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enlightenment from my study and work in the future!!
In my last year at school I made my mind up to study Chinese
At that time, my form tutor,
when he found out I'd chosen this subject
pulled me to one side after class and said
Chris are you sure you want to study Chinese at university?
Do you know how difficult this language is?
If you really want to study Chinese I support you
but you have to be sure about it!
I told him i'd thought through it
and was prepared to take on the challenge.
Also a lot of friends thought it was weird
asking me
Why on earth do you want to study Chinese?
Why don't you choose Engineering, Chemistry, Maths
or a traditional subject like that?
If you really want to study languages why don't you
choose French German or Spanish?
I didn't know how to reply at the time
But I knew a lot of people thought I was quite strange!
One time I went to visit a Chinese department
there was a guy come to meet people
and I him a lot of questions about his study
He was in the fourth year of university
and he said when reading Chinese newspapers
there were a lot of characters he didn't know
he could only pick up the gist.
Hearing that really made me think
I really had a big challenge ahead of me.
Later after I got to university
our Chinese textbook had over 20 lessons
and we had to study 1 unit every 2 days
there was lots of new vocab
dialogues and a lot of Chinese characters
Because at the time I had never written
a Chinese character before,
I had a lot of difficulty initially
writing characters.
So after about a week I started to think
How difficult is this Chinese going to be?
Can I really take on this challenge?
After 2 or 3 weeks
I got used to writing characters
Although I found a lot were difficult to remember
I would spend of time after class practising
writing characters, using computer software
to check the correct stroke order.
In the holidays I would
watch TV and practise characters at the same time
and listen to textbook dialogues slowly a load of times
after I got used to my study I really got into it
and started to really enjoy it.
Later when I got to Taiwan in 2007
when ordering food I only knew
fried noodles, fried rice, kung po chicken
simple names of dishes like that
I hadn't learnt any other names of dishes
so when ordering food
I would always look things up in the electronic dictionary
However, after 2 months I had learnt all the
characters in the menus there.
and made a lot of progress with everyday speech
When I got to Mainland China
a lot of people were really curious towards foreigners
everybody would ask me a load of questions like
What country are you from?
Do you like China?
Do you like Chinese girls?
What places have you been to?
Questions like that
Beforehand, I had read on the internet
that Chinese people are passionate about studying English
so it would be hard to practise Chinese with locals.
But my experience wasn't like this
in fact it was the opposite
most people were very willing to to speak to foreigners
and speak Chinese.
After the first week of university
I didn't have any more doubts about my decision
to study Chinese, and I never regretted it.
And a lot of friends I met in China
couldn't speak English at all
so if I couldn't speak Chinese
I wouldn't be able to communicate with them.
I also got a lot of enjoyment from studying
Chinese history, philosophy and literature.
I think that studying Chinese and other languages
has changed my view on life, way of seeing other people
and has broadened my horizons.
So I hope that I will be able to gain even more
enlightenment from my study and work in the future!!