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Less Painful and More Effective Chinese | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5485 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 9 of 21 23 March 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What if reading and writing the characters is the primary thing that motivates and inspires you to keep studying the language? Also, just an FYI: when I see more than a few words in a row that are in caps lock, I just skip past them without even reading. I can't help it, it's just the way my brain works. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Adamdm Groupie Australia Joined 5229 days ago 62 posts - 89 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Dari, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 10 of 21 24 March 2011 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Um - if you don't know the writing system, then you can't read it. The only things avilable to 'read' are transliterated things in language teaching books - not 'real' stuff at all. Also, you would probably have to read transliterated material OUT LOUD (pardon the caps :)) to get much learning benefit from it. Unless you have a phenomenal aural memory ability (which is now very rare), then I think it would be very difficult to progress much beyond the very basics of the spoken language, or to retain what yoou have learned, unless surrounded by it. Whit Chinese, a learner needs to get their head around the writing sooner or later. No question that this is a huge undertaking. Myself, I've chosen to attack the hard bit first - with the result that my ability in the spoken language is very poor considering the number of years that I have been learning. However, my reading ability (of 'real' material) is is starting to get useful, and my overall learning curve is definitely picking up. As for hand-writing, I am definitely an advocate of the benefits of practicing it, as an aid to learning - just because you can get music from your ipod easily these days doesn't mean that you can learn to be a musician from it. Edited by Adamdm on 24 March 2011 at 1:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 4801 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 11 of 21 24 March 2011 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is a good thing that you are not put off by the complexity of characters, but have a positive attitude and interest towards them. One should enjoy the process of learning a language. "IF YOU ARE SATIFIED WITH YOUR OWN PARTICULAR LEARNING METHOD AND IT MOTIVATES YOU TO KEEP ON STUDYING, THEN IT IS A GOOD METHOD FOR YOU...." (mess 8)
Some misunderstandings. What I mean by READING is recognizing Chinese character SYMBOLS and understanding their meanings and pronunciations, mainly digesting non-transliterated materials at intermediate level.
"...concentrate MORE ON READING than ON WRITING....(mess 8)" denotes a relationship between Much and Less, not between Much and Zero. If you practice handwriting as an AID TO LEARNING, that is fine and appropriate. Edited by futurianus on 24 March 2011 at 1:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 4801 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 12 of 21 24 March 2011 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Due to the special nature of Chinese writing system which is different from most of other writing systems in the world, there are some considerations and clarifications I need to make. When we talk about READING and WRITING Chinese, there are SEVERAL DIMENSIONS which are not familiar to foreigners, the significance and nature of which are often not fully differentiated, defined and understood, but nevertheless a good understanding of these is crucial in efficiently overcoming the hurdles on the path towards mastery of Chinese language. READING: LEVEL 1) understand the meaning of characters LEVEL 2) understand the pronunciation of characters In most of other languages, the meaning of a word is inseparably linked to how it sounds. If there is no sound, a word does not exist in speech and writing, and therefore there cannot be any meaning to a word that does not exist. Thus meaning is subsumed under sound. A sound merged with meaning becomes a 'word'. In Chinese, however, meaning is separated from sound via the construct of symbols, a middle agent between meaning and sound. Meaning is inseparably subsumed under the symbols, while sound is subsumed under the symbols for about 30%. What it means is that while there is only one set of meanings, there can be several different sets of sounds attached to the symbols. This in turn means that one can learn a system of symbols and their meanings, somewhat independantly of sound systems. Thus there is a justification for an attempt to learn just the system of symbols and their meanings, that is, to acquire a reading ability at the level 1. In Chinese, reading in the sense of understanding the meaning can be separated from reading in the sense of understanding the pronunciation, while the latter subsumes the former. That is, you could understand a symbol, but not know how it sounds; however, if you know how a symbol sounds you will mostly likely also know its meaning. What I mean when I say one should 'READ and READ' is reading at the level 2, that is, recognizing the symbols and understanding both their meanings and correct pronunciations. The correct sound would be dependent upon the sound system of your target dialect or language(i.e., Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese, Japanese Kanji, Korean Hanja, etc.). Learning correct pronunciation is essential for developing listening and speaking skills in your target Sino-languages or Sino-influenced languages. Acquiring proficiency in reading at level 2 will take more effort than at level 1, an amount of efforts equivalent to learning several other languages based on phonetic writing system. WRITING: Unlike other writing systems, there is a great gap between an ability to read and an ability to write. In other writing systems based primarily on phonetics, one automatically acquires an ability to write when one masters basics of their alphabetic writing systems. With Chinse, one does not automatically acquire an ability to write when one acquires an ability to read Chinese characters. Except for a very few with special abilities, learning to write Chinese could even require many times(10-100) more effort than learning to read Chinese characters, all the more so if not approached wisely. This is the very reason why I do suggest that one should resist the pressing feeling of a need to master the writing skill at the beginning stage, even more so if one is struggling painstakingly with recognizing the meaning of characters, let alone the pronunciation of them. You can fiddle with writing throughout different stages of progress to get a feeling of the language, to strengthen your reading ability of some important key words, or to just have a fun, but do not be entangled by it. If you burn out after having exerted exhaustive effort just to learn to read Chinese characters, you would be pouring oil on yourself for quicker self-combustion by setting a goal for mastering writing Chinese characters at the same time. Concentrated effort to learn writing should be made after you have become proficient with reading first. At that stage, writing will come to you a lot easier as you would have become very familiar with several thousand characters, and have acquired an ability to intuitively recognize different radical units and learn to write in terms of combination of radical units rather than that of the strokes. If your goal, however, is more oriented towards reading and writing, you can do so. Many Koreans and Japanese of past and present have learned reading and writing of Chinese characters, studying Chinese classical texts, and/or their own texts in Hanja or Kanji, without ever developing an ability to listen and speak in Mandarin or Cantonese. Because there are multiple dimensions in Chinese unlike most of other language systems, learning each dimension itself constitutes an endeavor as difficult as mastering one or several whole language systems. Due to its multi-dimensional complexity, mastering a living Chinese language in all of its aspects requires one to take a careful and wise management of time and energy resources in their learning activities, having a concrete plan for avoiding burning out too soon and constantly tuning up one's learning approach and methodolgy. There is no painless or effortless way. That is why the title of this thread is 'Less Painful and More Effective Chinese'. Having said all these, if you are ENJOYING learning it, then you are most likely doing it right. If you REALLY WANT to learn it, you will find a way to learn it. They are many people who have become fluent in it, you will also become fluent if you do not give up. Edited by futurianus on 25 March 2011 at 6:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5842 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 13 of 21 24 March 2011 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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To sum up for everyone;
One way of thinking says that the reading, writing, and speaking/listening skills in Chinese are too separated to worry about stressing yourself out over all of them at once. So it is better to focus on the ones most important to you. Another way of thinking says that all the skills may seem separated at first, but become more related as you progress in Chinese, so it is better to just learn them all at once. Yet another says that "learning Chinese" yet having a gaping hole in reading, writing, or speaking is an injustice to yourself and to one of the worlds beautiful and important languages. Does that about cover it? edit:typo Edited by irrationale on 24 March 2011 at 10:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 4801 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 14 of 21 25 March 2011 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Not a necessity, but something that can improve your interaction with the people of your target language and optimize your proficiency in that language. This will be especially relevant in learning SPEAKING BY IMMERSION at intermediate or advanced level, where you converse much with the native speakers, though this also has much implications even at the beginning stage where you are practicing speaking alone by yourself. I expressed this 'something' or a technique in wordings which might shock, amaze or even amuze some readers, but there are very important and powerful principles involved. You may have been using your own similar techniques unconsciously, which are in accordance with those principles in varying degrees, when you tried to learn more about the people, culture and language of your interest, when you tried to mimic the sounds, accents, tones, rhythms, feelings, and velocity of the speeches of native speakers, and to imitate their facial expressions and body jestures which were made in coordination with their speeches. When you find yourself restraining a sudden urge to reply in your target language in response to your native language speakers, starting to have dreams in your target language, or suddenly finding yourself muttering or thinking in your target language, all of these are due to certain mechanisms inside your brain triggered into operation in accordance with these principles. Identifying yourself with the people of your target language is for forcefully PUTTING A BREAK on your primary language system inside your brain, so that it will not interfere with the linguistic(grammatic, semantic, vocal, cultural-motor) processing of a new language, and for stimulating new nerve cells to grow within your brain into forming a new language center which will INDEPENDENTLY PROCESS your target language. Otherwise you will always go through two step communication process, regardless of how many years you have studied and practiced the target language, that of interpreting your primary language into your target language, and vice versa. The invisible 'TRANSLATOR' in your brain, however, will bring in a lot of unnecessary cultural, vocal, and semantic elements of your primary language into the process of production of speech and thinking in your target language and block its optimal performance. Put it simply, the main idea is to develop an ability to THINK and SPEAK DIRECTLY in one's target language, without the intervening process of 'inner translation', and to transform that language as much as possible into one of your own primary languages. In other words, Chinese becomes one of your primary languages. This is where the principles of identification, sympathization and simulation come into play. To give you an example of this principle at work, it is what a good actor or actress would do in character playing--aiming at complete identification with and immersion into the character, so as to more effectively act and express out the character's little idiosyncracies and peculiarities in manners and speech. With this issue of identification and simulation, there are other important factors involved, whose discussion, however, would need another thread. Don't worry. You will neither become a Chinese nor lose yourself--no one's magical spell is that potent. Your 'self' will rather gain more depth, dimension and colour due to the process and, of course, your attempt at learning Chinese will be much more effective. Edit: spell check. Edited by futurianus on 26 March 2011 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5751 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 21 25 March 2011 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That I can agree with. There are other things that I can agree with as well though your posts, in this thread, read like commercials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 4801 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 16 of 21 26 March 2011 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thank you all for your comments. I found them reasonable and helpful. I have gotten rid of about 90% of Caps from my first post by retyping them in small letters. Jinx, you can now go back and read those parts you skipped.:) Edited by futurianus on 26 March 2011 at 1:13am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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