Learning Chinese

I am one of those people who picks up languages really fast. I think I inherited it from my mom, who can learn and correctly pronounce phrases wherever she goes. So I was under the (wrong) assumption that when I arrived in China, I could just learn the language naturally. Of course, I planned on taking private lessons so that I could actually learn Chinese. However, I thought little phrases like "How expensive is this?" and "Excuse me" would just stick to my brain like fully cooked spaghetti on a kitchen wall.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong. To be honest, I'm still not fully confident in my ability to ask how much something costs. My Chinese ability is improving at a snail's pace. I am very lucky that NDFZ provided me with a Chinese tutor, Zhang Laoshi, and she is awesome. She is my age, super sweet, and an amazing teacher (she is also the Chinese English teacher who sits in on my Junior II classes.) However, she is an English teacher. She has never taught Chinese before. The textbook she (very graciously) bought for me is full of complex sentences I don't understand. Plus, she is so cool to talk to: I'd rather just chat with her in English after a long morning of teaching than make the effort to learn Chinese. And I don't feel too bad about it, because she wants to improve her English. Our relationships is more "language exchange partners" than "teacher-student."

One month ago, I started taking private Chinese lessons with a Chinese language teacher, Qi Laoshi. Already, my Chinese is seriously improving. Part of it is the textbook, which teaches basic Chinese and provides the building blocks needed to create simple sentences. Part of it is the length of the class, 80 minutes instead of 40. Part of it is that I'm paying for it, so I feel more pressure on myself to do the homework. But part of it is also my teacher: she doesn't really speak English. Although we do occasionally chat in English, I feel more required to speak in broken Chinese. When I wanted to ask her how older her son is (I often see them walking around my area together), I got creative with my language skills. When I wanted to tell her that my mom may potentially come visit me in the spring, I used Chinese.

The best part of this is that I'm finally at the point where I'm eavesdropping on conversations and I can understand the gist of it. The combination of straight vocabulary I learned from Zhang Laoshi and the sentence building skills I learned from Qi Laoshi has made me feel more confident in my Chinese. My listening and speaking skills are improving daily. The hardest part about Chinese is reading and writing. I dread the part of my lessons where I have to read Chinese. When I see a character, I can recognize that I studied it, but I don't remember what it means. One step at a time! China Doll may be an English teacher, but also 我是学生!