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Week 3 & 4

Shelley

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Week 3 & 4

Well I had to cram 2 weeks into a few days because unfortunately I had help arrange and then attend my mother's funeral this last couple of weeks.

She had been ill for a while and was 81 years old so we were sad but not surprised.

******* ******** *******

Lesson 3 was about arriving at the hotel and booking a room with a broken air conditioner.

We learnt some useful grammar patterns and did battle with the 3 can's in disguise :)

能不能 ， 可不可以 ， 会不会

In lesson 4 we learnt the "although .........but......... " pattern. I had not come across this one before, very useful.

We went to the hotel restaurant and ordered breakfast. A Chinese omelet with the option of adding tuna and cheese and a cup of oolong tea.

Estella put in an appearance in the second video of lesson 4, she loses her purse and has it given back to her by one of the students on the Chinese course, this then leads to the arrangement of going for lunch later on =* ooh is romance in the air? Its just a bit of fun, and is so very obviously staged it made me laugh out loud.

Interestingly for me as I have been taking part in the brilliant tea topics by abcdefg, we were taught the names of several Chinese teas. Also something called 奶茶 - milk tea, never heard of that before, if anyone knows what it is, that would be interesting.

As always in each introduction video Estella again emphasises the importance of tones, as she says if you don't pay attention to your tones now you will be speaking not just wrong Chinese but bad Chinese. She has been a real stickler for getting tones right from day one.

The long awaited android version of the app that goes with the course is being promised soon. This helps with tones and characters from what I can tell from the demo.

I am enjoy the course very much, it fits in well with my life and adds some structure to my self study routine. I am going to also go back and take up my NPCR routine now that life has returned to normal. So I will post my progress for that as and when there is something interesting.

Two members of the forum have joined the course this week, glad to have them on board, be nice to have someone to bounce ideas around with about the course.

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Shelley

Thanks for your thoughts. It is sad but not for too long,she wouldn't have wanted us to be sad for too long.

 

Its a bit complicated, I am now on book 1 lesson 9. I have, in the past, with my private Chinese teacher (5 or 6 people in our group) reached the end of Practical Chinese Reader book 2.

 

I felt though, that because I am now self studying, I keep missing things and have not been disciplined enough sometimes and consequently I have holes and misunderstanding in my knowledge, so I decided to make a concerted effort to start with no. 1 and work my way diligently through the course, no skipping bits, no "I'll come back to that" and so on.

 

I am going to document my progress with NPCR, starting in a couple of weeks when I have a couple of weeks break in my edX course, so that I can do an introduction and fill in up to lesson 9 then I can just top it up as I go.

 

I will go into my Chinese learning history a bit more also, I have been learning for 30 years but sporadically to start with but now I really want to get my speaking and listening up to speed with my reading and writing, another failing with self study and not living in china.

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Johnny20270

Indeed, my parents are both declining, won't be many years left. Time goes fast when you think about it.

 

 

There is a lot of material in each Chapter in NPCR.  in our class we are in Book 3, lesson 31 We do a lesson every 3 days but to be honest its too fast and skip many parts, In language schools here in Beijing, there is often a race to finish a book, which in many ways is self defeating.

 

The workbook contains a lot of useful exercises and you just need time to practice dialogues sentences patterns

 

Yes revision is paramount in my opinion, its amazing how much you pick up 2nd and 3rd time

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