Need a shot in the arm My Chinese language learning can be likened to a roller coaster where I'm sometimes on a roll and have hyper focus and at other times I just lose all motivation. Lately however, my motivation has hit rock bottom and I'm not sure what to do to re-ignite my interest in the language. The strange thing is I’ve rediscovered my love for learning Cantonese but I’ve lost my interest in learning Mandarin. For work purposes, Mandarin is infinitely more useful considering all my students understand it while only a handful can speak Cantonese. I just don’t know what to do …

Chinese Music Chinese Music is at once hauntingly-beautiful and emotive. I've just started listening to what I believe are cover songs by a lady called Tong Li from China. The music is rather soft, easy-going and surprisingly accessible. Her voice is just ... sublime. She could be singing about hóng dòu (red bean) and manages effortlessly to make it sound like the greatest love story ever told. Her voice transcends language barriers. Yup, I'm a fan. What I like most about her songs are the fact that it's so perfectly pronounced and she sings it so slowly thus giving me a chance to one day fully appreciate what she's singing about. She has such a profound connection to the song. It's as though she's singing it just for me. When I tell people I've been listening to Tong Li, a singer from China, I'm just greeted by blank expressions. I guess I shouldn't be surprised as China does have a lot of people in it (understatement of the year) and music being as subjective as it is, it's hard to find someone who has heard or even know of her existence. But surely, a singer who has churned out 30 albums in the last five years couldn't possibly be that unknown.

wǒ lín jū gǒu (My Neighbour's Dog) wǒ lín jū gǒu shì sā dàn de hái zi. Měi tiān xǐng lái de shí kè tā de shēng yīn dǐng bù de kuáng fèi. -----OK, this is going to get very badly lost in translation so here's the English version as well.----- My neighbour's dog is the spawn of Satan. It spends every waking moment barking at the top of her little voice.

Let's talk about GRILS A bit of a background, I'm currently teaching summer school to mostly International students from Vietnam, Korea and China. So yesterday afternoon, we had a few students leave early and had a smaller crowd. I asked them what they wanted to learn (just for something different) and here's how the conversation went: Student 1: GRI Me: Pardon? Student 1: TRIHH Me: Er, can you spell that? Student 1: J-R-L Me: Er, G-R-L? Student 1: Noo! G-R-I-L Me: Gril? Student 1: Um... yes GRIL Me: What's a Gril? Student 1: GRIL Me: You mean like a BBQ grill? Student 1: No ... laughs. Me: Okay, why don't you write it on the board for me? Student 1: Mmm... okay! (student goes up and writes the word GIRLS) Me: Ohhh! GIRLS! Students: Laughing Me: You want to talk about GIRLS? Student 1: YES! GIRLS! Me: Okay, we can do that. At least we have one girl in the class. Student 1: Yes, she's pretty! So, I got the students to describe the GRIL (sic) in the class. A few words were bandied around like long hair, pretty, beautiful and then a facetious student threw in words like noisy, cries a lot and lazy. So I said, let's just focus on the positive things about a girl. And that led on to me having each student come to the front of the class and the students got a chance to physically describe each student. It started off pretty slow and then it snowballed as they gained momentum culminating in their description of me. We then moved on to talk about personalities with a focus on the difference between introverted and extroverted personalities and asking which the students felt they were. Exactly one half of the students were introverted and extroverted respectively. I then informed them that many teachers were introverted people who can be selective extroverts. That drew some puzzled looks. I explained that we're generally quiet, shy and retiring but when we're in a class our alter-ego, the said extrovert can manifest itself. The next area we looked at was their individual characteristics. It seemed to me that young Asian students are not used to being paid a compliment and are often unsure how to respond while here in the West we just say 'thank you' and move on. It was nice to see them pay each other a compliment and also to write good and positive things about themselves. The students then described their personality and characteristics and we went through them together. I like to encourage them whenever possible because encouragement always helps.

Introspection - Days 5-7 The preceding days have given me lots of food for thought. I have found some good language partners and some which are a challenge. Having talked to at least 10 different people now, I feel I have a better grasp on my next subject matter - accents. Chinese learners who embrace English as a Second Language (ESL) have rather quirky accents. Well to be fair, my Chinese accent sounds very Aussie-fied which is to say it sounds fairly weird. Sometimes, the accents sound really cute like a cartoon or anime character. At other times, it sounds really fake or labourious, like it's a made-up accent. In many countries, language centres have a preference on the accent of their teachers as this is eagerly desired by their students. For example, a language centre may advertise that they only want North-American native English speakers so their clients can talk like George Bush and as a bonus sound seriously-sardonic. Yes, I know it's an oxy-moron. There are also language schools who prefer only caucasian teachers because it is seen as more 'prestigious' and they can charge a higher premium. It's a little bit of reverse-racism. Personally, I've never liked the Australian accent as it sounds too ocker. I have what we call an International English accent. When you've been in a Western country for a long time it's easy to lose your sense of cultural identity and being able to dictate what you sound like is a big part of it. As funny as it sounds, I want to sound like me. Just me and no one else. I'm still struggling with sentence structures when speaking Chinese. I now understand why my students sentence structure looks the way it does. They're just making direct translations as I have been doing previously. It's something I need to focus on. Getting them to think in the correct structure will help them more than drilling pronunciations or learning new words at times. They both have their place but structure is fairly important for preliminary students. Caleb Gattegno's 'The Silent Way' can assist students in forming these structures which are already lying subconsciously in their psyche. It's hard to truly articulate what's on my mind presently. In the past week or so, I've picked up so many new Chinese words, sentences, idioms and colloquial expressions. They're all swirling in my mind like a three-legged race without a finishing line.

Day 3 Of My Skype Adventures So, today I was meant to go to work but had a last minute cancellation much to my relief. Anyway, I've been IM-ing a rather shy lass who's yet to make the leap to voice communication. We must find a way to make her less shy and retiring but it isn't as easy as it sounds. As an introvert myself, I know what she might feel eventhough I can be a selective extrovert at times. It was quite a surprise to me that so many teachers are actually introverts in real life. It's like we're transformed into a different person when we're in the class. We take on so many different roles and we really have to be on the ball. It's a very rewarding job when you see the difference you make in a student's life. The job can be very 'soul satisfying' at times and at others, it can 'suck the soul' out of you. I'm looking at you Bailieu. Alright, on to today's conversations. I'm quite looking forward to a lesson I have scheduled tonight with a Chinese teacher. I hope it goes well as I certainly need more help in the art of speaking and listening coherently. I managed to have a decent conversation with a night shift worker who I must say values the opportunity to learn more than his sleep. I know when I used to work the night shift, the very first thing I did when I came home was sleep for at least a year. Shift workers have it tough if you are unable to adjust to the sleeping patterns. My old job had me switching it out every two weeks, it was hell. I'm the sort of person who can't sleep unless it's completely quiet and dark and especially in a foreign place - the stars have to align for me to have a fitful sleep. So, as you can imagine, I got next to no good sleep for several months. Just had a very productive session with my teacher tonight. Definitely learnt a lot and will be scheduling more sessions in the near future. I felt like my understanding has gone up a notch albeit a very small one. Sweet dreams people.

Day 2 of My Skype Adventures Okay, so now that I'm a veteran of Skype, I bravely add more strangers to my list of exchange partners. I had to work yesterday so that put a bit of a damper on things. One of my students brought his girlfriend to class and they decided to sit together immediately. I'm like "No ... if you want to stay in class, you have to sit separately and you have to take part in the class." She goes "Err, can't I just sit here and listen?" and I reply "Nope! If you're going to be here you have to help me out by conversing with my students." She reluctantly agreed just so she could be close to her lover. Sigh ... the beauty of young love. I digress. Yeah, so I came back late from work because I was helping out a former student who speaks barely any English with my um ... what's the word for it, with my Elementary Chinese. It was rather painful akin to a dentist visit but without the drilling. I mean, how can a person live in HK for 6 years and not pick up any Cantonese? So, my first conversation of the day was with this gentleman from Beijing. It turns out we're actually from the same minority ethnic group known as the Hakkas. And like me, his grasp of Hakka was barely non-existent. This was because he moved to Beijing at the tender age of ten and had little opportunity to grow the dialect. Anyway, he proved to be quite an interesting fellow. Again, I can't remember what we talked about but he did introduce me to his mother which was nice. Um, yeah, he helped me quite a bit with my sentence structure as I tend to do literal translations in Chinese. So to you, I say "hěn gāo xìng jiàn dào nǐ." I forgot the word for dào and thought it was dàn which means egg while delicious makes literally no sense. The second and final conversation was with a lady who really understood what language exchange meant, which was a refreshing um ... change. She would take turns talking to me in Mandarin and correcting me and asking me questions in return. She seemed to really relish the role. Once again, perhaps embarassedly, I can't remember most of what we talked about. It was mainly what you would classify as small talk. The stuff of everyday conversation which we spend 90% of our time on and maybe about 10% on more serious conversation. This lady is driven to excel in her vocation of choice and it's good to meet someone so dedicated. Ps. I have decided not to add names of people I talk to but to just refer to them as a gentleman or a lady.

Day 1 of Skype Language Exchange The first day is always the hardest. Apparently even native speakers get what is commonly known as 'foreign language anxiety (FLA).' I now get a glimpse of what my students go through when I put them on the spot. Okay, so I message a bunch of people on the conversation exchange website and I get a few replies here and there. So finally, I installed Skype and added various people to the list and then I got struck by FLA. I felt weirdly anxious and nervous and an irrational fear about Skype and talking to complete strangers online. This feeling persists for a few hours at least. I then make a decision that I'm not going to care, I'm just going to jump in head first. So the first person I talk to is Tony Parker (not his actual name) who's a huge NBA fan. Sadly, he had trouble hearing me while I could hear him perfectly. Being the keen learners that we were, we try and tweak some settings in the hope that this problem will be remedied. Unfortunately, nothing helped. Swing and a miss! The second person I spoke to (whose name I can't even recall now) was from Taiwan. Much better connection and he's studying to be an English teacher as well which I thought was pretty awesome. He was very patient and a good teacher and I didn't expect the conversation to flow so well. We talked for about half an hour. Next up was a lady from China now studying in Melbourne. We spoke for about 45minutes and discovered that 25 is quite old in China. I'm like ... What?! No way. It's good to get little tit bits about China and cultural norms. And lastly, I think he was from China. Yes, he was. Maybe he was the English teacher, I honestly cannot remember. Was another good, long conversation which flowed fairly well for 45 minutes once again. Anyway, after about two hours of talking, I really had to rest my voice as I had a 6 hour class to teach the very next day. The first day was a bit of an eye opener and it helped me to establish some ground rules for language exchange. For instance, when we're practising Chinese, you need to reply in Chinese (not English!). Also, it would be nice if you asked me questions back in Chinese like a regular conversation. That forces me to think in Chinese and rely less on translating (which I try not to do but subconsciously it rears its ugly head).