When Learning Chinese Isn’t Fun Anymore – What is Motivation?

Recently, while attending an intermediate Chinese class for five weeks, I felt myself hit an emotional rock-bottom. After class, I found myself depressed, stressed, and with a lack of pride. While it is not my intention to bash an interesting class, I understood that this class experience wasn’t fun anymore and was not right for me.

While I’m always pro-learning Chinese, I also found out that in order to maintain motivation to learn, the learning experience should be fun, interesting, and manageable in a positive environment. Without any of those four aspects, learning Chinese becomes a heavy anchor that makes us feel like we are going nowhere even if we force ourselves to keep going.

MOTIVATION = FUN + INTERESTING + MANAGABLE + IN A POSITIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Using myself as an example, I thought about what was bothering me about this so-called “Intermediate” class, which I believe should have been an advanced class. It is an advanced class because other students were able to basically read, write, and speak Chinese already. I feel like I have a handicap because my teacher treated me like I had a handicap.

FUN:

Having fun is different for everybody, but even a fun activity becomes a stressed activity when the other three factors are missing: interest, manageability, and positive environment.

My teacher tried to make class interesting by giving us a picture and we had to create stories with it. I was okay with that, but in the next class, she gave us flashcards and we had to pretend we were at the street market haggling, taking turns as either a seller or a buyer.

For me, role playing is an interesting and fun activity, but I was missing the manageability and the positive environment. In the beginning, our teacher gave us flashcards and expected us to have the vocabulary necessary for role playing without teaching us any vocabulary beforehand. Furthermore, she told us we were not allowed to look at the pinyin or Chinese characters when looking at the flashcards. To me, this fun and interesting activity quickly became unmanageable and I had a hard time participating in it. I struggled and my teacher asked my fellow classmate to help me out. The fact she asked another student to pretend to be my shopping friend to help me out contributed to the idea that I am not good enough to do this on my own. I was really determined not to receive special treatment in any way. I felt my pride being damaged. Normally, being helped by another student should not be a threat to my pride at all, but because my teacher had pre-established a threatening environment for me, I was determined to prove my teacher wrong and that I should not receive special treatment. I’ll explain more about this aspect later.

INTERESTING:

Of course, the topic of learning Chinese is interesting for me as the evidence is clear from the existence of this CantotoMando blog. The dedication and time that I spent to break down the Chinese language into manageable pieces is limited to my lifespan. Our textbook in class is so interesting, but we don’t spend too much time on the textbook in the classroom. The fact that the entire class was conducted in Chinese was difficult and frustrating for me to understand because I am not at the level where I can simply listen and understand what other people are saying. I have never skipped a class even when it is pouring rain outside. Once a week, I traveled from Long Island where I currently work to Flushing, which is about a half hour drive. Afterwards, I parked my car ten minutes walking distance away from the train station, and then I rode the subway to the Grand Central Station, which is about a half hour ride. The school is about two blocks from Grand Central Station. I would not do all this if not for my interest in the Chinese language and the class. Unfortunately, with interest comes fun, but without manageability, the class becomes a burden as I struggle to understand the entire class in Chinese. While this is a new experience for me, the negatives seems to outweigh the positives. Again, I’ll explain environment later.

Interestingly, I found that in the beginning we had a class of seven students. By the third week, we had five students. By the fourth week, we had three students including myself. Perhaps, the attendance numbers are telling me something is wrong with the teacher’s teaching methods.

MANAGABLE:

No matter how difficult the class may seem, I plowed through it. Although I consider myself a beginner to intermediate student, I believe there is no task too difficult when the topic is broken down into manageable sections. Unfortunately, the teacher does not teach in what I believe is my style where everything is broken down and clearly understood from a student’s point of view. Whenever the teacher explained something in Chinese, I either have a delayed understanding or I don’t understand at all. There isn’t enough time to process what she said because she would be off to the next sentence already. I couldn’t keep up and my vocabulary is limited. In the end, I felt frustrated and overwhelmed. I can’t even tell the teacher to slow it down since the other students already understood. It was like watching Chinese TV or any other foreign program without subtitles. Sure, I’ll understand a word here and there, but I won’t fully comprehend what is going on. Because I couldn’t manage the language, I wasn’t able to have as much fun or take as much interest in what I was learning.

I have done many Chinese activities even though I had no idea what was going on. I had interned at a Chinese TV station one summer in Manhattan with minimal knowledge of Mandarin and I have listened to Chinese music and had no clue what the lyrics meant. What made me keep going? Was it the exciting environment I was in and the people I was working with? Was it the fun and interest in the music itself? Nowadays, I listen to kpop music where I have so much fun and interest in it and that not knowing the lyrics does not bother me too much.

IN A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT:

I realized a positive environment is critically important. All the other motivation factors such as fun, interest, and manageability are meaningless when I feel as though I am in a bad environment. I can recall many times when I was young, my Chinese teacher made fun of me often. I didn’t understand why she picked on me, but to me, she’d always be a mean and miserable lady in my memories who was really close to beating me with a stick. I thought about quitting so many times. After all, I was close to being at the bottom of my class in rank as stated on my report cards. What would people expect from a student who was picked on in class? I’m uncertain what drove me to continue my studies. Perhaps, it was my interest and pride in being Cantonese and the fact that my parents already paid the tuition. Quitting is simply not an option in my mind.

On the other hand, now that I am an adult, I have a choice. I remember going to the first class and being positive. It was a good intro class where we introduced ourselves and then we read the textbook. From the second class on, my teacher started giving me and another classmate special handicap treatment. She told me that she is going to work more with the other students because they have already “been to China.” I came into this class believing we would all be treated equally despite our level of comprehension or our prior experiences. Whenever, we read aloud or completed exercises, she asked the “advanced” students to read it first or answer the questions first. I was always last priority. I couldn’t believe I faced discrimination. From that point on, I felt like the class was tailored to the “advanced” students who are going to China again at some point. Finally, the nail hit the coffin when, for homework, my teacher told the two advanced students in my class to create three sentences based on the words we learned and to also write a story. When it was my turn, she told me I can make the three sentences, but if I have time or if I feel like it, I can write a story too. I felt like the way she treated me was insulting and no amount of fun, interest, and forced manageability can counteract this negative environment where I am treated like a student with a handicap. It would be different if the teacher treated us all as if we didn’t know what she was saying. Every time she explained something, she looked at me specifically and asked if I wanted her to explain in English or if I understood what she said.

During the last class, I was also angry when my teacher was holding up the flashcards and kept asking a student who went to Taiwan how to say all the names of the flashcards in Taiwanese. She also asked another student how the names were said in the Beijing dialect since that student went to Beijing. Never once did she ask me about Cantonese, but then again, one time in class, she thought I was Korean based on my last name. I lost my sense of pride and confidence in class.

Needless to say, I have decided to discontinue the class after the contracted five classes.

At some point, if the class is not what you are expecting, then perhaps it is time to ask yourself:

Was it fun?

Was it interesting?

Was it manageable?

Are you in a good environment?

If there are more bad points than good points, then perhaps it time to move onto something else. There are so many ways to learn Chinese. Do not feel like you have to be stuck in a learning environment where you are not comfortable. It’s also not a bad idea to give yourself a trial period to evaluate your motivation. In my case, I contracted myself to five weeks of classes at a language school and I am no longer obligated to continue after those five weeks. I did the same thing for dance class and I was glad I stuck through the contracted five months. I would have regretted quitting so early. Either way, good luck to you in your journey towards learning Chinese. Keep motivated!