Learning Chinese

My Chinese skills suck. It's shameful in fact. Writing is hopeless for me. I can read basic words, but given a newspaper, I have no chance. I can speak some, but my Canadian accent is a constant source of amusement for native speakers. I can understand basic Mandarin, but a newscast I have difficulty with.

I suppose it's partly my fault. I speak mostly English at home, even when spoken to in Chinese. On the other hand, I took Saturday school all the way to high school. When I was younger I always resented the fact that Friday nights were always spent studying. Now I resent the fact that I didn't work harder. But I wasn't a complete slacker and I did end up learning quite a bit. I just wished I learned more.

Lately, some of my friends have been signing up for language classes. A lot of them signed up for this in the summer, which I thought was insane, since I didn't want to give up my summer weekends cooped up indoors. So I decided to start taking classes in the winter with the Confucius Institute at Renison College, which is on the Waterloo campus. Class is only two and half hours every Thursday.

So far it's been quite good. There are only four students in the class which really accelerates the learning process. The teacher is excellent and knows how to teach and interact with the students. The class is mostly focused on reading and conversing, which I suppose are the best skills to know first. The down side is that they are teaching "Mainland" Chinese. I'm not used to their accent and some of their words. Since they are Mainland, the writing is simplified, which is harder for me to learn, since I had previously only learned traditional. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with the course. Now, if only my language skills improved to a point where I'm good enough to use it!