The story that started out with my Mandarin wasn’t too good. I was depressed, deterred, demoralized and a huge range of bad things occurred during my first tenure of learning the language. I felt no progress and perhaps I couldn’t possibly progress. I felt stupid and generally I wanted to give up. I even made quite a few posts, especially one entitled “I have the memory of a fish when it comes to Chinese“, which depicts my attitude and how I felt when I was down in that hole.
Luckily now, I have changed immensely.
I no longer worry about having to do any tests as I score pretty high in all of them and I’m now so much more confident than before.
Today, I went back home to my parents place, my Auntie was around and she was testing my Mandarin. I had quite a few simple, however long conversations with her, she was quite impressed with my progress – as the last time I spoke to her… I was still in that aforementioned hole.
I’ve started to climb out, though not fully out, though I’m almost out. I consider my Mandarin still to be not that good, but I can now kind of hold conversations.
I still have a fear of talking to others of whom I do not know well enough, or of those who I do know well enough, but I however do not want to lose face.
Whatever the case, things are going OK when it comes to Mandarin for me, so I’m not worrying about that at the moment. All I’m worrying about is what happens next, and the great mystery which unfolds, called the future. :p
