Last night I had my first Practice lesson with a ChinesePod counselor. How was it you ask?
In a word, excellent. For me, reviewing with someone who knows the language (or knows it far better than I) is critical.
After speaking with Aggie a couple of times I was concerned that whoever I got was not going to be as qualified. After all, Aggie was the great Frank Fredella’s counselor. Thankfully my fears were for nothing. My counselor, Vera, is terrific. Sympathetic, encouraging, and available for questions via email at any time!
To begin Vera had me read the dialog from the transcript for this lesson. She said my pronunciation was good. Next we reviewed critical vocab from the lesson. She would pick a word and ask me the meaning. Then the difficult part: translating English sentences into Chinese.
I seem to have great difficulty here. I know the words but putting them together to form sentences is a problem.
Here is an example from last night.
Translate “I want dinner first’.
In my mind I have 我 “wo3”, 先 “xian1”, and 想 “xiang3”.
Dinner is a bit tricky. I’m thinking 吃 “chi1” but not sure if this is correct and not sure what should follow it. Should it be 饭 “fan4” or should it be something completely different?
I’m lost.
Then there is the word order. Is it 我先想 or 先我想
So the combination of not knowing the order or the correct word was stressful.
After some struggling and help from Vera I got 我先想吃饭.
This continued for several minutes with different key words from the lesson. Then the call was over. I walked away from the call with my mind racing, thinking over everything I said and what she asked me to review for tomorrow.
Overall I was very impressed. My only concern would be over the tones. For instance one of the phrases Vera asked for was “wash hands”. I knew hand was? “shou”.
What I could not remember was the tone. I said it with the first tone but was doubtful. Later I checked and it should have been the third tone. Vera didn’t correct me I assume, because of the phone connection. There were a few moments when she started to cut out so maybe she didn’t catch it. Or maybe she’ll mention it today. I don’t know. But I want to be sure I get them right. I’ll keep my proverbial eye on it.
I don’t intend on posting about every single lesson, but I’ll be posting as much as I can over the next couple of months. Hopefully I’ll get some more chances to use the language too!
4 comments:
Sounds exciting :)
Anything that generates a buzz has to be good. Don't assume you said shou3 wrong though. I found that at some point with many words my audio memory became better than what I thought the tone was intellectually. I thought first tone, said what I thought was first tone but my sub-concious saved the day and made it third for example. It is quite possible you will do the same.
The downside being for a while, that I would second guess myself. Say something naturally correct, then stress over it and repeat it wrong ;). Use the force Luke ....
Of course you may have just got it wrong, I tend to do that a lot too.
Thanks for posting on this Jeremy, and taking away some of the FUD. I plan to upgrade during the Summer so it's really great to hear some feedback. Keep up the good work and I hope the Practice is still working well for you.
好好学习，天天向上！加油:)
Chris, I think you are right and I find it amazing. I might have been correct about the tone after all.
Brendan, I'll certainly keep everyone posted about my progress and what Vera the counselor has to say.
Hell, interesting name! I'm working and staying the course.
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