Besides all the very interesting experiences and fun things I did here in China, I’ve also still been learning Chinese. Now it’s the end of the semester (I only have to finish my exams next week) and so I wanted to give you an update on my Chinese skills.
Lately a lot of people have been asking me if I can speak Chinese now, which made me thinking of when we can say we “can speak a language”. So I went online and did a test to find out my Chinese level. The first test told me that my level is “Upper Beginner - Lower Intermediate”, another test I did ranked me as “Intermediate A2-B1”.
So my conclusion is, that it’s really hard to determine your language level. However I feel like I am able to have easy conversations with people, in most situations I am able to express myself and if people don’t talk too fast I can usually get what they want.
In my opinion the classes at the University are very good and we learn a lot of practical things that we can use for everyday life. For instance we studied how to buy things, how to ask for directions, how to make conversations with people and many other things.
For how impossible to learn this language seemed at the beginning, I must say I’m quite proud of how much I’ve learnt in the past four months. It really helps a lot to be in the country to pick up the language, because you are always surrounded by it, can always read and listen and it also boosts the motivation to learn it. I’m looking forward to learn some more Chinese so that I’m really able to talk and I hope that the talking will also get easier.