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Mandarin Learning Schedule | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| CJoQ Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4623 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 7 29 April 2012 at 8:41pm | IP Logged |
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Hello hello,
I have always been a very regimented person when it comes to learning. Is there a template/recommended/tried and tested schedule, of sorts, that I can stick to when learning Mandarin. I have no experience with language learning strategy and I am still at the beginner level. I presume it would be a concoction of: - Writing (stroke orders, grammatical orders and correctly placing characters in sentence structure) - Reading (or does this go hand in hand with writing? - Speaking (tones, pronunciation, speed) - Hearing comprehension How do you incorporate these things in your language? At the moment, I can only commit part time to studying Mandarin, however towards the end of the year it will be full on. - 20 mins a day focussing on an aspect of all 4 of the above? - 20 mins a day just on a reading, then the next day another 20 mins on speaking, etc.? Any thoughts? If there is a link to a sticky or something with this already set out, that would be great. Thanks everyone! CJoQ 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5757 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 2 of 7 29 April 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged |
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Try this thread
I'm with you. I just starting learning Mandarin on the 20th and I'm still trying to get into a rythym. I asked about how many hanzi I should learn a day, and a poster said I should not get discouraged when I spend more time reviewing than learning new hanzi. I thought that was useful advice. Some seem to suggest ignoring writing right off the bat and instead focusing on learning the sounds of the language first. What course are you using? I'm using Assimil and Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| CJoQ Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4623 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 7 29 April 2012 at 9:25pm | IP Logged |
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My university is running a course that I am doing along side my studies, so I have a
Beginners Chinese Book and a native speaker teacher that teaches a class of us once a week for 2 hours - however due to my studies and part time job, attendance on my end has been bad. I have jammed my iPhone full of podcasts and Apps - I should be further along but I haven't got myself a routine of dedicating, say, 20 minutes a day on each thing. Its frustrating - can't wait for my degree to be over so I can commit more time! Re: Speaking > Writing I have been working on the idea that I shouldn't be able to SAY anything that I couldn't also WRITE, but this has been a really slow process and has got me behind in class (of course, bad attendance is a contributing factor). However, I feel that learning to speak it and then going back on myself and learning the characters may speed the process up a little bit. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5757 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 4 of 7 30 April 2012 at 3:17am | IP Logged |
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I'm no expert, and I can see the reason for wanting to know the hanzi for all your vocab, but progress may be too slow if you do that.
I've heard people say of languages that use the Arabic script that you should wait a year or longer to learn the script, and the Arabic script is much easier to learn than characters. I would think some people may say that you should wait to learn characters as well. Most people on the forum think classes are an inefficient way of learning. I'm not one of them, and I've enjoyed my classes in the past. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 7 30 April 2012 at 12:36pm | IP Logged |
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You don't necessarily need a routine :) Others have said that if you have just 40 mins a day, it's inefficient to divide them further and do 10 mins of each thing.
It's a good idea to devote some time daily to things you neglect, though. E.g. if you like speaking, it won't be a problem if you skip a day, but if the hanzi or anything else is intimidating, creating good study habits should help :-) Using a program like "Learning the Hanzi", specifically designed for this, might also be a good idea. Also, are you taking advantage of the "dead" time? Queues, driving/commuting/walking (even to the local store), even being in an elevator :D And since high school my rule has been to be learning a language when my classmates/roommates are fooling around (the breaks, waiting for the teacher, interruptions during classes etc). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4896 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 6 of 7 01 May 2012 at 1:41am | IP Logged |
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I'm preparing for studying Mandarin at the moment and it seems like this is a language where it's easy to get lost without a sensible structure.
I've been reading the Hacking Chinese website on how to learn characters and on the tones and found it extremely helpful. It's not so much a study routine, but has a lot of tips on how to avoid common pitfalls. From what I see studying the meaning of characters and their pronunciation (with tone) are two different processes and trying to study all of it at the same time doesn't work too well. It's what the Heisig books claim and I found it to be true when I did a test run with a couple of characters. I don't know if it's more efficient to start with writing and learn all characters and their meaning like Heisig advocates or first focus on speaking and then add writing much later. Or even studying them separately but progress in both areas at the same time (I'll probably try that). In any case, studying radicals/character components seems to precede studying characters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Groatse Newbie United States Joined 4645 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes | Message 7 of 7 01 May 2012 at 2:30pm | IP Logged |
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I kinda disagree with the notion that learning characters and their pronunciation would
be two different processes. For two reasons: 1) The characters that I've known the pronunciation for as well as its meaning have stuck a lot better. Basically this activates more areas in your brain when you are learning the character (think of a kind of extra mnemonic), which should help the character stick. 2) Characters have usually (well, maybe sometimes would be more accurate) a phonetic component attached to a component that connotes the meaning. All in all, my take on this is, that you should always learn the pronunciation with characters, but not necessarily the other way around. So in this sense I disagree with Heisig. Although I have used his method, but I've always attached the pronunciation to the characters. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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