After Sunday’s embarressment I am quite keen to quickly learn Chinese.
In my opinion a good student is one who is motivated to acquire the knowledge he has to learn. I have been motivated before in that I want to learn the language of my son and his family that he is living with, but that is medium term. Suddenly I have a short-term motivation and, of course, it’s relationship based.
Anyway, moving swiftly on. So I was trawling the net, visiting my usual resources, trying to extract what precious info I could. I know for a fact though that I needed recordings of Chinese, as spoken by natives, in order for me to practise. Of all the many people who have offered their help, none have really responded with decent lessons.
I Googled my desire in a different way and happened upon a site that connected me with this precious gem:
www.chinesepod.com.
Go see for yourself, but after reading a bit and listening to a few lessons, I bought a cheap 256MB MP3 player, downloaded the first 23 lessons (which is how many I could fit on it) and am now well away to acquiring Chinese I can actually use.
Their lessons are short, focussed and fun and if you start from lesson one, you will gradually build up your listening skills, vocabularly and ability to speak. Wa hey! What a pleasure. The best thing is, the audio lessons are free. Yes, free.
If you want more, there is an option to subscribe and truth be told, if the Bank of China could comprehend that I need a VISA Debit Card, I would subscribe, but at the moment my funds are ‘locked’, as I am creditcardless. A sad state of affairs. Hopefully once I’ve learned enough Chinese, I can haggle with the Bank again, because I can’t explain clearly what I want.
So go on, if you’re keen to learn Chinese, surf on over and get started. Soon I will be able to communicate with The Waitress.