the jimmymac attack!

In Taiwan I've been slowly learning mandarin Chinese. It is very interesting and challenging. I can say some basic things after one year. Progress is slow and painful but I think this is normal. I also teach English so I know how slow and difficult the learning process can be. Sometimes I look at and think about children and how they learn. I would love to be able to speak Chinese as well as an average five to ten year old. It seems one problem adult learners have is unreal expectations. They seem to think that in one or two years they should be fluent in English. And this is doing only a few hours of study a week. Children spend hours and hours every day for years repeating and repeating. Adults do not want to spend the time. And they skip steps. Before learning the basics they want to learn advanced grammar. I've seen so many students agonize over the present perfect tense when they cannot even use present simple properly.