Back at UBC I was learning Beginners’ German from a German PhD student whose lessons were quite fun and engaging. Even though he was unsure of certain grammatic rules, we always forgave him because beads of perspiration would form on his head even in the midst of winter. Our German textbook introduces grammar step by step and we were just getting into past tense. Learning was in short sentences. I was already struggling with so many rules to remember and vocabulary to memorize, but I managed to get by with pastel colours.

Here in Fudan my classmates are done with grammar rules and usages. My current textbook is filled with PASSAGES and during today’s lesson I was completely lost when the teacher read the passage and the class started analyzing sentence structures. Usages and grammatical rules are briefly reviewed in Chinese and I can’t really follow. There’s way too much I need to catch up with, and I’m not sure if I can handle learning a 3rd language with my 2nd language in such a short time. What is 第1-4格respectively? And then there’s 强变化动词，不规则变化动词 (irregular verbs?)，不定式 (indefinite?)，现在时(present tense?)，过去时(past tense?)，完成时…

I am so dead.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Campus Life, Fudan, Language, Ramblings, UBC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.