Mandarin Mondays: 学习

So this first week of the new year. I'm thinking a lot about what I want to do in the coming year, and what He would have me do. One of the areas I've been thinking about is my study (xué xí, 学习) of Chinese. I am perfectly okay with the fact that my husband is progressing faster along with learning Mandarin because he goes to school two hours a day, five days a week to study it. I am still continually seeing progress at understanding and speaking, so I am okay with learning a little slower because I cannot devote as much undivided attention to it at this time. However, I want to be a little more intentional and push myself a little more in this important area. I have a lot of good resources I've started to use, but I this year I want to complete some of these.

We also want to be a little more consistent in exposing the boys to Mandarin. We're not expecting them to be fluent by a certain age or anything, but we want to make sure that they are at least getting a lot of practice in listening to this difficult tonal language, at this age where language learning is still quite natural for them.

Since I do blog about our Mandarin learning, I'm going to share my personal goals in this area, if only for personal accountability. Perhaps someone else may want to look into these Mandarin resources as well. I've tried to be fairly specific and break my goals into bite-sized pieces since that is the only way to eat an elephant (or fish head as is more likely here) or any other difficult task. If life completely changes and these goals become completely unrealistic, I'll be okay with that too, but for right now, this seems like a very doable amount of study and a way to challenge myself in a good way.

Week Day Goals

• Listen to 2 or more ChinesePod lessons

Weekly Goals

• Work through 1 chapter of Learning Chinese Characters
• Work through 1 chapter of Chinese Language Learning for Foreigners
• Write 1 Mandarin Monday post about something I've been learning

Goals for 2012

• Listen to all ChinesePod lessons we have downloaded through lower intermediate level
• Finish Learning Chinese Characters Book
• Finish Chinese Language Learning for Foreigners Books 1 and 2
• 50 Mandarin Monday posts

For working with the boys I just have a couple of goals.

Week Day Goals

• Go through about 20 Chinese picture flashcards
• Listen to at least 1 short ChinesePod newbie lesson

Goal for 2012

• Have the boys listen to all appropriate ChinesePod lessons at the newbie level

Again, our goal is not to try to force our boys into fluency but just try to make sure they are consistently exposed so they don't develop language blocks that would make it hard for them to learn later. We may try to find other ways to increase their exposure in natural settings here as well.

So, those are my goals for Mandarin learning in 2012. Hopefully, I will see a lot of progress this year and maybe prevent Alzheimer's later in life too.