2014年12月26日 星期五

Chinese Integration

The main trick to studying a foreign language is to immerse yourself in that language.  This doesn't mean taking tons of college classes, keeping up with your homework, and worrying about how many characters you have memorized or learned in a day.  Those concepts of learning are old fashioned, having been used in times before when information and books were mainly kept in universities and libraries. Due to the mass propagation of information, in the modern age of language learning, you as a student are solely responsible for your own individual growth and 'power level' --hopefully it is steadily growing to become over 9000

This concept actually applies to any individual pursuit you are involved with.  I recently began playing Starcraft 2 much more seriously in hopes of increasing my knowledge and level to such an extent that I feel comfortable casting in Chinese (I play the game in Chinese and do my best to watch Chinese casts and read Chinese language tutorials).  I consciously immerse myself in Starcraft professional videos, learn how others in the industry began casting, and set a base number of how many games I want to play a day.

I firmly believe this conscious immersion and setting of baseline numbers will allow me to maintain my focus and continue to grow into the direction of 'the sun.' Having the ability to consciously change our environment places humans in an interesting position.  Unlike plants, which passively grow towards whichever direction the sun shines onto them in a process called the Phototropic process, humans can position the sun themselves and determine the direction in which we grow.
So in order to become a super saiyan Chinese speaker, better than all the rest, you MUST position your sun to rise in the east and control the media you expose yourself to on a daily basis.  This means going to youku instead of YouTube to surf around, watching Chinese versions of youtube videos or songs, and even looking for obscure Chinese pop-punk bands--basically, anything you are into.

This type of language learning has many detractors -- people who will criticize your desire to watch anime, tell you that you can't learn from sports broadcasts, and think it's funny when you tell them you learn from television shows.  The reason these people feel this way is because they have been taught to think that language learning only occurs in the classroom.  Can you imagine how your ENGLISH experience would have gone if you were only allowed to learn while sitting in class?  You would be able to diagram sentences, write short essays, read from textbooks, and be positively bored.

Don't let your Chinese self be boring.


Let your Chinese self be awesome.