never do again, and so I feel my time could have been used much more productively.  With 30+ students in a class, the time to talk was minimal, and the exams were somewhat of a joke.  It's always nice to get good grades, but far better when you feel like you actually had to work hard to get them, and the exams were a challenge. 

Currently writing my thesis on 《三体：地球往事》，which has been incredibly interesting and enjoyable.  We have until June to finish the whole thing, and it's supposed to be around 10,000 characters (which really isn't many for a 'thesis').  I've written 13,500 so far and just sent it off to my tutor a couple of days ago.  He said there are no major issues, just a couple of sections are a bit too short (comparatively), so I will go back and edit those.  Feels pretty good to have the bulk of it done a few months early, and will certainly make the final semester far easier.  I feel a lot more confident with my Chinese now, even though it has fallen behind somewhat, and when I think back to starting first year, the improvement has been vast.  Certain tones are still a big struggle for me, especially when speaking fast.  The 4th tone + 1st tone combination really trips me up!  It's going to be great to graduate, but really for me the point was never the degree, rather I want to be able to converse fluently in Chinese, and continue to build on that in the future.  I will give a full report when I graduate, but if I had to go back I would still choose to do the degree, as the benefits have outweighed the struggles and frustrations. 

At this point I highly doubt we will be getting back before graduation, and with having to redo visas for the whole family, quarantine, pay for flights, find a place to live again, I am actually quite relieved about that.  Would love to go back to China, but not just for a few weeks before graduation.

As I say, a more in depth review will come in a few months when I am finished, but just wanted people to know I am still here and still trying my best to study hard!

The first semester of third year is done, and I am currently with my family taking a break in Cambodia.  Overall I feel that this semester went pretty well.

One of our teachers quit when we had 2 weeks left of the semester, and that was really weird.  One week he was there, and then the following week he just didn't turn up.  He was my favorite teacher and seemed to have the best relationship with all the students by far.  I would always message him to ask questions and such, and while he has since said I am welcome to continue doing that, it is still disappointing.  I am not sure who will take over the classes we had with him next semester.

I've tried to do a bit more reading of late, especially focusing on the type of literature we will be reading next year for our thesis.  I read 《棋王》and really enjoyed it, finding it about right for my current level, then I read 《断魂枪》which was short but interesting, and I am currently reading 《啊Q正传》.  I am mining a good bit of vocabulary from these books, and of course increasing the number of characters I can read.  I am also enjoying the cultural aspects of the books, though at some points they are still quite confusing to me.  I do also have 《三体》which I would like to read, but first I just want to focus on stuff for next year a bit. 

As far as speaking goes, I find myself in much the same position as before.  Obviously there is some improvement, but I still find that my tones go haywire when I start trying to speak a bit faster, in contrast to sounding wooden and strange when I speak slowly.  I'm still not sure of the best way to improve here.  I had a teacher suggest reading through texts that I am familiar with at a slow speed, which in theory sounds good, but my reading isn't anything like good enough to actually have an accurate pronunciation when I read out loud.  I think I just need to keep practicing, and doing my best to imitate native speakers.

My final exams seemed to go well on the whole, although I haven't bothered to check my results.  I can only get access to them through the wifi at the university, and because I live off campus I have never actually paid to be able to use this service.  I am also finding that I am less interested in my results, and more interested in my actual ability to communicate with people in Chinese. 

It seems strange writing this with the whole coronavirus situation going on.  We have been contacted by the university - they wanted all our details, where we have been, where we are going etc.  They have also said that people are not allowed to return early, and that anyone who is spending the holiday in Harbin isn't allowed to leave without applying 3 days in advance.  Furthermore, on their return they need to self-quarantine for 14 days.  There has now been a confirmed case in Cambodia, and to be honest with the state of the healthcare here China would likely be a better place to be.  For now we are just going to see what happens over the next 2/3 weeks, and what comes through from the university.

Until next time!

What a strange season this has been.  I'm not really sure what to write, as our whole semester has been online.  I feel like I my improvement was minimal due to the online classes, and the format in which they came.

Speaking was done as an interactive online class, and so that was actually not bad.  But a lot of the other classes were prerecorded lectures, with a few questions to follow, in order to check that we had been listening.  The hardest class we had was 文学，and I got next to nothing out of it, because it was basically a teacher talking at us for a couple of hours, without any interaction.  I feel this class would have been really good if it was in person.  A lot of class time I just spent reading and doing flashcards, so that I was at least getting some self study in.

Overall this semester has been far from ideal, but I do feel there has been some small improvement at least, and was happy to get through 《三体》，which I will do my thesis on next year.  As far as getting back to China goes, I have absolutely no idea (nor do I think anyone else really does) as to when/how this will happen.  If the next semester starts online, I struggle to understand how we would be able to go back before it ends.  The logistics of trying to switch from online classes to actual classes, while international students are all having to book flights to get back, along with going through a two week quarantine, just seems like too much of a headache.  I imagine it would be much wiser to do it during a break. 

Anyway, not much to report this time unfortunately.  We have our final 4 week semester now - today is the last day of class, then 2/3 pieces of homework/papers over the next 3 weeks before we finish for the summer.  Watch this space to see what happens next!

Well I guess I mistook which week we are in, because apparently this is week 7!  I didn't update the blog last week as we had the week off, which was actually really nice and relaxing. 

Anyway, things are continuing to go well as we start back up after our week off.  Still a fair amount of students not coming to class.  Week 9/10 is our mid terms, and it is doubtful whether or not some of the students will be able to sit the exams, as they may not have been to enough classes.  If they aren't allowed to sit their mid terms, they automatically get disqualified from taking the final exams too, so I wouldn't want to be in their shoes!

Yesterday our comprehensive teacher told us that we have a big dictation deal on Friday, covering all the hanzi we have learned so far.  Then today he dropped a 22 word dictation test on us out of the blue, said there will be another one tomorrow, but the one on Friday will be much bigger.  It was nice to be able to see where I am at with no prior preparation or knowledge of what words were going to come up.  Along with 2 other students, I got 100%, so needless to say I was pretty happy with that.  We also had homework for that class which was to talk about our room and what it contains, but for me I had to do my whole house as I live off campus.  This was also really good because it meant looking up new words and their measure words, as well as putting into practice the location words we've learned.  Some of my new words were cactus, scales, drawer, punching bag, and a fair few measure words for those and other items. 

We also had homework for our speaking class.  We just finished up a chapter on time, and so we had to describe a typical day.  I tried to make it interesting and add more than just 'I get up at x o'clock.  I have breakfast at x o'clock.  Class is from x-x o'clock.'  I'm sure there were mistakes in there, but I want to get things wrong in order to learn more. 

I definitely feel like I am improving across the board, but still find listening to be the hardest by far.  I am usually there early so I chat with the teachers, but compared to regular people I meet in daily life, they are so easy to understand!  I also find that I can usually do fairly well in the comprehension type listening exercises, but when it comes to the ones where we are given a sentence in pinyin and there are 3 words or so for which we have to mark the tones, I struggle a bit.  I guess it's just practice, practice, practice!

One of the reasons I now enjoy writing this blog so much, is the feedback and help that I get when I do.  I think that at the end of my first year I might try and make a list of the resources I have used, as it will include many things that get suggested over the weeks.  This week gwr71 was incredibly helpful in suggesting a cultural visual dictionary, one for measure words, and a grammar book, all of which I now have an am beginning to tuck into. 

Last week I was also asked about my schedule, including how much time I spend on homework, and so I will give that here.  Each week we have 20 hours of class, with each class lasting 2 hours.  That is broken down into 4 comprehensive classes, which, as the name suggests, brings all the elements we learn from the other classes together.  We have 2 listening classes, 1 reading/writing class, and 3 speaking classes.  Listening classes can be a bit repetitious, but I think that's just the nature of it, and there's really no way to avoid it.  I also really need it as listening is what I find hardest.  Regarding homework, some days we get it, some days we don't, it's fairly unpredictable for the most part.  What is predictable is our reading/writing homework each week.  In class we cover 2 chapters in the book, and for homework we take the list of new words from each chapter and write them out a couple of times, then make a word of our own choosing, then make a sentence which includes that word.  I really enjoy doing this because it's where I get to experiment a lot and the corrections help a ton.  We also have to do the exercises for each chapter, and then at the end of each chapter there is a text, and we need to write and answer 3 of our own questions relating to the text.  This homework is supposed to be done over the course of the week, but being as it's on a day when I have 4 hours to kill on campus, I just hammer it out then.  As I do other reading and writing throughout the week, I don't think it negatively impacts my studies in any way.  We rarely get any homework for listening, and for speaking and comprehensive it really varies.  Some days we might need to write a dialogue relating to the topic we are studying, or talk about a specific subject.  Most days we have dictation in class, and so we need to learn the appropriate characters.  We have now moved on to phrases (started with single characters, then words, now phrases, and I assume longer sentences will be next).  My assumption is that the idea behind this is so we don't forget characters we have learned previously, and it seems to be doing the job!  Being as we are still looking at very common characters, there may only be one or two that I really need to memorize, and so this doesn't normally take very long.  This frees me up to do more of my own studying.  Random new words that come up in class, and vocabulary that I just want to learn myself, I study throughout the week.  I will attach a picture of what it looks like but I just do it in the way that I have found works best for me (and before it gets pointed out, I know how messy my handwriting is, both in Chinese and English!) - I write down 5-7 characters/words that I want to learn, and then write each of them down 5 times.  A bit later I come back and write them down again, this time in a different colour.  The following day I come back a third time, and again with a different colour I write them down a final time.  How many words I do just depends on the week.  Once I have a full page of words, I put them into Anki. 

For listening I just try and get myself as immersed as possible, and spend time with Chinese people.  I really like tattoos, and so I have made good friends with 2 tattoo artists who have a shop just down the street from where we live.  They don't speak English which is perfect, and they are really fun to hang out with, and have even offered to teach me some stuff!  It's perfect because they speak just like anybody else, which of course is often a far cry from what we learn in the books!  I also find myself reading and writing more with Wechat (although it is of course pinyin input).  I frequently message my current teachers, and my previous ones, with different questions about new vocab and grammar, and I will actually often ask the same question to different teachers, or just make up a question so that I can practice reading when they respond.  Thankfully none of them have let on that they are fed up of me yet hah!

A highlight this week was attending a sort of 'Chinese competition' at the international student center at uni.  Fortunately I wasn't involved, as this is only for the short term classes that I was a part of before I started the degree.  This was a more advanced level than the one I had to compete in, as I was watching my friend who has now moved up to a higher level class.  The reason I was happy not to be involved was that not only did they have to act out a skit of some sort in Chinese, but they had to sing a song, and my voice is unbelievably bad!  It was great to watch, and actually quite funny.  I think it also alerted me to the fact that the previous classes seem to have been much more rigid in the structure they follow.  I feel like in the degree program there is much more freedom and the pace is basically whatever the students make it, rather than very rigidly sticking to the book and having to pack a large amount of content into a short space of time.  I chuckled when I heard the phrases '三天打鱼，两天晒网不行‘ 和 ’在家靠父母，出去靠朋友‘，which I myself learned in the short term class only a few months back!

The final thing for this week (I feel like there is a ton I want to write, but I want to save stuff for future posts also!), was my reading/writing midterm.  I think it went fairly well.  I kicked myself afterwards at having written 容 incorrectly!  I wrote two characters next to each other to try and compare them and remember which was right, one of them had a tiny extra heng just above the kou, and unfortunately I went with that one and erased the other one!  Other than that, unless I have grossly overestimated my ability, I don't think it was too bad.

Ok, one final, final thing!  As I add pictures each week and describe what I am doing to learn, please feel free to critique, make suggestions, tell me why there is a better way of doing things etc.  I want to learn and I want to do it efficiently, and so far the help that people have given has been really, really useful.  Thank you!

Edit - Please excuse the lack of pictures this week.  I tried 4 times to upload a couple of photos but for some reason it failed every time, even after copying the blog post and reloading the page.  I will try again next week. 

This week was a standard week with not much to say.  I don't really want to write posts just for the sake of writing them, so I think this will be my last post until we start our finals, which is 3 weeks from now.  Then I will do a post to finish the semester, including areas I feel I have grown in, and areas that need the most improvement.  Perhaps also some goals for the break.  I will then do a post after my finals, and maybe a mid-break post to try and keep myself working! 

The title this week alludes to a passage we had to write, which was on our dream house if we had as much money as we wanted.  I set up shop in a castle on my own private island!  We didn't get around to 'ba' sentences in the end, but we kept on moving through our book.  This week we will probably finish our speaking class textbook, and then from next week we will do various exercises as prep for our final.  For listening we are going to keep plowing on through our book, as there really isn't much we can do to prepare for listening other than listen!  I doubt we will finish our comprehensive book this semester, but there shouldn't be much left for the start of next semester, and we have already handed our money in to purchase the following book.  For speaking and listening there will be 2 chapters left to finish at the start of next semester.

I have some photos of the campus looking snowy which I will upload in my final post, if possible.  This morning there were huge blocks of ice everywhere and a couple of cranes, as they are starting to build up big ice sculptures.  When they are done in the next few days I should also have some photos of them all lit up to upload.  It certainly adds some character to the campus!

Well the first semester is at an end, all that remains is 4 finals over the next 2 weeks (no class during that time).  I said that I would do a summary type post to finish, including areas that I think I have grown in, areas that are most desperately in need of improvement (comparatively), and then goals for the break.

I have really enjoyed this semester and feel like I have learned so much.  I don't think personal improvement is always that obvious, but I have been told by the teachers that we have all improved a ton.  I suppose they are bound to say that, but I have been told the same thing by others so that's encouraging!  Obviously that is relatively speaking.  I think my greatest improvement so far has been in my reading/writing, which is also my favourite aspect of learning the language.  My speaking has improved too, and I think the biggest thing here is being aware of my mistakes, and they are MANY!  I am constantly struggling to speak Chinese at home, but it's a real battle to change the language I speak to my wife.  However, I know that the only way to get better is to do it more, and the reality is we just don't speak much in class.  I also try and speak only Chinese with my classmates, which actually isn't hard because I don't speak Thai/Korean/Russian and they don't speak much English, and our teacher said one big source of improvement further on is that students speak Chinese all the time.  I have also improved in my listening, but again I am very aware of my shortcomings, and my biggest one right now is that I really, really have a hard time distinguishing tones I hear.  I usually try and rely on knowing the word and the context, but of course there are cases in which that just won't cut it (especially when you have to mark the tones above pinyin from audio you hear)!  We covered a listening exercise in our book that I had actually done previously last March, when I first started studying the short course.  All I remembered about it was having no idea what was going on, but this time it was easy.  That's how I am gauging my improvement! 

Areas that need improving - I think it goes without saying that there is a lot of improvement needed in every discipline.  However, things that need the most immediate attention are speaking and listening.  As for how I plan on seeing that improvement, I think the main way is to just continue what I have been doing.  I am hoping that time will be key here.  Additional things I want to make an effort to do are really hammering myself on speaking Chinese at home, and doing more listening practice, especially over the break.  I am going to try and do more general listening by watching more Chinese material.  I have access to plenty of Chinese movies on Youtube, and of course there's the TV.  I would also like to do some more intensive listening.  I have a book that I want to try and work through over the break, and I am going to try and find the CD and do all the listening exercises to go with it.

Goals for the break - I have a book called 'Short-Term Spoken Chinese', which is the elementary level, and I actually covered the previous book in the short course before starting the degree.  I am going to work through this one over the break.  If I don't finish the whole book then that's ok, I just want to try and do some active studying regularly.  I also want to watch at least two Chinese movies a week, which I know isn't a lot, but it's better than nothing!  Other than that I would like to keep active in speaking and listening when I am out and about.  For reading and writing I have the book that I am studying, I also want to go back and consolidate any new vocab that I have missed over this semester, including how to write it all.  The finally adding new characters/vocab to my writing deck on Anki and continuing to do that regularly. 

I will write another post after my exams on how they went, and perhaps a post mid-break regarding how I am getting on with my goals.  It seems that I can upload pictures again, so I will add some random pictures to this post!  Edit - Two pictures uploaded successfully, the rest failed :-(

Last week was another great week!  I got my midterm results back for listening and speaking - 95% and 96% respectively.  That put me third for listening and top for speaking so I can't complain!  I was somewhat annoyed with myself when it came to my listening though, as I could easily have gotten a better score. The teacher graded something that I had dismissed as unimportant, although that wasn't the case (at least not for this test) - which vowel you place the tone mark over on the pinyin!  It's annoying because we learned it and I could have studied it, but I didn't really think it mattered.  So even though I got the correct tone with a few word like 'jiu', jue' etc., I put the tone mark over the wrong letter and got penalized hah!  I am happy that after our final exam there will be no more pinyin anywhere!  This coming Thursday is our reading/writing midterm, and then that's all 4 out of the way, and we just have finals in January to look forward to!

Last Wednesday was a really fun day in our speaking class - we were on a topic which involved clothes, and so the day before our teacher told us to prepare some items of clothing in Chinese, and she would split us up into 3 groups the following day and we'd have a competition writing as many different items of clothing on the board as possible.  Not overly surprising at this point, but there were only enough students there to make 2 groups, but all in all the groups got 63 and 64 separate things written on the board.  I don't think I know that many in English, let alone Chinese!  My list of 12 that I had prepared seemed somewhat inadequate, but it was great to pick up lots of new clothing terms, and by the end the board was crammed with Hanzi, written by 9 different people, and so it looked awesome (our group actually had to wipe some off to make room for more)!  I also picked up a couple of new words in class, and then some more from my own personal study.  Some personal vocabulary highlights from the week were 发抖，浮躁，后悔，激动，抽象 和 承担后果。

As I write the almost mandatory update on the ongoing student saga, it might become clear why I wanted to know the final phrase!  There was an incident with a Russian student in the 3rd year of the program I am studying.  At a bar, ironically named Russian Size, he had a fight with another Russian student at 3am in the morning.  Damaged the tooth of the other student, was arrested and is spending 7 days in prison.  My assumption is he'll be deported after that.  Regarding the students in my year, this week 9 of them were told they won't be allowed to take the final exam, they will have to resit it next year.  Furthermore, they all had to sign a statement declaring that if they fail to attend 10 or more classes (one week's worth in total) between now and Dec 30th, without any good reason for doing so, they will be expelled.  It seems the hammer has finally been laid down, and now they have to 承担后果！

We have just completed the first week of third year!  I can't believe I am now half way through this degree, perhaps even over half way as 4th year finishes earlier than the previous 3 years.  We have a new teacher for 综合 this year, and so far I think she might be the best teacher we've had.  She has a great way of teaching, and explains things really well.  In both 综合 and 口语 our teachers have said that the major focus this year is going to be 近义词。 This is because our vocabulary is growing, and as it does a common problem we will face is misusing words that have a similar translation in the dictionary, but can't be used in the same way in Chinese.  A good example from this first week was 保存/储存，or 职业/行业。

Our other subjects are 中国历史，写作，修辞和阅读。I was really excited about history, and the book is great, but the class so far was uninspiring.  It was all focused on getting through the material and prepping for what will be on the exam, so we covered right up until 秦始皇 in one class, which was way too fast.  We also did some on 孔子，which ironically we have covered in more detail last year (twice). 

Our 写作书 is actually 高级 instead of 准高级，so it's quite challenging, but the first class was laughable.  Unfortunately our teacher seems to think we are retarded, and so spent most of the lesson explaining what a sentence is, what a question is, how a question mark/comma works etc.  She also calls us 'babies', which perhaps should offend me, but when a 36 year old woman refers to me, a 31 year old man, as a baby, it grinds my gears a bit!  Anyway, hopefully this class will improve, and the material in the book looks great. 

修辞 was fun, and I am also looking forward to this.  We looked at 比喻句 which are pretty straight forward, being as we use them in English all the time.  But it's interesting to see how Chinese metaphors differ from English ones!

All in all this was a great first week, and I am excited for this semester!  Other good news is that I got a scholarship which knocked my fees down 20%!  My teacher said if I had done more with the university then I would have gotten a higher one, so maybe next year!

We are currently in the midst of our midterms.  Last week was 听力，写作和阅读，next week we have 中国文化，语法学，口语和综合。It's good because we get all of our exams out the way before the 5/1 break.  Exams seem to have gone ok so far.

As far as how this semester is going, I am really enjoying it and I feel that I am progressing.  Last week for 口语 we had to explain one of 8 成语 based on its story, and so I chose 愚公移山。I really enjoyed doing this, and was encouraged and how much I must have improved to even be able to consider doing this.  Then a couple of days ago I was in the gym trying to have a conversation and basically couldn't understand a word the guy was saying!  This seems to happen a lot - I will be really encouraged by my progress in one area, then take a hit in another area.  More often than not it's when comparing what is spoken/heard in the classroom, with the authentic stuff that happens outside the classroom.  Regular people are under no obligation to use standard Putonghua and dumb it down for you because you are a foreigner!  I suppose this just needs a lot more time and practice.

I have been trying to increase the input I get, and so I have been watching 男人帮。  I just finished episode 26 last night, and when I have watched all 30 I will find something similar to watch.  I watched this series 2 years ago and understood very little, but now I am getting a ton out of it.  I find that so many of the things I am learning at uni keep coming up in it, and it really helps solidify them in my mind.  This has probably been one of the most useful things I have done so far, and actually although I would always make excuses about being busy, finding 45 minutes every other evening to watch an episode isn't hard.

The new semester started a week ago, and it's been a great first week.  As far as my goals for this year, I've basically failed them all already!  I wanted to read a lot more, but over the break I went home for the first time in a couple of years, and so unfortunately my Chinese took a back seat.  However, I did get through one and a half books.  Now being back I feel like I have so much more to focus on, and I'd rather do a good job of covering all my class materials well than spreading myself too thin by plodding through a book.  Hopefully I can change this up when the books are a bit easier to read, and don't require constant stopping and note making.  Rather than dwelling on my failure here, I am trying to put it behind me and go all in with everything else!

This semester we have two different classes.  Our 中国概况 and 汉字学 classes are over, and in their place we have 中国文化 and 语法学。  I really like 语法学 and find it to be incredibly useful.  The books we are using are fantastic, and basically contain answers to many questions that keep coming up for me.  中国文化 seems to be fairly interesting, and we have a new teacher for this class.  She's very friendly and asks a lot of questions.  Although our class consists of 40+ students, there's only a few of us that don't sit on our phones and actually participate in the class, so I really appreciate an interactive setting.

On that note, our speaking class has changed slightly.  For some reason all of our exams are now going to be written exams (how someone's speaking can be tested with a written exam is beyond me, but it's out of the teacher's control).  So in light of this our teacher has said he will just teach one of our classes each week, and the other one will be dedicated to us speaking (presentations/reports/skits etc.). 

All in all, I'm really excited about this semester!

I finished up the spring semester of my second year yesterday with my final of 7 exams.  Next week we start a 4 week summer semester, which consists of a week of class, followed by some outings and then a final exam.

This semester has been great, and I feel like I have made a ton of progress.  I still struggle with my tones, but thanks to lots of speaking practice I feel much more aware of the mistakes I am making, and am being much more conscious in my efforts to correct and avoid mistakes.  I really enjoyed speaking class this semester, as we had a lot of opportunities to be up the front giving presentations and such.  This was definitely the highlight for me.  Of course I would do massive amounts of preparation beforehand, but the fact that our teacher won't let us take notes up to the front to read from meant that I was forced to go with the flow much more.  This in turn has led me to feel much more comfortable speaking in front of others.

Final exams seemed to go ok.  In general they were similar in structure to previous exams.  I made a couple of silly mistakes here and there, but nothing major.  I find myself losing interest somewhat in exams and results, as I want the focus to be actually being able to converse fluently in Chinese, read books, write articles etc, rather than comparing myself to others, or getting great marks on an exam. 

I have already bought most of my books for third year, and have begun looking through them.  My reading book is the same series as this year, and so the jump isn't too intimidating.  However, for some reason we are now using a 高级 book for writing (I mentioned this to the teacher as I thought he had made a mistake, we are only 准高级 in third year, but he said this is the book).  There is a marked increase in difficulty here, and aside from pinyin for a few words, there is no English whatsoever.  This may not be a huge deal, but it's a cool little milestone for me hah!

I finished watching 男人帮 ages ago, and I'm now 20 episodes in to 一仆二主, and loving it!  The first was set in Shanghai, but seemed to use very standard putonghua, and so I didn't find it too hard to understand.  The latter is set in Beijing, and for some reason I am finding it far harder to understand!  If it wasn't for the subtitles there are whole sections that would just sound like one, long, slurred 儿 sound!  I am understanding enough to know what's going on for the most part though, and I am picking up lots of new vocabulary and characters, as well as working on my 听力！

I also bought a book.  I foolishly bought a copy of 三国演义，being as it was at a great price.  It took me half an hour to get through the first paragraph, at which point I realized this wasn't a productive undertaking.  Still wanting to be able to have a crack at such a Chinese classic, I bought a 青少年版。  As expected, it is much more manageable, yet still far beyond my level.  This is a challenge for me to accomplish over the course of the next two years.  Until then, I will stick with my textbooks, and of course with my great friend 淘气包马小跳！

In August my family is heading out to China, and we will be traveling to Xian, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai.  I'm really excited to finally get to visit some other Chinese cities, as so far I have only been to 3.  Shanghai is mainly to get passports done for my sons (not to say I am not excited to visit, just that it wasn't at the top of my list of places to go).  I can't wait to check out the terracotta army in Xian, especially after spending some time learning about it in my 文化 class this semester.

Finally, I have just applied for a scholarship for next year.  This is from the university rather than CSC, and there are 4 grades, ranging from fully covered with 1000RMB a month for living expenses, to 20% off.  My grades are probably good enough to get me something, but I have basically done no competitions or activities with the university, which is something they highly value.  Getting any money off would be amazing, so here's hoping!

I am a week late in updating my blog for a couple of reasons.  Firstly because of the week off, and secondly because we moved house last weekend.  Our landlord wanted to sell her place, and we wanted to move out before it gets really cold.  We have found an awesome place, cheaper and bigger than the last one. 

Mid-terms are fast approaching, and I have 5 out of 8 of them over the next two weeks.  Speaking was last week. 

For someone Chinese, our speaking teacher is very direct when it comes to telling us how we are progressing.  I can't remember if I mentioned it in my last post or not, but we had to do a dialogue with a friend, and then do a short powerpoint presentation on a topic that we were allowed to choose from a selection of 7 topics.  I felt that it went ok, but because of nerves my pronunciation was even worse than usual (my tones are pretty bad at the best of times).  The teacher said the presentation was fine, but my pronunciation was pretty bad.  I already knew that, but being told it by the teacher was discouraging!  However, I am glad he hammers me on this because it challenges me to improve.

For our midterm we were randomly put into groups, and then given 3 words.  We had to do a 10 minute presentation.  The first task was to explain each of the 3 words, basically as if we were teaching the class.  Then we had to write a dialogue which included the 3 words, and present that.  Having been blasted for my pronunciation, I made sure to practice this over and over so it would be better.  I got a 98 on the exam and my teacher said that this time there were no major tone mistakes, and that it was way better than before.  I was really encouraged by this.  In general my pronunciation isn't really any better than 2 weeks ago, but because I have seen that I am CAPABLE of having much better pronunciation, this has sort of re-energized me to put more effort into getting it correct.  The task now is to get to a point where I can speak like I did after 3 days of continually practicing the same 10 minute talk, without having to think about it.  It wouldn't surprise me if this takes a lot longer than my time at university here!  However, I have to start somewhere!  I got some advice from my teacher, as well as trying to follow some points from one of Imron's posts on improving speaking.

I am also really encouraged to be hearing more words I know in general conversation.  Over the past few weeks these are a few of the words/phrases that I learnt, and then heard/read and immediately recognized when chatting with Chinese people - 露一手，侵略，急于求成，结巴，挖.

Until next time!

I just got home from my final exam of third semester, and so my first year is over!  The exam today was quite difficult.  It consisted of 5 questions which had long answers， basically like essay questions but much shorter.  They were based on what we have covered this semester in our week of class, and the places we went to visit. 

I am feeling really good about how this first year has gone.  I have a very long way to go, but I can feel that there has been a big improvement since I started, and that I have a good foundation for the next 3 years.  I'm not sure that there is one stand out area that I need to improve a lot more than anything else, but rather just that I need to keep continuing right across the board.  I was at a little show thing yesterday that my kids' kindergarten put on, and one of the teachers was speaking at the front and I understand almost everything she said.  Then when we ate together later on she was talking and I understood next to nothing!  This may have been because slower, more 'formal' type Chinese is easier for me to understand than dialect laced chit-chat, but it was both a great encouragement at being able to do something I never could have a year ago, and a reminder that there is so much more I need to learn, and so much more time I need to spend practicing.  The same rings true of my speaking, reading and writing.  I'll express myself really clearly, and then be misunderstood when I try to tell someone I'm from England.  I'll write something my teacher says is great, and then forget how to write 年 or 唱歌 in an exam!  I'll find a sentence out and about that I can read and understand, and then find one where I don't know a single character. 

Over the break I want to try and keep up with study, but I haven't yet thought out exactly what I am going to do.  I think I will try reading texts from a text book that I haven't used yet, in order to keep my reading up, and also to pick up new vocab.  I will try my best to speak Chinese at home (not just out and about), and try to do things where I can increase how much I am listening. 

I think this might be my last post until September when we start back up again, although I may drop a mid-break post if I remember. 

Last week was our speaking and listening midterms, and on Thursday we have our reading/writing exam.  We also had another comprehensive exam (our teacher is giving us 3 to make up our midterm, one on each of the 4 chapter units that make up our book).  The comprehensive seemed to go quite well, although there were less questions, so mistakes will be more punishing than usual.  I was pleased to see that there was also more extra content than usual, and so I felt like the extra study I do by myself is really paying off.  One set of questions had us complete sentences using whatever word appeared in brackets, and 除非 showed up, which we have never studied before.  Thankfully I've looked at this in my own time and so had no issues with it.

Speaking went really well.  Our midterm is a spoken test, which to me is what one would expect in a SPEAKING exam, yet isn't the case for our final.  We had to read a short passage, read a list of pinyin words, and then talk about whatever topic was on the test paper we randomly picked.  I actually wasn't thrilled with my topic - a friend takes you to the airport as you are flying home, what would you say to them?  It had to be at least 10 sentences, so it wasn't overly difficult for our level, but I just found the topic a bit strange.  Again here I felt the advantage of living off campus and using Chinese everyday, and so being able to diverge a little bit from the standard book answer.  Most of the other students live on campus, and they have lots of friends from their own nations, and therefore only really speak Chinese in class for now. 

Listening was so-so.  The final 20 questions were all comparing the written pinyin + tones to the audio and saying whether it was the same or not.  This is my least favourite thing about listening.  I find I can usually understand the stuff at our level without too many issues, but I really, really struggle with distinguishing tones.  Thankfully I think this will be the last time that we have to do that, as these questions seem to fizzle out of our listening book now.  That being said, they are replaced with having to mark the tones on words in the middle of sentences, and I don't think I'm going to find that much easier!

Regarding my progress at this point, some days I feel really encouraged, and yet at other times I feel hugely discouraged.  We had some Chinese friends round last night and I was shocked at how much I understood and was able to communicate, for the first time I really felt like I have made a huge jump.  Then earlier on the bus a lady didn't understand when I was saying 'I'm a student here'!  So lots of ups and downs, but generally I'm feeling really good and excited to push more and more!

Another enjoyable week, although not a huge amount to write about!  Only 4 more weeks now until exams, so for the title of this post I combined that with some grammar we studied this week - 要/就要/快要。。。了。 I have encountered this before but it was good to go back over it and be reminded of things I have since forgotten.  For example, the fact that I can put some sort of time in front of 就要，but not 快要.  This week in my 综合课 we are going to be covering sentences using 把, I am looking forward to this because I am sure I will learn lots of new things, as well as refreshing myself on the stuff I think I already know!

I got my surprise test back and got a 90, which kept me at the top of the class.  It also highlighted areas I need to be sure to cover when preparing for my finals, and just to continue improving in general.  I made a few small mistakes, so I need to be sure to take care when I am writing - I wrote 出发 incorrectly for example, missing off the little down stroke on the start of the horizontal.  Just a small mistake, but enough to get the character wrong!  I also need to spend a bit more time on my grammar.  Our teacher said that as a class he is really pleased with our level, but our weak point is definitely our grammar.  This showed up in the section where we had to read various sentences and simply say if they were written correctly or not.  At this point our grammar is not exactly extensive, so this should have been a very straightforward question, but none of us did particularly well on it.  Anyway, it is a great reminded to go back and look over even what I assume to be the simplest sentence structures. 

Life in general is good!  Our landlord said she isn't going to sell our place this year, so we don't have to move.  It's perfect because we absolutely love this house, the rent is cheap, there are 3 bedrooms (wonderful with our 2 kids), and the area is really 方便。The weather continues to get colder, today was -20C, a couple of days ago was the lowest so far this winter at -21C!  Not that much snow yet, but I'm sure it's on the way!

I really want to get some pictures uploaded but unfortunately I am still getting an error message every time I try.  I am waiting to hear from admin, so watch this space!

I can't believe 5 weeks of this semester have already gone by!  Next week we have Thursday and Friday off, and then our midterms will be within the next 2 or 3 weeks.  These last 2 weeks have had some really helpful grammar, and also helped to clarify some things I sort of knew, but never really knew why I knew!

The first was more on the usage of 还是.  So far we had learned about using it when phrasing an 'or' question, but nothing else.  I felt like I knew how to use it as an adverb, but not really why.  The way our teacher explained it was incredibly helpful - you can use it when you have compared things and then come to a decision about which is best.  You don't need to mention any thing else in the decision if you don't want to, and whatever you think the best choice is will always become evident when you use 还是. 

For example: 我还是坐飞机去。 I am heading to Shanghai and, whether I have stated it or not, have compared the pros and cons of taking the train or flying.  For whatever reasons, I have decided that flying is still the best option.

We also covered more on using 了, this time on the rules of using time.  For example

我看电视一个小时 is wrong, but 我看电视看了一个小时 or 我看了一个小时（的）电视 are both ok.  There were also various other rules/exceptions which we covered.  I still find 了 to be tricky, as there just seem to be so many uses and rules regarding it, but this grammar has made me feel I understand it much more now than I did previously!

The ongoing student saga has now resulted in 3 students being kicked out, and 3 more down to a last warning, where if they miss one more class they are done.  This came from admin rather than our teachers.  None of them took it seriously before, but now that some have been given the boot they have come to every single class! 

Over the last 2 weeks I had my reading/writing midterm, and then next Friday is the last of my 3 comprehensive midterms, and this one will cover the whole book we have been studying, rather than just one of the 3 units.  My reading/writing midterm went great, apart from one really stupid mistake on my part.  I misread the question and thought we just had to give the pinyin for the characters listed below, but we were also meant to make words.  Unfortunately that mistake cost me 10 easy marks, but I still managed to get an 88% so it's not the end of the world.  A couple of other students made the same mistake as we just assumed the question was the same as we cover each week in our book.  Well, we all know what they say about assumption!

One of our teachers frequently encourages us to get to know each other better, which makes sense, and so this weekend I invited pretty much all the students from my year over.  We had a blast, there were 14 not including us, all crammed into my our apartment, and each made food from their own nation.  Thai, Korean, English and Russian food!  I felt like it opened the way for more relationships, because we were basically forced to use our Chinese to communicate, rather than in class where each nation uses their own language.  If nothing else it was at least good speaking practice!

In class at the moment we are basically just continuing to slog through our books.  Listening is pretty mind-numbing, comprehensive class is the most fun.  We have covered a selection of grammar, including where to put nouns when you are dealing with the number of times something has happened, how to use 从来，the use of 地，要是...就, and a couple of other points that have slipped my mind!  I do have a test to photo and upload, but I've gone and left it in the classroom, so it will have to wait until next time! 

The first semester of year two is officially over, although I still have two finals left to sit.  My first 5 finals were quite difficult.  Especially challenging was listening, as there were questions to which we had to give written answers (rather than multiple choice), and I blanked on how to write lots of the characters that I don't use that often. 

I feel that I have progressed a lot this semester.  Before starting I had bought a book for kids and tried to read it, and I found it very challenging.  A lot of the grammar constructions were new to me, and there were many characters that I didn't recognize.  I have just picked up that book again, and found it far easier.  New characters are appearing much less frequently, and the grammar that I can specifically remember not understanding, I now understand.  One of my goals for this year is to try and read at least one book each month.  As books for young adults are still too far above my level, I am starting with kids books.  Right now I am reading from the 淘气包马小跳 series.  I want to be reading something that's actually native, and not completely boring, and this is perfect.  The story is actually quite entertaining, and it feels so good to be able to get through some paragraphs without having to stop to check a word.  I am also reading out loud as I figure this will only help my pronunciation.

I think the above is my biggest goal for the year, and will also benefit my areas of weakness the most.  Of course my listening needs to improve, but I get that almost every day in class, and I really do find general listening to be far easier than listening exam type questions!  I'd like to spend more time speaking with native speakers also, and I have found a language partner specifically for that, which will give me some good, focused time each week.  I'm also really trying to make the effort to speak to my wife in Chinese.  It's a bit easier now that it doesn't take me 10 minutes to string a sentence together, but it's so easy to revert back to the languages we normally use.  I will try harder!

The highlight for me from this semester was 汉字学， it was a fantastic class.  Unfortunately we don't have it next semester, but I have the textbook and I will definitely be going back to it.  It really changed the way I look at characters and brought me a lot of new understanding. 

We have a couple of different classes next semester, but I am not yet sure of all the details.  I will update in a couple of months once the new semester starts.  I am really excited about continuing to grow my Chinese over 2019!