Day 25: Let the research commence!

-

Having just gotten back to Hsinchu last night after a fun-filled weekend, the crew got back to our usual schedule once again. The morning started by waking up in the Tsing dorm beds once again, after the brief hiatus of last week’s hotel stay. After getting ready for the day, I went to my favorite breakfast joint and grabbed another one of my favorite scallion pancakes I’ve had in Taiwan so far (it was just topped this past weekend in Tainan). Having thoroughly enjoyed this familiar taste, I walked to General Building II for class and did some last-minute studying for our daily vocab quiz.


During class today, we debriefed on our busy weekend in Tainan, applying the unit’s grammar structures to our explanations of the weekend’s activities. We also presented our reports for the unit, in which we discussed family structures and values. These reports were very informative and I am very proud of my classmates and their presentations.


As class finished up, we went to the cafeteria’s buffet once again. I can confirm, the tofu was even better than it usually is. The cafeteria has truly become one of my favorite spots on campus, as I can converse and relax with friends while enjoying some delicious food.  



After finishing up this delicious lunch, it was time for more language partner tutoring! Our language partners have become an extremely important resource to my Mandarin-learning experience in Hsinchu, as they have allowed me to get the absolute most out of my homework. Not only have they helped me answer the questions in workbooks, but they’ve gone above and beyond the questions to teach the concepts and grammar structures behind certain words and sentences, which has been very helpful. I think that my learning has been enhanced by interactions with our language partners. Not only did I successfully finish this week's workbook activities, but I was even able to consult with my language partner regarding my research project surveys, which I plan on conducting in the next few days. She helped me translate my questions, which will be asked to Tsing Hua students.


After our tutoring sessions, we found a little pal right outside of General Building II. It looks like this little guy was a little lost, so we helped him get back on the right path! 太可爱了！




Having said goodbye to our friend, I went to the NTHU library, which I have found to be a fantastic study space. Not only has it been a perfect place to quietly study, but I’ve even found resources that have contributed to my evidence for my research paper. I stayed in the library until closing, but it felt like time flew by. Nevertheless, I had a productive few hours where I have made significant steps forward in my research paper.


After the library closed, I got my favorite 7/11 dinner and made a quick call to update my parents on our great weekend. As I’m writing this, I’m getting ready to get a good night's sleep before another busy day tomorrow.


Now that we’ve really gotten into our research papers, it’s been incredible to see how passionately our classmates have been immersing themselves in their research topics. From interviewing, to conducting surveys, to going outside of Tsing Hua’s campus to do field research, progress seems to be going very well.


--Phillip


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 17: Farming at Island Time

-
Image
While several students went to the beach, the rest of us headed over to Island Time where we experienced life as a part-time farmer! We had the pleasure of having Lai Ching-sung, the founder of Island Time, give us a guided tour of his “farmland utopia.”  Mr. Lai shared his experience on leaving the bustling city and becoming a “dreamer,” which he calls “half farmer/half X.” I think it’s truly admirable that he was able to gain the trust of farmers around the Shenguo Village to farm organically. Farming without the use of pesticides and herbicides of those sorts was  very much unheard of at that time, so Mr. Lai really paved the path for organic agricultural practices in Yilan county. After listening to Mr. Lai’s life as “half farmer/half X,” we were given the opportunity to farm and become 农夫 (nóng fū- farmers) ourselves! The twelve students were divided into three groups and we each went on to take on our respective roles before rotating to the next one. We got to harvest ri...
Read more

Day 33 Presentations, and Certificates

-
Image
08.08.23   In contrast to the previous day, our second to last day of the program felt quite packed with events. The day started off quite interesting. The day before I had prepped for my presentation for the Final mandarin presentation, and felt quite confident about it. What I had not prepared for was all of the distractions that would happen during the presentations. Throughout most of our presentations the building we were in was testing their fire alarm systems, so many times presenters were interrupted by a loud noise followed by “testing, testing”. On top of that during my presentation both the professor who accompanied us to Genshi county, and one of the directors of our program came into our classroom to listen in on my presentation. To say that I was a little worried about my pronunciation and grammar would be an understatement. To top of my presentation in the best way possible. At the end of my presentation I had made a joke and related it to Snow White the cartoon movi...
Read more

Day 26: More Research

-
Image
         Today was a super busy for everyone on the dialogue! We have all been using this week to prepare our research methods and apply them. This has been a challenge because all our interviews and surveys need to be conducted in Chinese, which is nobody on the trip’s first language. To make it even more tedious, in our surveys, the characters need to be in traditional, while we have all been used to learning simplified.      I started my day off with a breakfast from 7/11 (as usual), with Savannah, Sam, and Derrick. We took bets on who would show up next: Ryan, Kevin, or Jack. Kevin was first.        In Chinese class today, we gave our presentations about what our opinions were on getting plastic surgery. After that finished, we engaged in a group activity where we practiced some of the grammar we were learning on Google Jamboard. After that, we played a game where we learned the measure words for differe...
Read more