the adventures in bilingualism continue

These past four months, I've taken the osmosis/immersion route of language training, listening to my coworkers talk at lunch and during meetings, chatting with shop owners and taxi drivers, and watching an occasional Chinese program on TV. Unfortunately, it seems this route has developed my skills in reading body language more than it has increased my Chinese vocabulary. Sure, I've picked up the occasional phrase here or there, and I've chanced upon occasional eureka moments when I realize certain Mandarin words are equivalent to ones I already knew in Cantonese. My listening skills have also improved; I can recognize and regurgitate the sounds people make, regardless of the speed or accent with which they're spoken. But for the most part, I feel my vocabulary is hardly bigger than when I first arrived. I know that with more practice and more structure my improvement could be more noticeable. I also know that I learn best with the formality and routine of a classroom setting. So I'm excited that I will finally be starting official, formal, structured Chinese classes next week.
I went last weekend to take the placement exam. I'd called ahead, and the receptionist asked how long I'd been learning Chinese. I hesitated. Should I tell her one semester, since that was the length of the refresher course I took before moving to Shanghai? Or maybe two years, since I took a Chinese class in high school and one again in senior high – though due to a change in schools, I had to start from the beginning again. Or maybe I should tell her seven years, which is my guess at how long I was forced to attend Chinese Sunday school when I was a child. I said two years, and qualified it by saying I was Chinese-American.
When I arrived at the school, I was welcomed by the same receptionist I'd spoken to on the phone. We sat in a colorful room decorated with a children's phonetics poster and scenic pictures of Nanjing. The receptionist flipped through her files and pulled out a sheet of paper. "Let's take a placement test," she said. She spoke to me only in Chinese.
There were about a dozen questions on the first page of the test, all written in Chinese characters. I was to listen to the receptionist read a passage and then write down my answers to the questions. As she began reading, I realized that 1) I could only read about 30% of the paper, and 2) I could only understand about 30% of the passage she was reading. All I knew was that it had something to do with tea. She repeated the passage twice, noticed the blank stare on my face, and then said, "Let's try an easier test, shall we?"
This time she started off with an oral test, asking me questions about the weather, holidays, food, and travel. Much better; though I was still panicked from the first test, I could at least carry on a halfway decent conversation with the woman. Then she handed me another piece of paper. It too had Chinese characters on it, but this time with phonetics to aid reading. It was also multiple choice. I now recognized about 70 or 80% of the words - but those I recognized did not help me answer the questions, which were focused primarily on specific grammatical structures. When I didn't know the answer, which was most of the time, I guessed. And apparently I guessed pretty well. At least the receptionist thought I did sufficiently well, as she determined that I should be studying at that level.
She recommended that I take the school's Business Chinese class. She said it would be more beneficial to me than the intermediate-level general Chinese class, and that, yes, I would not only be able to communicate in a business context but also would be able to converse more easily with my coworkers around the lunch table after taking the course. The latter is especially important to me. I just want to be able to communicate easily and fluidly with my peers; I could care less if I knew how to discuss mergers and acquisitions at this point in my Chinese studies. So Business Chinese it is.
I've just noticed that the textbook for the class "is designed for those who have completed at least one year to one and a half years of Chinese study at the college level and have gained a good knowledge of basic grammar in modern Chinese as well as around a 1,000-word vocabulary in Chinese." I can't even read the title of the book let alone the table of contents. Can we say "under-qualified"? Oh well, more to learn I guess. And that's the whole point of what's certain to be a very frustrating, ego-bruising, and yet wonderfully challenging experience ahead.