The importance of REVIEW

Like we'll check the pantry and fridge before we do grocery shopping, or you check your wardrobe before you do your seasonal shopping (being a must-be-organized person, I do that all the time), it is important to take a break, pause, and review whatever you've learned from time to time when it comes to learning Chinese characters.

After I told my tutoring students that I'll be no longer tutoring them from next month, they accepted it pretty well (sure, they're adults!) and asked me to keep in touch with them. Student D is going to travel in Taiwan and China, and she promised me to submit the "special assignment" I gave her after her return. Student P is going to travel to France and Japan, so it's a actually a good timing for him to stop the lessons for a while. So, I feel less guilty to "abandon" them, according to P.

Anyway, for both of them, I gave them a big assignment: re-organize all the vocabulary they've learned so far, and compile a chart of them. I ask D, who has just learned Mandarin for about 36 hours (over the during of 6 months), to turn in a list of at least 50 vocabulary. For P, he's more on the edge of a beginner and intermediate level now, so I asked him to give me a list of at least 500 vocabulary.

By listing the words by a few different categories: Subject, Verbs, Nouns, then Adjectives, Adverbs, Phrases... The students (even for the teacher) get to know what they've remembered in their brains, and what they have given back to the teacher. And then they can focus on what they've been missing, and strengthening the grammar concepts by putting the words in the right order to create their own sentences.