Year 11 currently on Easter Break, terrified for mandarin.

Hi all,

Right now I'm meant to be revising mandarin but I find it completely ineffective.

I practice repetition of the characters, saying the Pinyin as I write it but 5 minutes after writing the character let's say 40 times I can't recall it if I move on to another character.

I often muddle up characters or Pinyin and I sometimes only remember fragments of characters.

My speaking and listening aren't too bad but I feel hopeless at reading and especially writing.

I chose this GCSE because I wanted the challenge, I'm not especially dead set on going to work in a Mandarin speaking country. Would much rather become a doctor here in the UK.

How screwed am I for the summer? Is it too late? Should I even care about doing well in mandarin or should I focus on my 8 other GCSEs?

Thanks,

Conrad

Hi all,

Right now I'm meant to be revising mandarin but I find it completely ineffective.

I practice repetition of the characters, saying the Pinyin as I write it but 5 minutes after writing the character let's say 40 times I can't recall it if I move on to another character.

I often muddle up characters or Pinyin and I sometimes only remember fragments of characters.

My speaking and listening aren't too bad but I feel hopeless at reading and especially writing.

I chose this GCSE because I wanted the challenge, I'm not especially dead set on going to work in a Mandarin speaking country. Would much rather become a doctor here in the UK.

How screwed am I for the summer? Is it too late? Should I even care about doing well in mandarin or should I focus on my 8 other GCSEs?

Thanks,

Conrad

You could ask to be withdrawn - you don't need a MFL

I've thought about it but I'd honestly feel really bad for the teacher. She's really nice and it's only a small class of four of us.

I know I shouldn't let the teacher influence whether I should drop a subject or not but that's the main reason I haven't. Because I'd feel bad for the teacher.

My tutor has also said I've learned mandarin for 2.5 years why stop now. It's a tough situation I suppose