The Struggle of Learning a Language: Why I wanted to give up studying Chinese
by Mia Castagnone
With countries becoming ever closer, it is natural that more and more people are learning a second language. When I was 12 years old I started learning Chinese and although it has been a lot of fun, I think if I were to rate my experience as a whole, I would only go so far as to giving it two and a half stars out of five.
Why? Well, we all can relate to the experience of going abroad after years of studying a second language. We are filled with anticipation, excitement and curiosity. We all know or can imagine the feeling of fear we experience when we try to speak the local lingo but choke up because are nervous or uncertain about how to express something.
For me Chinese was much that same. My high school teacher had a big influence on my studies, particularly when she guilt-tripped me into picking her class back in year 8. Despite being one of the hardest languages to learn for an English native I still enjoyed it. Even if it takes twice approximately 2000 hours in reach fluency, which is twice the amount of time as other languages, no matter how many times I felt like giving up, I kept going. That is the allure of learning a language. For some reason, we keep going.
SEVEN years have since passed and I with a small degree of regret I am still grappling the complexities of Mandarin.
When in 2019 I finally visited Shanghai on an exchange, I realized my ability was a long way off perfection. I occasionally flourished within specific contexts because I had learnt Chinese not to speak in the everyday setting but within structured textbook chapters. Most foreigners are criticized for their spoken ability and at first I was no exception. Chinese is a tonal language, meaning one word can be spoke with one of four tones, which all result in different meanings. This alone is far different from any Latin-based language and it is only natural to imagine how difficult it is to master.
I was disappointed in myself. I also held greater disappointment in the system who had been teaching me all these years.
What USYD and many institutions are failing to do is prepare us for the real world. I was learning the official language in the land of over 200 dialects. A city like Shanghai for example was home to hundreds of migrants from across China who had roots in many of these dialects and thus spoke Mandarin with varying accents. But my ear had only been trained to the perfect, standardized Mandarin of my teachers.
Moreover, the focus is solely on writing ability; vocabulary is learnt within a context and scarcely is there opportunity to practice speaking and listening. This does not prepare us for reality. We are told to write 1000 word essays in Mandarin on topics like the “One-Child Policy” but not how to start a conversation with a shopkeeper.
Unsurprisingly my 6 months in the deep end of Shanghai with 24/7 practice did more to progress my ability than the last one and a half years at university. I fell more in love with the language but couldn’t help feel devastated that it took me so many years to reach this point.
Yet was it too much of me to expect that at a university level I would be graduating as capable speaker? Was it too much to ask for simplicity not hardship to join a study abroad programme? I wonder what were the expectations universities had of us language majors? Because as I reach the end of my degree, I am noticing something is crucially missing: advanced fluency.
For many years, I have been aware that this was the circumstance and that language is improved within country not classroom. Any foreign language student will realise that although many times we want to give up, our curiosity implores us to continue to learn. No matter what the educational circumstance, hard work, time and perseverance will allow us to achieve our goals.
Although I regret many aspects of this situation, the one thing that is impossible to regret is how much learning a foreign language has opened my mind. I learnt about a rich culture and people that was unlike my own, form friendships I will keep forever and take risks that will pave my future. If only it could have happened sooner. Nevertheless, those experiences no matter how long they took to reach, I will always rate five-out-of-five.