Chad Salinas’ Long Chinese Learning Journey

My Chinese journey started some 10 years ago when my wife was pregnant with our son, Kai. I wanted to teach my son a second language… one that was part of his family history. So, my consideration set narrowed to Spanish, Tagalog, and Chinese. After considering my childhood speaking Spanish and the utility of learning Tagalog, I settled on teaching my son Chinese. Now, I had to choose between Mandarin, Cantonese, or other of the many dialects. As a side note, I was surprised to find how many people from China cannot talk to each other! As I explored further, I discovered Cantonese to be almost indecipherable for a non-native speaking adult to learn. So, I decided on Mandarin.

Learning Chinese, where to start?

Having picked my language, I self-assessed a good starting point for starting my language journey. At that time, my Chinese vocabulary comprised of two words:

你 and 好

For my learning plan to be effective, I would have to learn enough to be able to talk to my new baby in Mandarin so he could acquire the language naturally. I settled on an immersion approach. I went to Stanford’s bookstore and bought the book and CD’s that they use for their Chinese I classes. I would listen exclusively to Chinese every time I drove in the car. I would only watch Mandarin programming on the TV, on YouTube, and on Baidu. Each day, I would read through the Chinese only text in Boya’s immersion series of textbooks.  From now on, I would completely immerse myself … or best laid plans of mice and men.

成长汉语第一课 到第十课

语法点：

吧

都几点了

你们在等一会。

生词：。。。

现在，我就修了五十六个生词。