(Translation into English by Leo Hsu)

現在我不能說英文了，因此今天的文章是用中文寫的。

I’m not allowed to speak English anymore, so today’s article is written in Chinese.

不知不覺地兩個禮拜已經過去了。每天都忙得不得了：不是在上課，就是在預備第二天的課。我剛來ICLP的時候，ICLP主任說“除了上4個小時的課之外，你們還得預備第二天的課。爲了好好預備，最少要花六個小時”。本來我以爲他誇張了，或是是在開玩笑。後來，我發現他說的差不多對。雖然每天都這麽忙，但是我每天都很開心，因爲這樣我才能用最短的時間學習最多的中文，再加上我的希望和我實事是一致的。

The past two weeks have been so busy that they flew by faster than I could process them. At any given moment, I’m either in class or else preparing for the next day’s lessons.  On my first day here, the director warned us that “on top of four hours of lessons a day, you should spend at least six hours preparing for the next day’s lessons”.  I assumed he was exaggerating or joking, however, looking back after two weeks this is about right.  However, I don’t particularly mind because I’m learning Chinese at the fastest possible speed. On top of that, my hopes and reality are aligned.

這個學期我有三節中文課程：“中國文化”，“今日臺灣”，和”華語新聞”。中國文化是我的核心課程，因此每天兩個小時：一個小時1對1，一個小時跟兩個同學。“今日臺灣”和“ 華語新聞”，每天一個小時，跟三個同學，所以每天 一共四個小的中文課。

This semester I have three Chinese courses; “Chinese Culture”, “Taiwan Today”, and “News Chinese”.  “Chinese Culture” is considered a core course, and is two hours a day:  one hour one on one, and one hour with two other students.  “Taiwan Today” and “News Chinese” are supplementary courses and are one hour each a day each with three other students.  So, every day I have four hours of Chinese lessons in total. 

其中，”華語新聞”可能是最好玩的。老師是林老師，幽默感特別好。每隔一天學生們在家裏先讀一張新聞文章，然後在網路查一查這張新聞的背景。上課的時候，林老師會問我一些關於這張新聞的問題。有時候，她會說一句話，然後問我們按照這張文章，這句話是對，不對，或是不清楚。

Out of these courses, “News Chinese” is probably the most fun, in large part because of the sense of humor of our teacher Ms. Lin.  Every other day, we first read a news article at home, where we also do some research on its backstory.  Later in class, we will discuss the article and Ms. Lin will ask us questions.  Sometimes she will make a statement, and then ask us (according to the article) whether the statement true, false, or ambiguous.

林老師已經發現我總是會説“不清楚”，問我爲什麽。我就回答“我是數學家。從我的觀點來説，什麽都不清楚”。比如説，一張新聞文章有這句話：

Ms. Lin has already noticed that I usually say “ambiguous”. I explained that this is because “I am a mathematician.  From my point of view, everything is ambiguous”.  For example, one of the articles contained the following sentence:

“自駕小巴實驗專案，雖是第一次上街測試，卻並非首次出現，7月時就已在臺灣大學測試夠一周，當時有900人次試乘”。

“Even though this was the first road test of self-driving mini-bus project, it was not the first test overall.  In July, an earlier test was conducted at Taiwan National University.  At that time, 900 people participated in the test (by riding on the self-driving mini-bus)”.

然後，林老師說：

Then, Ms. Lin asked us:

“七月份在臺灣大學爲期一周的實驗是無人小巴首次出現 – 對，不對，不清楚”。

“The experiment in July at Taiwan University was the first experiment in the self-driving mini-bus project :  true, false, or ambiguous”.

對我來説，這句話一定不清楚，因爲文章不説七月在臺大的實驗是不是首次，有可能還有更早的實驗，我們不知道。可是，我同學都認爲如果有更早的實驗，文章會告訴我們，因此這句話是對的。我覺有應該是，但是不一定。

From my perspective, this statement is definitely ambiguous, because the article only specified that there was at least one earlier experiment.  There may well have been other experiments that were earlier still – we don’t know.  However, my classmates all believe that if there were such an earlier experiment, the article would have said so: therefore this statement is true.  I agree that this is likely, however it isn’t definite.  

也有時候，她會問我們對一一張文章的意見。不管是哪種問題，我們同學們總是不同意，每天辯論，有説有笑，真的好玩。我們討論的話題五花八門，比如：文化剽竊，無人車，虛擬偶像，性別歧視，等等。由於討論這麽多不一樣的話題，因此這節課的生詞特別多，比我所有別課的生詞放在一起還多。我認爲這節課最大的好處是提高了我的詞彙。

In other cases we’ll be asked for our opinions rather than a simple true/false/ambigious.  In any event, every day is a debate as none of us ever agree. There’s plenty of and it is a lot of fun.  The topics under consideration are also very diverse; for example cultural appropriate, self-driving cars, virtual reality idols, sexual discrimination, etc. As a result, the new vocabulary words in this class exceed that of all my other classes put together.  I believe the greatest benefit of this class is increasing my vocabulary.

“中國文化”，雖然沒有”華語新聞”那麽好玩，但是是很有意思的。第一個禮拜，我們學習的是中國的歷史，尤其是中國社會制度的演變。第二個禮拜我們都給大家講一個演講，題目是“現代社會制度最大的問題”。我對這些題目感興趣，因此我覺得好玩。這個禮拜，我們開始討論語言學了。

My other class “Chinese Culture” isn’t as much fun as “News Chinese” but it makes up for it by being very interesting.  The first week was about Chinese history, focusing in particular on the evolution of the social systems in China.  In the second week each of us gave a talk to all the other students, the topic of which was “The biggest challenges facing society today”.  This week we started discussing linguistics. 

最後是“今日臺灣”。這個課程我也覺得有意思，因爲我們會討論臺灣特有的問題。

Finally, there is Taiwan Today.  I also think this course is very interesting because we discuss problems specific to Taiwan.