Class 4

Feelings:

Today I felt some of what Krashen would describe as the affective filter for learning a second language. I also recognized some patterns in my emotional reaction to class as well as reactions of other students. I always begin the class excited, but also a little fuzzy on what I remember from last class. The first thirty minutes or so I find myself struggling to get into the heart of things and take myself away from my other daily worries. Just as I begin to get confident, I feel like that is when a whole series of new information is presented or that the teacher goes through the material very quickly. When new words or information is just being introduced or we are only being exposed to it, I feel a sense of frustration because I want to know all of the logic and understand every word. I find, however, that when we return to that subject, I feel more confident because I have already been exposed to it. By about the second hour, I usually feel my most positive experience. Today this was when we practiced a basic song that we had learned one time before and kept singing it inserting a new subject. The teacher played away on her harmonica and we were as a class able to keep up with the words, in my opinion, pretty well. It was one of the first times that I felt that the language was coming with some sort of ease and was not such a forced feeling of expression. I do also remember how much I enjoyed learning Spanish through song, so if only I could find the Chinese version of Shakira, I would be all set!

Repetition:

I think I remember hearing a statistic something like middle school students need to hear a word 20-30 times before they own it and use it properly. I feel like it takes about 50-75 repetitions of a word in Chinese, along with a picture, along with a song, along with a gesture until I finally embrace the word as my own. After that I must repeat it in my head in the car the whole way home and hope that it will stick with me until the next day when I can impress (or try to impress) my students with my newfound skills. By the end of class today I did realize that I do know more words than I originally believed I did when I see them in print (pinyang of course, not the Chinese characters)or even hear them orally. Sometimes with my students I think that because we have only had 5-10 vocabulary words in a week and have reviewed them a few times it should be simple to remember them. Now I see that it truly is necessary to repeat them and provide several contexts. For some reason, the word for restaurant was familiar to me since the beginning even though I don't have any memory of ever seeing it before. This word was probably only presented 2-3 times in class, but I always recognize it right away. I guess I have my priorities straight! Yum!

Language as a way of viewing the world:

One of the things I enjoyed about learning Spanish was coming upon the realization that language truly is a way of seeing the world and that there are so many different ways to do this. For example, in Spanish I always enjoyed the expression "tengo ganas de...." I have the desire to... which seemed to be much more fitting than anything else I could find in English. Also in Spanish, sentences are usually longer. Although it can be a cultural or individual thing, overall in Spanish it is more common to use phrases like "mi amor (my love), mi vida (my life) or querida (dear one) that we in English usually only reserve for loved ones. I am beginning to find that Chinese, as well, has its own unique way of describing and interpreting the world. For example, the characters all have a logic. When the character for tree is repeated, it means woods. When one line is added to big, it means sky. There is no gender in words or past tense. You describe these things by the words you choose. Slowly this is giving me a window into another culture and way of viewing the world.