I’m good at school. Good at learning, being in class, doing homework. It almost doesn’t matter what the subject is. There is one subject, though, which I don’t like — languages.
I’ve been thinking about this. There is no reason for me to single out languages for particular dislike. Objectively, languages should be one of the most enjoyable subjects. You learn something useful, you learn about other cultures, it’s easy enough to understand (not like theoretical physics, say). I even remember eating sushi and onigiri in the Japanese classes I did for three years (I have retained nothing from these classes).
I think it’s because I associate learning languages with pain and failure. I went to Chinese school most weekends for ten years. Then I did four years of Chinese at university. The classes were always too hard for me. There was barely one moment in those fourteen years of study in which I felt competent or stimulated. Instead, I felt embarrassed, frustrated, angry, bored, and despairing.
I could not (still can’t) understand why people learn Chinese, or any language, for fun. How can it be fun? It is so hard and makes you so wretched. You can’t ever get on top of it. You will always fall short.
I am glad that I can still speak and write (and type) Chinese, in spite of moving to Australia before my third birthday. While being miserable in Chinese class, I thought, ‘This must be what it’s like to be bad at school. No wonder people hate it.’ I remember being so grateful when classmates helped me understand the work. I wonder if that inspired me to help people in other classes?
Now that I’ve figured out why I hate the idea of doing language classes, maybe I can wipe the slate clean. Maybe I can stop myself from cringing at the thought of learning a new language.
I reckon those weekend Chinese classes were terrible. Parents basically used them as day-care for high-school students. Not many people wanted to learn, they just wanted to pass.
I’m learning Chinese (slowly), this time as an adult and without the humiliation and frustration of those weekend classes. I’m learning it because I want to learn Chinese, not because I’m being forced to.
I’m enjoying it a whole lot more. Languages actually are fun!
If you can speak and write, even type, Chinese, that sounds like you have the language under your belt. What it is that you don’t like learning about Chinese?
Hi Wayne. Well, for many years, my parents said I had to go to Chinese school. But by the end of it, the pain was self-inflicted. My brother quit but I kept going. I didn’t want to ‘waste’ the years of training. I can be stubborn like that.
Hi Anon. I can speak, write and type conversational Chinese. My reading isn’t good (I recognise characters but not the character combinations that make words, generally).
I think the main thing I didn’t like about learning Chinese was this constant feeling of failure, always needing my parents’ help with essays and pre-reading. I spent hours trying to deceipher texts before class. My whole textbook would be covered with markings. My parents helped a lot but it must have been boring for them, too.
The classes were always too hard for me. I’d scrape by in one class and the next year, it just got harder. I just about reached my limit by the time I got out of university. I got to the second highest level and it almost killed me. There was no way I could have done units 11 and 12.
The thing is, I always got good marks. I worked very hard at Chinese, spent hours on it, and didn’t enjoy it at all.
I think this is what I associate with learning languages.
I associate learning languages with going on holidays. Yay!
When learning a language as children, I think we expect more from ourselves and invest more of our self-esteem into it (at least, I did intially) than we might do when we are adults. If we were not very successful as children, we might think of ourselves as failures, but as adults we are more likely to think that we are just aiming for some moderate level of ability and are not expected to be fully fluent so are not disappointed when we turn out not be.
I’m not sure to what extent this is just a matter of growning up and learning what a reasonable expectation of ourselves is, and to what extent it is a different sort of expectation because we have ‘lost time’ by not starting to learn something younger.
I empathise with you.
Your Chinese sounds better than mine! I’m still learning, but on my own now. I found classes a bit wasteful at uni, because the teachers used to just give everything away. We were set translation exercises that were way too hard, so our teacher did the bulk of the work for us. Then our oral exam was more like acting rather than anything that actually tests your spoken communication ability; and our texts were always so dull.
I guess I ‘soldier on’ because I’m ABC, so I feel like part of my identity is fraudulent if I can’t say with confidence, to myself mainly, that I’m genuinely literate in Chinese.