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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 1 of 169 30 May 2011 at 6:46am | IP Logged | ||
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It is with some trepidation but great hope that I post this, my first ever message, to a language forum.
My goal is simple. I've had a lifelong desire to be able to master Chinese. What does that actually mean? Well for the context of this project, it is to learn both Mandarin and Cantonese in 300 days. As a practical matter, I will work on Mandarin and Cantonese for the rest of my life, but as a focused endeavor, I want to be able to reach ILR level 3 of Mandarin in 300 days, and ILR level 3 of spoken Cantonese in the same time period. At this stage, I don't yet know what I don't know, but I am committed to achieving this in the specified time-frame, and I'm posting this to find out what I need to do to get to that stage. Unlike some of the incredibly talented people posting on this forum, I only want to learn these two languages, particularly because I will be researching Chinese history in the south of China and will need to be conversant with some local people who do not speak English. Yes, I know that I can hire interpreters to communicate, but there are many source materials in both Mandarin and Cantonese that will require me to be able to understand both languages. So I will focus on only two languages, in the same language family, one of which has no written form. First of all, is it doable? I am assuming that it is, if I delimit exactly what i am aiming for. Using the ILR Scale: Mandarin Listening 3 (General Professional Proficiency) Speaking 3 (General Professional Proficiency) Reading 3 (General Professional Proficiency) Writing 3 (General Professional Proficiency) Cantonese Listening 3 (General Professional Proficiency) Speaking 3 (General Professional Proficiency) These are six distinct skill sets that I must develop. These are listed in order of importance; I must achieve level 3 listening for both languages within the given time frame. Given that restriction, my initial efforts would be to do daily listening practice for both languages. So if I were to further restrict my expectations, it is only two sets of skills that I must develop: listening, level 3 of Mandarin and listening, level 3 of Cantonese. I realize that all four aspects of language reinforce each other. This language log will be my attempt to describe my progress and ask others for their advice. Edited by zhanglong on 09 April 2013 at 4:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5230 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 2 of 169 30 May 2011 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
Good luck to you in your language journey. You have chosen a difficult task, but not entirely impossible. Check out irrationale's mandarin log if you haven't already, he rose to proficiency rather quickly.
I'd be interested to hear more about this. Care to share? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 169 30 May 2011 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Is it doable? Sure. But very, very difficult. You're probably going to have to be studying full time for this. And then some. FSI estimates that Mandarin alone takes 2200 class hours to get to a level comparable to what you're aiming for, at least half of which should be spent in-country. If you're not in China during this time, you'll probably need even more hours, but let's go for 2200. That's 7.3 hours a day (including weekends) for Mandarin alone. Add to this Cantonese, which has a more complicated tone system and for which any materials beyond beginner's level will require you to learn traditional characters. You'll have a significant advantage in knowing Mandarin, of course, but expect to add another four hours a day for Canto.
So if you manage to study about 11-12 hours a day, including weekends, you've got a decent chance, according to FSI. But that will require extraordinary amounts of dedication to pull off. You may have an aptitude for languages, but from your post it seems you haven't studied any foreign languages before. So don't be too surprised if you still have trouble reading basic texts when you get to China. However, once you're there, your learning will speed up significantly. EDIT: Oh yeah, and
Not true. There's not a lot of written Cantonese out there, but it's hardly accurate to say it has no written form. Comic books, movie scripts, advertising, Saam Kap Dai literature, karaoke and movie subtitles and Cantonese Wikipedia, for example. And of course just about all SMS messages and web forum posts in Hong Kong, which amounts to a pretty decent amount of text. Edited by Ari on 30 May 2011 at 11:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 4 of 169 30 May 2011 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the encouragement!
I love this forum. I never knew there were any other people who loved languages the way that I did, and that were insane enough to attempt to learn a foreign language while working and going to school. Here is the latest update: I'll be in Guangzhou, China in June. If I can, I will study at one of the Universities there part-time to get a handle on conversational Mandarin. If I cannot, I will devote myself to self-study. To begin, I'll focus on listening and speaking Mandarin, and on listening comprehension in Cantonese. Mandarin Listening Mandarin: Pimsleur 1 to 90 Speaking Mandarin: Pimsleur 1 to 90 and discussion with native people Reading Mandarin: HSK 1 - 6 vocabulary lists Writing Mandarin: Transcribing Pimsleur dialogues and all of the characters of the HSK, arranged by frequency Textbook: Integrated Chinese, Volume 3 I'll supplement that with traditional classes and other multimedia, using an SRS for all vocabulary I encounter. Cantonese 1) Listening Cantonese: Pimsleur 1 to 30 2) Listening Cantonese: FSI Cantonese 3) Listening Cantonese: Teach Yourself Cantonese Speaking Cantonese: daily conversation with native speakers supplemented by monthly trips to Hong Kong, sans dictionaries or any other aids. irrationale's blog looks interesting! In fact, many folks on this forum have such intriguing stories that I could easily spend all day reading how they did it and not work too hard on what I have to do. LOL! Ari, thank you for including the FSI estimates of how long it would take to "learn" a language. I will really have to factor that in to what I am doing and set a daily schedule that I can stick to. When it came to your Mandarin and Cantonese study, what did you do and how far did you get? I know that it is hard to maintain a level of proficiency in a language if you don't do it all the time, so I admire anyone who has made any kind of progress in a foreign language. Jason, I am actually working on an oral history project of people who lived in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the middle of the 20th Century. Most of the people involved are quite old now and may not remember much of anything about China in the 1940's and 1950's. Luckily there are many resources available for the official history, and much can be gleaned from expatriate memoirs such as Martin Booth's, but there are also many things that cannot be obtained from a book, a newspaper, or official records. Hence my quixotic quest to learn two really, really hard languages. At project's end, I will sit for the HSK exam and post a video of me speaking Cantonese with a native speaker. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5230 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 5 of 169 30 May 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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The oral history part of it sounds really interesting. I did something similar in graduate school(not related to Chinese unfortunately), it was a lot of fun.
Guangzhou is fast becoming "the place to be" in the south, I think you'll like it a lot (assuming this is your first visit). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 6 of 169 30 May 2011 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, it is May 31st. I am in Guangzhou, China. Work takes nine hours out of every day, and I am in an English-only environment. That leaves me with seven hours a day of "free" time.
How much of that seven hours a day I can devote to my project is unclear. Some ballpark estimates... Assuming 2500 hours to achieve Level 3 proficiency in Mandarin and 1250 hours to achieve Level 3 proficiency in Cantonese (half of that required for Mandarin because I will not study a separate writing system) is a total of 3750 hours. So, Ari, you are right. 12.5 hours a day of study would be required to reach my target within the 300 day time-frame. If I expand the time-frame to 5 years or 1826 days, I can achieve my goal with only two hours a day of study. This is a much more realistic and sensible goal. Hmm... If I adjust my goal for the next 300 days to Level 3 listening and speaking Mandarin, and Level 3 listening for Cantonese, the time requirements drop down to: 1250 hours for Mandarin 625 hours for Cantonese ----------------------- a total of 1875 hours ======================= So if I am absolutely pressed for time, the bare minimum I can do for my two languages are: approximately 6.5 hours a day of study 4.25 hours of Mandarin listening and speaking 2.25 hours of Cantonese listening --- This is beginning to look a lot harder than I expected, but it is still doable. --- If I only concentrate on level 3 Mandarin listening and speaking: 1250 hours --- 4 and a quarter hours a day ============================ Week 1: To start, let's say I will devote 3 hours a day to studying. I think I can make better progress if I devote most of that limited time to Mandarin and focus less on Cantonese. Hour 01: Mandarin listening: Pimsleur 30 minutes Mandarin speaking: Pimsleur / speak to Native speakers 30 minutes Hour 02: Mandarin reading: 30 minutes a day; learning the HSK vocabulary Mandarin writing: 30 minutes a day; writing out individual characters Hours 03: Mandarin reading: reading of simple textbooks and grammar drills: 30 minutes Cantonese listening: Pimsleur 30 minutes --- That's the routine I'll follow at least at the beginning and see what other opportunities there are to increase my study time and improve my study methods. Edited by zhanglong on 30 May 2011 at 8:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 169 30 May 2011 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd have gone for level 2 in one language, and level 1 in the other as a more plausible goal to reach within a period of 300 days only.
You mention how much you love languages; how many other languages have you studied before? When I read that you were aiming for level 3 in Mandarin in 300 days, and then that you were also aiming for level 3 in Cantonese, I assumed you were either a very, very seasoned language learner, or that you didn't really understand what level 3 entailed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 8 of 169 30 May 2011 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Arekkusu:
You may be absolutely right about that. I'm devoting five years of concentrated effort to this project and will continue to maintain whatever I've achieved in that time frame for the rest of my life. So I am quite certain that I will reached my goal in five years. But what about the magic number of 300 days? That's the amount of time I will be in China and hey, if someone can be "fluent in 100 days" then of course, I can do it too in 300. *wink* More seriously though, I am a native speaker of English, can speak fluent, near-native level 4 Spanish, perhaps level 2 French, and can read a passable Latin, though it has disappeared steadily over the years. Looking over the ILR descriptions listed below, Level 2 listening and speaking of Cantonese seems to be what I need to complete my project. If I can just speak to native speakers face-to-face, and use contextual cues (and an interpreter!), I should be all right. --- Listening Level 2: "Able to understand face-to-face speech in a standard dialect, delivered at a normal rate with some repetition and rewording, by a native speaker not used to dealing with foreigners, about everyday topics, common personal and family news, well-known current events and routine office matters through descriptions and narration about current, past and future events; can follow essential points of discussion or speech at an elementary level on topics in his/her special professional field." Speaking Level 2: "Can handle with confidence, but not with facility, most normal, high-frequency social conversational situations including extensive, but casual conversations about current events, as well as work, family, and autobiographical information." Reading Level 3: "Able to read within a normal range of speed and with almost complete comprehension a variety of authentic prose material on unfamiliar subjects. Reading ability is not dependent on subject matter knowledge, although it is not expected that the individual can comprehend thoroughly subject matter which is highly dependent on cultural knowledge or which is outside his/her general experience and not accompanied by explanation. Text-types include news stories similar to wire service reports or international news items in major periodicals, routine correspondence, general reports, and technical material in his/her professional field; all of these may include hypothesis, argumentation and supported opinions." Writing Level 2: "Able to write routine social correspondence and prepare documentary materials required for most limited work requirements. Has writing vocabulary sufficient to express himself/herself simply with some circumlocutions. Can write simply about a very limited number of current events or daily situations. Still makes common errors in spelling and punctuation, but shows some control of the most common formats and punctuation conventions. Good control of morphology of language (in inflected languages) and of the most frequently used syntactic structures. Elementary constructions are usually handled quite accurately and writing is understandable to a native reader not used to reading the writing of foreigners." Edited by zhanglong on 30 May 2011 at 9:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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