Learning,Chinese,Hobby,Imagine education Learning Chinese - A Hobby?
Some forms of parent involvement with the school such as communications with school, volunteering, attending school events and parent--parent connections appeared to have little effect on student achievement, especially in high school. Helpi Translation jobs are undertaken by professional translators who are well versed with at least two languages.Translation can work at two levels: inter-state or regional language translation and inter-national or foreign language translation.
Imagine that you have a bag with every singleChinese word printed on poker chips. The bag would need to be large as it wouldhold over fifty-thousand of them. It would also need to be sturdy, as it wouldweigh more than half a ton. This makes learning Chinese a pretty gruesomeundertaking, right? First of all there is obviously no need to learnmost of them. Today at least twenty percent are only used if you study ancientliterature. In fact, to enter university, you only need to know about sixpercent of this bag. If you would become a professor, you would leave withten-thousand, at the most, of which the majority would be terminology. Given that the majority of the words are not reallythat interesting, how does one learn Chinese in the most efficient waypossible? Imagine a very large round table. The entire contentof the bag is promptly emptied onto the table. The flood of chips areintimidating but we start organizing, creating structure and order to it. We place the most commonly used word in the verycenter of the table lets go with Hello. We then start the place the secondmost commonly used words; perhaps thank you, good bye, my, name, is, etc. Wecontinue to do this until every word that you would use in daily communicationis laid out on the table. It is obvious that to speak Chinese in any usefulway, you will need to learn these characters, every single one of them. Thegood news is that these only represent about one percent of the total pile. Most students are able to learn and retain betweenten and twenty characters if they study for three hours a day. For the averagestudent it would only take ten weeks to be able to handle everydayconversations. They would be able to count to infinity, describe what they see,be polite, ask for directions, order in restaurants in short be able to livein China without uttering a single word in English. But not much more than that. Now the rest of that bag 99% of it, is less useful,but any serious student desiring to learn Chinese would need to go through someof it. So we continue. We start to organise more words on that table, now the criterion that we aregoing for is to get every word that a student would want to use in the averagemonth, that is not terminology or jargon, onto the surface. We start at thecircumference of the basic circle. This next circle will become much larger;six times larger, in fact. At the same rate as before, only ten words a day,this would take about 1 year and 3 months. The next circle is much much larger. It would take10 years to complete that one. However, to most people, that circle is not relevantin its entirety. For basic economics, for example, the range of word that wouldclassify as jargon or terminology is about 500 to 1000 words. Unless you aregoing to work with Economics you will never, ever, encounter them. However, ifyou are, they are crucial. The same applies to all other hobbies andprofessional ambitions. So, add another, say 2000, for good measure torepresent hobbies and professional jargon. In summa; 5000 words, or 10% of thatbag and you will have access to every word that you use in daily conversation,also every word you will need to know to not have to use a dictionary more thana few times a month, and all the words you need in professional life and inyour spare time. No one would say that you can now not speak Chinese. In 2 years and 1 month you have learned to speakChinese at a level where you can live and work like a native. You have donethis without it interfering with your life, professional or social calendar, asyou have only spent 2-3 hours per weekday. Therefore I put it to you: learning Chinese is lessa unfathomable undertaking than it is a serious, and extremely beneficial,hobby.
Learning,Chinese,Hobby,Imagine