2016 Spring Intern: Amanda

Amanda Gilbride interned at AllSet Learning as part of the requirements for the Chinese Flagship Program. Having already completed 4 years of Chinese study, she had a high level of Chinese, and was able to help out with all kinds of projects. Amanda really showed her academic rigor as she dug into some especially tricky academic issues regarding Taiwanese Mandarin. For that, she was reading Chinese academic papers. In traditional characters. (Oh yeah... hardcore.)Here's what Amanda had to say about her time interning with us:

I found this internship opportunity at AllSet Learning through the Chinese Flagship Program. As a year-long program, the first semester is spent studying Chinese in Nanjing, and the second semester is spent interning.The internship was an intersection of my majors, Chinese and Linguistics. Working on the Chinese Grammar Wiki was great as I got to do some Chinese linguistic research. I also got a chance to learn a lot of specialized linguistic-related vocabulary, which helped to improve my Chinese.One of the biggest projects I undertook during my time at AllSet Learning was helping to create a grammar practice book for the Chinese “ba” sentence structure. Going into this project, I had a lot of shortcomings. For example, I realized that in some contexts, I had been using “ba” incorrectly. I first had to learn all of the rules for both the B1 and B2 “ba.” Then I moved on to creating an interesting mystery story related to China and culture, while also trying to incorporate solving mystery clues into “ba” grammar. After I finished everything, I found myself confidently using “ba,” knowing that I was well-versed in all of its nuanced rules.Working on social media marketing was also a fun aspect of the internship because reading about Chinese language, culture, and current events was always entertaining.Everyone who works at AllSet Learning is extremely hardworking and welcoming. Thanks to Weiwei and Chen Shishuang for letting me practice my Chinese as well as learning about Chinese culture, especially all of the great Chinese food during our lunch breaks. It has been great working with everyone, and I definitely plan on coming back to Shanghai in the future.

Thanks for all the hard work, Amanda! (The Grammar Wiki misses you too.) We look forward to eventually sharing the work you did on the grammar exercises with the rest of the world.