Your method of studying

[jonhargett]

I would like to hear how other people are going about learning Chinese. I have been studying for about a year now on my own. I have some Chinese friends who can correct my pronounciation and answer some questions, but for the most part, I'm on my own. I use books and flashcards, and of course, the Oxford Dictionary on Palm :wink:
I don't know how well I'm progressing though because I don't know anybody else that is learning.
So, what methods are you using to study, how long have you studied, and how much do you know?

Jon

 

[Thaler]

Steep learning curve

My observation of people studying in China . Forgive the gross generalizations, but exceptions make the rule in language studies. Mileage will also obviouly vary depending on aptitude, street time and desk time:

The fastest learners after:

3 months: Pronounciation is 90-95% accurate, tones are right upwards of 75% of the time and they start putting togther basic sentences with good grammer but longer sentences are a stretch.

1 year: Able to express themselves in most situations, though not always using appropriate words or perfect grammar. Tones and pronouciation are right upwartds of 95% of the time. It also seems to take upwards of a year to start understanding the CCTV Chinese channels (news takes longer).

2-3 years: approaching basic native language proficiency in conversational situations but not complex and unfamiliar situations(approropriate word usage, grammar and able to speak "di dao de" - local slang). Pronounciation and tones are mostly correct but accented.

6-10 years: Close to but probably not true native language proficiency.

FWIW, I've never met a person with less than around 5 years that spoke like a true educated Chinese native speaker, though they undoubtedly exist.

From my comparison of people studying outside of China and those studying within China, my guess is that most people learn upwards of 2x as fast in China tha in a non mandarin speaking country.

 

[Rafael]

I'm glad Jonhargett asked this question because I have often wondered about these very same issues. I am an expat at a multi-national company so I can't study the language full-time but I have studied it diligently and practically daily for the last few of years.

I am familiar with Western languages and have had the opportunity to become fluent in German and Spanish. I can say that learning Chinese has been one of the most challenging things I have done in my life besides being also one of the most fulfilling.

I have used CD-ROMS, textbooks, reading comics, Pleco software, listened to the radio and watched TV (Chinese soaps are not bad for learning: the Chinese subtitles help).

As for the difficulty let me make this comparison: After learning Chinese for 2 years in the US at Berlitz and living in China for 2 1/2 years (only self-learning in China due to time limitations), I am only now approaching the fluency I had in Romanian after studying for 3 months at Berlitz and 1 year in Romania.

I am convinced that progress in learning any language is directly related to how much you practice speaking it. My main difficulty in learning Chinese is that, to me at least, it is initially very difficult to understand. Therefore, even if I tried to practice speaking it, I had a very hard time understanding the response, making it hard to carry the conversation. This, in turn, of course, made it difficult to continue practicing. Especially if the Chinese person switched to English in order to continue the communication (or to practice his English!). A vicious circle.

It would be nice to know if others have encountered the same major obstacle: Chinese comprehension.

Difficulty aside, Chinese is a great language to learn. If you are in business and can speak the language, the Chinese will greatly appreciate your effort in learning their language. It is a sign of your respect and love of their culture.

For those who might be discouraged, I can only say carry on! It is certainly not impossible. No one is "tone-deaf" (I heard another expat say he was as the reason he didn't learn) and every Chinese baby has learned it so so can you!

 

[Thaler]

Steep learning curve

The learning curve of Chines is remarkably steep, I once saw a study by one of the institutes that trains the US government and military personnel in foreign languages (diplomats, special ops, etc) which made the following points:

1. Compared to studnets in the easiest cluster of languages (French, Italian, Spanish and a few others) students in the hardest cluster (Chinese, Japanese and a few others) took 3 times as long to reach the same level of proficiency.

2. Chinese is amongst a small group of languages where listening comprehesion is harder to acquire that spoken fluency.

Acquiring Chinese confronts adult learnings challenges including the infamous tones, new pronounciation and new grammar paterns. Many habits acquired in speaking such as studing tone inflections actually work against you. Compounding its very difficult to improve grammar without being able to read in Chinese. This takes at least a year, and most likely 3 years for dedicated learners.

I personally beleive it is close to impossible for Native Enslish speakers to pick up up Chinese by mere virtue of immersion. That is to say, those who have picked up French, Spanish etc without much study will probably be surprised to find out that, for most people, learning Chinese actually takes real effort.

 

[beirne]

Why is Chinese so damn hard?

I found a good article describing the difficulties of Chinese, called Why is Chinese so damn hard?. It pretty well conveys the frustration of learning Chinese, although his point that Chinese is hard for the Chinese themselves doesn't apply to all of his points. Still, reading this when frustrated with my own progress gave me a few good laughs.

 

[mikelove]

That's a fascinating article; many thanks for posting it. (though I'd like to think that #5 at least has become less of a problem since '91... :wink

 

[Jim]

learning Chinese

I have noticed with foreign students learning any language that the best method by far is to study something else in the language you are learning. That can mean anything from learning a simple subject at night school to full time classes. The heavier the course the better.

They all flounder at the start but after a relatively short time their ability takes off. Whether they are passing the course or not doesn't seem to matter. I do have one friend that actually got a degree in Japanese at Taiwan University. His Chinese during that time became so natural to him that he doesn't think at all when using it.

To do this though takes a lot of guts. Don't be afraid to jump into something way over your head, that is where the best results seem to be. Or be afraid, but do it anyway. I have seen a student with as little as one term in B level at BLCU jump into first year law at Qing Hua University and many more with only one or two years Chinese study jump into similar programs. While some, not most, of them failed, none of them failed badly which says a lot for how their Chinese improved. To be honest, I didn't thing any of them were close to ready at the time for something so tough. Every single one outdid my expectations of them by a lot.

Most people don't think about learning their mother tongue. They learn it naturally as part of learning everything else. When talking to students who have done the above they all say their learning experience became much the same as learning their mother tongue. They stopped thinking about learning the language, just focussed on getting through the course. However, while they all said it was worthwhile they all also said it was gruelling and were not sure if they would ever do it again in a similar situation.

I have also seen people get into genuine immersion situations because of their work but while they seem to make incredible progress with their spoken Chinese and sometimes with their reading, their written usually lags behind the students in Chinese schools.

Due to work constraints and a very erratic schedule involving lots of travel I haven't had a chance to put this into practice myself but intend to someday. Unfortunately, at this time studying Chinese has to take a back seat to earning a living.

Hope some of you get a chance to be so daring.

 

[Rafael]

Why is Chinese so damn hard?

Beirne's article is really enjoyable to read. So many difficulties that I could relate to!

Consider one difficulty that the author didn't address but that I think really adds to the challenge: the fact that the whole language seems to be composed only of homonymes. English has a few (e.g. two, to, too) but every single word in Chinese is one. That seems to make comprehension extremely difficult. Pile that on top of the necessity of memorizing all the different permutations that make up the compound words, mentioned in the article, and I am amazed at how a language could have evolved into this state.

Natives do, at times, have comprehension problems themselves. That is why they say phrases like "feiji de fei" or "yi tiao long de long" in order to make clear to the receiver which character/word they are actually talking about.

I agree with Jim about studying something else in order to learn the language. It seems to be even more motivating to study something you are interested in to begin with and may have expertise in. By focusing on certain vocabulary it may provide a way become fluent (or at least reasonably so) in a limited scope making it easier to expand into other subjects later.

If all else fails, drinking shots of baijiu on cold north China nights is a great way to start very fruitful Chinese conversation sessions without any fear of failure![/quote]

 

[Jim]

re: bai jiu

The comments about Bai jiu helping reduce fear of mistakes is valid. However, after innumerable business dinners I can tell you there is a simple scale of effectiveness that should be followed.

Before consuming alcohol in any form:
I think my Chinese is terrible.
Chinese think my Chinese is pretty bad.

After a couple of drinks:
I think is my Chinese is pretty bad.
Chinese people think my Chinese is not bad at all.

After a few more:
I think my Chinese is not bad.
Chinese people think my Chinese is really pretty good.

After a few more:
I think my Chinese is very good.
Chinese people wonder what language I am speaking.

 

[beirne]

Homonyms

I hate to start up a linguistic debate, especially because I agree with the rest of Rafael's points, but I'm not sure Chinese is composed only of homonyms. The vast majority of the sounds behind individual characters have homonyms, but lots of words are formed of multiple syllables and are phonlogically distinct. For example, fei1ji1 only means airplane, even though fei1 and ji1 can both mean other things. This is analogous to English, where "air" can also be spelled "err" and plane can refer to a woodworking tool.

Early in my Chinese study I wondered how a language could work with only 1600-something word sounds, but have since come to understand that Chinese is more like English than I realized. Most English words are formed of parts, but the parts are less obvious in English because they come from Latin or Greek. Chinese has many fewer base syllables than English, but assuming that one can distinguish the tones the number of homonyms in regular speech is greatly minimized.

BTW, distinguishing the tones is the hard part for me, and I'm still not good at it. I use context more than tones when listening.

 

[Rafael]

It is true that multiple syllable words are phonologically distinct but Chinese creates them from homonymes and the language thereby gives rise to a unique phenomenon: multiple syllable homonyms. In my handy-dandy Oxford C-E dictionary I quickly found eight shishi's, seven jishi's and four zhengshi/chengshi's.
Now, I'm not a linguist and these may not be homonyms in the strictest sense because they are composed of syllables of different tones but as a novice Chinese learner I have the self-given right to call them homonyms that sure are frustrating!
Not to mention that Southerners don't distinctly pronounce a difference between si and shi: everything is si.

Is there anything comparable in English (or any other language)?

On your second point I certainly agree: it is much better to use context than tones when listening to Chinese.

 

[beirne]

OK, I was taking definitions fairly literally. Given that the tones are hard to tell apart in regular speech I agree that everything appears homophonous. Just for comparison I looked up shishi in Wenlin, which uses the ABC dictionary that is coming to the OCECD and got 44 hits, so it is actually worse than it appears. I'm trying to remember back to how I adjusted to the problem, and I guess it came down the fact that while lots of multi-syllable words are homonyms if tones aren't considered, the homonyms don't always show up. I have definitely gotten tripped up on words that sound like shishi, but not on things like fei1ji1 or zi4xing2che1.

 

[John]

I don't know how well I'm progressing though because I don't know anybody else that is learning.

I would highly recommend using http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/ to find a language exchange partner partner who wants to improve their English in exchange for you helping to improve their Chinese. There are thousands of people registered in China, Taiwan, etc who want to do this. You can have an e-mail (or instant messenger type) language exchange rather than meeting up in person.

You can register your details on the site for free including a description of yourself. You have to pay something like $5 for the ability to contact as ,many people as you want through the site for a period of something like 3 months or more. Once you've contacted each other through the site, you can of course exchange e-mail addresses to contact each other directly. Registration is risk free in that others can't see your e-mail address and can only initially contact you through the site.

I've used the site and correspond regularly with a few people in China as a result.

 

[goulniky]

improving oral comprehension

oral comprehension has been a major problem for me, still is, the Chinese always seem to speak so fast. characters is what got me into learning Chinese, admitedly an additional hurdle but I still have the same fascination as when I learned my first hanzi if not more, not sure I would carry on with Chinese otherwise.
as I live in Europe, I have few opportunities to practice but I went to Taiwan for a month last year, taking intensive one-on-one classes for 3 weeks before going around the island. Will go every year to either Taiwan or China from now on, been studying for 4 years mainly on my own as the few attempts to find a Chinese teacher where I live were not succesful. I took the entry level HSK test 2 years ago and passed with a B, attempting the intermediate level this year.
I am a native French speaker with English as a second language, I have been working for a multinational company in Switzerland for many years, in English. I have made few attempts to learn other languages though one of this year's resolution is to seriously study German.
I spend at least an hour every day learning Chinese, reading, writing, typing (Wenlin is the tool I use) so all the textbooks I studied are in the box. I try to listen as much as I can but not enough, started working on Practical Audio Visual Chinese when I returned from Taiwan which means I had to switch from simplified to traditional characters. The interesting thing is this comes with a whole set of VCDs which I loaded on my PC.
My last foible has been transcribing the TV soap SunnyJeanny (*) which I bought as a set of 16 VCDs in Taiwan. It's repetitive and colloquial, with a simple story line, enough to keep me busy for a few months.
Of course the Pleco palm tool is an essential part of my toolkit.

(*) 善真姬 , shan4zhen1ji1
http://tomato.myrice.com/drama/tvplay/shanzhenji.htm

 

[Smoodo]

My methods of studying Chinese.

Hi there.

I've been studying Chinese for a little over 3 years now. It seems to be coming along pretty well. The first thing I did was really concentrate on pronunciation. Once you can pronounce all of the pinyin sounds and tones in the language, you will have a solid habit formed for adding words to your brain. I complete a minor in Chinese from my university. I found that was helpful for keeping the pace and some of the discipline present. I think, however, the most important thing to do was find a way to immerse myself in the language. I tried to integrate it into my life by doing the following:

Listen to CDs and MP3s of popular Chinese music. It is easy to find lyrics too.

Import the lyrics into a program like Wenlin (http://www.wenlin.com) or use PlecoDict to pick through the song and add the words to your flashcard list.
(This gives you context and interesting content.)

Check out excellent sites like:

http://www.newsinchinese.com
The above link gives current news articles from China in such a fashion that you can mouseover the words and get the Character Zoomed with Pinyin and English meaning.

ADSOTrans, a cool free dictionary I found recently that 'annotates' Chinese text that you feed it. It is a free download and is MySQL compatible, which opens all kinds of possibilities.

http://www.adsotrans.com

Google for a program called "CoolStreaming". It is about 3 MB and allows you to view live streams of TV out of China free. Quality has generally been good. It seems to be a Bittorrent kind of streaming video client. (FREE)

http://www.asiamoviechannel.com
This is a pay site that I use to watch some Chinese videos and TV series, (When my friends don't just burn me discs or loan me their series sets). It is pretty cheap to rent movies ($1) or $0.40 in most cases and you can check it out for 30days. Their site is in English, Simplified and Traditional characters. (This is my most recent gander into video stuff)

http://www.baidu.com

This is a MP3 and Lyric + other search engine. You can find more songs from an artist that you come across or hear your Chinese friends mention. The links it digs up are very reliable.


----
I also read children?s books that have pinyin in them. Working through those is much easier than books without, although I picked some fun Harry Potter books and a few more serious business books to pick through.

Find a local Chinese Christian church. Often the sermons may have Chinese then English translating or something similar. If they are in straight Chinese, just enjoy it. You will notice people with English/Chinese Bibles and can find verses easily. It is very Rosetta Stone like to have a verse in English right next to a verse in Chinese. You will be able to learn a lot that way. People will often discuss a verse in Sunday school too and elaborate on the meaning.

I go to Chinese restaurants from time to time and chat with the workers there. It is good practice to listen to people with all kinds of pronunciation differences. What is nice is if you have a Bubble Tea cafe or something similar in your area where you can plant yourself with some study materials and chat with visitors or workers over time.

---
Eating is a big part of Chinese culture and as such, I think it is fun to cook. You can find many Chinese cookbooks that have English and Chinese characters in them. Recipes are short and concise. A good learning source and you have that bonus of entertaining friends and having something uniquely special to eat.

 

[adamlau]

I utilize a multitude of aids:

Wenlin 3.3
NJStar CWP 5.02.50808
PlecoDict 1.0.1
Berlitz 1.0.1

...including various books included Integrated Chinese and the venerable PRC series, and websites including http://www.pinyin.info/index.html . I am an American-born Chinese (ABC) so have some proficiency in terms of speaking and listening. Having friends from China who are familiar with standard pinyin helps tremendously. Even so, I find myself at college level Chinese III when reading and writing is introduced into the equation. I recently finished up two months of overseas summer studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Between 5-15 students per class, hire a tutor, study in a group...Typical tried and true methods. I found many students looking up every single word in the textbook from the front cover to back using the above mentioned tools. It was only after breaking down every word, radical by component that many students began to appreciate the language and begin to self-motivate themselves...

 

[goulniky]

Since my previous message, I have changed the way I go about learning Chinese: I now have a tutor (PhD student from PRC) with whom I practice about 2h/week, half the time spent on reading to improve my pronunciation (which was quite a challenge as I kind of went back to first principles despite my intermediary level), the rest on reporting about various events that happened to me (or him) during the week.
As for personal work, I almost exclusively work from videos - I used to almost exclusively work from books, with the result that my reading ability improved tremendously, but this was at the expense of oral comprehension. All this was useful, particularly as I prepared for the HSK, but missing one dimension.
After purchasing dozens of VCD/DVDs of Chinese films and soaps, I admit I started downloading quite a few, including some very interesting stuff from distance MBA education, all with Chinese subtitles. So what I now do is watch these, retranscribing everything as I go along, making lists of mainly 3 and 4 characters expressions I try and get back to. This helps me develop listening ability as well as reading, only flaw is I hardly ever write characters anymore other than with Wenlin or NJstar, or Pleco for those I can't recognize. I typically have 2 to 3 sources open at one time, a business course and a movie, sometimes a tv series in addition.
And there's enough on my harddisk to keep me going for another year or two

 

[LaoWang]

Re: Steep learning curve

2. Chinese is amongst a small group of languages where listening comprehesion is harder to acquire that spoken fluency.

This is a really old thread, but...anyway...

This can hardly be true! Maybe if you only listen to speakers whose putonghua isn´t very good, but I cant´t really imagine how you would acquire the ability to speak if yoou couldn´t hear what people were saying.

 

[zj]

Actually, I agree with that statement...at least to a degree.

I know that at the beginning of my Chinese study that in some ways I spoke better than I could listen. Because Chinese has so many words with similar sounds and because tonal recognition was so hard for me initially, I couldn't necessarily pick out words that I knew and often spoke. But certainly my listening comprehension of common phrases and questions(where are you from?, how much money do you make? etc) was better than I could ask those same questions.

I'm not sure how to judge whether my listening comprehension was really behind my speaking, but I do know that it was, and still is, quite common for me to hear a word that I know very well but not comprehend it, or to mistake it for another word. Certainly compared to my language study of Italian, Spanish, and Arabic, my Chinese listening comprehension is much closer to my speaking fluency.

 

[LongShiKong]

Re: Steep learning curve

2. Chinese is amongst a small group of languages where listening comprehesion is harder to acquire that spoken fluency.

This is a really old thread, but...anyway...

This can hardly be true!

It is! Imagine if the majority of English speakers suddenly switched 'sh' for 's' and since English doesn't have zh and z, what if everyone reverted back to using 'k' or 'sh' for 'ch' ('church' used to be 'kirk')? For you and I it would be challenging enough but imagine the challenge for a non-native speaker. It's not just southerners who are lazy speakers--it's all over China. Next week, I'll ask my student from Harbin. Last week, I ran into one such speaker say what I thought was a new word...until I asked for clarification. And there's more. ChinesePod's female Chinese teacher frequently confuses 'ing' with 'in' endings. And everyone knows the le/re confusion but what about the ri/re distinction....that still challenges me at times because few pronounce that clear enough.