Submitted by ciurce on
I would like to share with you my experience in learning Chinese but first I have to introduce myself. My Rwandan name is MPAWENAYO GAD, my Chinese name is 林海.I am studying in University of Rwanda, College of Education, my major subject is English. Now I am studying in level four where I am doing internship.
At the first time I came in university, my friend called Peter who was studying in level two told me that in our campus, there is a course of Chinese and it is free charge. I asked him the requirements needed for a new student to attend the course and he told me that It is a photocopy of student’s registration letter and photocopy of identity card. On the next day, I took my registration letter and identity card to cyber café for having their photocopies. Having gotten those photocopies, I went to the Confucius Institute register office for being registered. By reaching on office, I knocked and entered, the registrar was there,and then she helped me in registration.
The following day was the class day. I was highly motivated and courageous. I could not be absent even one day for the class, the first day of the class, the teacher came in class and greeted us saying 你们好, I could not understand what it means and no one in my class replied to the teacher’s greetings. When my teacher says in English, we all replied and she consoled us saying do not worry I will teach you and I am sure you will know Chinese very well. She talked to us a lot and her talk was normally based on encouragement where she encouraged us to study Chinese with purpose and never give up because there is profit for those who are studying Chinese including scholarships, finding jobs in the Chinese companies etc. The next thing was to give us Chinese names where my teacher asked one by one his/ her names in Kinyarwanda and then the teacher referred to his/her names and gave him/ her Chinese name.
On the second day of the class, my teacher 陈 taught us how to greet someone in Chinese for the morning time, in the afternoon and the evenings. My teacher wrote 房子on the white board and then I started wonder how I will know how to write those Chinese characters and somehow I was afraid but because I knew my ambition, that why I did not give up. In my class we were so many at the beginning but as we progress, some students started to give up because of fearing to write Chinese characters and even thinking that Chinese is so difficult that they can’t know to the level of using it in their daily communication.
On the day on which we had class, we usually play 太极拳 at least thirty minutes and then after classes start. I was good at playing 太极拳and I liked it very much that I was the one to reach in the playground. Every teacher admired my courage and they always pointed me as exemplar.
Normally in Confucius Institute, the classes started on 18h00 and ends by 20h00 but me, I usually arrive in the class at 17h30 in order to make revision of the last course. Our teacher used to give us homework and I was the first one to hand over the homework to the teacher. I kept being motivated to the end of the first academic year. After the first academic year, we had holidays of five months. During the holidays, I was doing small business that I could not get even thirty minutes for making revision. I was always busy with my business.
Later the holidays finished and I returned to school where my college was shifted from Kigali to kayonza district. In that new college, there were no Chinese class before. It was I and my classmates to introduce Chinese class in that college and because I had spent five months without making revision of Chinese, I had almost forgotten everything in Chinese. Thinking that my classmates have advanced to the higher degree that I cannot catch up them, that is why I felt less motivated and then I gave up studying Chinese for two years i.e year two and year three of university. When I reached in level four of university of Rwanda, it was my internship period. It is on that time I changed my mind seeing that I have time for studying Chinese and seeing that my classmates who kept studying Chinese are getting jobs of translating Chinese in companies of Chinese people and others are getting scholarships of going to China to study Chinese.
In July of 2019, after thinking deeply about restarting to study Chinese. I knelt, pray to God just to request strength and motivation in studying Chinese. After I bought again new notebooks and pens and then I registered again in Chinese class where I started in level two of Chinese with great ambition. Because level two studied in the evening and level three studied in the morning, that why I decided to study level two and level three of Chinese at the same time.In the morning, I went for studying level three and in the evenings, I went for studying level two. I kept studying very hard until when the period of doing Chinese proficiency test arrived. In December of 2019, seeing that I have advanced to a higher level, that is why I decided to registered for doing Chinese proficiency test of level three where I got 297 marks over 300.
作者简介：MPAWENAYO GAD（中文姓名：林海），卢旺达大学教育学院大四学生，卢旺达大学孔子学院初级班学员。