I am a little frustrated by the memorize and repeat method of teaching Chinese that is popular here. We learn to memorize dialogues between people. The emphasis seems to be placed on saying the exact words in the text.
The pace is a bit slow. We have spent about 10 class periods on "Where are you from?", telephone numbers, and "How many people are in your family?" Today we learned about 30 terms for people in the family since Chinese differentiates everyone. I am pretty sure I won't ever use more than about 8 of the terms. But we spent an hour learning about your mother's uncle's older sister's husband and other such useful relations that come up in everyday conversation. When I mentioned that these terms were not all that useful, the speaking teacher agreed saying they were pretty boring to learn since they don't have much use, and then continued right on going about someone's father's younger brother's wife's older brother.
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