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Fluent in Mandarin in 3 months? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5428 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 33 of 69 07 January 2012 at 1:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"I honestly think Benny wouldn't have received any criticism at all..."
Actually, I get criticism all the time no matter what I aim for. Because I wrote a digital book that I earn from, because I have a blog that I promote, because the title of said blog is ambitious, because the language I chose is "just" another European language, because my goals weren´t defined well enough, because they are defined too specifically for your liking, because my t-shirt says "cunning linguist" etc. Haters gonna hate. I will always receive criticism no matter what my mission, as long as it's anything more than what an average learner "should" aim for. The higher I push the bar, the more people will get annoyed. Too bad. Now, what you've said about me "mocking" C1. I've sat these examinations. Several times, in different languages. I've passed two, failed one, and spent months preparing for another that I couldn't sit in the end, each time with months of my life invested into them. Probably over a year in total of my life where most of my thoughts outside of work where on these exams. So frankly it's "mocking" the work I've already put in when certain people who only understand the work involved "on paper" say I don't know what I'm aiming for. I find such things terribly annoying. How many more exams do I have to sit before you accept that I understand the system quite intimately? I know what C1 is people. If you have personally gone through four different examination preparations (and that's ignoring teaching English specifically for the Cambridge version over several years) in four different languages among various levels in the system, then maybe you can argue this point with me. And if you have done such an exam, don't forget that I'm saying C1 ORAL. I got 96% in my Spanish C2 oral exam, and did really well in my German C2 oral exam. When I'm not distracted with writing well, and annoyingly complex grammar questions, I'll have even more focus for the spoken part. Give me a chance please. I'm not "claiming" anything. I'm aiming. A lot of people have written to me to say that if I attempt such things, then they can "at least" attempt a B1 in 3 months or something along those lines. I get many emails every day from people who are encouraged by my missions. Ambition is contagious, but unfortunately so is over-prudence. I've failed in some of mine, and I can confirm that the world did not end, but that I came out the other end with way more than what I started off with, and was proud every time. As has been said in this thread, low goals will yield low results. If I "only" get a B2 from aiming for a C1, that's better than getting a B1 from aiming for a B2. Work does expand or contract depending on the amount of time and devotion you give to it. Splog said I may discourage people with this mission. I have never ever gotten an email or comment on my blog from someone saying I´ve discouraged them from learning a language or from making progress in their own goals (although I've gotten plenty of negative comments in other lights), only comments on forums that I "might" discourage people. Conjecture conjecture. If someone can reply to this thread saying my current objective has made them cry themselves to sleep and they have lost all hope in language learning, then perhaps I will stand corrected. Any takers? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5754 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 34 of 69 07 January 2012 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Benny, I thought I was on your email list but the prior one before this weeks' came in Nov. Is there a different email sublist? Aside from that, I've been thinking about doing something similar in Taipei at the end of this year though for approximately 3-4 weeks. In my case I've been studying Mandarin for a while. Anyhow, I'm really interested in the details of what you're doing. Edited by Snowflake on 07 January 2012 at 2:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4925 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 35 of 69 07 January 2012 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Some of us have. We just don't shout it from the rooftops.
And that's great. Nobody is disputing that you can and do inspire people.
Who's saying your objective is making people cry themselves to sleep, much less lose all hope in learning a language? Bit of a straw man and totally unnecessary in the discussion. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 07 January 2012 at 2:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5428 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 36 of 69 07 January 2012 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"Some of us have. We just don't shout it from the rooftops."
Trust me, if after all that, I told you that you didn't have a clue what C1 meant, you'd be inclined to inform me of your experience ;) EDIT: @Snowflake Best to email me directly so I can check your status in the mailing list distributor. But don't worry, I'll include the majority of the email in the blog post, since I got a really good response from people enjoying the details. Edited by irishpolyglot on 07 January 2012 at 2:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4510 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 37 of 69 07 January 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Benny, have you met any Taiwanese yet? Any progress with the speaking?
Cheers and support from Brazil! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4925 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 38 of 69 07 January 2012 at 3:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Me personally? Probably not. My livelihood doesn't depend on those particular tests, though (though there are other metrics that determine my professional worth that I'm able to make known if needed). Any CEFR leveled exam I've taken has either been to gain entrance to further formal education or for personal reasons. For me it doesn't matter what other people think, and in fact, serves no purpose to anyone, other than for the previously stated reasons. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 07 January 2012 at 3:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5428 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 39 of 69 07 January 2012 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As I said, I'll detail the high points of my first days in a blog post, but here's a quick overview:
More details on all that on the blog. Even though I've been awake since 6PM yesterday (after 3 hours sleep), I'm going to try and stay awake until the evening (it's 11AM now) to force myself to synch with local time. Can't be social right now because of exhaustion, but I have some contacts and ideas to make friends once I have the energy. It's important that I get over jetlag quickly, but I had 4 days of sleep deprivation BEFORE the jetlag, so that's not so easy :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6345 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 40 of 69 07 January 2012 at 10:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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C1: Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognize implicit meaning. Can express him/herself fluently and
spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organizational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices. What I take from that and apply to Benny is: Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social purposes. It’s very vague, but imo, I didn’t reached this level in 3 months in any of my languages. But it’s nice to know I’m “conversationally C1” or better in 7 languages. The bar was lower than I thought. I doubt if he’ll be able to pull it off, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. Some questions: How much Mandarin did he know before starting, and why should we believe him? If he’s not going to be tested, how will we know what level he achieved? How many times will he edit his videos? Why doesn’t he have a neutral party interview him on skype or something? Here is what I think he needs to do to get as close as possible to his goals in his given time frame: First he needs to learn pinyin, or some other phonetic system, really well, and practice all the initials and finals. Until he can correctly produce all the initials, finals, tones and tone sandhi correctly, he will not be understood. If he tries to converse before doing this, he will fossilize poor pronunciation, which is much more sever for a tonal language. He shouldn’t make the same mistake with Mandarin that he did with Thai – he should learn good pronunciation early. This is crucial, but I think he will neglect it and fail as a result. I think he will neglect it based on the fact that his pronunciation in Thai, another tonal language, was absolutely terrible, but he claimed it was good and ignored all criticism. He has time to start Mandarin well, but I don’t think he will. He will need to do a lot of listening practice from the beginning. Graduated material is the best, but it’s good to throw in a little bit of native level every day even early on, increasing with time. True for every language, but getting used to the tones and homonyms makes it take longer than usual for many learners. Until he has a good handle on listening, he will not understand his partner. Regarding characters, I saw him mention Heisig. The first 500 characters in Heisig’s book aren’t the most frequent 500. And he will not be able to read most signs and menus with the 500 most frequent, or with Heisig’s first 500, anyway. If that is his main priority, I suggest he gets or invents a program devoted to those things, and study the specific characters. I think the mnemonic method popularized by Heisig is the best way to start, but he should know that it takes lots of additional work to get to the point where he is actually reading or writing. Vocabulary – I suggest he get it mainly from conversation. Grammar – a quick audio program would be the best. Unfortunately, I don’t know of one. Michel Thomas will get him to a certain stage quickly, but then he’ll probably have to work his way through a text to get the rest. I have other suggestions, but they are secret because I plan to write a blog about it and sell an audio book for profit. 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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