learnchinese2

3/04/01 I started lesson two today. I made out notecards with the chinese word on one side and the symbol on the other. I was able to name all of lesson one's words...pretty good huh? I am really having a good time. I need to make myself study for my tests at school and not just try to learn Chinese. It's so challenging that I feel like I have really acomplished something if I can recognize a character. I got a book from the BookStar last night that has the "English" pronounciation of the Chinese word. I realized I had said almost every word for lesson one incorrectly. So that's my third step, first learning to recognize the word and second how to properly pronounce it and then thirdly to recognize and somewhat draw it's character.

I had a major accomplishment on day 4 of learning chinese. While at the book store Mike asked me what some Chinese characters said, one was way too advanced, but I said I thought the other was the symbol for water which is shui (the book was on Feng Shui). I was pretty impressed with myself since this was a lesson two word. I am having a good time with this. I am really bad at writing the characters, but it was easier for lesson two words than lesson one, so maybe practice will make a significant difference.

3-08-01 It's been a few days since I sat down and seriously studied my Chinese. So today I tested my memory. First I practiced a few strokes (disregard the stuff in the middle of the first page, I was testing a double tipped pen). After I practiced a few characters I quized myself.

I had two parts to my quiz today. First I wrote the word in English and drew the character by memory. I got one wrong, couldn't remember one and reversed the characters on 'worker'. The second part of my quiz was to write the word in English and then in Chinese from memory. The only mistakes I made were two transcribed letters and one word spelled slightly wrong. So all in all I think I did great!

3-14-01, I have been working on lesson 3, but not as hard as I did the first two I have to admit. It is getting harder in some respects, but easier because I am starting to get the hang of it.

Lesson 3 is more involved character wise than the other two. I seem to have a real hard time drawing the character for che and ma. I haven't been studying as much, but I am still excited about it. I have just been side tracked by other things lately. I have done something on it (either made note cards, practiced the characters or quized myself with the notecards every night. I don't want to get out of the habit of learning.