Less Painful and More Effective Chinese (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Less Painful and More Effective Chinese
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

21 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6549 days ago
2365 posts - 3804 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

Message 17 of 21

26 March 2011 at 2:05am | IP Logged

futanari, nice post, but I think you underplay the importance of listening in the early stages. It has been shown
that listening to comprehensible input from the beginning gives the learner a significant advantage over those
who don't listen.

irrationale wrote:

To sum up for everyone;

One way of thinking says that the reading, writing, and speaking/listening skills in Chinese are too separated to
worry about stressing yourself out over all of them at once. So it is better to focus on the ones most important to
you.

Another way of thinking says that all the skills may seem separated at first, but become more related as you
progress in Chinese, so it is better to just learn them all at once.

Yet another says that "learning Chinese" yet having a gaping hole in reading, writing, or speaking is an injustice
to yourself and to one of the worlds beautiful and important languages.

Does that about cover it?

Not at all. This sounds like your theory of why people choose different ways to study. Why you think the reasons
they give need to be changed to the ones you listed is a mystery to me.
1 person has voted this message useful

tyronedavies
Newbie
langwich.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4991 days ago
2 posts - 3 votes

Message 18 of 21

26 March 2011 at 4:12am | IP Logged

I have been studying Chinese for about three years now at university. I started
learning to speak whilst writing and memorising characters. Chinese is a fascinating
language and the Characters tie in so much with the spoken language that characters are
,in my opinion, important in learning the language, so it is good to start learning
them from the
get go. If you learn the origins of the characters it makes remembering the characters
much easier.

For example: 安 This character represents 'safe'. The top part of the character
represents a roof and the bottom represents a woman. So a woman in a house is 'safe'.
Take away the roof and you have 女 which is the character for woman.

The word for sleep is a two character word 睡着. When used in in speech and writing
often people will only say the first character. So it is important to know the meanings
of individual characters and their relationship to other characters. This will not only
help you remember words but also get a slightly better understanding of the culture and
thinking of the Chinese people.

Edited by tyronedavies on 26 March 2011 at 4:14am
3 persons have voted this message useful

irrationale
Tetraglot
Senior Member
China
Joined 6049 days ago
669 posts - 1023 votes

2 sounds
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog
Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese

Message 19 of 21

26 March 2011 at 7:54am | IP Logged

leosmith wrote:

Not at all. This sounds like your theory of why people choose different ways to study. Why you think the reasons
they give need to be changed to the ones you listed is a mystery to me.

Huh? I was summarizing the points of view thus far expressed in the discussion for those, perhaps beginners, who didn't want to read through very long posts mostly expressing the same thing. It's my subjective summerization on different approaches expressed here; feel free to add or disagree.
1 person has voted this message useful

futurianus
Senior Member
Korea, South
starlightonclou
Joined 5008 days ago
125 posts - 234 votes

Speaks: Korean*

Message 20 of 21

26 March 2011 at 10:05am | IP Logged

leosmith wrote:

"STAGE 1) First concentrate on basic grammar and simple everyday conversation.
.......
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...."

I rechecked my first post, and indeed the hearing part was not explicitly stressed, though implicitly implied in the stress on 'conversation' aspect. I totally agree with you on the importance of listening in the early stages. To develop an ability for 1 output unit(speaking), one probably needs to imbibe 1000 or more input units(listening) especially at the beginning stages to get your brain basically wired up for the new phonetic sytem, though at intermediate and advanced levels, this proportion between speaking and listening amount is and can be decreased drastically.

Edited by futurianus on 26 March 2011 at 10:26am
1 person has voted this message useful

leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6549 days ago
2365 posts - 3804 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

Message 21 of 21

29 March 2011 at 1:40am | IP Logged

leosmith wrote:

futanari, nice post

My apologies. I just realized I misspelled your handle. Makes for
some interesting google results though.

1 person has voted this message useful

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