|
 |
Less Painful and More Effective Chinese | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | Mandarin | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5011 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: Korean* | Message 1 of 21 22 March 2011 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
|
After reading some posts about learning Chinese, I wrote some guidelines which address some of the difficulties and struggles that the members have expressed--Chinese writing system, tones, sense of confusion and despair.
WARNING: DO NOT CONCENTRATE ON READING AND WRITING CHINESE AT STAGE 1!!!! STAGE 1) First concentrate on basic grammar and simple everyday conversation. STAGE 2) Then concentrate on READING and increasing your VOCABULARY. STAGE 3) Then, incorporate more of listening(TV, radio, DVD, etc) STAGE 4) Keep on reading, listening, and speaking as much as possible. Get them INTEGRATED. STAGE 5) Only after having gone through above stages, practice handwriting if that is what you find you still want or need. --At beginning stage, do not become bogged down by Chinese characters. You can play with writing Chinese characters a bit and get introduced to the writing system, but do not overdo it or feel that learning Chinese is essentially that of being able to read and write Chinese characters. At this stage, It is more important for you to be able to understand and reproduce the sound aspect than written aspect of Chinese. Learn some Chinese songs. Try to concentrate on carrying out simple conversations, on learning simple everyday words and expressions. Do not be shy and feel that you need to speak with perfect tones and grammatical structures. The only way to perfect your tones and grammars in your speach is through stammering efforts at speaking, through ceaseless trial and error. We must be willing to become like a baby, and struggle and babble through the stages of growth in recognition and imitation of speech. DO NOT BE TOO CONCERNED ABOUT CORRECT TONES AND GRAMMARS. You will have better grasp of them only after later stage anyway. Try to find as much opportunities as possible to directly communicate with the native speakers and create an environment most condusive for language acquisition. --After you gain a basic understanding of Chinese grammar and are able to carry on some simple conversations in Chinese, you need to expand your vocabulary. you can do all the memorization exercizes, but if you do not read much, many of those words will not become yours. READ AND READ, AND READ SOME MORE. News, articles, TOPICS OF INTEREST to you, whether through offline or online sources. There are many softwares and online dictionaries that can help you with finding out the meaning and sound of words. Use them. --As your vocabulary increases, try to spend more time listening or watching TV, radio, DVDs, etc. As your vocabulary increases and your conversations strengthen your feeling of the rhythm and accent of the language, your listening will become more crisp and better. These in turn will improve your speaking. You can only listen and understand the words that you know. You get to know and remember words effectively when you see them in CONTEXTS as you read materials in which you are INTERESTED. READING MUCH is the ONLY WAY you can get past beyond your beginner stage. --Keep on reading, listening, and talking. Let reading and increasing your vocabulary become the foundation for improving your listening and talking. Let these skills become integrated together. Keep on doing these until you become at ease in your comprehension of the textual and audio materials, and in your expression of more complicated ideas in longer sentences. --At this stage, you should be able to type in Chinese characters using computer keyboards, and in general would not have much opportunity for handwriting. However, should you really need to learn handwriting Chinese characters, you should begin to do it only after you have become familiarized with reading Chinese characters and can read articles in Chinese without much difficulty. The ONLY WAY to learn writing at this stage is to just keep on writing the characters, words, or sentences. Write, write, and write. And write and write some more. KEEP ON WRITING.... With Chinese especially, it is important to not get fixiated with a pressing idea that to learn a language one must learn its writing system, and that one must do so at the beginning stage. Such an idea, if it possesses you, will drag you down into the deep mire from where you will unnecessarily struggle with confusion and despair for a long time. SOME OTHER GUIDELINES: You need to make a PACT with yourself throughout the learning process. --PATIENCE: Be prepared to take at least a couple years or more to learn the language. Take a long distance running approach. Do not be too anxious to learn it too quickly. Take it easy and slow. It takes time to learn a language. Remind yourself to enjoy the process of learning, and have patience. --ASSURANCE: Whenever you hit a plateau and even have a feeling of despair that you will never be able to master it, you need to remind yourself that if you keep on treading on patiently, what you do will accumulate and will let you come out on the other side where things will become a lot easier and let you taste the fruits of your efforts. Tell yourself that you will someday surely become fluent in this language. Hold on to your hope and sense of assurance. --CURIOSITY: Find out more about the culture and people. Keep up your interest level high and motivate yourself to learn the language. It is important to maintain high level of interest and curiosity. --TRANSMUTATION: Think of yourself as Chinese. Think that you are already a fluent Chinese speaker, even when you have to babble through your conversations at the beginning. You need to make as much effort as possible to identify with the people who are the speakers of the target language. You must become them. This should be your goal as a language and culture learner. You must become transmutated into a Chinese. You must cast a magical spell on yourself and turn yourself into a Chinese in acting, thinking, feeling, talking, grunting, sighing, laughing and dreaming. Let go of your mother tongue and sense of national identity, and constantly self-hypnotize yourself into transmutation. Wishing you all success with Chinese learning! Edit: removed about 90% of Cap letters. Edited by futurianus on 25 March 2011 at 10:46pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6332 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 2 of 21 22 March 2011 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I would recommend the opposite: learn as many characters as you can in the first stage of
learning mandarin (at least 2000 char. in the first 12 months). Of course, it will be hard, but it will pay off eventually, specially by making acquiring new vocabulary faster and natural. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 3 of 21 23 March 2011 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
|
I concur with Wilco, you should learn the characters as soon as possible.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 21 23 March 2011 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||
|
I would advise to keep your fingers away from capslock. (=
And I'd like to argue that it always depends on the learner, of their talent (or lack thereof) for replicating sounds and tones, for their visual memory, for the grammar structures they're used to, and those they're not used to. I'm naturally very shy, so everyday conversation is actually the biggest hurdle in any language. What I mean to say is that there is no formula for success that works for everyone equally well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 21 23 March 2011 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
Uh, I do not see this as a necessity to learn Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5169 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 21 23 March 2011 at 7:49am | IP Logged | ||
|
Completely agree: I've started chinese six month ago and I regret to have spent so much
time to try to learn the caracters individually. Maybe Wilco and Irrational have a good visual memory and can remember a single caracter out af his context...but personnaly I only can to learn caracters in context: learning caracters individually is almost impossible and has been an INCREDIBELY HUGE loss of time for a really poor result. An other loss of time for me is caracters writing: it ABSOULUTELY doesnt' help me to memorize them. Plus, nowadays nobody needs to be abe to handwrite...and write on a keyboard is very easy! Edited by Lucas on 23 March 2011 at 7:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 7 of 21 23 March 2011 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I didn't learn characters out of context, I learned them with the words. For every word I learned, I learned it's characters and I did it from the very beginning. So I learned all of the most common words, and their characters. I also had sentences (in the anki card). I was reading Chinese novels within 7 months of studying, which improved my Chinese even more, creating a virtuous cycle. As far as handwriting goes, well...if it is still a debate about whether to or not, then you probably shouldn't. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5011 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 8 of 21 23 March 2011 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
|
--The guidelines above would be particularly relevant for those who are at the beginning or intermediate level, are not yet able to read various texts in Chinese with ease, are aiming at proficiency in hearing and speech, and are studying on their own, but got stuck in their progress due to the difficulties of Chinese characters, tones, psychological confusion, or feelings of discouragement.
--One can and should learn to read and write some very basic materials to get started. One, however, should neither be overconcerned about learning as many characters as possible nor be overconcerned with tonal system at the beginning level. Learners of Chinese soon bump into the formidable high wall of confusing characters and tones, and this causes many of them to become discouraged and quit the study too soon, unfortunately before getting past beginner's stage. Some talented people or those who have no other option but to continue on studying, such as a major in Chinese or an exchange student in China, will struggle on and overcome those hurdles and gradually acquire an ability to read and understand the meaning of Chinese texts, and hopefully also progress on to understand the pronunciations of Chinese characters and become proficient in hearing and speech. But there is no reason for making learning Chinese more difficult and painstaking than is necessary, and not follow more effective learning methods and processes. --From the second stage, one has to learn to recognize the meaning(for reading ability) and sound(for listening and speaking abilities) of Chinese characters. It is at this stage that one has to increase(I do not like the word 'study', but prefer to use the words like 'acquire', 'assimilate', or 'increase'--this is a discussion better left for another topic) one's vocabulary. In effect, it accords with the admonition for 'studying' 2000 characters within a year. A significant gap exists between reading and writing in Chinese, unlike other languages whose writing systems are based strictly on sounds. Thus I suggest that the beginning and intermediate independent learners of Chinese should concentrate MORE ON READING than on writing. --Being able to read and recognize the meaning of Chinese text is essential for foreigners in learning Chinese. Unlike many illiterate Chinese, it is almost impossible for them to recreate the environment for intensive experience of growing up in Chinese speaking family and society. Many foreigners, however, have a misconception that they know Chinese when they can read some Chinese texts and often put too excessive effort into learning the characters at the beginning stage. This is often due to the uniqueness and difficulty of Chinese writing system which forces foreign learners to exert enormous effort and energy to master it right at the entry point. It is a proper way for learning Russian, Greek, Hindi, Arabic, Thai, Burmese, Cambodian or Korean writing system, but not for the Chinese writing system. Often this trap makes many foreign learners to become burn out at the beginning stage or gives one a misleading sense of knowing the language after overcoming this hurdle preliminarily, when what they have acquired is only an ability to understand the meaning of some texts in Chinese, and not an actual fluency or mature understanding of the language. This is the very reason why you need to have an effective overall strategy for your progress from the very beginning stage to the advanced stage. The catch is that when you are at the beginning or intermediate stage, you are still up against something you do not yet fully and clearly understand and are not in a good position to accurately evaluate your progress or the effectiveness of your learning methods. I do not want to get into detailed arguement as to which method is superior or better. I, however, will just say that IF YOU ARE SATIFIED WITH YOUR OWN PARTICULAR LEARNING METHOD AND IF IT MOTIVATES YOU TO KEEP ON STUDYING, THEN IT IS A GOOD METHOD FOR YOU. Edit: got rid of 10% of capitalized letters. Edited by futurianus on 26 March 2011 at 1:18am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
