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venture160 -

I've done a language pledge as well with CET Harbin. I thought it worked VERY well, but I did it
for 12 months straight and afterwards it took about 2-3 months to get my english back up to speed,
and even longer to fix my writing skills. But it helped to improve my spoken chinese, and we
avoided the pitfall of only speaking to Americans in Chinese by having Chinese roommates. Also, it
was a great way to avoid the english langauge tutoring, just tell them if you speak english you
get sent back to the states.

For the past three months I have been in the states taking classes here, and besides my classes, I
have been under a self imposed language pledge. I have chinese roommates, and when i go between
classes its nothing but radio shows I have downloaded onto my mp3 player. 80% of the news I read
was in Chinese. I am on spring break taking some time off from this, but I"ll prob return to this
mode in a few weeks.



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crow610 -

So those of you who are on this "pledge", do you also think in Chinese?










venture160 -

I did thinking, dreaming and counting in Chinese.










kdavid -

Someone a few posts back mentioned being approached by other non-native Chinese speakers. I've
found a good remedy for this problem:

Whenever I'm approached by someone wanting to practice their English in the streets, in a
restaurant, etc., I just tell them I'm Czech and can't speak English (in Chinese). If they
continue to try and speak English, I just make a confused face and walk away. It's actually quite
entertaining.










xianu -

I am surprised by how adamant some of you are about refusing to speak English, and coming up with
little background scenarios for dealing with it. I didn't mind meeting and speaking English with
people, Chinese or foreign. I made some great friends from many different places, and I like to
think I helped a lot of frustrated travelers gain an appreciation for China (rather than be all
bitter about it).Perhaps because I am ethnically Chinese (ABC) I never had an issue with people
randomly trying to practice English with me, or with non-Chinese randomly singling me out to help
them communicate/translate. I have always wondered how my ability to "pass" affected my
experience. Any other ABC's, for whom Mandarin was definitely a foreign language care to comment
on this?










Meng Lelan -

I did what kdavid did, tell them that I couldn't speak English and act confused if they kept on
trying to speak English to me. This worked because I would tell them it is because I have a severe
hearing impairment (which is true, I have to wear hearing aids to hear). You do have to be very
strict with yourself if you want to self-impose a language pledge and you want to improve your
Chinese. Otherwise those pseudo "teach-me-English" friendships (heifeng put this into words very
well) will drag down your Chinese level very very quickly. Those of us who are in China to learn
Chinese well will self-impose the pledge (maybe this comprises one percent of all the foreigners
who come to China). Those of us who are in China to not learn Chinese well are going to keep on
speaking English to the locals and the foreigners (this would maybe comprise the other 99% of
foreigners who come to China).










xianu -

I always found that friendships with these "teach-me-english" types, if they actually were with
likable people, turned into great language exchanges, and I learned a lot of vocabulary and
especially the more colloquial verbage, plus lots of culture from them. Partly because they had
attained a certain level of english proficiency, and were obviously interested in American or
Western culture, there were things that we could talk about that would improve both my Chinese and
their English. Though of course, you have to weed out the puds from the nice folks. And that's
when making up stories about your past can be a fun and entertaining way to live.










Stefani -

Well, I was much younger then, but I had a language pledge to speak English as much as possible. I
had learned English in Indonesia, but my expressive skills were lacking. A friend who lived with
other Indonesians said that it took her 3 months before she was comfortable speaking & writing
English, and she was very smart.

I did not want it to take that long, so I forced myself to speak English as much as possible and
asking other Indonesian friends to do the same. As a result, it took me a month before I was
comfortable speaking, and started dreaming in English. Like any languages, the more time you spend
in a particular language the better your skills will be in that particular language.

It was difficult, but it worked very well, but one's language skills have to be quite high already
(I don't think it will work well with beginners, my English was probably intermediate / upper
intermediate at that time, especially for the receptive - reading and listening - portion).










Long Pan -

This article from China Daily, is about the Chinese program organised in Beijing by Princeton
University which has a language pledge; Students “must pledge to speak no other language than
Chinese for the duration of the 8 weeks to two semester program, at risk of being expelled”.
Does not say if they can read English or not. Quite impressive !












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