I realized recently that other than my textbook post, I haven't posted on this thing in weeks. What's my excuse? Well, mostly I've been eaten by my classes. I have three classes: one is 新聞聽說讀 (aka Media Chinese), which consists of reading edited newspaper reports, listening to high-speed summaries of said reports, and then discussing them. it's easily my hardest class, given that my other two classmates are a year ahead of me and come from Chines-speaking families. One's a Taiwanese high-schooler, and the other's an undergrad. The girl and teacher often treat me with a sort of amused contempt for not being able to keep up as well, but whatever. I'm learning a ton, and I care more about that than anything else-- my grades in this program are a lot less important that my ability to convince the professors back in Seattle to let me take 4th year. Which I'm thinking may be possible, given that I've learned a lot of newspaper terms, and the course aims for 4th year include being able to read newspapers. I got the lowest test grade of the class, due to swapping two phrases in the matching section, but I still did pretty well on the test.
Another class is Talks on Chinese Culture, the default third-year grammar text. My classmates here are an undergrad from Pennsylvania and a linguistics PhD from University of Washington. We're all at roughly the same level: Karla has sent a year in Taiwan already, so her speaking and listening are really good, but her writing is a little behind her speaking ability (otherwise she's probably be in fourth year), Mo Dan (I forgot his English name) is really good at grammar, and I'm somewhere in the middle. I did really well on this midterm, only losing one point out of a 100-point test that also offered 20 points of extra credit. That one point was due to writing 讓 incorrectly. Stupid 讓. This is the class that has the awful propaganda.
The other class is my one-on-one class. This used to be my favorite class of all. My one-on-one teacher, Huang Laoshi, was excellent. She thought up fun roleplays based on the grammar, and asked me questions about US history and politics and my family and whatever in ways that encouraged me to use the new grammar and vocabulary while answering. Unfortunately for me, Huang Laoshi was very, very pregnant, and a couple of weeks ago had her baby. So now I have a new teacher, who isn't nearly as good. Now it's just boring drills and repeating after him, and we stick exactly to the text, and he speaks super-slowly and is really patronizing in that way that male professors so often are to female students. I think one reason I like Dr. Whiting so much is that she's one of the few non-TA professors Ive ever had who actually responds to what I say. Usually if I say something in class, I get an amused smile, and a non-response, but she actually responds to the content, saying things like "I think that's just propaganda," or "That's true, I tend to overlook that because of my focus on political structures" or "That's interesting but not really a comment on the theory." Not all male professors do this, and some female professors do (Norma Fields, I am looking right at you), but it does seem to be the default way that male professors in the field of Asian studies have treated me.
Class is not the only thing I've been doing, though. There's also been seeing the movie Red Cliff, the school trip to Yilan, extending my visa, and other fun and less-fun things. Which deserve separate posts, I think.
Another class is Talks on Chinese Culture, the default third-year grammar text. My classmates here are an undergrad from Pennsylvania and a linguistics PhD from University of Washington. We're all at roughly the same level: Karla has sent a year in Taiwan already, so her speaking and listening are really good, but her writing is a little behind her speaking ability (otherwise she's probably be in fourth year), Mo Dan (I forgot his English name) is really good at grammar, and I'm somewhere in the middle. I did really well on this midterm, only losing one point out of a 100-point test that also offered 20 points of extra credit. That one point was due to writing 讓 incorrectly. Stupid 讓. This is the class that has the awful propaganda.
The other class is my one-on-one class. This used to be my favorite class of all. My one-on-one teacher, Huang Laoshi, was excellent. She thought up fun roleplays based on the grammar, and asked me questions about US history and politics and my family and whatever in ways that encouraged me to use the new grammar and vocabulary while answering. Unfortunately for me, Huang Laoshi was very, very pregnant, and a couple of weeks ago had her baby. So now I have a new teacher, who isn't nearly as good. Now it's just boring drills and repeating after him, and we stick exactly to the text, and he speaks super-slowly and is really patronizing in that way that male professors so often are to female students. I think one reason I like Dr. Whiting so much is that she's one of the few non-TA professors Ive ever had who actually responds to what I say. Usually if I say something in class, I get an amused smile, and a non-response, but she actually responds to the content, saying things like "I think that's just propaganda," or "That's true, I tend to overlook that because of my focus on political structures" or "That's interesting but not really a comment on the theory." Not all male professors do this, and some female professors do (Norma Fields, I am looking right at you), but it does seem to be the default way that male professors in the field of Asian studies have treated me.
Class is not the only thing I've been doing, though. There's also been seeing the movie Red Cliff, the school trip to Yilan, extending my visa, and other fun and less-fun things. Which deserve separate posts, I think.
Current Mood: 
cheerful
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