Learning Chinese Part 4 (+o+)

Welcome to my blog! I'm back with my weekly Learning Chinese Series: Part 4. Before I go into the actual syllabus that we'd gone through, I'd like to share with you an "welcoming speech" which Dr Tang has given last week, take a look:

“So today is lesson 3. Welcome to the class, I hope that you all can still remember what I teach last week. We learned numbers, strokes & some basic words, still can remember? Do you have any question on that? *no pausing whatsoever* If not, we will continue with today...there are some activities that I’ve planned for today. Maybe it’s hard for us to have one-to-one interaction because the class is very big, about 50 people so hard for me to teach. (wtf) Next week or maybe the week after next, there will be a new class by Ms Zhu Yue, same time but another classroom (wtf) so if you feel that you already have some knowledge of the language you can go to the class maybe can gain more knowledge from there. Or if some of you want to start from lesson 1, first class can also go to that class & learn more. I’ll pass around this paper. This is Class A, Zhu Yue’s class is Class B. If you think you can learn more there then you just put ‘B’ beside your name, this paper I’ll pass around this paper, just put ‘B’...ah maybe you can learn something new there since she is from China. And also easier for me to teach this group if it’s not so many people. There’s about 50 of you that’s why we need to separate into 2 classes, Class A & Class B. If all of you choose to remain in this class then I have to work harder & try my best to teach this language to all of you. I welcome you to my class & I’ll try to teach in a fun way, hopefully you all will learn something from me. Now, I’ll share with you some activities for today. Zhu Yue’s class might have other activities maybe you go there you can learn more. Anyway, welcome to my class...”

This ‘opening speech’ lasted for 30 minutes. The actual thing is much longer, I just shorten a part of it because my fingers ache by just typing this paragraph. Just imagine our torment while sitting in there, staring at the fragile old lady mumbling in front, don’t know want to feel pek chek or pity at her. *sigh* I saw Susan from ELS was yawning, some giggled when our dear teacher kept beating around the bush. I was busy jotting down everything she said while my friend, Padmani kept telling me, “Kesian the teacher huh~ kesian her~”.

Just for you to know, I’m not in any position or have any intention to criticize the way she conducted the class. However, it just bothers me with the fact that she didn’t have to repeat so many times for simple announcement like this. Precisely, she can just say “There’ll be a new class/group by Ms Zhu Yue so if there are some of you who find that you cannot cope with the lesson here, you can go over to her class, same time, but different classroom. Full stop. Easy peasy. Save a lot of time and saliva & she can continue with the lesson.

Another matter that bothers me is the inefficiency use of time. Very poor time management I’d say. For your information, this elementary level consists of 8 classes, once per week, 3 hours each time. Just imagine the time allocation will be something like this if I put it in a pie chart:

Out of 180 minutes (3 hours), 17% (30 minutes) were used for her to aimlessly mumbling or to convey a very simple message in a sarcastic manner. That follow by 12% (20 minutes) for waiting those who were late (Malaysians can never be punctual. This is a fact.), another 12% (20 minutes) for tea break & the final 12% (20 minutes) for video-playing. Overall, the exact time use to teach is only a less-than-half 47% (80 minutes)! A huge percentage of 57% (90 minutes) + 10 minutes (she always dismiss class 10 minutes before the bell rings) goes wasted unnecessarily! Just multiply 80 minutes with 8 classes, that’s only about 10 hours & 40 minutes of lesson time. You tell me, how can you master an elementary level in just 10 hours? How to learn 100 Chinese characters / words in 10 hours? By the word “learn”, I expect someone to be able to write, read, pronounce & understand the meaning of it & also apply it.

Side note: A business student is always sensible (a.k.a calculative) when it comes to time & money, hahaha~

Enough said. Moving on to our lesson of the week: 

We learn some additional strokes, for basic strokes click here

Then, we write basic conversational phrase / greetings like, "Ni hao ma?" meaning how are you and "zai jian" meaning goodbye or see you again!

More exercises on intonation..

(Lucky number 5863~)

Then we did revisions on numbers, from 1 - 100... like yi, er, san, si, wu.... jiu shi jiu, yi bai..

I write very ugly I know, I will practice more! *semangat berkobar-kobar*

By the way, I scored 20/20 in the test! Yay!~ Will show you the test paper when she returns it.

Got to go, on half day leave today! 

Goodbye!