For the past month, I’ve been spending about 30 minutes a day on reading and listening comprehension in Mandarin.
I haven’t been speaking at all…and I think it caught up with me today. I was at a monthly meet and greet I organize for language learners here in Calgary. If you want to check out the next one in February, let me know and I’ll send you more information.
A native Mandarin speaker attended today’s event.
She spoke to me in Mandarin and…I froze up! I could barely find the words to reply. I usually do lots of conversation practice when learning languages, so the feeling of freezing up to such an extreme extent was surprising to me.
The experience reminded me that speaking is important.
I know it may sound obvious. I suppose a part of me forgot because I have been so focused on reading and listening lately. I don’t think doing so has been a poor choice per se, but I have now realized that I should at least consider re-incorporating speaking back into my study routine at some point in the near future.
Thanks for reading today’s article.
I appreciate it :)
Azren
Calgary Language Nerds Owner
https://azrenthelanguagenerd.com
An easy way to do that is to read out loud! Though I'm not sure how much of a challenge that is with Mandarin, since the script is not phonetic. May be pretty difficult. 😅
This is where your Saturday class is helping me so much!