PREVIEWING

[Scoobyqueen]

I am shortly going on an intensive course in China.

Cheers for any suggestions.

[gato]

He asked me what the point was of learning material in advance when the whole point about going was that you learn new material.

He's got a point. If it is indeed entirely material you can easily learn on your own back in Germany, then there is no point to go to China to learn it other than for the holiday. So the corollary of what he's saying is that you should make sure what you are studying in China is not something you can readily learn back at home. Perhaps spend the vast majority of your time there improving your spoken Chinese and save the written stuff for study at home.

[roddy]

Something like cramming a load of vocab about a particular topic so that you can later make full use of speaking practice about that topic makes a certain amount of sense.

[wrbt]

40 hours per week holy **** that's going to be a hardcore class man.

If you don't mind me asking where are you taking it? I've occasionally thrown around the idea of taking some precious vacation time for a couple weeks in China doing intensive study too.

[anonymoose]

How can you review something in advance? Review means to look at it (view it) again after you have already viewed it before. What you mean is preview, right?

Anyway, I think previewing the material might be a good idea. If you are going to be doing 40 hours per week, then you'll probably be under a fair amount of pressure. If you can get some of the material under your belt before you've started, then you'll be able to take some of the pressure off when you're there.

[Shadowdh]

I like to preview the material... I believe it helps me to learn more constructively and better. I can find out my weak points and work to them better, I also can find out which areas I really need to concentrate on in class and what sort of questions I might have...

[imron]

I also like to go over material in advance. You don't need to study it all so thoroughly, but having a basic overview of things means that when you first encounter it in class it wont be so new and you'll have a better chance of absorbing it. Studying it in advance also means that when you are in China you won't need to spend so much time studying the written materials and can focus on other things.

[Scoobyqueen]

How can you review something in advance? Review means to look at it (view it) again after you have already viewed it before. What you mean is preview, right?

Yes indeed. How blonde of me (especially considering my job is to organise "preview" events).

40 hours per week holy **** that's going to be a hardcore class man.

This course also includes Saturday and Sunday and is meant to be immersion and the lessons are one-to-one for three weeks.

I do the course in Beijing in 五道口. I found a small school with some highly qualified teachers and have been there several times and am very satisfied.

[roddy]

The name of the school might possibly be useful . . .

[adrianlondon]

40 hours of one to one tuition a week? Wow, well done! That would melt my brain.

Although I studied at a much more sedate pace (20 hours a week in a class at BNU) the lessions usually involved reading the new vocab, some quick explanations as to what each item meant (the vocab list was already translated into English) then straight onto the new text.

I was very lazy, but if I would have read the new vocab prior to the lesson it would have made life much easier. There was no way that after 10 minutes of reading around 40 new words we could then read the text without continual pausing and going back to the vocab list. It would have been much better to have memorised as many as possible before hand so that the text reading was more continuous.

Also, by knowing the new vocab in advance I would have time to prepare some questions (of the form "why do you use A when last week we learnt that B meant the same thing?" instead of just getting confused a couple of days later after we'd moved on.

Of course, this is all "I wish I had done" rather than what I did, as I was lazy. There wasn't much time to revise what we had done let alone prepare in advance for the next topic.

As you're "only" doing three weeks, having the material in advance and going through the vocab should really help.

[Scoobyqueen]

There was no way that after 10 minutes of reading around 40 new words we could then read the text without continual pausing and going back to the vocab list.

How does the teacher react to that?

Also, by knowing the new vocab in advance I would have time to prepare some questions (of the form "why do you use A when last week we learnt that B meant the same thing?" instead of just getting confused a couple of days later after we'd moved on. .

Thanks for bringing that up. I agree completely.

[misheast]

The way I see it, the more time you study, the better you'll do. If your question is, "should I preview this material instead of looking at other mandarin material" then I wouldn't know how to answer. But if you're really asking, "will I improve more if I study more?" then the answer is definitely "yes".

Likewise, I've found that I get more out of material I've previewed as well.

[xianu]

I have to say that this has been an interesting forum to read! As a teacher of Chinese, I would have to say that it drives me batty when students don't prep for class - at least go over the vocab so you have a clue what is going on when we use it in class. You don't have to be an expert on it, but your teacher can't learn the material for you! Simple prep activity that probably takes the longest time to absorb is to just learn the vocabulary - not just learn to read/recognize something, but try to understand how to use it, its part of speech (so where you should put it in the sentence) and if it seems like a wierd or non-obvious word, make up sentences for it and then when you get to use it in class, you and your teacher both have something to work with - you and your teacher both have your understanding (or misunderstanding) of how the word is supposd to work, and if you are wrong in some way, the teacher has a place to start to help you understand its usage.