classes started

There's a ton of things I could talk about / post pictures of, but I think I should write up a post just talking about what this program is, how it runs, and what it consists of. Kelly, please take note!

Ok, so first of all the important thing to note is that the curriculum is NOT predetermined and in fact I was asked to specify what classes I wanted to take at registration. This wierded me out a little bit because I had no idea what was going on; I thought there was a preexisting "intermediate chinese" track, which there wasn't.

Anyway, there are four levels of classes: tutorial, 2 students, 4, students, and 6+ students. Upon registration, you write down what classes / how many hours of each you'd like to take. Ok, so somehow or other on my acceptance letter said that I was approved for 10 hours of class / week, so I assumed I was taking 10. I originally put down 10 hours of tutorial cause I figured 1-on-1 would be the best; but then I rethought it and decided that a group class would also be good to take. So I was trying to figure out how many hours of each I wanted to take and I tried putting 5 and 5, and then as I went to confirm my schedule with the teachers they told me that the group class was a 2-hour class every day of the week and that I should take the full regiment of 10 hours per week in that, meaning that I couldn't take the tutorial.

So it turns out that 10 hours per week was some arbitrary/meaningless designation and I could take as much class as I wanted. So I decided to go with 10 hours of group class, and 5 hours of tutorial. Now this runs into the problem of funding from Light, for which I based my tuition estimate off of the website's quote of "10 hours of tutorial = NT28000." So I was actually planning to take 15 hours of classes despite Light funding for only 10. Turns out group class is less expensive than the tutorial, so the total tuition worked out to a cool NT27750 which fit right into the Light budget.

I picked out my classes with the teachers and they started asking me some questions in Chinese, and I had just been haggling with them about my schedule so I was a bit confused. Turns out it was an impromptu sort of proficiency test; they asked me a lot of questions whose grammar I understood perfectly but with vocabulary I didn't know, so I think I gave them a bad impression. Anyway, I guess I tested into Intermediate Chinese, which is the title of the textbook I have, but how/why they placed me in my particular class I don't know. More on that later.

So I paid the tuition and for my textbooks in cash, as famously alluded to earlier, with no mugging problem. Registration day was on the 27th, and classes didn't start until Jul 2, so I didn't really have anything to do for a couple days. I decided to just learn the first lesson on my own to prepare for class; the textbook seemed to me pretty easy and I started getting worried that I wasn't going to be very challenged here..

Anyway, I went to class yesterday (about a 30-minute walk from my uncle's apartment in the sun; I was drenched) and my first class was the tutorial, which was BRUTAL. I really like the teacher; he doesn't speak English at all. What's interesting is that we'll be talking, and he'll use some new vocabulary pretty often, and if I can't figure out the meaning from context, he'll try to explain it.... in Chinese. Getting through one little topic alone takes a long time and a tremendous amount of concentration & creative thinking on my part (trying to interpret his demonstrations of the definitions). Also, he writes down all the characters for new words, and I copied them down in my notebook.

Group class after that is a real disappointment, though. I'm in class with 3 older Americans, all grad or post-grad (not in Chinese). I can't really discern the level of Chinese spoken; one guy, who actually lives about 30 minutes from me in New York, has a huge vocabulary but his spoken fluency (ie tones) is pretty rusty. A girl is in my class who hasn't spoken Chinese since she took 1 year of undergrad ... she's now a post-doctorate student so that gives you an idea of where she is. Class just consisted of us reading through the new-vocabulary pages, repeating the sentences, occasionally making our own sentences with the words, and doing a little discussion (which lead to more new, somewhat unrelated words being uttered & written). But that is literally all class consisted of - reading and discussion a few new vocabulary words.

Here I should mention that the first day we got through something like 20 new vocabulary words. TWENTY! Over a span of two hours!!!! And I had already learned them the night before when I was previewing. We had a test the next day on 8 of them (hard to explain, the two hours are split between two teachers so the first teacher assigned a quiz for the ones we did with him)... which worked out to about 15-17 new characters; I got all of them, but the others didn't do perfectly..

I don't know. At Yale I felt like the classes moved pretty slowly and here I feel like I'm in a remedial class. I was / am fully prepared to learn 100 new characters a night and I can't figure out what to do. I literally have been creating work for myself to do: I copied down all the words we spoke about in my tutorial / class (not from the textbook), which worked out to about 100 characters, and learned them last night. Being pulled from assorted conversation topics, there's no theme to this list (it goes: theater, independent, swimming, blood, 'rotten cake,' developed, relaxed, etc) and no accountability if I don't learn it.

Anyway, there's three UMass Amherst students also taking Intermediate Chinese, except their class is in the morning (mine are in the afternoon); I was talking to the girl from their group and she alluded to having to learn a lot of new words. I think they're using the other 'intermediate chinese' textbook, which I bought but our section isn't using (dunno why), and it looks like their homework is more intense than mine (which is basically nonexistent cause I know lesson 1 already). I'm going to ask tomorrow what the difference between my and their section is, and if I can somehow transfer / add a new class. I'm reluctant to transfer section because it'll probably mess up their schedules and besides I made good friends with that guy in my section. And if I add a class, it's going to cost another ~NT20000 which is ~NT20000 more than the Light Fellowship awarded me. I'm not really sure what to do: I'm here to learn Chinese and right now I'm typing on blogger, in English, with no homework to do except voluntarily learn characters.

Also, there isn't a language pledge here. Before you squirm, let me say it's not much of a problem since few of the people I hang out with here speak any English. In fact, the only other people here who speak English much are the UMass students who I don't hang out with (but I wouldn't mind doing because I have no friends here). And being 'allowed' to speak English helps sometimes; we can discuss more complicated topics using mostly Chinese and use an English word when needed. (Or ask someone, zenme shuo.. ?) I haven't yet started "thinking in Chinese," which is disappointing, but I feel it's not because of a lack of a language pledge, but more a result of me having nothing to do and thus reading blogger posts/facebook/whatever at night.

Mostly, I'm just bored, which really wasn't what I was expecting. I live 30 minutes from campus with my retired aunt & uncle; my cousin sits on his bed all day playing Everquest, rarely talks, and in fact yesterday left for Taipei to chill with his university friends; I don't have anyone's phone number; the only people I know how to hang out with are kids from church which is always wierd for me since I'm atheist; argh.

Well, that's how things are shaping up as of the second day of classes. I'll talk to my teacher and perhaps the administrators tomorrow and see if there's something I can do, but for now it's chilling in my room reviewing characters for the hell of it. :(