I was speaking to my friend from South Korea today and he was also having difficulties learning Chinese. However that is more than understandable considering he managed to skip to a higher level for the Chinese language course.
He is a good friend and I like his advice. He studies very hard I believe however he has started to lose interest in Chinese. We kind of talked it over and he said he didn't have a good enough reason to study Chinese, which is why he is losing interest he believes. I think it is for other reasons. What I believe he is asking himself is "What do I do after I learn Chinese?" or "Am I going to get a job which I will like with the language I am learning?”
In a sense I agree with him. Although I have a pretty damn good reason to be learning this language since I am Taiwanese. Even though I have a good reason and should have this huge drive to be learning this language I am finding this language very tough to muster and to learn. I feel I am learning too slowly and even when I repeatedly find methods which usually work when memorizing the characters, when someone asks me to write those characters, I find it very difficult.
What I also find very difficult is the measurement words to remember in Chinese since books, pens, newspapers all have different measurement words which go before them. So if you want to order two books, you need to know the measurement words. Although you don't in reality considering you'd just pick up two books or you can just say 2 books and not include the measurement word. But I just feel bad every time I have a test, because it seems I am the only guy in class that struggles. I can study the day before and even for the entire week, but yet when it comes to answering questions I am given, I struggle hard. – Harder than anyone else it feels like.
But I am trying to change my attitude since it stinks. I am too afraid to speak and when the teacher asks me any questions, I am afraid to answer or make a fool out of myself. I even made a simple mistake today which some people laughed at. But I noticed the mistake and it was a very small error which I looked past. The error that I found was that I was trying to say the Chinese as fast as I could so people wouldn't think I was slow. The error I made was that I said a little more than I should have done. But that is because I never focused on what I was reading. Otherwise I would have totally understood the question, had I not been so worried about what others were thinking of me.
Tomorrow I will try to change. But I have a feeling or gut instinct I won’t like my test results that I did today. That will make me go back to thinking like a 0 or a nothing. I just hope that things can improve a little more quickly than they are at the moment.
I just feel that with life it comes down to money. You have money? Well you can be who you want and do what you want. You can go on nice holidays and not worry about any bills. – Buy anything you want and do anything you want. No insecurities really. Though I am sure a lot of rich people create insecurities for themselves. I would be more relaxed with learning Chinese, would probably pay for 1 on 1 class everyday and perhaps outside classes too to speed up my learning abilities that bit more. That is the power of money.
