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Chinese immersion in Beijing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Immersion, Schools & Certificates |  | |
| Tropi Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 5441 days ago 67 posts - 87 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 10 18 May 2012 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi everyone,
I am currently studying Chinese at my university and managed to get to Beida next term. I learned Chinese actively for about 1 year. (I started 1,5 years ago, but had to pause for some time.) However, I obviously want to benefit as much as possible from my stay abroad. So after I finish this term I have nearly 2 months in summer to prepare for my immersion. And I am worrying what aspect of the language I should focus on. Anything seems helpful, but I wonder what the common procedure is. My goal is to achieve as much speaking fluency as possible. So what should I do? Try to perfect my pronunciation? Do comprehension exercises, so I can have a head start when I'm there? My main concern is that I might waste 2 months on comprehension exercises when I could have done it in Beijing in only 2 weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4711 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 10 19 May 2012 at 1:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Comprehension is king. You can say small talk phrases but whats the point if you can not understand the answers?
1, Food/reading menus - possible without Chinese but Chinese will let you go to small local places and save A LOT of money. Some places have menus online you can study at home. Read recipies, living on instant noodles in not pleasant, I have lost so much weight :s 2, Directions and locators of course! 3, Anything along the lines of haggling - As a foreigner many places will try to over charge you significantly. 4, Small talk - I have a lonely existence with no friends and no one to talk to. Maximum fluecny will probably come from small talk as there is more variation, but food is a popular topic here. Beijing and other places in China are currently in the midst of one of its periodic anti foreigner purges. Things relavent to your visa and polite words to cops would be very usefull should you go home one day to find the authroites sitting in your abode. This is a hotline Chinese people can ring to report foreigners and get cash rewards. I have seen other foreigners set up by various people because of this. So be carefull. Talk to some English teachers, they do not have the protection of some corporate bloat hole that those on the ex-pat package have so they usually have a better ear to the ground on how the tide is flowing, since it is in thier interests to do so. sure you do not get stuck in that hole. Edited by eggcluck on 19 May 2012 at 1:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4869 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 3 of 10 19 May 2012 at 9:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally, I would recommend to contact with some Chinese couchsurfers in Beijing. In 95% couchsurfers are people who definitely understand linguistic passions and are very eager to help.
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| Tropi Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 5441 days ago 67 posts - 87 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 10 23 May 2012 at 12:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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@eggcluck: Thanks for all the tips. The topics you mentioned will definitely be very helpful. As to the hotline: What could I get reported for?
@prz: I'll try. I've been registered to Couch Surfing for a few years but never really used it. Maybe it's time now. :) And I've also already got in contact with some students doing German Studies in Beijing via another site (livemocha). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tangerine Newbie England Joined 5221 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 10 23 May 2012 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Tropi,
I live in Beijing and I have seen many a student who has studied abroad come and go. Two things that are strikingly common are: 1. Most students who studied abroad need to work on their pronunciation. In chinese, if you haven't got the tone, you haven't got the word. Outside of class with a trained, experienced teacher (used to hearing foreigner-Chinese), many students get frustrated at their inability to be understood. I recommend you work on your tones and pronunciation, but most importantly be prepared to do some intensive work on these after you arrive, when you're in the language environment. 2. Many students' listening abilities aren't great. Taxi drivers, waiting staff, normal laobaixing have little or no concept of how difficult things are for a foreign learner and they will speak very, very fast. If you do not understand they may walk away. I strongly suggest you listen to some natural Chinese - go to www.youku.com and watch movies/TV shows/news/etc or listen to some authentic podcasts/radio broadcasts to get your ear in. Not to dampen your enthusiasm about coming to the middle kingdom, but i think you should think about these two things. Re: the hotline. I've never heard of it and sounds unlikely. There IS a lot of anti-foreigner sentiment at the mo (recent media sensations regarding a Brit who was found (allegedly) raping a CHinese girl, a Russian musician who cursed a woman on public transport...), but just keep your head down and you'll be fine. Enjoy! Edit: couple of typos Edited by tangerine on 27 May 2012 at 10:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tropi Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 5441 days ago 67 posts - 87 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 10 24 May 2012 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for your tips.
1. Pronunciation: I know that this is obviously a big deal, because even with the tones there are a lot of homonyms. Not to speak of 那 and 哪 or 买 and 卖 and the like. I practice this a lot, unfortunately without a native speaker who corrects my tones I don't feel like getting very far. I know how things should sound in my head, but I'm not really able to correctly hear or speak it fluently. 2. I do listen to some "real life" Chinese via radio. Usually I listen to CRI News (http://media.crinewsradio.cn/crinewsradio.wsx) or Beijing Story Radio (mms://alive.rbc.cn/am603). The thing with these is that I understand very little because of the vocabulary. I recognize just a few words and I'm not sure if this is very helpful at all. Okay, I get to know the "flow of the language" a little bit better, but I can't even hear new words because I am unable to hear the tones (that fast) to look it up. Maybe radio podcasts with transcription would be easier to start with. Do you have any recommendations? Oh, and don't worry my enthusiasm won't be dampened that easily. I just want to benefit as much as possible from these few months, so I want to prepare accordingly. And those foreign policies are obviously unfortunate, but I hope it doesn't affect my visa. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tangerine Newbie England Joined 5221 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 10 27 May 2012 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, radio is going to be tough, in any language. Think about German newsreaders, the speed at which they talk and the vocab they use... What you could do instead is to watch/listen to something a little more 'natural' like a soap opera. For this, i recommend 大女当嫁, a soap-opera-style TV series about an aging daughter who is under increasing pressure from her family to get married. It's probably more watched by women, but i'm a 30-something bloke and I liked it. Good for listening anyway, and the beauty of chinese soaps is that they always have subtitles so can have a quick scan to check words you didn't hear clearly. You can download episodes from www.youku.com i believe. If you wanted a more 'manly' thing to watch, try 带弹孔的勋章, set during the civil war, the communists (the goodies) are infiltrated by a nationalist (baddies) spy, and the hero is trying to root him out... A bit of a lame story, but also good to practice listening...
No worries about that; as a student of Beida they'll be keen to get you in. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tropi Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 5441 days ago 67 posts - 87 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 10 27 May 2012 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yea, I like the soap operas, but it's often very time consuming, because they are usually really long (> 1 hour). Another thing that bothers me that I usually have dual subtitles (English + Chinese).
So it's incredibly hard to focus on the scene, the audio + 2 subtitles all at once. Maybe I should disable English subtitles, but I'm afraid I can't follow the story. Well, I'll give it a try and figure it out... Thanks for the recommendations though, I'll take a look. And no, I don't have a problem if it's made for women. I think all the soaps I watched until now were love stories. Do you also have another recommendations on things to watch? I have watched a few soaps until now, but most of them where from Taiwan, which is bad mainly because of the "zh/z" thing and that it's harder for me to deciper the subtitles. Maybe there is something like Dora the Explorer in Chinese? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_the_explorer) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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