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Balancing Mandarin, French, and Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| StuHughes Diglot Newbie Wales Joined 6367 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian | Message 1 of 5 24 September 2008 at 3:42am | IP Logged |
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Hi Professor,
I have just moved to London to begin a Chinese degree (complete beginner) at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Assuming you are not familiar with this degree at SOAS, I have two 2-hour grammar lectures, a 1-hour grammar tutorial, 5 hours of tutorials, and 3 hours of language lab time - total time studing modern Putonghua: 13 hours/week The course in part uses the Colloquial Chinese material from Routledge, using both the pinyin text and the full character text. As far as I can see this is very thorough, progressively advancing through grammar and the acquisition of vocabulary; however, I hope you would inform me of any shortcomings in this method which might be compensated for by other methods? I would specifically like to know about the benefits of the course offered by Assimil, assuming they've not dumbed it down to sell in the 21st century market. If an older set is in order, do you know of any vendors in Central London who might stock or be able to obtain earlier generations of the course? I would like to make use of at least another seven hours a week to the study of Putonghua using Assimil to total twenty hours of language study. I hesitate to commit more time than this at present until I know the amount of work expected for other classes in my degree. So there you have my situation with regards to learning Putonghua. My other desire is to acquire fluency in French, and for this again I assume you would suggest one of the Assimil courses as a foundation. Which generation would be best, and again, do you know of any vendors of earlier generation material in London? Finally, I want to at least maintain the basic level of Spanish I acquired ab initio on the IB Diploma. As time is constrained, I wonder if 30 minutes a day would be adequate until I can return to its study more intensively after attaining some fluency in French? Same questions as above for Assimil. Thank you for your time - I eagerly await your response. Regards, Stuart Hughes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| StuHughes Diglot Newbie Wales Joined 6367 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian | Message 2 of 5 01 October 2008 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
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My "grammar lectures" at present seem to simply be a summary of the work done in tutorials and self-study. One lesson per week of T'ung and Pollard's text is studied per week - this amounts to as much as 40 characters to learn per week, as well as a small vocabulary using combinations of the characters learned. The one-hour lecture on Friday involves a test of all the week's characters. The Classical Chinese lecture at present requires various English-language texts to be read, as well as learning approximately 29 radicals per week. This naturally has some overlap with learning the characters - perhaps it would be wise for me to learn each radical alongside the characters in which it appears, perhaps also grouping them for study in this way? The history and culture lectures is not a class in language acquisition, so is merely mentioned as something to break the monotony of learning characters during self-study :D The tutorials consist of practising the dialogues and presentations in the Colloquial Chinese book, as well as various speaking and listening exercises offered by the teacher. At present the speaking and listening involves trying to correctly identify the tones, initials and finals spoken. Later it appears to become more advanced, along the same level fo difficulty as T'ung and Pollard's book. Finally, the language labs are similar to the tutorials, although I believe at some point some video may be used for study. Not trying to jump the queue here as I know many others have been waiting much longer for a response from the Professor - this is merely to include some extra detail about the requirements of my degree from week to week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7037 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 3 of 5 16 October 2008 at 4:56pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Hughes,
Thank you for your letter, whose title I have taken the liberty of changing slightly to make it more accurately descriptive. I am less qualified to give advice on Mandarin materials than I am on many other languages, but I will do my best to share what I do know. Since you inquire specifically about Assimil’s Chinese course, from the description of your coursework in your update, I do think the Assimil method might make a nice overall supplement, consisting as it does of short, lively, dialogs that will give you global reinforcement in your learning, as well as a positive and measurable sense that you are making progress outside the classroom. As far as I know, they have only produced one generation of it, so there is none to choose among. My only real caveat about this course concerns the recordings. There are frequent and random odd gaps, sometimes of up to 7 or 8 seconds, between sentences all the way to the end of the course, which you must close up before you can use it sanely. Do I take it you are just beginning French? If you are committed to Assimil and want advice about choosing between their 60’s, 80’s, and 00’s versions, then, in the first place, it obviously comes down to the availability of the earlier ones or it is all moot, and no, I am afraid I do not know of any outlets for them in London, although I am sure that you can find them if you hunt a bit. The 80’s version is probably best overall in terms of recordings and content, whereas the 60’s version is most interesting in terms of being a continuous narrative (though the tapes, if you can find them, will probably use an all too exaggerated theatrical intonation), while the 00’s version will be the slowest and dumbest, though it will contain the most contemporary language. All in all, if you like this style and method of learning, you would do well to get all three eventually, as they can contemplate each other nicely in terms of helping you digest the language. Everything I just wrote about Assimil’s French courses does apply equally well to their Spanish ones – but does it apply equally well to you, given that you already have a “basic” level in it? For maintaining any language, 30 minutes a day will indeed suffice (and how many are you going to give to French? You did not say…) Might you be ready for their more culturally interesting second volume of Using Spanish, or perhaps even for the more satisfying experience of delving into real material rather than textbooks? If not, then this would be a good way to go, but if so, then there is no point in holding yourself back just because you are in maintenance mode. I hope this answers your questions? Regards, Alexander Arguelles 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| StuHughes Diglot Newbie Wales Joined 6367 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian | Message 4 of 5 17 October 2008 at 4:24pm | IP Logged |
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Excellent answer Professor. I think Using Spanish would be a more appropriate path to take with continuing my study of Spanish - heaven knows why I didn't think of it earlier.
I believe I can allow a good hour a day for studying French, taking into account my other commitments. I was somewhat vague in my original post - I'm best described as an advanced beginner in French. From five years of sporadic high school study, followed by complete isolation from the language for the better part of three years, I'm left with little more than a few phrases and words floating around in my head, though my pronounciation and accent have always been very comfortable. With this in mind I feel I would be best served starting from scratch and going through the Assimil course, increasing pace wherever I feel it is appropriate to do so, would you agree? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| StuHughes Diglot Newbie Wales Joined 6367 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian | Message 5 of 5 04 November 2008 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
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Professor,
Having removed the gaps from lessons 1-12 of Chinese with Ease vol 1, I find myself with ten minutes of solid audio. I do not think it would be productive to make sections of audio any longer than this, would you agree? Stuart 1 person has voted this message useful |
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