haha. i hardly EVER do a continuation post, (only about twice so far), but since i had nothing of vital importance except my mid year exams 3 days hence, i decided to just give additional techniques for chinese!
oh yes, i just took my chinese paper last friday, and it was superb. my composition was a piece of an artistic genius: the topic was on a moment of folly you had done in your life which you regretted , and apparently my moment of folly happened during the japanese occupation.
hmm? composition out of point? you must be joking. anyways my 2nd paper was as much of a success, but i realised that i havent touched on the techniques on how to answer chinese comprehension open-ended!
to avoid doing what i -ALMOST- did, that was to answer questions one to five in this order:
1. wo bu zhi dao (i don't know)
2. wo ye bu zhi dao (i also don't know)
3. wo hai si bu zhi dao (i still don't know)
4. wo zhen de bu zhi dao (i really don't know!)
5. wo yong yuan bu zhi dao (i won't know forever)
of course i didn't want my head to be chopped off by the teacher, so fortunately i chickened out and use this techniques instead.
CHINESE COMPREHENSION OPEN-ENDED TECHNIQUES
first off, yes this is more complicated than just your mcq, because more than a technique, it also happens to be a step-by-step process. now, before you rush to complete the questions, you must at least have a hint of WHAT the passage is talking about.
shocked? surprised? yeah, thats one of the reasons why they call it comprehension. you say you'll never know what the passage is talking about! not to worry! memorise these various senarios.
1. highlight, or if you're too lazy, look out for the "i"s. not the letter i, mind you, the chinese i, or myself. no not me as in me, the...arghh you know what im talking about.
anyways, if the passage has a lot of is, its very probably a narrative, which means the author is
a. trying to write a sob/inspirational/nice/etc. story about himself.
b. trying to write a sob/inspirational/nice/etc. story about other ppl he knows.
Ok, if we eliminated the possibility that its a narrative, now comes the tricky part. knowing if its a newspaper report, or talking about events or random things, or even fantasy stories like, say, some pencil talking to the eraser and aruging about stupid stuff. (usually these stories would have a moral behind it, like, don't use the pencil tip as an erasor).
if its a
newspaper article discussion- you see lots of one-way conversations? most probably people getting interviewed!
talking about events or random things- look out for they key words. "i think", "i believe", "people feel", "people think" oh, how to find out what's the topic of discussion? ask your friends about it after the paper.
fantasy stories- usually these kind of stories are the hardest because usually they come of with lots of new names and terms that people who actually mug chinese are not sure of, so the rule of thumb is this: if you come across a passage and have used the above ways to comprehend, but to no avail, its definately a fantasy story.
ok, now how to answer questions!
technique 1: paragraph-by-paragraph.
for question 1, copy the first paragraph.
question 2, copy the 2nd paragraph.
question 3, copy the 3rd paragraph.
and so on, but stop and skip a paragraph if they ask you "meaning questions" or "what do you think" questions.
eg. if they ask you a meaning question at 3, DO-NOT COPY the 3rd paragraph, (technique on how to answer would be taught shortly), but for question 4 copy the 4th paragraph. easy, no?)
technique 2: answering meaning questions
alright usually for meaning questions you have quite a safe net- 0% chance of knowing the meaning. so, in the event that you don't know the meaning, follow this.
a. if the meaning of 2 words are asked- random any noun/verb/adverb
b. 4 words are asked- random any sayings/proverbs.
c. a whole chunk of words are asked- leave it blank. ok fine, write a whole chunk of words that you don't understand back to teach them a lesson.
technique 3: answering "what do you think?" questions
usually the safest way is to put "i agree" as your first sentence, though the teacher may bluff you that both may be liable alternatives, it probably takes 10 times the effort to write no than yes. anyways
1. copy the last paragraph. (usually they conclude and give all sorts of opinions)
2. try to pick out one or two words that you understand and write from there.
(for example, for my chinese paper i failed to understand all but the last 4 words, "still can be saved", so i wrote "yes, because i believe that people can turn over a new leaf". ok, maybe later on my friends had no idea what i was writing about because they claimed the question asked a totally different thing, but at least i was close!)
all these techniques are fail-proof, having been tried and tested by none other than a professional- me. my credidentials are be noteworthy, and my chinese teacher is always begging to see my parents cos' of the loads of great things she has to tell them about me. =)
damn, im good.
