so i noticed that during the first
lockdown of spring 2020 i was doing a
lot of these wacky video diaries sort of
you know vlogs from just my bedroom
where i was just documenting what i was
doing so i thought you know i might as
well do it again so here it is and today
i thought i'd tell you guys a little
story and yeah i'm gonna do it in my
pajamas because that's what's comfy you
know that's what's up so just to get
everything straight what exactly do i
mean when i say that i learned chinese
in 10 months in the school year 2018 to
2019 i did a study abroad in beijing
china for you guessed it 10 months and
at the end of my exchange i achieved the
hsk 5 level of chinese which is the
second highest level of chinese that one
can achieve now i'm not claiming that my
chinese was ever on that level i think i
passed the exam with my slightly higher
hsk4 level of chinese and a lot of kind
of relying on my sixth sense of what
answer could be right based on what i
already know but i guess that counts as
well so here's how i did it it's safe to
say that i wouldn't be able to achieve
it without two main things first of all
physically being in china living with
the host family and spending my you know
day-to-day life amongst only almost only
chinese people seeing signs and mandarin
on the street every day has already
helped me so much because it's immersion
when you're surrounded by a foreign
language everywhere you kind of have no
other option than to start learning it
because well instinctively you always
want to make your quality of life better
easier so yeah of course of course
you're going to learn the language and
second of all i had such good teachers
they were absolute angels when it came
to explaining thoroughly uh sentence
structure different grammar points it
was just amazing so shout out to lila
shire and yellow shirt because they
taught me everything everything that i
know
so for the first five months i was in
the international department of my high
school in beijing which also by the way
i should mention was one of the top 10
high schools in all beijing so it was
quite a big deal that they let us do our
exchange there there in the
international department i would learn
chinese on average every day for six
hours six hours a day of pure chinese
this was our schedule these are the days
of the week from monday to friday these
are the classes before lunch and after
lunch the red squares were
or an intensive reading class where we
would learn new characters new
vocabulary
read chinese texts or write stories
completely in chinese characters
try to
remember like a three-page text and then
in 10 minutes retell it to the teacher
this class was sometimes really hardcore
but honestly it was one of my favorite
ones because i just learned so much in
that class my brain was never more
challenged when it comes to language
learning so i i owe a lot to uh the
methods of my teacher and law school
that she
she was just able to teach me so much
holy it was fun it was oh my god it
was so much fun those classes were so
much fun the green squares were koyuku
or conversation classes where the
teacher would either put us in different
situations where we'd have to use new
vocabulary uh in different you know
scenarios with her or with our
classmates i think it was also the class
that was the most focused on grammar
overall and again our teacher lila sure
she was so good at explaining grammar
now quickly the blue squares were
fanduca or more chilled out reading
classes where we'd cover some more not
that important reading exercises the
yellow squares were doisier or reading
and writing classes where i think the
class was just all about us perfecting
our
you know orientation in chinese
characters ability um also the teacher
was super badass because she had a high
proficiency in chinese japanese korean
and she knew basics in english so like
that's badass okay then the pink squares
this yeah we're self-study classes or
classes without a teacher where we would
either just like um do our homework that
we didn't want to do at home or would
straight up just sleep because some days
were really just that exhausting that we
would just sleep for those 50 minutes of
the class yeah i think actually they
knew that self-study was the best class
the best fix for a
mandarin student's sleep deprivation and
then the rest was just pe or some art or
culture classes shu which was learning
math vocabulary and math itself in
chinese which i did not enjoy a bit and
if i'm correct from that class i still
remember pantoen which is multiple
choice and then tencon which is fill in
the blank
i think
i really like the international
department because all the teachers
there were super kind and they had the
determination to teach us as much
chinese as possible but also to make us
all comfortable in this new country this
new environment where everybody was
alone without anybody that they knew
prior to the exchange there were korean
people japanese people thai people uh
two girls from sudan me and other people
from europe and with that kind of you
know intensive learning as i said six
hours a day from monday to friday i was
able to start feeling comfortable in
daily conversations in mandarin after my
first four months so it took me four
months until i got like until i kind of
like cracked my shell and was like oh i
can actually express myself now oh what
also really helped was that in my class
there was only five people so the
teacher was really able to answer every
question and give attention to each
student individually which also helped
so much now i'm going to show you guys
the textbooks that i myself have used
during those 10 months now i can't
really tell you that these are the books
that you know i can thank to for my
success no because i don't really know
if what i learned what i achieved in
those 10 months was thanks to those
textbooks or thanks to my teachers that
were able to apply the exercises and the
textbooks into their you know overall
curriculum but i know that people are
going to be interested so these are the
ones that i used these were used for
conversation classes really nice
textbooks different situations for
conversations a new vocabulary etc these
were the books that were used for
intensive reading uh probably my
favorites because there was so much new
vocabulary that you could learn from
these books and you know different
stories in chinese that were based on
the vocabulary that you learned each
lesson
and yeah some more books for reading and
writing classes i don't really remember
these that much also in addition to all
the textbooks that we used for learning
chinese i also wrote my own vocabulary
books where i you know sorted vocabulary
based on um different categories so if
it was uh an occupation a food
electronic school work adjectives so
yeah these were just really handy and
i'm i'm just really happy that i did
them because it's even helpful now when
i'm trying to remember a specific word
that i can't find in any dictionary i
just
look it up here
anyways after me and my friends passed
our first five months in the
international department our teachers
decided that it might be cool to like
put us individually into different
chinese classes in the chinese
department full of chinese kids that
only spoke chinese
which was actually fine so from then on
we spent our first five morning classes
every day in the chinese department and
then for the remaining three afternoon
classes we would go back
to the international department to study
more grammar and to just always progress
in chinese when it comes to the subjects
and teachers and the classes that all
the chinese kids had in mandarin we
didn't have to do well in those classes
we didn't have to take tests or anything
we could like participate in the classes
we felt like it but we really didn't
have to our main goal there was to kind
of just like listen to the teachers try
to understand as much as possible during
the classes and during breaks and lunch
we would try to socialize with our
chinese classmates so we would practice
our chinese with them and they would
practice their english with us it was
pretty cool i met some pretty
interesting people there and uh honestly
some friends that i wish that i kept in
touch with uh more after china but we
didn't really it's it's really hard
anyways during weekends or even weekdays
sometimes we would go out with my friend
jacob where we would just explore
beijing there are so many adventures
that we had in beijing which by the way
are all documented here on this channel
i made a lot of vlogs from china so you
can definitely check those out and yo
subscribe while you're at it
what you doing where's that subscribe
button there but my point is sometimes
on the weekends we would still meet up
to study even more uh maybe in a library
or in a coffee shop keep going
especially before our hsk exam which was
um a hard time for both of us me and
jacob but that's i guess the harsh truth
of learning a foreign language you need
to put in immense amounts of work
because even if you are in that country
being in that country on a student
exchange that's one part but all the
studying and everything that was on us
that was our responsibility by the way
the hsk stands for high new shui pink
sure which means the chinese language
proficiency exam uh just just if you
were wondering what has what what does
hsk stand for two main things were
helpful during that exam and that was
this official hsk vocabulary book uh
that is so good so for example you have
this right so new word this word right
here or it means once in a while or
occasionally and then immediately here
you have example sentences how to use
that word in different scenarios
brilliant this book especially if you're
trying to you know complete your hsk
exam anyway second thing that really
helped is pleco which pleco is this
dictionary on your phone that you can
download is the best chinese dictionary
ever
you do if you have pleco you don't need
any other chinese dictionary and for the
end of the video i'd like to give you
guys some chinese tips for those who are
maybe thinking about trying to learn
chinese or for those of you who already
picked it up some tips that maybe your
teachers or textbooks won't put emphasis
on right away a lot of times in mandarin
when foreigners want to express that
they didn't understand something or they
want the person to repeat they're often
taught the phrase
which literally means i can't understand
i can't understand what you're saying
but that phrase kinda also means that
you don't really know how to speak
chinese if you say that to someone he's
automatically gonna assume that oh okay
so let me switch to english so it's not
the perfect phrase for when you wanna
practice your chinese with other people
so if you wanna like keep talking to
them in chinese and practice your
chinese with them you can say something
like i'm sorry
one mating ting true i didn't hear you
clearly
or you can say uh
[Music]
and then
everybody's going to want to talk to you
everybody's going to
let you practice your chinese with them
there's a way to count in chinese from
one to ten only on one hand and i know
it might sound sleepy but it actually
comes in handy and
why did i do that it actually comes in
pretty useful and people really use it
throughout all china so you have one two
three four five you know pretty
self-explanatory then you have six
seven
eight
nine and ten pretty easy nothing hard
then with the chinese pronunciation of
the numbers it would be e
when you're in like a busy marketplace
and you can't really hear the shopkeeper
they can't really hear you they don't
know if you want one apple or seven
apples you just show them on your hand
while you're shouting at them anyways i
feel like i should end this video it's
already long enough and by the way
by the way you know what time it is it's
4 13
am
do i have a sleep schedule
what
anyways uh let me know you know if you
like this video let me know if you would
like more language themed videos if i
should make more because i quite enjoy
it i love languages and i like talking
about languages so
let me know in the comments leave a like
under this video subscribe to the
channel
check out more of my videos and i will
see you guys
next week
because i definitely
i am doing weekly uploads yeah
[Music]
you