okay so I'm gonna switch over to English now because I'm I don't think I'm gonna
be able to explain and articulate exactly how I'm feeling
in Chinese just yet but to be honest even that was like really really fun and
exciting just to try to express myself in Chinese just now oh I learned a
phrase um what is it...
so today's video is in part a sort of progress update for this series I've
been doing called Robin learned Chinese while busy where I've been documenting
myself learning Chinese for over one year now but much more than that
this video is me sort of feeling so compelled in this exact moment in time
on that journey to sort of share exactly what I'm going through and how I'm
feeling right now because I think it's so hopefully useful to share my
perspective on this sort of crossing over between sort of larger stages of a
language learning journey from beginner to
intermediate now one of my next videos is gonna be specifically about what
intermediate means to me and what I think it is in the world of language
learning because I think that's a very interesting topic all by itself and so I
would actually really like to invite all of you throughout this video if you have
any thoughts on what intermediate means to you when you're learning a language
please leave those in the comments and I'll make sure to sort of pick some of
those opinions and I'll say them in that video because I do think that this is
it's important to get many different perspectives on things like this but in
this video I want to focus on why I suddenly feel like my Chinese is now at
this sort of intermediate level I want to sort of talk about what that feels
like why I've been sort of going to bed and, like, super excited to put my head on
the pillow just so I can get up and start listening to more Chinese content and
continue with my learning I want to share what that feels like
because I often say that in language learning I think it's so important to
celebrate all of the small wins and successes that we have but the first
part of that is actually knowing how to identify when we win when we get those
milestones and successes so I hope that this video will help some of you who are
doing this for the first time sort of identify when you also deserve to give
yourself a pat on the back and celebrate those wins
okay so what made me get out of bed this morning and just jump up and with
elation and basically say I have to film a video I need to share how I'm
feeling right now because I'm so darn excited so I want to be clear here the
word intermediate is not really that important the main thing here is that I
feel a sudden advancement in the level of my Chinese I no longer really feel
like a beginner but I certainly don't feel advanced and so intermediate just
Maps very well to this place where I feel I am now
so one of the big things is that I've noticed everything suddenly feels easier so I'm noticing a really
big contrast right now in just how easy it is to simply study Chinese to sort of
go through lessons or materials to learn new words and especially how easy it is
to retain new things that I've learned it's a lot easier now so in the
beginning every resource I would study to a degree it just felt a bit too hard
so even the most beginner resources for quite a long time it was just taking
such a large amount of mental energy to just process things in Chinese it would
take me a lot of repetition to sort of absorb things and just for a very long
time I knew I was learning new words I knew that I was getting better but
certainly my ability to speak it felt very stagnant which is very normal by
the way I would learn lots of new words study for several weeks and then if I
randomly got a chance to speak Chinese to somebody and they would say oh like how much
Chinese do you know what I would try to speak it feels like I couldn't say
anything new like my ability hadn't really changed and I made a whole video
if you want to check it out sort of how to deal with this feeling when it feels
like your languages are not improving very much so then I went on to resources
like Glossika I was using Skritter I was doing Chinese pod lessons and again
all of these resources it just felt very very difficult to me to be honest it's a
bit like getting lots of new tools and materials but you don't really know how
to make anything useful so I was getting lots of words and learning new phrases
but I couldn't use them to make anything constructive
or sort of helpful in expressing myself in Chinese whereas now you know it's
very subtle but I just feel so much more comfortable engaging with my Chinese
studies I feel so much more at ease just going through the act of learning
Chinese and studying every day it's now become effortless and so this is where I
say some of you if you're doing this for the first time that may not feel like a
win that might just feel overshadowed by the feeling of not improving but I
really want to stress that these kind of things are really strong indicators that
you're doing the right thing that you're getting better
so again I also find that now when I learn new words I'm able to use them more quickly you'll see
I believe when I tried to speak Chinese at the beginning of the video I used
several new sentence patterns that I only learned in the last week or two I tried
to use this um...
like I'm wanting to speak more and more I also tried to use this:
this is like extremely excited like being dramatic because I think I'm
pretty dramatic and especially when I get excited
I'm very emotionally expressive so this is something that I wasn't able to do
before I would learn new grammatical structures but I just wouldn't be able
to mobilize them and use them in my speech whereas now I'm learning things
and I'm able to use them even if I'm making mistakes that's okay
now I do think this is a really good time to mention that I still struggle a
lot to speak so you may have noticed in the video even that I was struggling and
I was kind of you know having a bit of trouble to speak in really fluid sort of
sentences about needing to pause every now and again and to be honest I think
if I was having a real conversation with somebody I would actually struggle even
more than that so I've actually had very very few chances to speak to someone in
Chinese I almost never practice speaking with a person just a few times and so
while I'm getting more and more comfortable speaking to myself and sort
of expressing myself in a sort of monologue fashion I do think that if I
had a conversation with somebody right now I would struggle even more and so
this is the interesting thing about today's video is that to be honest if
you were to just watch my speaking skills especially in a conversation or
even if you were to just compare my knowledge against the CEFR language
scale or any kind of typical language rubric it's very possible the my Chinese
is not intermediate by those standards right this is very much something that I
feel inside of me and this is why I think the next video that I do all about
what is it to be intermediate what does that mean I think that there you know it
is important to have these sort of rubrics and criterias you can measure
yourself against etc but to be honest I think it's far more important how you
feel inside and learning how to identify the the improvement and progress in your
own language skills
just because I may be struggling to speak at the moment but I never really
speak I haven't had a lot of chance to practice but what I am noticing is that
when I now listen to a Chinese podcast I'm listening to one called bear talk
which is just a totally natural Chinese podcast the guy talks a lot about things
like UX design and career advice and when I listen to that I honestly don't
really understand almost anything but I understand lots of words now and it's
actually like it's no longer scary to me and I can I can tell that I'm going to
understand it in the near future or I'm gonna understand it better and better
I'm noticing now that when I approach intermediate materials like I'm doing
this sort of series on chinesepod it's like a romantic you know 14, 15 episodes
about a guy and a girl and they meet and it's kind of like a romantic story and
you know they're higher level materials the dialogues are a lot longer the
lesson discussion is half in Chinese half in English and I remember not too
long ago maybe three or four months ago that that was just overwhelming and it
was really difficult but now when I use those materials I get excited right I'm
just I'm at this stage now where I just want to pour Chinese into myself like I
just want all the words and phrases and grammatical structures to just wash over
me and I I'm just in it it's a totally different place of mind and so to me
that is more important that's why I say that it feels like I've leveled up and
again if that map's perfectly to the CEFR B1/B2 intermediate criteria or not I
don't think it matters quite so much obviously if you're trying to get a job
or if there's some external evaluation that you need right like you need to get
the B2 exam to do a job or something that's of course different but in terms
of are just internal intrinsic motivation for language learning and
being happy and recognizing your progress I think that it's really useful
to sort of to recognize how it feels to level up
and so for all intensive purposes that's why I say today I feel like my Chinese
is leveled up I feel like I'm an intermediate learner and that's really
exciting and so just wanted to share that with you guys I would love some feedback
on my Chinese I wonder if it's improved since last time you saw I hope it has I
can't wait to make a lot more videos in Chinese in the coming weeks