十二月 Last Class

Yesterday was the first class I've been to in a few weeks. Nearly everyone was out so it was myself and two others, almost like a private class.

Since this is my first post about a class I will start off by saying the structure is very fluid and open. We are free to stop our instructor at anytime to ask questions about what we are learning. We spend a few minutes discussing 中国 "Zhongguo". Sometimes longer because we are fascinated by the stories.

There is typically a handout or a free form assignment with the intent of getting us to actually speak in class. This is the hardest part for various reasons. Primarily embarrassment because I don't know the words to say, don't know the grammar, afraid I will say something incorrectly, and general shyness. It reminds me of John Pasden's post about teaching 英文 “yingwin" in China and how students are afraid to open up. The craziest part is our instructor is incredibly gracious and would never make me or any other student feel stupid no matter how terribly we mangle 中文 "zhongwen".

We spend the remainder of the class in our text, "Integrated Chinese-Level 1 Part 1" (Simplified Character Edition)"


We're in 第八课 "Di ba ke" at the moment.

Since there were so few in class yesterday I took the liberty of asking more questions than I typically would.
For instance:
The difference between 大家 "dajia" and 人人 "renren". 大家 refers to eveyone in a group, like when Jenny Zhu says 大家好 on ChinesePod she's talking to those listening to the podcast, to her students. However, if she were addressing everyone in the world, regardless of whether they were her students or not, she would say 人人.

同 "tong" = same
同学 "tongxue" = classmate
同事 "co-worker" = co-worker
同人 "tongren" = business partner
同乡 "tongxiang" = people from the same hometown

We were discussing a passage from a 日记 “riji" when we came across 上午 "shangwu". This led the parts of the day, which we've been over so many times and I can never get them right.
I remember 早上 "zaoshang" no problem. It's all the other parts of the day I can't remember.
So I wrote them down again, swearing I would remember them this time.

Somehow we ended up on the topic of tenses. There was a sentence with the word 找到 "zhaodao". Kai (that's our instructor) explained that there were many instances of having a verb + compliment and went on to describe how 找 "zhao" meant to search for, look for, or find something where as 找到 "zhaodao" meant that the item searched for was found. Essentially 找 reached it's conclusion.

He followed this up with another example. To 看 “kan" is to look at something. Whether or not you saw it is not known simply by saying 看. However, if you say 看到 "kandao" means you looked and you saw. The action (看) was completed. These examples helped me so much. Something just clicked. We've been over this before, I've read it in the text, read it online, etc. but the light bulb never went off. Yesterday it did. I can now study it with the anticipation of understanding.

We concluded the class by reviewing the tenses we've learned so far.
Verb + 了 "le" - perfect tense
Verb + 过 "guo" - past tense
Verb + 着 “zhe" - status

The last one I'm not clear on.
在 "zai"
正在 "zhengzai" was used as the example and all my notes say are "Continuous Tense" (i'm not a very good note taker).
Is it Verb + 在?

We then went through a few sentences using each of the tenses. We requested that Kai spend time in our next class session going over these in more detail. I'm looking forward to the next class.

Enough for now.
再见