David on Formosa

I have been attending Chinese classes for three weeks now. Although it is not a long time and I only have two classes per week I feel I have made some progress. 

In class I have mainly been studying the stories from Qi Bai Zi Gushi (七百字故事). As I mentioned  in an earlier post it is probably not an ideal text book, but it has worked reasonably well in class so far. Given that my main goal is learning to read Chinese the book contains stories are at a level that is appropriate for me. There is some new vocabulary for me to learn, but not so much that I have difficulty understanding the story. 

Some of the stories are also quite interesting. Although the book was written for children I never feel that the stories are too childish. Some of the stories contain some interesting references to Chinese history and culture. My teacher is able to explain some of this to me so I get much more out of the story than I would studying on my own. 

My teacher has also explained some of the idioms to me, which I was also missing before. At the end of the class he will also teach me a four character idiom (成語). These always have an interesting story behind them. I have bought a book of the stories, but it is slightly above my level at the moment. Hopefully I can start studying it in a few months. 

Another thing I have learnt is a bit more about the origin and structure of Chinese characters. I only studied Chinese for one year at university and during that time I never really learnt anything about characters other than how to write them. Although I have picked up a bit of knowledge over the years it is good to learn some more details. 

I don't want to start posting long lists of idioms, but here's a good one for every student of Chinese to use as a mantra.

熟能生巧 (shóunéng shēngqiăo) Practice makes perfect!