Chinese class completed

392 Chinese character flash cards, that's the final total now that the class is completed. Today was our last class and Final Exam.

The final exam wasn't too difficult, but it certainly wasn't easy. Everyone in class was given a different one page story written only in Chinese characters. We had 20 minutes to read and research our one page story. Then we individually stepped outside of class and had to read our story (with proper pronunciation and tones) to the teacher. Then after this, we were asked five questions by the teacher in Chinese about the story and had to answer these questions in Chinese. Out of the six students I was the second to go. I was a little more nervous than I thought reading the story, but I ended up reading the story OK and answering all five questions correctly. I was told "hen bang" (great or awesome) by the teacher so I guess I did well.

The class was pretty crazy because we studied all 12 chapters of the book in the time when they normally only study 8 chapters (our class was the first to try this new compressed schedule). The last few weeks I couldn't review or practice the older material because I was just trying to stay caught up with the newest material. I feel like my Chinese got a little worse the last few weeks, but we were all very lucky to have an amazing teacher, Tian Lao Shi, pull the entire class through this extremely difficult and fast paced material.

I knew the class was not going to be easy, and I had studied a little on my own a month before I came, but beginning Chinese is EXTREMELY difficult, and was much harder than I had imagined. It was probably the second most difficult class I have taken in my entire life. The only more difficult class I have taken was Astrophysics when I was getting my electrical engineering degree (I mistakenly thought I signed up for Astronomy, but that's another story).

Well I'm finished with my class, but I have a number of books that I'm going to continue learning from when I return to the USA next week. The initial learning curve of Chinese is very tough, but I think if you can make it through the first few months, the rest will become a little easier. This Chinese class was an amazing experience and I consider myself very lucky to have had the taken it with such a great teacher and classmates.

One last weekend to enjoy in Taiwan, then back to the USA on Wednesday.

Jim