Assignment 14: Reading

Objectives:

  1. Learn phrase demarcation within a sentence
  2. Understand the complete sentence structure

Instructions:

    Read through Chinese school books volume 2 to volume 7.

Study Log:

I began Assignment 14 on May 23, 2008 and I completed Assignment 14 in only eight days on May 30, 2008.
 
Book 7, Page 1 — Book 7, Page 50

Book 8, Page 1 — Book 8, Page 8
 
Approximate words learned in this lesson: 192
Approximate total words learned thus far: 2460
Approximate commonly used phrases (two or three-word phrases) learned in this lesson: 300
 
Below are a few examples of my notebook:
 

Example 1

Example 2

 

Comments:

 
This was the assignment I was anxious to get to from my very first day of study! I kept reminding myself that ultimately the goal was to become literate and I think that was a good point to focus on throughout my entire learning process. When I opened my first book and began to read and translate the short stories within it, I was overjoyed! I did not care that it was a book for a first grader, I knew I had to start somewhere, plus it was extremely fun. I felt like I was in grade school again reading about birds and butterflies, flowers and trees. As I progressed through the books surpassing a grade level each day, the stories, too, were longer and more detailed. I was amazed! I could read! On the technical side of things, the reading assignment continued to improve my ability to demarcate phrases, introduced me to Chinese sentence structure, and also taught me a lot of commonly used words in everyday situations.