Studying Chinese alone is probably easier now than ever. There are tons of free/cheap resources that allow you to do different things at your own pace. Those studying the language offer tips on their blogs, and various online communities form to encourage language study.
As I was sitting on my desk starting at the Chinese textbooks, flashcards, and hundreds of unread articles on my Google Reader, I realized that I probably have too much going on. I spend a lot of time reading about ways to study (which can be helpful, don’t get me wrong), downloading/registering for websites to help me, or looking at the many different language books I have. The problem is that I don’t spend as much time actually studying.
All of this information actually makes me miss the old fashion classroom learning environment. I never had time to do any of this because the work I was assigned took up so much time. We had one textbook, lots of characters to learn, presentations, etc. Now, even when I occasionally meet with a tutor, I am overwhelmed with information. He gives me speeches, xiang sheng (comedy skit), tongue twisters, and more. When I go home, I put it on my desk, and check out Chinesepod or Nciku.
After I go back to Singapore and get into my normal routine, my goal is to try and focus a bit more. I think I am going to work more on completing a new book on Business Chinese that I got here in Shanghai.
-TMM
PS – this is not the case for Bahasa Indonesia. I have not been able to find many resources online, and the ones I have found are pretty bad. Thus, I am forced to use my one book and small collection of audio recordings.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree! I think I am being overloaded with a ton of information/resources/websites/books of teaching and learning Chinese as well as English. But the only thing that really matters might be the actual study per se…
I think the plethora of sources makes it possible to keep studying without getting bored. I know that I never studied this much when it consisted of learning the declensions of adjectives in Latin from Wheelock’s Latin… geez, nightmares. 96 forms of a single adjective! Wtf was Cicero thinking?
At least this way, when I get overloaded on one source, I can go check out another source and get a different angle.
Heck I dreamed in Chinese characters last night…. I guess it doesn’t say much for my ability that the only character I remember dreaming about was 口.
Yeah…helps with boredom and allows me to passively study, which in turn makes me feel like I am not a total slacker.
I don’t think I have ever dreamed about characters, but I have had several dreams about tones! (something along the lines of my teacher yelling at me over and over for getting them wrong…)
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