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"Learning in class"
The most important question you should ask yourself about your current teacher or course is what you won’t learn. Since this isn’t something most teachers and schools like to talk about, it’s typically something you need to figure out on your own. This article discusses this question from various angles, highlighting the importance of being aware of what you need to study on your own.
Keeping a notebook with you at all times is essential, not only because it makes sure you don’t forget important things you want to learn, look up, follow up or remember for other reasons, but also because it help you keep your mind clear and enables you to focus on what’s important and thus learn more Chinese.
Having fun while learning, or at least making the best of every situation, is essential. Learning a language requires a lot of time and if we don’t enjoy the process, we aren’t likely to invest the time we need to master a language.
Looking at popular literature about learning styles, it looks like the use of learning styles is based on solid science. This isn’t the case and many scientists dispute the claims made by authors and educators favouring teaching based on learning styles. In this article, I discuss learning styles critically, but also provide some thoughts on how they can be used productively.
When reading about ways of learning languages, it’s easy to just nod or shake one’s head in approval or dismissal. This is not enough if we want to master the art of learning a language. We need to identify the methods or ideas that have potential and actually try them. Only then can we know if they are helpful or not.
Learning to write well in Chinese requires lots of practise, which presents us with a number of problems. How do we find suitable topics? How do we avoid performance anxiety? How can we benefit from the mistakes we will make? These are some questions I discuss in this article.
I won’t join the group of language bloggers who claim that classroom learning is meaningless, but I do believe there are good reasons to create links to the real world. Not only is this a motivational booster, it’s also an excellent way of identifying problems you might have with your Chinese.
When we learn, we can’t focus on everything at once. If we want to improve in a complex skill, simply practising that skill isn’t the most efficient way, we need to break it down and use target practice. For instance, focusing on improving pronunciation is too vague, but focusing on the fourth tone is more likely to yield positive results.
Studying languages, questions crop up all the time. What’s the difference between X and y? Why is sentence Z written in this way? In this article, I argue that how we handle these kinds of problems is dependent on what resources we have available (teachers, friends, etc.), but regardless of that, what matters most is how we choose to use the resources we have at our disposal. If we aren’t careful, we might end up wasting them or even losing them entirely.
The way in which we count proficiency or progress have a huge impact on how we study. This is relevant for teachers and students alike. Teachers should strive towards counting (grading) what counts (is important); students should do likewise when assessing themselves and also be aware of the general problem.
