This post was sponsored by Sagebooks. All opinions are mine and mine alone.
Holy cow. Today is the last day of 2018 and you’re making the wise decision to close out the year by reading my Sagebooks Update. I’m honored.
WHERE ARE WE?
It’s a little confusing for me to talk about both the last two weeks as well as the entire year, so I’m going to split it up.
The Last Two Weeks
We ended Week 16 at Set 3 Book 4 Lesson 9 and my goal for these two weeks was to finish the book in Week 18. I thought it would be a reasonable goal because that’s less than one new lesson a day.
2018
When Glow Worm and I started back in mid-January, I really thought we’d be plowing through the series and be on point and on top of it. I seriously thought I’d be done with the entire series by June 2019 so by this point in time (Week 48), I thought I would be 2/3 of the way done.
DID WE DO IT?
No.
Oh, I didn’t split that out. Well, the answer is NOPE for both.
Don’t give me that look. Sigh.
VERY WELL.
The Last Two Weeks
No.
2018
No.
I feel as if we’ve gotten too familiar with each other. Hmph.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Well… What had happened was…
The Last Two Weeks
Glow Worm (5) forgot a bunch of characters so I started making him review in addition to learning new characters. He was displeased with this development because I think he was annoyed that we had already gone over those lessons. I tried to explain to him that there was no point in moving on if he didn’t remember the previous characters because the entire point was to learn characters, not to blast through the books.
He was unconvinced.
2018
If you’re a regular reader of my site, you’ll know that this year was unexpectedly the year where I wanted to set my life on fire for about half of it. Starting in around May and ending around October, I went through a mid-life crisis and let’s just say that teaching Glow Worm Chinese did not figure high up on my list of survival mode.
But I powered through because employment is a good thing and in the end, I think it was good for people to see that even if you bomb and phone it in for half the year, you still can get pretty far in Sagebooks.
WHAT ELSE?
Overall, I am satisfied with our progress in Sagebooks.
The Last Two Weeks
Other points I found interesting: Glow Worm mixed up 海/hai3/ocean/ with 每/mei3/every, each, per/. He also consistently confuses 進/jin4/enter/ with 誰/shei2/who/. If you take a close look at each pair, you’ll see that they share similar components! This tells me he’s recognizing the similarities of the characters but not necessarily paying attention to context, which would tell him the correct word to use (and guess) in each situation. Also, after several months, he finally remembered 照/zhao4/shine, photograph/ and that was a pleasant surprise.
2018
There were days and weeks at a time where we barely cracked open Sagebooks, but thanks to the way the curriculum is set up, we still made progress. And yes, we did have to go back and review several times, but that’s okay.
Perfection is not the goal (nor is it plausible) because life happens and so does shit (whether self-inflicted or otherwise).
Learning to read Chinese is not a race. There is no reward for learning Chinese characters faster than other people (except, I suppose, MORE Chinese characters).
…
I forgot to take pictures and record videos this last month or so. Many apologies.
However, I did want to take the time to thank you for your patience and support this year. I hope as you look back and reflect upon your progress with your children, you will choose to see the good and move forward.
May you have a safe and wonderful new year. I’ll see you all in 2019!!