总重红绿灯 | Stoplight in the Sky

What is Chinese immersion at CET Hangzhou like? Every week we go through three/four chapters of textbook and between 180 and 250 new words/phrases, most of which are multi-character. That’s just brutal rote learning and I’m having some trouble with it, because there’s not enough time in the day for me to perfectly memorize 50-60 new phrases front-to-back (i.e. pinyin, writing, and recognition) plus practice my pronunciation and read the 2-3 page essay thoroughly plus write a 150 character essay and do some other exercises for the other classes. Whew! So something has to give. I’ve allotted 6 hours a day for homework, but honestly if I did nothing but go to class, study, and sleep, I still wouldn’t be doing much better, because my language skills decline when I’m tired and frustrated, so R&R has to be part of the program.

Just for comparison’s sake, at the UW I would go through one chapter, maybe less, per week, with 5 hours of class per day, plus maybe 2/3 hours of homework. So over the course of an entire academic year (3 quarters) I got about 150 hours of direct instruction plus 300 hours of homework, max.  In Hangzhou, in just 6 weeks, I’m getting 120 hours of direct instruction and doing about 180 hours of homework, plus 24 hours of exposure to Chinese  (i.e. indirect instruction) and almost no English at all. Technically I’m prohibited from speaking any English to people inside China, so my English is limited to Skyping abroad.