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Chinese dream | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 17 of 29 23 October 2012 at 8:05am | IP Logged |
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Contrary to aerozeplyn I find "passive listening", if by that we mean listening to material you don't understand whilst not paying attention, to be at best useless and at worst harmful. What you need is lots and lots of input, but it should be comprehensible input and you should be paying attention to it. You don't want to get into the habit of tuning out Mandarin as background noise. One of the most important skills in listening is to be able to pay attention and not have your mind wander despite the fact that your understanding is less than perfect. This skill is not helped by "passive listening".
Better to study some material intensively and really learn it, then build up a playlist of such material that you can have playing. And when doing listening practice, close your eyes and really focus on the sounds of what's being said, and when your mind wanders, bring it back to the sounds of the language. And take breaks, because it's exhausting. Your brain is not going to learn anything "passively" and listening to incomprehensible gibberish is not going to help you with anything. You have to put in the effort. That's what I think, at least. But as far as I know, no studies have been made on the subject, so I could be wrong. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| oruixo13 Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4417 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: FrenchB2, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 29 23 October 2012 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the advice mates. What I would do is as soon as I get my mp3 player I'll fill
it with all the pod-casts that I previously went through. Only the conversation, no English. Then I will listen to it whenever I can. Without paying a lot of attention to it, but actually understanding what is being said. That's what I call passive listening": once I put in the effort, I expose myself a lot to the material, thus getting sort of fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 19 of 29 23 October 2012 at 10:33am | IP Logged |
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That sounds like a great plan to me. Good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| oruixo13 Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4417 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: FrenchB2, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 29 25 October 2012 at 4:17am | IP Logged |
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Following the advice of some prestigious polyglots like laoshu, I'll begin also to study
the Assimil course. It's been hard to get a decent copy of it but I finally managed to get a copy from the library. Don't know what to do after, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| oruixo13 Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4417 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: FrenchB2, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 29 26 October 2012 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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From now on I will have even more time to study. I do not want to get burnt, though.
I have to say, I am in love with Assimil. It is so good. No English in the recordings. Straight to the point dialogues and humour everywhere. I think maybe I am doing to much writing and little speaking and listening. Keep improving. Edited by oruixo13 on 28 October 2012 at 11:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| oruixo13 Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4417 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: FrenchB2, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 29 28 October 2012 at 11:42am | IP Logged |
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Finish Pimsleur 12. Great conversation. I also did Assimil lessons from 1 to 14. Great
day today. Every time I complete a lessons I dump it on my mp3 player. It simply works great. I am improving by leaps and bounds, at least it's what I feel. I have a question, though. Is it legal to cut a mp3 track and put it in your mp3 player? I don't think so, but I am not doing business with it. Anyway, I want to say that I will be in the Assimil challenge too. But I won't follow the rules strictly because I will continue to use Pimsleur on the side. I think it works great so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| oruixo13 Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4417 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: FrenchB2, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Mandarin | Message 23 of 29 31 October 2012 at 11:10am | IP Logged |
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I have a huge problem: I do not know how to handle the Chinese characters.
First, I thought that with Fun with characters I would be in the right path, but there's two major downsides: simplified version and useful words. Half of the second book is about animals!! After that, I started wondering about Reading and Writing Chinese. It has the pronunciation also, to which I won't pay attention at the moment, and most importantly, it has useful combinations, always with characters already learnt, which helps a lot. But again, I put those in Anki and forgot half of them because of lack of MNEMONICS. So I think I will purchase a copy of Heisig. I have to tell you a little secret: 3 months ago I was a complete ignorant as far as the Chinese language is concerned. I believed that ALL characters were either pictures or meaning-meaning compounds. I thought: "Great!! I will learn them all by creating mnemonics about them". Then I realized that MOST of them are sound-meaning compound (80 per cent or so I think I read somewhere). That changes a LOT. The majority of characters are composed by a radical that gives you a CLUE about what it is all about and the other part tells you roughly how to pronounce it. My plan to conquer characters was worthless. I also thought (poor me) that 2000 characters was all I needed to read a newspaper. I believed that those 2000 characters were WORDS. Of course, it is NOT the case. Those characters represent ideas that, once you gather some of them, yes, you'll have words. Again, poor me. But forgive me, I was young and ignorant. I am still ignorant, but less arrogant at least. So, my plan now. Continue with Pimsleur. It works great. Today I finished lesson 17. I feel like those who created this method know EXACTLY what I need to review. In this case was numbers. Also I have Assimil, but for the moment I won't rush on it. And then I have Heisig method. You'll wonder: Why? You just told us that you realize that mnemonics are not that useful, right? Well, no. I will remember the character by creating stories even if they are absurd involving also the sound compound. I don't care if the story that I made up is the real origin of the character, I am only worried about me remembering the script. So let's see how it goes. I just found out that in Heisig's book the characters aren't so useful. I will also use frequency table with this method. For those frequency table haters, keep in mind that I will continue to use Pimsleur and Assimil to build up my vocabulary. Edited by oruixo13 on 31 October 2012 at 12:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| oruixo13 Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4417 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: FrenchB2, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 29 01 November 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
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I realised something very important. In fact, it is crucial. I do not have to go through
more than one Pimsleur lesson a day. Even if I have some spare time, which is the case now. The reason being that it interferes with the previous lesson and I end up forgetting words, phrases and sentences. The other major discovery was that I have to practice out loud each lesson. It sticks in my head much better. The only downside is that I have to be in my room to do so, otherwise people would think that I am crazy. Don't rush. Be patient. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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