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Manic Quest for Mandarin - TAC ’14 Team 鹊 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| SomeGuy Groupie Germany Joined 5098 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: German* Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 49 of 52 29 March 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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女士优先! :)
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4536 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 50 of 52 30 March 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged |
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I've just finished my March FSI challenge, which was to listen to 100 tapes of FSI Mandarin this month.
At the beginning of the month, I knew that the time commitment wouldn't be the problem, but maintaining my motivation would be. I'm very grateful for the accountability provided by keeping this log. It would have been far too embarrassing just to give up half-way through the month. The other motivating factor? Pure, unadulterated terror. I'm leaving for China tomorrow, and in less than 36 hours I could conceivably be having my very first conversation in Mandarin. It'll most likely be the kind of survival Mandarin that FSI has been teaching me, such as buying a train ticket or finding my way when I inevitably get lost somewhere. I'll be interested to see how well the voices on the FSI tapes have prepared me for real-life conversations. Better than the slow Assimil voices alone, I'm sure, but the jump from language courses to real life is often unforgiving, and the plunge back to Earth is often face-first! I'm extremely pleased with my progress after a bit less than four months. Now the real fun begins. Edited by LangWanderer on 30 March 2014 at 4:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 51 of 52 30 March 2014 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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Wow! Good luck LangWanderer!
If you have Internet connection in China please blog your adventures! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4536 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 52 of 52 09 April 2014 at 4:21pm | IP Logged |
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I've been in China for eight days now. I have so many things to report that I couldn't possibly fit them all into one update, even if I only focus on the linguistic aspect. I'll cover my first day in China and do my best to catch up when I have some time off of work in the next few days.
On April 1st, I arrived at Beijing airport and needed to get to the train station to get a train to Changchun. I thought that catching a train would be more fun than flying. In order to do that, I spoke my very first sentence of Mandarin: "请给我一张到东直门去的票。" I was successful on my first try as well! (By that I mean that I received a ticket to Dongzhimen. Who knows if the actual sentence was grammatically correct or if my tones were all over the place.) Once I arrived at the Beijing station after transferring to the subway at Dongzhimen, I had a bit of trouble finding the ticket office. I asked one of the workers at an entrance to the station, but the response could have been in Mongolian, for all I understood. I wandered around a bit, checked my phrasebook and saw the word 售票处. Almost instantly I saw 售票处 in big characters a few hundred metres away. I'm sure I'll never forget that word now. That's one of the biggest benefits of immersion, I think. There are certain words that stick in your mind because of the experiences associated with them. After another successful ticket purchase - although the ticket seller might have thought I was speaking Mongolian this time, because my nervousness probably made my tones incomprehensible - I got on the train to Changchun. While I was reading my book on the train, a lady started talking to me with the normal questions: "Oh, can you read Chinese?" "Where are you from?" etc. We eventually got past that and she started talking about Changchun, Dongbei food, her family and her trips around China. After an hour of doing my best to talk to her and her friend, I ended up with some tea, an orange, some red dates, a dinner invitation and, oddly enough, a heat-proof cup. Of course, there were times when I was totally lost for words (at one point I even forgot the word for "word", so I couldn't say, "Sorry, I've forgotten the word"). For the most part, though, I was very proud of how my Mandarin held up under the scrutiny of two housewives from Changchun. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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