Language partner et al

Now that I am wrapping up, I have been thinking of all the people to meet and wrapping up things.
Taking pictures is on my to-do list and I just realized that I did not take a picture with my language partner when I met her for the last time ! That prompted me to write a blog about her and other related things.

Earlier in the semester, my room-mate found me a language partner. One of her Korean friends, wanted to improve her English and I could definitely benefit from learning some Chinese. It started off with good intentions with a focus on language but then deviated to culture and food. Which I am not complaining about. Either way, made a good friend.

I had never realized that teaching English would be difficult. Never having had to "learn" a foreign language (minus Mandarin which kind of failed), teaching someone ended up being more difficult than I had imagined. Luckily, my friend had a Korean-Chinese-English book to follow. It was an interesting layout. My friend knew how to read and write English but had a decent vocabulary but it was the grammar and sentence construction that was mainly lacking. I personally hate grammar, I remember Wren & Martin as one of the prescribed books in middle school, but never ever used it. So using this Korean-Chinese-English book was interesting. It was divided into use of verbs and adjectives mainly.

The verbs started with give, take, go, come etc. And then usage of each verb was illustrated by sentence formation. When we got to the verb "come" - all the sentences were he comes, he came, he is going to come , he will be coming etc etc and this whole time I was trying not to say that's what she said and crack up laughing at the lack of imagination with the sentences. And then for adjectives, it was the same process. So teaching was more grueling than I anticipated but as a solace, our meetings were usually over coffee/Korean food/hot pot so the calories helped with the learning.

At the end what helped the most was just talking to her in English. By the end of 4 months, she carried on a conversation with less pauses. If we were more disciplined, I think it could have been a lot better. But it was nice to have a buddy here. She tried to teach me Mandarin but my vocabulary level of < a 2 year old's and inability to understand the script made us give up. She did help a bit with pronunciation. However, I had less motivation to learn the language knowing that I was returning in January.

Before coming to China I had wondered if I would want to move here, but now after spending 5 months here, I have realized that I would never move to China. I would be totally open to doing a 1 or 2 year short term project as part of a job, live in the expat area, have more cash etc but not a permanent move. I guess I am going to be content with survival Mandarin for the rest of my life :)

On a side note, this is what my friend and I had for dinner at our last meeting. A whole grilled fish swimming in hot spicy sauce :D