1. Compared to the start of the school year, I can definitely say that I've improved my Chinese speaking abilities. I was able to muster my courage and use Chinese in public for the first time, like ordering in restaurants. On top of that, I was able to make friends who were able to speak Chinese. Whenever I had trouble with something Chinese-related, I would rely on them to help me. This made me much more comfortable speaking Chinese and maybe even compelled me to speak Chinese since they would understand me, even through minor errors in my speech. I feel more confident while I’m speaking as well. I still somewhat seldom speak Chinese, but I try my best to surround myself with music, videos, and games that contain Chinese. Language learning is a tough path for many people. With language learning, you have to stay devoted when learning a language. What I find is that many people in the process of learning a language do not put in their full effort when they are learning. As a result, the language will be forgotten as the usage of that language diminishes. Language learning is like getting good at a game. The more you practice, the better you get. But if you stop practicing, you will lose some of your skills. So even after becoming fluent in a language, in order to maintain that level of fluency, you have to keep being exposed to that language. The mindset you need to have when learning a language is that you have to be prepared to always use that language, either through listening, reading, writing, etc. I feel that this Chinese course does well to expose us to new ways of learning while developing our abilities, but if we want to keep our skill level, we must keep Chinese in our lives in some sense! So whatever you want to do to keep up your Chinese, I wish you all luck in the lifelong journey of language learning.
2. My second time using Chinese in a public setting was with my Chinese friends. We went out to a Chinese restaurant that day. I wanted to use my Chinese again to order some dishes, so when the server came up to our table, I tried reading the names of 2 dishes. I got through one but could not read the other! I ended up improvising and just saying "这个". The important thing here was that I did not know what the characters were. It was that I somehow managed to get through by improvising, even if it was not the best option. I will take this experience and keep this in mind for my future experiences.
3. My next goal, specifically for learning Mandarin, is to start using it more often. I want to keep improving my Chinese, of course. While I keep learning new words and sentence structures, I feel that I will be able to have more confidence. So I will continue to try speaking Chinese whenever I can so I can push myself out of my comfort zone.
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