Alkeides
Senior Member
Bhutan
Joined 6147 days ago
636 posts - 644 votes 
| Message 1 of 5 19 November 2008 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
I've been reading old posts by furyou_gaijin lately, both on this forum and elsewhere. He's shown a high level of ability in a wide range of languages and his acquistion of Mandarin has been quite amazing. He's learning 文言文 now it seems?
I hope he doesn't mind if I post a few comments by him that I've found interesting on various blogs and fora over here
furyou_gaijin wrote:
And what is so incredible about ChinesePod visitors claiming proficiency in more than four languages? It is quite common in continental Europe, as many responses to this post testify. For employers it probably pays off to be more specific when questioning one’s linguistic abilities and the standard ‘how many languages do you speak?’ is a rather inadequate way of getting the true picture.
My own credentials: a degree in linguistics and work experience as a simultaneous interpreter on a top level with English, French, Dutch and Russian. Very remote from language-related jobs at present, though I can still claim full proficiency in the above, plus a good functional knowledge of German, Italian and Polish (reading, writing and open-ended conversations, although I wouldn’t attempt to apply these languages in a booth), and somewhat limited proficiency in Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish (fluent reading, good understanding and decent conversational skills - open-ended but often ungrammatical).
From this basis - as Ken aptly put it in one of his previous posts - it becomes possible to figure out nearly every Germanic (like Afrikaans or Norwegian… but not Icelandic!), Roman (e.g., Catalan…) or Slavic (Czech… Serbian… but not Macedonian!) language to a certain degree and upgrade any of them to a high level of proficiency within a relatively short period of time. So the whole issue of ‘how many languages’ becomes somewhat irrelevant.
Oh yes, I can also hail a cab or chat up a waitress in Greek, Estonian, Turkish and Arabic - but I hope that doesn’t count as serious knowledge.
On a very different note - Japanese has been my all-consuming passion for a while and my interest in Chinese was originally driven by the search of deeper knowledge of Japanese (to which Chinese is like Latin to most European languages), before I realised it was quite interesting in its own right. A few months into the study of Mandarin now, I can’t wait to put my skills to test when I’m in Shanghai this coming Saturday…
(Incidentally, having spent a couple of weeks in Tokyo this month, I was amazed to see how much more material for students of Chinese is available in Japan - as compared to the supply in Europe.) |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
This is very interesting and brings up the subject of learning techniques to maximise the potential of ChinesePod. It would be great to read about other peoples' routines in using the CPod and (possibly) other facilities.
I am very new to the CPod (only been around for about two months) so I am still catching up on the older podcasts (completed the 'newbie' and halfway through the 'elementary') - at a rate of about 3 podcasts per day on average. I remix the podcasts, only leaving the dialogues (and sometimes the banter, if it's in Chinese) which I subsequently listen to on my iPod (until I'm able to predict the next sentence). All new words go into my iFlash (the flashcard application), with translation, pinyin and the characters (simplified and traditional). I review the words every day, with pen and paper, starting from the translation. The word is considered 'learnt' when I can write it down in traditional characters. Occasionally, I listen to some 'intermediate' podcasts to get an ear for 'live conversation'. Time permitting, I decipher the news on www.creaders.net to get used to real-life texts.
Deficiencies of the method as I can see them:
- no conversation practice at the moment (am planning to chat up a suitable 'language exchange partner' when I'm slightly more advanced)
- not overly concerning myself with always learning to reproduce the correct tones for each word as I believe this will come naturally with the conversational practice (from what I have seen around me, one either has an ear for the tones or one doesn't)
- little attention to Simplified characters which - although undoubtedly ugly - are definitely part of today's reality... hoping to acquire more fluency with them as I read more 'real-life' texts.
- no structured grammar study - I have a grammar book and am planning to start reading it in the next week or so... So I can finally get the intricacies behind the 過 and the 得 and the 了...
- no attention for 文言 - will have to tackle this in a few months' time, I reckon...
It would be interesting to see what other people are doing and hear what I am doing wrong... (Remember, this is a very part-time effort, like it is for most people in this forum.) |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
chris(mandarin_student) wrote:
you would be forgetting characters at one end at the same pace you were learning them at the other
The key is properly spaced repetition. Here's the boring bit: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/theory.htm Any flashcard software features some sort of spaced repetition assigning scores to learnt words, etc. Yes, that's a lot of work: no one's found a shortcut to literacy yet...
chris(mandarin_student) wrote:
Your bulk learning descriptions sound interesting, I really must find out more, still again have I really lost out if I end up having spent about eight months primarily working on listening and speaking and then hit characters big time (and I do like the sound of that it is right up my street, find a brick wall, put on a stubborn expression and bash my head against it until it breaks). Did you use something similar to learn the traditional characters for Japanease??
I don't think you've lost out as this has clearly worked for you and you seem to be taking the right decisions now! ( ^ _ -- )
Indeed, I used this method for Japanese (after having wasted A LOT of time and effort through traditional methods). You may want to review this: http://www.kanjiclinic.com/reviewheisigwiig.htm There is also a link at the bottom of the page to a demo version of the book. Dr Heisig is actually writing a work on Hanzi now but in fact it is superfluous - all you need is a list and the principle... |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
Chris-san,
I have stumbled upon a great work designed for bulk-learning Chinese characters. The title is 'Cracking Chinese Puzzles' and it is by T.K.Ann. Here's a link on Amazon
It contains 5 hard-back volumes and is quite pricy... I have now bought Volume 1 at Grant&Cutler and will look for the remaining volumes when I am in Shanghai in a few weeks' time.
The beauty of the book is that it takes you from the absolute basics through systematic explanation of radicals to the full proficiency in both Traditional and Simplified to a grand total of 5,888 characters. With examples from both modern and classic Chinese, it even touches upon the Japanese usage. Volume 1 treats around 1,850 characters and it is arranged not so much in the order of frequency as in the logical order of components. Hence, together with the obvious 我 and a rather frequent 餓, such obsure characters as 鵝, 娥, 蛾 and 峨 are also covered - and explained in such a way that definitions stick in your memory.
Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, as it is a very very thorough book. I only wish something similar dropped in my lap when I first came into contact with the characters.
It would be interesting to hear if anyone has worked with this book before. I will recount my own experiences as I move forward. |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
A couple of days and a couple of hundred pages further down the road, I'm still excited with what an absolute gem this book has turned out to be. Consider this excerpt:
'Or' is translated 或 huo4. 或 huo4 was the original character of 國 guo2 'country', 'state'. To circumscribe 或 with a large 口 was a later development. In its Metal Script the first stroke of the character 或 was cut in the middle. It therefore had 2 parts: the left part <..> had the connotation of 'boundaries of fields' and the right part 戈 'spear' or 'weapon'. Early people had nothing in writing to define ownership or boundaries. <..> A country could thus change its size depending upon its military power, and the drawing of boundaries became desireable. The character for country hence needed a circumscription, i.e. 口. In the meanwhile, the occurrence of boundary disputes conceived a lot of 'doubts'. Thus the central part 或 was made to mean 'perhaps'. The concept 'or' must have developed therefrom.
In later dynasties scholars thought it incorrect to leave a character signifying 'perhaps' in the centre of a character which meant prestigious 'state'. A new character 国 (FG: in the book without the dot) with 王 'king' in the centre was thus invented. The revolutionists eventually changed it to 国 by placing a piece of jade (FG: 玉) inside the circumscription - a very easy way out by just adding a dot. This is now accepted as the simplified form of 國. And 或 just means 'or' and nothing else.
And the book goes on to describe practically every character in a similar fashion. Although some explanations may be a bit corny, it does stick.
Another great idea in the book is that 'the common difficulty for foreigners (FG: and one I have definitely experienced!) is how to break up a sentence into two-character expressions and to single out the singletons.' The book then proceeds to list all possible prepositions and link words consisting of one character only...
In one word, 'it's cheaper by the dozen'... |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
Discussing individual learning styles is rather out of place in this thread. And yet, what realistic alternatives are there to memorising (bits of) dialogues - in the sense of listening to them to the point of being able to reproduce the whole sentences when suitably prompted? Or memorising (bits of) sentences from a written native source? If there is any other way to achieve the ability to sound and to write like a native speaker (and not like one who is constantly translating from one's own language), everyone is welcome to share.
Marketplace for Mandarin Chinese is the least of one's concerns when one has a goal to achieve fluency in the language: if one wants to make real progress, one simply has no time to comment on the colour of the banners and the user-friendliness of the section captions. The pragmatic approach is to take ANY available resource and squeeze the maximum out of it. And then discard it and move on to another resource that offers more.
And under the above approach, CPod was a no less valuable resource a year ago (in its pristine and simple form) than it is today (with tons of embellishments). I will continue to use it while I can still learn new things from it but I will also continue to adjust the ways in which I use it, to keep up with my needs of the moment: this is by far more efficient than trying to get CPod make any change if one's primary goal is to learn a language and not to benefit the community by creating a perfect resource. |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
Luobot-san et al.,
With due respect for the validity of many points made so far, I'm amazed by this discussion: is this a particular feature of people who tend to actively participate in discussion forums that they are more concerned with discussing technical aspects and devising a 'perfect' learning resource than they are pragmatic in taking the best from what is already available?
No pauses in dialogues to allow for repetition?! Has no one noticed a pause button on their iPods then?!
Not enough content? The banter too irrelevant? Well, there are over 500 highly relevant transcripted dialogues out there for free, with thousands of vocabulary items - have people covered them all before commenting on the lack of material?
Explanations repetitive? Who cares about them anyway?! Just cut straight to the dialogue to get the vocabulary and/or learn the sentence patterns by heart.
No progressive study plan?! Those learning the language in self-study should be sufficiently mature to work it out for themselves, it's more fun that way, too: I only listened to a few minutes of Pimsleur before having to combat the urge to throw myself or my iPod out of the window.
No opportunity to practise speaking? Once again, learn the dialogues by heart and recycle them in your conversations - you'll never make a mistake and modifying the known sentences to include other vocabulary is a basic basic basic skill.
CPod is an excellent means to a goal. And I, for one, want to work my way through it in the fastest and the most efficient way, absorbing maximum vocabulary from what is available so far and moving on to applying this knowledge. And this implies that there is no point in dwelling on what could have been presented better in Lessons 1 to 1305 when there are still Lessons 1306 and 1307 to go through. And no time for it either. |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
And what is wrong with becoming a fluent... well, if not a speaker then a reader is less than a year?! Some people don't have a lifetime to dedicate to this pursuit.
I'm very much like JimmySeal on this and I have a personal goal of 6,000 characters by year end. It looks like both or us have started off with 2,000+ of Japanese characters so it can be safely assumed that we do know HOW to learn characters...
I'm actually finding this quite easy and very entertaining. My biggest challenge in this seems to be memorising the correct tones. |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
With all the discussions around sustainability of the method that a few of us seem to be using, it might be a good idea to give a brief overview of my own routine...
My book is called 'Cracking the Chinese Puzzle' and it is by T.K. Ann. I am using a massive 5-volume edition but there is also an abridged 1-volume version of it. The 1-volume edition is also featured in Stuart Jay Ray's video on learning languages (I recommend for everyone to look it up on the youtube, it's hugely inspirational), he literally says: 'It's a great book! After you've read it, you will have learnt 5,000 characters.' The full version actually contains around 6,000, with variants.
The approach is loosely similar to Heisig's but instead of inventing a bunch of 'lies' and assigning random names to radicals for the sake of convenience, this book actually explains the real etymology for each character, tracing it back to the Bone-Shell script, etc. It also contains examples of usage, chengyu, bisyllabic expressions, etc.
I have quickly read all the volumes once - this gave me a general understanding of how things stick together, an appreciation for the magnitude of the task and a very good idea of how phonetic components work and to which extent they are useful.
I now have a routine in which I am going through 50 new characters per day, reviewing through the SRS software (iFlash, in my case). I think even 100 per day is sustainable if one has more time to spare. Additionally, my routine involves a study of component words and chengyu. I also look up many characters in internet dictionaries and on Google and Baidu, just to see how they are used. I also use the Chinese wikipedia to get a notion of which fish, which plants, etc. are denoted with the characters that I encounter. This is quite thorough and increases the work load so I personally can't do more than 50 on a given day. I also travel extensively for my work and often have to skip days and deal with piled-up reviews. Allowing for this, I still believe I can manage the 6,000 by year-end.
I'm not making any silly stories to remember the character form as the etymology provides enough information to be able to retain it. I try to remember the readings by loosely associating them to words in other languages I know (thus, 'ji' may be remembered through 'jeans'). For tones, I'm using loose association to various moods: the first tone is something connected with machines and no feeling, the second tone is questioning, the third tone is something arcane and secret, the fourth tone is a command or something very abrupt. After playing around with various techniques, I have found that this one works for me the best, though I'm not dogmatic about it and may use another association if it readily suggests itself.
The key is also that I try to do a lot of reading and force myself to fully recognise the 'known' characters in the text.
And of course, 50 per day is sustainable because of grouping them by component. So when learning the very common 誰, I would learn 焦, 錐, 椎,騅, 雈, 鵻, 隹, 蕉, 醮, 蟭, 礁, 潐, 膲, 僬, 燋, 趭, 蘸, 噍 and 瞧. Incidentally, one will discover that all of the above only share 2-3 readings, with occasional tone variations. And etymology and the Bushou are there to provide clues to the actual meaning...
Still doesn't sound sustainable? |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
Ok, let's discuss individual learning styles. There is no 'right' way, there are many ways. Some of them are efficient, others are less efficient. But efficiency has to be measured in relation to each individual's goals. And as goals differ, it is impossible to impose one style for everyone. The discussion of specifics can merit a separate thread, hence I judged it out of place in the current one.
Regarding memorisation of dialogues: at the initial stages learners will probably find it beneficial to memorise the whole dialogue (ni hao ma? wo hen hao! ni jiao shenme minzi? wo jiao Ken, etc...), at a later stage - only sentences with new patterns and lots of new vocabulary will require memorisation. I didn't realise that this required clarification but will attempt to be more specific going forward.
I don't think we disagree on the importance of being able to remix, etc.
Regarding the marketplace: yes, it is important to know what is out there but there is a limit to the process of discovery. Often, it is better to stick with an old resource until it's exhausted, instead of keeping switching over to new ones as they appear. Time is a limited resource and there are enough people on forums and in language-learning blogs who seem to be passing more time searching for a perfect book or website than studying. Learning languages is in this respect similar to photography: many people spend much more time discussing and buying equipment than actually taking pictures...
Regarding criticism and praise: have I not repeatedly stated that CPod is a useful resource?
Regarding other resources, it may help to state my goals first: ability to read and comprehend any texts in the Chinese language (including, to a degree, wenyanwen). Any ability to speak and listen is a 'nice-to-have' and will take care of itself when the first objective is completed. I have exclusively used CPod and real-life conversations with native speakers to achieve my current intermediate (in CPod terms) level. However, most of my time is now spent on a 'full-time' study of hanzi and vocabulary, with a goal to learn 6,000 hanzi by year-end. My CPod routine has been very basic: listen to the whole podcast only once, discard the banter and carry on listening to the dialogue only. If I have a question on grammar, I will look it up in my grammar book or ask a friend. I have never considered using any of the CPod premium features.
Once again, many of the points you (and others) make in the discussion above are very valid points. It just seemed to me that at a certain point the discussion closely approached my photography analogy... |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
Yes, I have looked into CPod's premium features and they just don't fit my study pattern. New vocabulary is introduced as individual words whereas I prefer to create my own flash cards with longer units, like, for example (from one of their lessons):「重視自己的外表」and use no English on them. Examples they give for each word are somewhat interesting but the same and more can be obtained from www.dict.cn. And I don't think that other exercises with matching words and filling the gaps are useful at all.
A lot of what they do (such as their new feature called 'Fix') is highly reliant on translation which I don't think is of any use when learning a new language. So I don't want that as part of my routine. |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
| Judging by the title, I thought this thread was about finding a 'girl-friend' for purposes of studying the language... Highly recommended. |
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furyou_gaijin wrote:
| My interest in Korea(n) is similar to my interest in any other language/country: women. :-) |
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Edited by amphises on 19 November 2008 at 11:38am
1 person has voted this message useful
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Alkeides
Senior Member
Bhutan
Joined 6147 days ago
636 posts - 644 votes
| Message 2 of 5 19 November 2008 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
Oh and about the 国 without the dot, it can still be seen in some historical calligraphical works.
1 person has voted this message useful
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ronp
Heptaglot
Newbie
Australia
ronpeek.blogspo
Joined 6093 days ago
33 posts - 74 votes
Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: Norwegian, Mandarin, Esperanto, Finnish, Macedonian, Hindi, Greek, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Basque, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic (Written), Sign Language
Studies: Turkish, Swahili
| Message 3 of 5 20 November 2008 at 2:01pm | IP Logged |
Dear amphises,
Thank your posting this, an insightful read and source of inspiration!
Ron
1 person has voted this message useful
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Alkeides
Senior Member
Bhutan
Joined 6147 days ago
636 posts - 644 votes
| Message 4 of 5 21 November 2008 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
A few other interesting posts
Quote:
Honestly - I would love to describe my approach but I don't think I have one. My nomadic life certainly helped, as did a degree in linguistics, as did an ability to analyse, absorb and recycle what I hear and see around me in a very efficient way. Although I do believe that having a teacher is a great advantage but not being very punctual I have always preferred having the 'round-the-clock', girlfriendly type of 'teacher'. (I also confess to getting involved in some of these relationships for mainly 'linguistic' reasons...) The other aspect is that I have come to realise that good teachers are few and far between and that it is best to become one's own teacher by solliciting information 'as and when you need it', not when the teacher decides it's time to spoon-feed it to you.
I also believe in beginners' textbooks and don't believe in intermediate/advanced texbooks. For European languages - once you have the basis, it is much more rewarding to go out there and access real-world materials. (Admittedly, the situation with Japanese and Chinese might be slightly different.)
I also believe that Japanese, together with Chinese, might be a case apart. You have to learn how to learn these languages first, before concentrating on actually learning them. So to speak. And this is where a good teacher might play a crucial role. I wasted a lot of time with Japanese at early stages of my study precisely because I assumed it was no different from any other language I knew; became increasingly discouraged and eventually gave up.
Conversely, now I seem to understand much better HOW to learn these languages (for instance: I found out about Heisig, or - in a broader sense - about the radicals and character etymology) and my progress in Japanese and especially (from scratch) in Chinese has been very quick.
So - for the avoidance of doubt - I do believe that a good Teacher is a great asset, whereas most scheduled classes (unless they are on a high level in a specialised linguistic institution) are a less efficient use of time.
As an extreme example, I remember an earlier post by a user of this forum describing how they only started to approach the kanas in their classes after three years (sic!!!) of study. |
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Quote:
A very interesting thread. Makes one look deeper into oneself and think...
I've had a latent interest in Japan and all things Japanese for a long time, it must have started about 13 years ago with a Japanese textbook my mother presented to me for some reason. I have worked through it at the time and achieved a basic understanding of how the language works and - surprisingly! - some ability to read (or rather, succesfully decipher) Japanese literature. Then other interests took priority... I would come back to Japanese once every 3-4 years and play around with it for a bit without getting too serious. Gradually, a deep interest in Japan started to develop. I had a vague idea that I might want to live and work in the country for a few years, just to try it out. But then, at some point of time, I realised that 'playing around' would not get me anywhere and actually gave up on the language study altogether for a number of years.
Then came a point when I realised that life goes on and if I am still serious about ever living in Japan, I might as well check it out: if I hate the country, it'll be a closed chapter. If I like it, I'd better start working on properly learning the language and getting myself over there.
So I bought a ticket and flew to Japan for a few weeks in late '05. Have been a frequent visitor ever since. Took up the language study again - this time much more seriously, worked my way through Heisig (well before the creation of this marvellous resource), etc.
To me the language has become at this stage a very urgent first-rate priority: I am looking to relocate to Tokyo (touch wood!!!) in early '08 and the job currently being negotiated (or any other potential job, if this one falls through) involves interacting with the locals in a native-proficiency level environment and would typically be filled in by a local... Needless to say, this is a huge challenge so I'm working hard on it right now.
Now, I'm definitely in a minority on this forum as I positively can't stand anime or manga (with an odd exception that confirms the rule, such as Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu - which has some brilliant language in it - I recently managed to find an electronic version of the book and was pleased to find that it's actually a Book, not a manga...), so there would be very little incentive for me to learn the language in isolation from the country.
So to me it's all about the ultimate challenge of being able to establish and maintain my existence in Japan. If I manage to go out there next year, there is no return date - as I have no place to return to - having been on the move all my life, I don't have a notion of 'home'. If I ever become disillusioned with Japan, I'm most likely to find myself looking out to new horizons than looking back... |
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KyoANI is pissing me off by doing Clannad Afterstory instead of season 2 of Suzumiya Haruhi. I don't know how those otakus can STAND sappy, boring, annoying, anime like Clannad. I'm ashamed to admit I watched most of the first season, but I came to my senses eventually. Analyse the shite out of that series and read into whatever
"themes" you claim it has, it still remains bloody boring.
Evangelion is also vastly overrated. The last few episodes claimed to be so 'psychological' by fans are a result of loss of funding.
Quote:
Now, I am, of course, way too arrogant to have even noticed any negative comments on my Japanese studies (or any other behaviour) coming from whoever. But being in the process of relocating to Japan, I now have to answer the 'why?!' question many times each day. Initially I tried giving a sincere explanation each time but quickly discovered that only a handful of people could relate to that. Now my standard response to 99% of these questions ranges from 'to bang sl*ts' to 'I would like to be reunited with my long-time girlfriend with the purpose of creating a family, Sir' - depending on who is asking. Now, THAT is something everyone can relate to. Never mind the real reasons.
QuackingShoe wrote:
While I'm not going to deny that I'm socially awkward or anything, the irritation in this instance isn't because of some sort of embarrassment over people thinking I'm learning Japanese for the girls. I don't care that they're thinking that about me; they're wrong. I'm irritated because anyone who would think that in the first place is not someone I want to be around, at all, ever. Especially if they follow it up with comments about how sweet and timid and other racist trash they are. And as a general thing, I respect women and myself too much to say or think anything like your example, and would never want to impress any guys who would be impressed by such a speech.
Euh... so do you not care or are you irritated?! You surely can't be both?.. And I do hope you counter those 'sweet and timid' statements with conclusions derived from your personal experience to demonstrate how such views are based on limited or outright wrong information (as - for the record - I think they are)? Because, of course, just calling something racist / sexist trash is never any kind of argument, is it? Oh, and generally, there isn't much of an overlap between those who 'respect women too much' and those who actually sleep with them - but that's just one of those sad things about life and is definitely off-top by all standards, so, the vulgar idiot that I am, I'd better shut up now... |
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Here's a link about some of his thoughts on vocab. Although this subsequent post seems to indicate a few changes in the way he uses an SRS
Quote:
QuackingShoe wrote:
Erubey wrote:
I just leave out English. I don't even define the words I'm learning most of the time. I know what they mean or will remember, but the readings get me.
This is something I've been wondering about lately. I don't have any definitions on my cards anymore, and for the same reason; I've never actually forgotten what a sentence I insert into anki means. Possibly because I only take sentences out of stories, so I always remember the context they came with. I may forget a word when I see it in a completely different context, but within the context of that sentence, or ones similar to it, I don't.
Does everyone else, or is it just a habit thing?
Same here. Ever since I've lived in Japan (two months and counting!), I have followed the same routine. I go about my daily tasks with my Casio EX-Word in hand, looking up words from books I'm reading, adverts on the Tube, conversations around me, podcasts I'm listening to, etc. When I come home, I go through the history of my look-ups for that particular day (or a number of days, if I've been lazy), pick out words I believe are really useful, look them up in the built-in dictionary for MacOS and get my sentences from that dictionary. My sentences are seldom real sentences, though, more like: a noun + a verb or an adjective + a noun, sometimes a bit longer. I also try to limit the number of new words per entry to one or maximum two (annoying exceptions being sentences I cut and paste from the news sites).
The 'answer' side only contains the reading for the new words. I don't use Anki and there is no point in writing out the whole thing in kana. I also don't see any point in pasting definitions in this field. I have experimented with this and have found that it is either:
(1) entirely useless if I remember the word anyway so I never look at that definition again
(2) entirely useless even if I don't remember the word as it's way faster to look up the word again (all it takes under MacOS is copying the word and the dictionary running in the background automatically displays the meaning)
Whatever value there is in working one's way through dictionary definitions I believe is offset by saving the time to go through more words and do more real-life reading. If I find myself consistently forgetting the word's meaning, adding more (self-explanatory) examples usually helps.
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Quote:
Vlad wrote:
anyways, I wanted to ask you, whether you think it is OK to learn isolated vocabulary, or better wait for what the
language we learn at the uni will be. If it is good to learn isolated vocab.. what do you think.. where would be a
good place to start.. HSK lists, frequency lists?
Here's my somewhat overdue thoughts on this. I finally have the time.
I do believe in learning isolated vocabulary (especially for character-based languages) but not necessarily from
the very beginning. I think it is beneficial to familiarise oneself with the basics in the beginning: the grammatical
structure of the language, the basic vocabulary to support basic constructions, and to aquire a good phonetical
base.
Your university studies are likely to come with a well-defined road plan. More often than not, it is way too slow
as it is designed for an average student. And Chinese is actually a very easy language to analyse without a
teacher.
Leaving phonetics aside, I would suggest starting with understanding the basic sentence structure of the
language. No special grammar study is required, just analysing simple sentences will do the trick. It is important
to understand the functions of the following: 在，对，是，有，不，再，又，将，过，跟， 给，比，着，那（哪），
这，里，还，的，地，样，怎么，从 and maybe 20-30 similar auxiliary words and question phrases and related
constructions. This is actually achievable within 1-2 days, with the suitably geared material. Words like 你，我,
etc. will be acquired naturally in the process. The suggested next step would be to get more basic vocabulary
(several hundred words and expressions) naturally, through sample dialogues and texts. These are foundations
of a good base and understanding how a language sticks together. Stressing too much about characters at this
stage is probably unnecessary (although I don't know this first hand - I came to Chinese with a solid foundation
in characters already).
Practically, ChinesePod Newbie and Beginner lessons (hundreds of them, at this stage) are excellent means to
acquire this base. Their explanations are extremely rewarding but somewhat superfluous: for an efficient learner
it
should be enough just to go through all the dialogue texts (several hundred at this stage, so it can be done in a
few days).
Once the base is there, one can move on to the targetted bulk study of the characters and the vocabulary. It is
important to have enough context for immediate application of what one has learnt: there is nothing more
rewarding as seeing the most obscure characters one has just learnt coming to life as fish names on restaurant
menus or on billboards advertising drugs or heavy machinery, or as family names in newspaper articles, etc. I
would imagine study without immediate practical application to be extremely dull.
Once the solid character base is there, it becomes possible to analyse compound words and understand their
structure, which also provides a very powerful mnemonic for learning these words. It takes infinitely less effort
to learn 明天，明白 and 聪明 if one understands how and why these words are coined, instead of just relying on
the sound. However, typically, the words in the above example will be acquired at a very early stage. A more
complex example would be clusters such as: 规则化，原则，规律，规定 etc. I think in general this pricinple is
quite clear.
In fact, once the solid character base is there, it may or may not be necessary to study vocabulary with lists.
Every newly encountered vocabulary item can be analysed and instantlly memorised in the context, as all its
elements will already be familiar...
HSK word list in conjunction with clusters of vocabulary around particular characters are probably a good way to
bulk-learn the vocubulary, if one is inclined to do so. Once again, it is important to maintain the exposure to lots
of language input, to make sure there is adequate context for the newly learnt items.
As I have said before, there is no right or wrong way in approaching this. I have found the above method
working for me but then again, I have never been an absolute beginner in Chinese... Do let us know how you're
getting on. |
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Edited by Alkeides on 03 December 2008 at 9:46am
1 person has voted this message useful
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Language Learning Forum : Polyglots
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