Throughout this summer I read the book “Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language” by Deborah Fallows. It is a memoir about the discoveries Deborah Fallows made through her journey of living in China for three years. She wrote about the good and bad but also the different things she learned in the process. For example she wrote about her troubles when she first started getting introduced to the different tones, but then she learned that although the tones may sound the same, the character is what changes the different tone to the different meaning. Her example was that shī (狮), shí (十), shǐ (使), shì (是) sound the same but mean lion, ten, to make, and to be because the different characters change the meaning.
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In Chapter 8 Disappearing pronouns and the sense of self, Fallows talked about how the locals never say I (我), you (你), he (他), or she (她) often because it isn’t needed and there could be a lot of overuse. I realized that whenever I am doing an assignment at home or school, I always add in an extra 我, 你, 他, or 她 just because I feel as if I need to make clear about who I am talking about. As Fallows writes in this chapter, the reasoning behind this is because we are taught at a young age that pronouns are important to our English vocabulary. However when being taught Mandarin her Chinese friend said that the “teachers just don’t drill pronouns” as much as we do. So with this in mind, my recognition is that I often overuse the characters 我, 你, 他, 她because it is like a second nature, but actually I don’t need to add as many pronouns as I think I do. Another recognition I made are about characters. In Chapter 11 The essence of being Chinese, Fallows wrote about how to read characters and break them apart to understand them easier. With …show more content…
My favorite thing about this book was reading and looking at all the graphics and pictures Fallows included. I felt that the pictures made the book more interesting and more fun to read. My favorite picture was from page 149 where it was about the evolution of characters from the twelfth century B.C. to current day. I thought it was really cool and interesting to see how they developed and changed. Another thing I liked about this book was that it wasn’t that long of a book. I have realize that whenever I read a really long book, I seem to lose interest faster. However with the length of the book and all the graphics it had, it made me pay attention and keep myself interested. My least favorite thing about this book was in Chapter 12 Rules to follow and rules to break. I disliked this chapter the most because although she talked about how her time in China made her change and break rules every once in a while, I didn’t feel as if it needed a whole chapter to itself. When reading she made it seem like when in China it is good to break the rules, but only do it sneakily in certain places because some be more strict than others. However this is just my opinion on the book. Besides that I thought that there were many upsides to reading and many good lessons to be
In Chapter 8 Disappearing pronouns and the sense of self, Fallows talked about how the locals never say I (我), you (你), he (他), or she (她) often because it isn’t needed and there could be a lot of overuse. I realized that whenever I am doing an assignment at home or school, I always add in an extra 我, 你, 他, or 她 just because I feel as if I need to make clear about who I am talking about. As Fallows writes in this chapter, the reasoning behind this is because we are taught at a young age that pronouns are important to our English vocabulary. However when being taught Mandarin her Chinese friend said that the “teachers just don’t drill pronouns” as much as we do. So with this in mind, my recognition is that I often overuse the characters 我, 你, 他, 她because it is like a second nature, but actually I don’t need to add as many pronouns as I think I do. Another recognition I made are about characters. In Chapter 11 The essence of being Chinese, Fallows wrote about how to read characters and break them apart to understand them easier. With …show more content…
My favorite thing about this book was reading and looking at all the graphics and pictures Fallows included. I felt that the pictures made the book more interesting and more fun to read. My favorite picture was from page 149 where it was about the evolution of characters from the twelfth century B.C. to current day. I thought it was really cool and interesting to see how they developed and changed. Another thing I liked about this book was that it wasn’t that long of a book. I have realize that whenever I read a really long book, I seem to lose interest faster. However with the length of the book and all the graphics it had, it made me pay attention and keep myself interested. My least favorite thing about this book was in Chapter 12 Rules to follow and rules to break. I disliked this chapter the most because although she talked about how her time in China made her change and break rules every once in a while, I didn’t feel as if it needed a whole chapter to itself. When reading she made it seem like when in China it is good to break the rules, but only do it sneakily in certain places because some be more strict than others. However this is just my opinion on the book. Besides that I thought that there were many upsides to reading and many good lessons to be