Where does my Chinese language ability stand after two years of study? Where should it have been?

The short version: nowhere near where I want it to be.

As the semester wrapped up and the exam was over and done with, I was left with a nagging, pervasive feeling of not knowing enough, not having learnt enough.

I decided to check how many characters I could comfortably recognize the pinyin and rough meaning of. Armed with two sheets of paper that together comfortably fit the 2700 most commonly used Hanzi in a neat 25×54 grid, I set out with a felt marker to cross out those I was iffy about or just didn’t know. The first half of the first page was pretty comfortable. The second half was very spotty. The second sheet was altogether alien, aside from a few characters that occur in specific compound words (that I usually had no idea what meant). Out of the first 1350, I had 915 right. On the second sheet, that number was down to a paltry 176. I ended up at 1091/2700. Granted, this is me being pretty strict - there were a lot I recognized but chose not to “keep”.

As far as spoken Chinese or Kouyu is concerned, I’d rather not talk about it (heh). Grammar is still not very advanced, but I’ve stopped making silly errors.

The way I learnt English was through exposure coupled with interest. These two years, it has been interest and in most cases stupendously boring texts. The coming year, from the present and up until July next year, I will be reading a hell of a lot of Chinese. I have a few books (even though I can plow through several hundred pages a day of English or Norwegian, Chinese is a hard slog), a few Tintin comics left, as well as what the Internet offers. If I feel inspired, I might have a look at my old books from Peking University, and perhaps even some Classical Chinese.

My goals for this year of Redemptive Studies is quite simple:

And they should be possible. I will be working full-time, saving money to go to China in the autumn of 2011.

My tentative plan is to stay in China (possibly Beijing) for a year while I continue studying on my own or with a tutor. After that year I might do the one-year unit the University of Oslo offers for more advanced studies.

1500 characters in a year shouldn’t be too hard? It’s only 30% more than what I spent two years learning.

As a certain Chairman would say, 愚公移山.

Contact

chriskolbu@gmail.com
008615210201451
Beijing, China