Being a Language Learner Again

As some of you may know, I had my first Chinese lesson on Monday. I am learning in a small group of 4-5 students. Our teacher is my tai-chi teacher, who comes from China. I’m really excited about being a language learner again. It is not my intention to comment on the way the classes are structured. Rather, I would like to write a short post about my perception of learning a language again and how it might impact on my teaching.

I am a beginner and I had never studied Chinese before. Before starting, I learnt about thirty phrases on Memrise but that is all. So here are some ideas:

1. Focusing on receptive tasks is great for a beginner class. I mean the phonetic system, distinguishing between various sounds or even words. Give simple instructions such as: “point to the sound I say.” Do more of it than you think is necessary. Only after that move on to production.
2. More revision. What might seem tedious to a teacher is actually great for the student. I was not bored when going over and over the basic sounds and words. We did plenty but I felt it still wasn’t enough. And I know I probably don’t do it enough in my lessons.
3. Be lean. Tech isn’t needed. We had a worsksheet each with the sound system and new words. All the tasks were pretty basic: repeat, read aloud, teacher points and students say the words, each student reads aloud, etc.
4. Be very specific about pronunciation. Demonstrate. Show how and where the sound is produced. Show correct position of lips, tongue, etc. Draw a sagittal diagram if possible. Sounds are weird. I needed to hear the new word three or four times before I could even attempt to pronounce it, so model many many many more times than I do now.
5. It didn’t matter what we learnt. This might sound curious, but as a beginner, I really didn’t care in what order we would learn the new words. We learnt basic words like friend, teacher, and verbs: speak, read, etc. Also numbers. I don’t teach these in my first lessons, but it didn’t matter. Also I am not very concerned about the book we’re using or the fact we are using a book. The teacher gave it to us, it may not be a perfect book to use but I feel it’s completely ok to use it.
6. Memory. We studied an hour. I didn’t remember much the next day when I tried to recall the new words (shengci). I wrote them down in a Quizlet folder, studied a hundred times today and still make mistakes! Also, it helps to have a wordlist so that you can make a set on Quizlet. I might actually take time to create a specific wordlist after each class to make life easier for the students. By the way, Quizlet is great. Thoroughly recommend.
7. The guilt. My next lesson is today. I haven’t had much time to study. I still haven’t read the rules in the book. It isn’t a nice feeling, so I’ll do my best to catch up (on the tram to pick up children from school etc.) I wish I had more time to write things down in my beautiful red book, which is still empty. My Czech student does this and his book is a wonder! Hopefully, mine will be too, one day, and I will be able to show it to you.

That’s it for now. Are you learning a foreign language and how does it feel?