The right time will come

 

Retired-teacher student makes some mistakes in her putting together a sentence in Chinese, saying she was doing it on the bus, trying to respond to a text (in Chinese) of mine.

    I replied saying, “Multi-tasking and Chinese don’t seem to work well together,” in an attempt to comfort her — that she was making those mistakes (which were minor) only because her attention was divided.  She came back saying, “Not for me anyway.”

    So, I tried a new approach.  Below is my response to her (and it applies to all students who might think they won’t get to the point of fluency [just purely not confident enough]).

    Think driving:  same thing.

    At first, there'll seem to be an overwhelming range of things to touch/press/tread/look at, e.g., mirrors (rear view; wing); levers (gear stick for manual; indicator; windscreen wipers); pedals (accelerator; brake; clutch).  All while the car is moving.

    Once you've reached the right point, you won't be aware of controlling all those things.  You could even be chatting to your passenger(s)!

Lima cars (Peru)

On our way in to Lima Central on the bus from the airport, we noticed that their cars were running around perfectly in spite of bits missing — wing mirrors, side windows, main windows, even entire windscreens.  We laughed at each one as and when we spotted them, “Look at that one!  It doesn’t even have a windscreen at all!”  It never rains in Lima, you see, or only once in a blue moon.

Suddenly, we saw a car crossing our path without a bonnet but no engine either!  Just an empty cavity in the front of the car.  How did they manage to get a car running without an engine!?  Then we saw that it was a VW (Volkswagen) beetle.

(Peru, June 1986)