Skip to main content

Small victories youll encounter in your Chinese Journey

Your language journey

Everybody has its own path when it comes to language learning, they are all beautiful but completely different, but there are some victories that will happen in most people's language journey. It's important to care about these victories and appreciate it them because these will help you to stay motivated.

My experience

Up to this point I have been studying Chinese for more than 2 years and a half and I honestly love this language, but I have had my rough patch, mainly when I first started to learn Chinese. I remember that there was a moment I really wanted to quit and this happened on my third module, which was around my 4th month studying Chinese, I was feeling quite frustrated because I was not able to understand a lot of things and I felt like I was not as good as my classmates and to be honest I was not enjoying it; but one on these small victories helped me to stay motivated, and I'm so glad that I was able to keep going, because now Chinese language is such a big part of my life. 

Reading victories

One day you'll be walking down the street, and you'll see a Chinese restaurant, suddenly you'll realize that you are able to understand the name of it or at least what they are selling.
One day you will buy Chinese takeout and whether it's the packaging of the chopsticks or the bag of the takeout you'll see some Chinese characters and will probably find at least one character you know.
One day walking down the street or in a store you'll see someone wearing a shirt that has Chinese characters, and you'll see some interesting characters, there's this one time when I was downtown, and I saw a man that was wearing a shirt with the characters 壞人 which means bad person but more in the context of criminals.
One day you'll see someone with a Chinese tattoo you might not understand it because people tend to get idioms as tattoos, but you'll recognize at least of one character, but who knows maybe you'll be able to understand the whole tattoo.
One day while you scroll down on Instagram you'll find a Chinese meme, and you'll be able to understand it, this is one of my favorites victories, something about being able to understand a meme feels so special.
Finally, one day you'll accomplish something as big as being able to read a book in Chinese. I'm not there yet, but I'm so hopeful that ill get there.

Listening victories 

One day when you are watching a c-drama you'll be able to understand phrases, the first phrase I ever identified in a Drama was 真的吗？ 
One day you'll be in a department store or something of that sort, and you'll recognize someone talking in Chinese, and you'll be able to understand what they are saying, the first time I was able to understand someone talking in Chinese was in a Banana Republic, they were a family and the mother was talking about a shirt.
One day you'll be able to understand a song just by listening to it.
One day you'll be able to understand a Chinese podcast without struggling and a whole new world will open up to you. 
One day you'll be able to watch C-dramas without subtitles, I'm not there yet, but I can't wait to get there 

Finally, there are so many more victories that you are going to achieve and these will make your journey a bit easier, and you'll start to like every step of the road, and hopefully this will help you stay motivated 
加油.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Manhuas, a game changer for improving your reading

How to use Manhuas to practice Chinese Improving your reading skills There are many ways to improve your Chinese skills, but when it comes to reading it's all about practice and constant immersion in the Chinese language, there are a lot of different resources that you can try like: books, articles, newspapers but the one I'm going to be focusing on this blog is practicing your reading through Manhuas (which are basically comics). Where can you find Manhuas? So there are a lot of different places where you can find them, for example if you want a physical copy you can find some on Amazon, but there's not a lot of variety, so the best options will be to read them online: there are some platforms that you can use for example: bilibili 漫画  or Webtoon , these two are both web platforms and Apps, so you can use them in the format that you prefer.  They are both free and quite easy to use, they quite similar, but the content in each one is quite different, another thing that is...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is going on with the 把 structure ?

The 把 structure The reason behind why you need he 把 structure The 把 structure is mostly used to add emphasis, the emphasis is added in the verb/result as it changes their usual position. This structure can be quite confusing, because in most western languages we don't have a structure that is remotely similar, so there is not a direct translation.  Even though this structure is quite hard, it's also really important, in my opinion it is fundamental. In addition, you will encounter this structure early on in your language journey. In my case I learned this structure in the GoChinese 400, and I'm also I'm pretty sure it's part of the HSK 3 coursework. What is the infamous 把 structure?  This structure is quite strict, from what I have learned up to now, the 把 structure never changes. It always follows its original pattern, which is : Subject+把+Object+Verb+ Result   The main uses of the 把 structure: 1)To emphasize that an action has finished Subject+把+Object+Verb+好了/忘了 ...
Post a Comment
Read more