翻译一封信,看看是啥意思。
sorry, i remember now asking you about subtitled movies before. duibuqi, wo wang le (wang = forgot?).
of course (dongran?) we're learning simplified hanzi and putonghua. all the chinese courses here and throughout the west will run along those lines. people want to talk to a billion and a half zhongguoren, not restrict themselves to a measly 30 million hong kongers or taiwanese.
yeah the chinese teacher is dongbeiren - that's an appropriate phrase, isn't it? can't remember which place exactly, but i think in liaoning. she's quite young, probably late 20s. it's funny to see how chinese people, even in a completely different context, nonetheless behave in a very typically 'chinese' way, like a freshman at english corner, ha ha. she's very innocent, quite authoritarian, and - despite having lived in the uk for a few years, and having an italian boyfriend - is still somewhat naive about "the west". (although not as naive as most of the dumb laowai in the classroom.) she's a pretty good teacher though (although nowhere near as good as yourself...), and it's nice to talk to her - it's like a little bit of shijiazhuang here in bo-ming-han, ha ha.
really the class is hardly useful at all for me; it's just nice to go along and get a (little) chance to practise, and i managed to get cheap enrolment because i'm connected to the university of birmingham. i'm unwilling to tolerate regimented language-learning anymore. i did that for seven years at school learning german, and i did the work that was needed then, but now when i learn language i want to have freedom. so i normally sit there shouting out silly things in my elementary chinese, while the teacher organises very circumscribed activities: "repeat this list of vocabulary after me", "complete this dialogue in pairs, filling in the gaps". bu hao, meiyou yisi. what's more useful are these 500 Chinesepod MP3 tracks that i downloaded. they use a very professional teaching technique, and it's convenient for listening to while driving. i learn more from them than i do from the class.