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Mandarin not improving, any suggestions? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| graemegraeme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4873 days ago 7 posts - 16 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 25 24 July 2011 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
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Hi,
I have only just joined this forum today but have been reading the odd post over the last few months. I have been learning Mandarin since January this year. Although I occasionally have a listen to chinesepod or read a few words in a dictionary, the only consistent method of learning I use is to listen to Pimsleur every day on my way to and from work. I know it's recommended that you speak out loud when using Pimsleur but I have developed a method of speaking in my head whilst moving my throat muscles and tongue into the correct position without moving my mouth (Sounds pretty weird I know, I think it helps me develop a kind of muscle memory without people wondering why I'm sitting talking or miming on the bus, maybe it actually looks more weird, I don't know). Anyway, I have been doing this for 6-7 months now and am more than halfway through Pimsleur 3. I feel like I retain quite a lot of what I hear but it's just not enough for how long I've been doing this. I'm at the point of considering giving up because I don't seem to be able to retain what I've learned from any source other than Pimsleur, which contains mostly ridiculous formal vocabulary that is only really relevant to sleazy 90's businessmen. I know chinesepod is very 'now' and informal but I seem to instantly forget it. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should do now? I don't learn characters by the way, only pinyin. Is there some text book that anyone can recommend? What I really want is to hear from someone who has successfully learned Mandarin to a conversational level. I believe there is a lot of people that probably give up after Pimsleur. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aquablue Senior Member United States Joined 6383 days ago 150 posts - 172 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 25 24 July 2011 at 8:57pm | IP Logged |
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Asamil is good, I use it. Colloquial Chinese (the book) is good too.
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| graemegraeme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4873 days ago 7 posts - 16 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 25 24 July 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged |
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Cheers, just ordered a second hand copy of colloquial Chinese.
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| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5023 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 25 25 July 2011 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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Have you looked at the language log of the user irationale? Use the search facility and click on fsi. It is called Mandarin journey.
That guy reached an advanced level of Mandarin in about two years, and he started out with Pimsleur. He also used fsi and New Practical Chinese Reader. Well worth a read for some inspiration and some ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5987 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 5 of 25 25 July 2011 at 6:17pm | IP Logged |
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The main difficulty with Chinese is that the vocabulary is totally disjoint from English. You have to learn every little tiny word from scratch, with no easily guessable words like you would have in European languages.
If you want to learn conversational Chinese without learning to read, then at some point you're going to have to find language partners to practice with. Without a real source for non-written vocab, you're going to run out of Pimsleur and have nowhere to go. On the other hand, there are some very efficient ways to learn lots of Chinese characters in a reasonably short amount of time. Some dedicated people report learning 2000 characters in 3 months. What this would do for you is give you access to a whole new world of vocabulary through books and the internet. There are a lot of great learning materials available in print format in Chinese, due to the efforts of the Chinese government to spread the language. I personally have 30+ books on my shelf for learning Chinese, that I've collected over the years - everything from total beginner to advanced. Without learning to read, you're really missing out on some valuable resources. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 25 25 July 2011 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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Also check out FSI and CLO. The DeFrancis material has been mentioned as being in pinyin. For conversation partners, check out LiveMocha and http://www.conversationexchange.com/.
I don't know how long your commute is, though think that you probably need to intensify things a bit. Mandarin is not known as a language that native English speakers can easily pick up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| KCor Groupie United States Joined 5009 days ago 50 posts - 72 votes | Message 7 of 25 26 July 2011 at 3:37pm | IP Logged |
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You can check this website out to see if it's of any use to you.
http://www.chineseclass101.com/ 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| graemegraeme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4873 days ago 7 posts - 16 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 25 26 July 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I have got FSI now and have had a look at
irationales log, looks like a lot of hard work. I think maybe one of the things that's causing me problems is a lack of structure and continuity, there is so many resources dotted about but Pimsleur is the only one I'm really consistent with. I will have a look at those links too. I have met up with a Chinese guy a couple of times but we end up talking in English most of the time as my vocabulary is so small. I think I'm maybe not quite at that stage. Im at lesson 20 of Pimsleur 3 now and I'm growing tired of the useless vocabulary and lack of new sentence structures. I think I might rush through the rest of it then try and do the whole FSI course. Thanks again. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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