Maybe I was a slow learner. Maybe I was overconscientious. Maybe I simply didn't trust my own abilities. Maybe Chinese was just too difficult for me. I don't know. But I do know that initially I had only one method of learning Chinese: writing. Flashcards of characters, example sentences, lists of stock phrases, lists of specialist terms, lists of grammar points, lists of explanations. I filled dozens of notebooks from cover to cover. Whenever I encountered surprises or odd elements of the language, I would make notes. Notes on everything went into these books. Eventually, I was even cross-referencing my notes.
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