Cactus taster evening in London - what was it like to learn Chinese?
Friday, 26th March 2010
One participant comes out of his 2-hour taster class inspired, informed, refreshed and motivated...
I attended the Cactus Mandarin Taster session on Wednesday night in Kings Cross. I confessed, beforehand, to being a bit nervous, but mainly the sort of tingling, nervous anticipation that I associate with learning something new, and dipping my toe in the water for the first time.
Learning a new language, in particular, is a bit like starting a new voyage. At Cactus, we put a lot of emphasis on not worrying too much how long that voyage is going to be. Better to enjoy the journey than focus too much on the destination. In language terms, this means that after just a 10-week course – only 20 hours in total, you can accumulate enough language to cope with a number of typical situations, and use it with some confidence.
By the break, 45 minutes into my Mandarin taster, my nervousness had been transformed into amazement and fascination.
I hadn’t counted on such a cultural immersion.
Tina Tian, our trainer, was delightful. She put us at ease, gently but persuasively. She knew she had to start by overcoming our objections or concerns about approaching and learning Mandarin. She knew that we would perceive it to be very difficult to learn, and clearly had to get us past the idea that it might be prohibitively difficult. This she achieved by addressing head on the stereotypes associated with the language, the specifics of tone, the characters and their historical contextualisation, and the use of pinyin to make our lives easier. Really fascinating.
With that behind us, mainly after the break and another glass of wine, (“Don’t come back drunk!”), we take the plunge, and sure enough, start to hear Chinese cautiously leaving our lips. The sense of achievement and excitement was palpable amongst the ten of us in the room. I think a big psychological barrier to this seemingly inaccessible language and culture had just fallen. Before long, we were exchanging hellos and how are yous with some dignity. We could recognise the symbols for the sun, moon, man, woman, and knew something about hemp, horse, mother and swearing to be somehow connected.
The session was over, and I left the taster session inspired, informed, refreshed and really motivated to give this language a go.
Chinese (Mandarin) courses are available with Cactus in 10 locations around London and a further 8 locations nationwide. Visit the Cactus Language Courses UK website for further details.
By Richard Bradford, MD of Cactus UK.
Tags: chinese, evening course
Posted by Sarah Gooding under Experience Cultures,
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