How many lecturers have had the chance to be a student, learning remotely, during the COVID-19 pandemic? I feel very lucky! I started my remote Mandarin Chinese lessons a fortnight ago thanks to the kindness and quick-thinking of the fantastic teachers at the Confucius Institute at De Montfort University @DMU_CI. I was really excited to start learning again after a year's break and this also seemed like a golden opportunity for me to walk in my students' shoes.
Even though I teach biochemistry and I'm learning Mandarin Chinese, I think there are some similarities. People think that both are very difficult, both need the teacher and learner to be able to draw (molecules vs Chinese characters), both need a lot of practice and knowledge checking of fundamentals because you need a very firm foundation to move on to the next level. I guess like any subject.
So, I just had my third lesson with my very lovely Teacher Wei "魏老师" yesterday and I've been inspired to start this blog. I don't know if I'll keep it up, so today I'll start to lessons I've learned (or perhaps better titled, five things that hadn't quite occurred to me before) about remote learning by being a remote learner....