October SDA reflection

November 4, 2020

This month for my SDA I chose to write a short song segment, based off a popular mandarin song, which is meant to encourage people to study Chinese, but also to help those who are learning talk about the language as well as understand how Chinese songs work differently than in English. I felt I had much freedom in designing this assignment, but since my topic is very different from the topics of most, mine requires intense in-depth research (obviously). I may create a journal about how the HSK restricts my ability to learn Chinese effectively- essentially "protein bar" of studying which isn't necessarily healthy but works temporarily, yet a healthy meal is very challenging to get and rather time consuming- next school year when I plan to move on from proficiency exams, SDAs will be much more valuable to me.

Positives: It was so fun! I never get to do anything like this in my ordinary classes, and it was very valuable to me in getting hands on experience of how Chinese songs work. Negatives: I started late, and didn't get to do as much for my assignment as I would've liked, and time could have been put towards studying HSK (though I much prefer the SDA). I dedicated a whole day's (yes, a full day) worth of work, and the years of listening to Mandarin music. A lot of time, but worth my while.

I discovered that self study, and designing your own curriculum (NOT the HSK) is difficult to get, especially when you're going outside of your comfort zone, not able to know whether what you're reading is authentic. The most important thing I learned was that when something doesn't work and isn't worth spending your time on (not referring to the assignment here), it's okay sometimes to abandon that. I tried for so long to come up with my own song, but usually if I do write a song it randomly comes to me, otherwise it's never going to happen. Just make a parody of an existing song, which is much harder to do in another language! It seems obvious, but it ends up wasting a lot of my time and getting me into pickles constantly.

Identifying a problem is very difficult. When you're trying to create something from scratch, there's only one opinion on the table, yours- and it's not necessarily correct. That's what this project taught me about identifying a problem. Since my Chinese is relatively limited, finding problems at all is difficult and I rely heavily on the support of speakers I know, but for this I only relied on my own knowledge and that of existing online resources.

I am proud with the final product. Though I may not be the most accurate Chinese speaker in the world or best singer, the amount of learning gained through doing the assignment and feeling the accomplishment of having finished made me happy with how it turned out. If there's anything aside from my Chinese level or singing I could work on, it would definitely be time management. Not that I'm some major procrastinator or anything, but I feel the way I allot my time has a great effect on how productive I am. That's a whole different topic but is so crucial to me being able to balance my classes along with Chinese.

I need to think about what I write and what assignments I choose, and how that contributes to my learning of the proficiency test levels. Though a scale model of the difference in difficulty between HSK levels sounds fun, it doesn't directly help me at all. Since this month and the beginning of December I'm doing HSK 4, I might want to consider what will go into me teaching myself to speak, even with quarantine. To design a curriculum for myself- that counts as teaching and learning!

How can I keep from overwhelming myself with vocabulary while still staying within the time constraints (taking the test in time to submit my score AND really learning Chinese)?

As to answer the bonus question, I feel very heard by my coordinators!