Chronicles of a Chinese Language Student Crammer

We had our second class (di er ke) in Basic Chinese 3 last Saturday and this time, only four (si) of us attended. Honestly, I like the set up even if that means I'd be called to recite more often because it is practically a tutorial class unlike in Basic Chinese 2 which was a big class with a lot of chances to slack. I also like the way the teacher (laoshi) conducts the class, just like my Chinese 10 and 11 teacher in U.P. It was just too bad that some students (xuesheng) in Basic Chinese 2 are quite advanced for their class so they were transferred to our class. Next week, seven of them will join us and since they have attended Chinese schools, the pace of the class will change for sure. And to think it was bad enough that I'm trying to catch up with the characters (hanzi) I should have learned in Basic Chinese 2. Anyway, it is really dificult to gauge which xuesheng should belong to which level especially since the Ateneo Confucius Institute is just on it third batch of xuesheng. I myself initially wanted to enroll in Basic Chinese 1 until I realized it would probably be a repeat of my lessons Chinese 10/11 - introduction to pinyin, pronunciations and introduction to Hanzi. And so I decided to be bold and plunged into Basic Chinese 2. It was actually a good decision except that I wasn't able to focus that well and I was coming to class unprepared. This time though, I vowed to myself that things will be different and I will make sure to learn as much as I can in Basic 3 even of I have a lot of catching up to do.

So far so good. Despite the initial setback of not having the CD (guangpan) companion of our textbook (the Institute doesn't have it), I have kept myself abreast with the lessons. Since the textbook doesn't have pinyin anymore, what I do is read the lessons again and write (xie) on my notebook the hanzi along with the pinyin. This way, I am able to remember easier the characters as well as the pronunciation. Since there are a lot of hanzi I cannot recognize, I painstakingly look at the hanzi index of my Basic Chinese 2 textbook (New Practical Chinese Reader Book 1, which is what is used for both Basic Chinese 1 and 2). If I am lucky and I remember the hanzi vaguely, I can look under a particular letter. If I have no idea at all, I look at each hanzi - yep, one by one. It is actually not too bad as I only have to look at three pages of the index. Last week, I spent more than an hour on Wednesday (xingqi san) at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf re-writing the characters for the two dialogues. After my class last Saturday (xingqi liu), I stayed at Starbucks for four hours and did writing and memorizing the characters the entire time. I was also able to review the important phrases which the laoshi asked us to memorize. I'm just lucky I got just a mild headache (touteng) for it. I got my reward afterwards as me and my friends (pengyou) had dinner at Sweet Inspirations and played a game of bowling afterwards.

I can see that my "learn Chinese" project would entail a lot of hardwork, no doubt about that. But then again, I'm really enjoying it and I really want to do it. These days, I carry my two textbooks around wherever I go. I don't want to miss the chance to get to read whenever I can cause really, I have a lot of work to do. I just wish I'll get to learn how to use the IME editor so I can type Chinese characters using the conventional keyboard.