Thomas Calder |
I entered the class with a disadvantage because I did not take the first semester of Chinese 101 at Virginia. Although I did know some vocabulary that my other students did not, they knew a lot that I had never learned and it had been a semester and a summer since I had last spoken Chinese. But I was eager for the challenge and after some time and effort I can now say that I feel part of the class. My class at the University of Richmond focused more on elements of writing than my class at Virginia, but unfortunately also moved quite slowly. I was glad to see that this semester class time was usually spent efficiently and the amount I learned in a semester increased. At times I felt the class moved too quickly through complicated grammatical structures, but with a little effort on my own I was able to figure it out. I really enjoyed the pronunciation tutorials every week, because that is an area I really need work and I felt ten minutes every week was really helping. I enjoyed oral dialogues each week, but I felt that we should I done more spontaneous dialogues between students would promote more understanding of basic conversation. But do not get me wrong I learned a great deal from the dialogues I wrote and it improved my ability to structure Chinese sentences and pronunciation. Lastly, I truly enjoyed the book series, Integrated Chinese, over the Practical Chinese Reader I used for class last year. The lessons were well laid out and the grammar lessons easy to follow and understand on my own. The listening comprehension exercises were at the right difficulty level, but the questions were not the clearest and often the final answer seemed left up to a class discussion between two possible answers. All in all, I enjoyed the class and I feel that I have learned a lot in a short period of time. |