My frustrations with the Chinese Language

I think one of my frustrations in the Chinese Language is translating English words to Chinese words.

I live in Singapore and because English is the national language of the country, everything that is official is written and spoken in English. So every single subject that I study in school is written in English, except our mother tongue language, either Malay, Tamil or CHINESE.

So I had my Chinese Mid year exam last Friday and I was supposed to write a Chinese composition. They gave us a few topics and we are supposed to choose one of them for our essay. So I chose the topic on whether Singaporeans are happy with their life.

To be honest, I had lots of ideas on what to write for this topic, but only one problem, my vocabulary. So I started writing and It was good for the first few paragraphs but suddenly, I was stuck at one word, " Economy ".

 

 Holy shit. What is economy in Chinese????

So I thought about it for a few minutes but nothing came to my mind. So I just said, " Screw this. " and move on. If that was changed to a Social Studies paper I would have scored an A man, seriously T.T

Another form of frustration I have is during the Oral exams. So during the Chinese oral exams we are suppose to read a passage, discuss a picture and engaged in a conversation with the examiner on a certain topic.

I have not much problems with the reading part but the problem comes in the second part. Sometimes, the picture is in favour of me and it portrays a place or environment which I know how to discuss in Chinese, but at times, the opposite happens.

For example, the picture shows a balcony..... or outside a School's General office. Do I know those places in Chinese? Nope, so I always end up saying words that are SOMEHOW relevant to that...

So u see the problem there?

 

In conclusion, I have a huge problem with my vocabulary and I hope that some kind souls out there will share a few tips on how to improve my Chinese in the comment section below. Your effort is very much appreciated :)