Tag Archives: foreign language

Yesterday was the final exam for my second Chinese class (Introductory Chinese III at the USDA Grad School in Washington). I’m happy to say that I scored a 96 on the exam.

Among the mistakes I made was one that was somewhat ironic considering my background in telecommunications. We were given single characters (字) and were expected to make words or phrases (词). One we were given was 电, the character for “electricity.” I intended to add 话, which is the character for “speach.” These two words together mean “telephone.” In a complete brain fart I wrote down the character 语, which means “spoken language.”

My other problems were a wrong choice in the radical for 穿 character, which means “to wear.” I also felt the strange need to add an object to the transitive verb 旅行, which means “to travel.” Ah well.

I’ve really enjoyed taking the class, but was getting a little bit burned out. I’m going to take some time off, and I hope to find a way to keep up and build upon what I’ve re-learned. In particular I’m looking for some opportunities to improve my spoken language ability. 谁要跟我一起讲话中文?

I’m very excited. This coming Tuesday I start a Chinese language class at the USDA Grad School in Washington. The USDA Grad School is a resource in DC for working professionals looking to expand their skills during the evening hours. Especially popular seem to be the school’s language classes.

I did study Chinese at University. In fact I was on an intensive language track my freshman and sophomore year. Those two years I took two hours of Chinese four days a week. Unfortunately, I never really found an opportunity to make immediate practical use of the skill, so I quickly forgot much of what I had learned. I hope it comes back quickly.

I’m taking Introductory Chinese II. I probably could have aimed a bit higher based on my past work, but I wanted to test the waters before diving back in to the academic world.

This class is part of my slow-moving objective of getting my master’s degree. I still don’t know what I want to study, or more acurately what I want to study most. My problem has always been that I want to learn EVERYTHING, but that’s not very practical. Some days I think I might want an MBA to advance my career, but some days that just feels like a lame reason to get a degree that isnt exactly the most exciting in the world (apologies to all of the MBAs out therefeel free to try to convince me otherwise). Economics has an extremely strong appeal, as do some of the public policy programs GW offer.

The one thing I do know is that I don’t want to go to school full time. I’ve become addicted to a big paycheck.

(If I remember my Chinese well, the title of this entry is asking, “Do you speak Chinese?” Either that or I am insulting your father.)