3 Principles from Learning Chinese You Can Apply to Learn Anything
“Ni hao ma, Popo!”
My grandma nodded and said, “Josun, Dezimond.”
It was after trying to speak to her in Chinese that I realized I had made a major miscalculation.
There were two dialects of Chinese, and my Popo spoke Cantonese, not the Mandarin I was learning in my seventh grade class.
Well, it was a few weeks into my class with Zhao Laoshi, maybe I could switch to Latin or Spanish?
Nah, stick it out, I told myself.
I’m glad I did.
Learning Chinese taught me the method to learn anything. Hopefully the knowledge I gained can help you in your quest to learn something new.
1. Have high motivation
The only reason I wanted to learn how to speak Chinese was to be able to speak to my grandma.
My mom said that when my sister and I were younger, we could speak Chinese. Once I reached three years old, I forgot most of it. I could basically only say josun (good morning), sicbao (I ate), and doujie (thank you).
My grandpa (Gunggung) had passed away when I was young and I have memory of him. My grandparents on my father’s side lived in Texas and I rarely saw them.
Popo was my connection to my ancestors and we couldn’t communicate that well.
I wanted to speak to her and ask about China, my mother, and a million other topics. So I was highly motivated.
Even after I found out that my high school only offered Mandarin, I stuck with it.
Try this simple exercise to see what you’re highly motivated to learn how to do:
- Write out 3 things you want to learn.
- Pick the one you are most motivated about right now.
- Do a little research on the topic and start learning.
As you can see from my note above, I want to learn web page design to improve my blog (www.desmonddelce.com). It would be great to improve my writing. I’m naturally a quiet person, so improving my social skills would reduce my anxiety when meeting new people.
I’m most motivated to improve my writing, so I read a lot of other writers on Medium.
If you pick something that you aren’t really motivated by, your interest will wain and you won’t see any improvement.
When I started learning Chinese with Zhao Laoshi in seventh grade, it was boring. We had to learn the four tone marks of Mandarin, all the different sounds, and eventually simple characters with their radicals and stroke order. Although Zhao Laoshi was an excellent teacher and my classmates were cool, learning it was hard and tedious at times.
This is where the next principle comes in.
2. Have a great support network
Although I couldn’t really speak to my grandma, I did have many people to help me improve my Chinese.
My kaumou (auntie) was my greatest help. We would always talk in Mandarin whenever I went over to my cousins’ house to play. I didn’t need to feel nervous because I had known her all my life.
There were hundreds of words that I didn’t know at that time. So we spoke in a mixture of Chinese and English.
My grammar was horrible, but speaking with her increased my retention of sentence structures I learned in school.
I was also able to practice with the workers at the Chinese restaurant where my mom worked.
Let’s say you want to learn how to program in Python. I just did a Google search and found Meetup groups, Facebook groups, and whole pages dedicated to helping beginners learn. You could reach out to friends who work in IT and see if they could connect with programmers for advice.
Having a great support network will help for the last principle.
3. Embrace Failure
There was a point when I thought I had to stop learning Chinese because I sucked at it.
The last principle might be the hardest to accomplish. You have to be comfortable with making mistakes when learning something worthwhile.
Learning how to read and write Chinese was a lot easier than speaking and listening. I had to give a speech in front of the whole class every quarter in high school. I was extremely shy back then and messed up every speech because of the nervousness. It only got worse in college because the professors required everyone to speak all in Chinese.
The first week was hell, everyone was speaking so fast and I understood maybe 40% of what was going on. Whenever the professor called on me, I gave only vague answers. Since participation was almost 60% of your final grade, I thought I was in danger of failing.
I wanted to do well (I was motivated) so I called on my support network (my classmate who was also from Hawaii).
A few times a week we practiced the dialogues from our textbooks and slowly but surely, I began to remember the vocabulary and complex sentence structures. I became more confident in class and could answer the professors questions and speak with my classmates relatively well.
By being in a safe environment, I was able to correct mistakes without the fear of my professor giving me the evil eye.
If you are trying to learn something new, you must be able to okay with making mistakes. After you identify your mistakes, reach out to your resources to try and improve. Don’t let a momentary setback disrupt your goal of learning and making progress.
Conclusion
- Choose something that you are highly motivated to learn.
- Have people you trust as a support network.
- Don’t feel afraid to fail or have setbacks.
I am certain you can apply these principles to learn anything under the sun.
Doujie!
