Tuesday's lesson: Can you use chopsticks

No matter how long you have lived in China, and no matter how well you speak Chinese, people will be amazed to see that you have learned how to put food into your mouth with sticks. Tune in to today's podcast to learn about the question every foreigner has answered dozens of times. This lesson is about your ability to use chopsticks.

here is the link to the audio conversation:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/can-you-use-chopsticks/discussion

here is the link to the vocabualry:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/can-you-use-chopsticks/vocabualry

here are the expansions activities:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/can-you-use-chopsticks/expansion

here are the exercises:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/can-you-use-chopsticks/excercises

Monday's Lesson: Good morning at the Office

Here is a Chinese lesson for all those morning people out there that we love to hate. A few chipper 'good mornings' to start off the day. You can shout them out your window to those neighbors who love to rise at the screech of dawn for a powwow outside your window. In this lesson, learn all kinds of greetings a la Mandarin. You'll be hello-ing and beyond in no time! The lesson for today is about saying Good morning in Mandarin.

here is the link to the audio conversation:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/morning-at-the-office/discussion

here is the vocabulary for the lesson:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/morning-at-the-office/vocabualry

here are the expansion exercises for the lesson:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/morning-at-the-office/expansion

And here are the exercises for the section as well:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/morning-at-the-office/exercises

Friday's lesson:

The elevator doors are closing. What can you do? If you only knew how to ask the people inside to wait a bit. In today's podcast, you'll find out. When you learn Mandarin with ChinesePod, you're always going up! So, as they obviously said, this lesson is about telling someone hold the elevator for you in Mandarin.

here is the link to the audio conversation:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/hold-the-elevator/dialogue

Here is the link to the vocabualry for this lesson:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/hold-the-elevator/vocabulary

here is the link to the exercises for the lesson:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/hold-the-elevator/exercises

And here are the expansion exercises:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/hold-the-elevator/expansion

My tutor also gave me some very useful worksheets as well as an assignment that I am working on for next time. She also started to teach me some basic writing skill for characters as well. So, Thats a pretty good end to the week right there.

how Wednesday went, and Thruday's lesson.

Wednesday: my session with the tutor went very well and was very productive. She gave my an assignment for the next time we meet, which will help me to gain further understanding as well. it wen very well, the only downside was MARTA, which was very very late. other than that went well.

Thursday's lesson:
Today's lesson is about how to tell a taxi driver where you want to go, or as the website calls Taxi Destination. it basically gives all the different directional phrases as well as general destination phrases as well.

here is the link to the audio conversation:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/taxi-destination/discussion

here is the vocabulary that goes with it:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/taxi-destination/vocabulary

here are some expansion exercises that basically go more in depth with the topic:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/taxi-destination/expansion

here are the exercises that go with the lesson as well:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/taxi-destination/exercises

Tuesday's lesson and what I am doing.

Today's lesson is about getting in and how to deal with a street argument. kinda unique. Since I can not copy and paste directly, I will post the links like yesterday as well.

here is the pertinent vocabulary:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/street-argument/vocabulary

here is the audio conversation:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/street-argument/dialogue.

They also have exercises that you can do as well to strentheng your understanding, here's the link:
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/street-argument/exercises

How to learn a extremely difficult language

I thought that it would be useful to find an article or two to illustrate how difficult it is to in fact try to gain some understanding of such a difficult language as Mandarin or Russian for that matter. here is a link to a blog of a English educator in China who is now fluent in mandarin, both speaking and writing. it took her almost two year in speaking and almost 4 in writing. Ben and I only have a semester, so it seems to be a little more challenging then some people realize. The other helpful thing, is on this website she broke down her method for how she became fluent and I will try to put some of those aspects into my study. keeping in mind, she was in China while she did this.

http://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-fluent-mandarin/

Missing work or any assignments i need to make up.

I will talk to you after school tomorrow but in case you see this before the end of the day. I would like to know what post or thing I can make up to boost my grade, because my progress was a lot lower then I would like and in my opinion for the quality of work and the amount of time that I have been putting in to this class. Thank you.

Monday's lesson plan and what I did today.

Today, I'm learning how to say good morning and the response to that. The website wont let me cut and paste it, so I will post the link to it.
http://chinesepod.com/lessons/intro-1-good-morning/dialogue

Its a basic lesson on how to say good morning and the response one would give it the particular instances. I posted the link to the vocabualry as well, for some reason the site will not let me cut and paste, its odd but whatever.

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/intro-1-good-morning/vocabulary

In addition to learning this particular conversation set, I'm also meeting with my tutor on Wednesday, though Im not sure why I have to have a tutor and Ben does not. Seems a tad bit uneven to me. I will also continue to review on my own. This will ensure that I continue the learning pace to which I am accustom.

My plans for the week.

Well, I was out on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. So, what I have decided to do is to mainly focus on a strictly reading based approach for this week. I have several online as well as textbook resources that I will use to catch up on during the end of this week. I will also use the ipod lessons that i have on my ipod to supplement my reading based learning. The audio will help me make sure I'm staying on target with the tones and general pronunciation. I know, I'm also a tad bit late on posting some of my lesson plans, so I hope you have not deducted for that. I will get them all up by Friday of this week. So thats the basic run down for this short week.

My plans for the upcoming 4-day week.

This four day week, my main focus will be to shore up any gaps that my tutor and I see that I have at the moment. After that I will schedule a meet with my tutor as well. Wednesday seems to be the day for right now, probably the 18th of next week. I'm also going to start using more video and audio resources so that i am able to have a clearer understanding of the subject as i work on it. I will also post some more links to different sites and pod casts that I'm am currently utilizing as well. The thing I'm beginning to realize more and more as I study this language is that progress at all is a good sign. The just immense task of learning this language at all is well, immense. So, the small amount of progress that I have made thus far in my studies, I am extremely proud of. having said that, I do understand however that I have a lot in front of and am going to try to tailor my plans from now on to maximize time and learning while minimizing wasted effort. So, this weekend i will begin to put together a series of lesson plans that will allow me to do what i said I wanted to accomplish in the above sentence.

This short week and what I plan to do.

Due to really unforeseen circumstances, this week has been a little interesting. So, My goals for this week, while kind of limited will be no less the same as always. instead of focusing on speaking this week, im going to take a little detour and look into some of the cultural aspects and related subjects surrounding Mandarin culture. I took a page out of Ben's book and got some ipod lessons and thing of that nature. I also by a happy coincidence found some free music and I order some old martial arts movies that were made in China off Netflix. This will all allow me to absorb the various sounds and nuances while also having a little bit of fun with it as well. Here is the link to the BBC website that is my focal learning tool for the moment. Here is a like to address different generations in your family as well.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/work/
http://www.kwanfamily.info/familytitles/familytitle.html

I will also put up some various things from my ipod lessons too. So i can show "visible progress" of my learning. Right?

For next week: I will do much of course.

Figure out some way to get feed back from tutor on correction with regards to my pronunciation and my speaking in general. I Will take care of that end.