Friday, October 13, 2017

Mandarin I Class Summary, Insights and Homework 10/12/17

Hi Everyone,

We had a very successful class last night. Though I was disappointed in the percentage of students who read the blog last week (I am typing this stuff FOR YOU -- not for my own health), I was encouraged with how many students came to class prepared with the book and ready to resume our study of tones and the basic syllables and sounds of Mandarin.

Please make sure you check this blog once or twice a week every week from now on. (Of course, I realize that only the people reading this blog will know to check this blog -- what a conundrum...)

CLASS SUMMARY:

We began by reviewing the 4 tones of Mandarin Chinese. I drew the same table on the board that appears in the first handout from 2 weeks ago (available for download in my previous blog entry in this section below). We covered the sounds of the tones on an "aah" syllable (the first of the simple finals, which were the next thing that we reviewed last night).

Following everyone vocalizing the 4 tones as well as the NEUTRAL TONE on an "aah" vowel, we chose the "bo" syllable from the first line of the bo po mo fo table of Mandarin initial consonants and did the same tones on this syllable. I explained the concept of the neutral tone a bit deeper last night than the previous week (don't worry; we will cover the neutral tone many more times in future classes). From here, we had our assistant teacher Esther read the 5 syllables of "ma" on all 4 of the tones as well as the neutral tone and you all repeated after her. I pointed out the nuances of what we heard, and at this point, we reviewed the 6 simple finals of Mandarin Chinese.

Again, for review, the 6 simple finals are:

a, e, i, o, u, and ü.


We spent a good amount of time on each of these sounds, focusing on the e, the 2 possible sounds of the i, and the problematic ü, for which I again shared the secret pronunciation hint mentioned during our previous class (see below in this blog category for that explanation).

From here, we moved on to the bo po mo fo table, and this time were able to cover all but the 5th line in some depth. As I mentioned, each student's ability to discern the subtle differences between line 4, 5, and 6 of the bo po mo fo table, and your relative abilities to reproduce these sounds accurately will determine each of your potential speeds with which you will either learn this language or quit out of frustration.

This is a simple fact of learning Mandarin: You MUST be able to get these initial consonant sounds correct (lines 4 through 6) and be able to flow seamlessly from one to another back and forth between syllables beginning with these consonants if you ever want to even hope for some ability to communicate with Chinese people in Mandarin.

I want all of my students to know this before they get any deeper into this learning process.

YOU NEED TO COMMIT TO WHATEVER IT MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT TAKE EACH OF YOU TO SUCCESSFULLY PRONOUNCE LINES 4, 5, AND 6 OF THE BO PO MO FO TABLE IF YOU REALLY WANT TO LEARN TO SPEAK MANDARIN CHINESE.

Please take this VERY seriously and focus on learning to say these specific sounds NOW before you move forward with learning anything else that I will teach in future classes. You will thank me later.

Next week, we will review all 6 lines, focus again on the subtle differences between lines 4, 5, and 6, and then finally move to the textbook for basic bo po mo fo syllable practice WITH TONES added in!

Yay!!!



INSIGHTS:


I don't really have much to type here today, because I basically just expressed my insights about the material from last night's class above.


If I were to share any additional insight right now, it would simply be this:

Please be ruthless with yourself when learning to pronounce Mandarin Chinese.

I want each of you to behave like the crazy tennis player who curses himself and hits himself with his own racket every time he misses a shot. Think John McEnroe, for anyone who remembers his antics from the 80s. Be very, VERY hard on yourself and complain (TO YOURSELF) every single time you screw up your pronunciation or tone.

Every time any of you mispronounces anything in this class or with a native speaker of Chinese going forward (once you start trying to speak with people in Mandarin), I want each of you to say to yourself under your breath, "I suck," and I want each of you to commit to fixing any errors you may have made with your pronunciation and/or tones, so that the next time, or the next time, OR THE NEXT TIME, you will do better and eventually pronounce that syllable or word within the threshold window of intelligibility that I mentioned during our first class. 

It is imperative that you are somewhat BRUTAL with yourself and that you FEEL EMBARRASSED as much as possible each time you make a mistake early on during your Mandarin language learning process for 2 reasons:
  1. You will develop the thick skin necessary to let all mistakes roll off your back without allowing any one mistake in class or out in the real world to discourage you enough to make you quit learning Mandarin. You MUST develop this thick skin, or you will go through the entire time that you spend studying this language MUMBLING in Mandarin because you will not be confident enough to just "put it all out there" and have genuine, from scratch, interactions in Chinese with real Chinese people. You will always second-guess yourself, and that will not help you enjoy this learning process.
  2. By being very hard on yourself from the start, you will take this process seriously and you will simply and quickly fix your errors, ALL OF YOUR ERRORS, instead of making excuses as to why you can't pronounce such and such syllable properly.
I have seen #2 in action time and time again, AND IT IS BULLSHIT. I have heard all of the bullshit student excuses before, and I have made most of them myself at some point...

Usually the one that goes like this:

"Oh, well, you know -- It's GOOD ENOUGH for me to just say it that way. I know it isn't "right," but [I am not Chinese or whatever other bullshit excuse you want to insert here] and it's good enough for now."

NO, IT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Be hard on yourself. I certainly will be hard on you in class, as you all know by this point if you have paid attention and read my blog.

I want people to quit this class because learning Chinese is not for everyone. 

Each new learner who is not ethnically Chinese and who didn't grow up speaking Mandarin with their grandma as a child MUST make a firm decision TO PERSEVERE while negotiating all of these weirdnesses of Mandarin Chinese early on -- like the 4 tones, and the ü, and lines 4, 5, and 6, of the bo po mo fo table, and eventually such mundane stumbling blocks as the correct pronunciation of the Mandarin Chinese word for "New York," which we will learn in Lesson 1 Dialogue 2.

Those who don't make this decision early on -- those students who don't get just a little bit PISSED OFF and who don't say to themselves, you know what, I AM going to succeed at learning this language even though I am having a hard time pronouncing it -- those are the students who will either quit my class or who will stay in class for the "hang out" factor while wasting their time, mine, and the collective time of all of their classmates, who will be burdened with listening to an unnecessary extra amount of really crappy Mandarin pronunciation for the rest of the year.

There is no shortage in this world, or at ALESN, of really badly pronounced beginner-level Mandarin Chinese. Make a commitment to yourself now, each of you, that YOU will not be one of the people who goes through an entire academic year in our program and yet can't even tell me what your name is in Mandarin by next June.

HOMEWORK:

Your homework for next week is to get and bring the textbook with you.

To download the mp3 audio files for at least the pronunciation and tones intro section of your textbook, sent to you last week and the week before in this blog column.

To download the videos from the link sent last week, also below in this blog column.

AND FINALLY, to go on Youtube and spend 15-30 minutes watching "bo po mo fo" and "Mandarin Chinese tones" videos, which will help you begin to iron out any kinks in the way your particular ears process these sounds that are very different from English, or from whatever your native language might be.

PLEASE EMAIL ME ANY LINKS THIS WEEK AND GOING FORWARD THAT HAVE REALLY HELPED ANY OF YOU, SO I CAN POST THEM HERE IN THE MANDARIN I SECTION OF MY BLOG, WHICH WILL HELP ALL OF YOUR CLASSMATES AND ANYONE ELSE READING THIS BLOG TO WORK ON THEIR PRONUNCIATION AND TONES, AND ON THE PROCESS OF INTERNALIZING THE SOUNDS OF MANDARIN CHINESE.

See you all next week.

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