Lucky #4

In the West, we have the luck of the 4-leaf clover, but in Taiwan, 4 is considered unlucky.

I hope my western roots apply then in my 4th attempt to learn Chinese!

First attempt - I went to a very renowned school in Taipei - Shida University, but I wanted to quit during the first week because the idea of reading and writing Chinese seemed like an insurmountable task to me. I just wanted to speak it. Thank goodness my classmate told me to just hang in there until it 'clicks'. Sure enough, the second week it did - with the help of 2-3 hours of homework. Anyway, I kept improving and was flying high half way into the course, but then the phone rang and I had an opportunity to start a new job that i couldn't refuse. Guess what i sacrificed? Yep, my Chinese course. The hours of the new job were too long for me to keep up with my studying...

Second attempt - I got a Chinese tutor a few years later and she was great. I took a different approach then learning from a traditional textbook. She was teaching me, the chinese phrases and sentences I could use in my everyday life. Classrooom chinese so i could speak to my students, and dogs chinese so i could speak to fellow dog walkers!  Totally cool...But, 4 weeks into my learning, I had to go back to Canada for a month and when I returned did not continue with my tutor.

Third attempt - I took a free Chinese website learning course for 10 weeks. Really, it was 10 free online lessons. I got back into learning and realized that as long as you have some kind of 'commitment' to someone, it's much harder to quit something. After the 10 weeks, I felt like i didn't learn a whole lot, even though I enjoyed it, so, I didn't continue. (probably should have continued no matter if it was slow or not)

So here we are...Lucky#4 ... "I'm looking over a four leaf clover..."

I joined a new chinese class, I'm doing my listening on my fake Ipod, getting into listening to Chinese
and reading the english subtitles on TV, playing chinese character memory games online, looking at the odd book to attempt to read, and the main point .... speaking whatever little chinese i know at this point.

This blog is to follow my progress from these early stages until whenever I feel like I've 'made it' which hopefully is in 6 - 12 months. It's time to wok and woll...(did led zeppelin ever sing in chinese?)