Steve Kaufmann - How good is he?

[roddy]

Moved the nascent Chinesepod discussion to here.

[flameproof]

Beyond this advice I would be getting into explaining how The Linguist system works which may be an abuse of this forum.

Absolutely! Such commercial activities are not welcome. (entered later: just joking, actually I Iike to see more - and I know where to find it)

However, I am not associated with Steve or "The Linguist" and I had a look and bought the ebook "The Linguist - A Guide to Language Learning". For $8.95 you can D/L the book in PDF format.

As expected it's very motivational and gives beside Steve's personal experiences a good direction how he thinks language should be learned. I will certainly add his suggestion to what I now do anyway.

[Shadowdh]

After reading that ebook the 12 rules of learning Chinese (or whatever it was called) I have to say that to read books on HOW to learn a language seem to be largely a waste of time... they are ok for motivation and sometimes for pointers... but I wonder if the time reading motivational type books might be better spent learning the language... hmmm?

[L-F-J]

well then, the question is changed to how you are going to learn the language. if you're doing self-study you pretty much have to pick which ever way is best for you. and most times thats bouncing from one method to another or not even picking a method and just trying to pick things up. or if you choose one method it may seem to work but is actually comparatively slow, but you wouldnt know the difference.

so the time you could spend learning how to learn languages effectively is spent ineffectively studying a language. i think that time spent would be more useful learning about language learning from those who have been there and done that. at least it gives you ideas about where to start, what to do and what not to do.

i think its extremely obvious that increasing your vocabulary is the number one biggest thing you need to do. because once you have an understanding of sentence structure in chinese you can pretty much say anything you want as long as you have the vocab for it. even if you knew every word but had no idea about grammar you'd still probably understand it just from knowing what the words mean.

what steve does is explains the most effective and fun way, that he found, to increase your vocabulary in any language. you can do whatever else you want to but in the end you need a strong vocab or you wont understand much or be able to speak it.

[flameproof]

what steve does is explains the most effective and fun way,

What Steve also explains is ways that DON'T work for him. Like formal language learning in school, grammar, interactive CDs.

It's sort of an eye opener. That somebody learns a language does not automatically imply that it's efficient. That's i.e. why I would not study Mandarin at any University in China, I think their methods are outdated.

....largely a waste of time... they are ok for motivation and sometimes for pointers...

But I don't spend 100% of my time learning. I do and read other things too. And it was refreshing to read Steve's story. After all, you can read the book in one day.

[roddy]

Beyond this advice I would be getting into explaining how The Linguist system works which may be an abuse of this forum.

Absolutely! Such commercial activities are not welcome.

Er, says who?

Steve, I'm not sure who you are and what you do but if you have a commercial product useful for language learning and it's relevant to the discussion and of potential value to users here, then an explanation is probably welcome. Unless you sell viagra, in which case . . .

[flameproof]

Er, says who?

I wasn't really serious. His book is really good reading (I planed already to buy it a few weeks ago, seeing him here was only the final push).

I actually fully agree, there are plenty of very good commercial products out there. After all Chinesepod.com, and whatever book you buy are commercial items too.

Little side note: Looking at http://www.thelinguist.com it looks as the commercial direction of the site is only aimed at people that want to learn English.

From: http://www.thelinguist.com/front/support/faq.jsp#faq10

10. Do you offer other languages besides English?

We would like to offer other languages but at the present time we only offer English. We hope to be able to offer other languages in late 2006.

Late 2006 is over, so Steve, any plans for Mandarin?

[SteveK]

We are very close to having a multilanguage version. I am Beta testing for Russian, and others for German right now. Asian languages are a few weeks away. I will certainly let you know when we are ready. We may even be looking for some Beta testers.

We will also be looking for native speakers of Chinese and other languages to provide natural conversations or other content in their languages which we can incorporate in our system. They will get credit for this towards learning other languages.

Rather than say too much about the system I will wait until I have a Beta version to put into your hands. We will also eventually do Cantonese, and if there is demand, Shanghainese. We do not need textbooks so we are not constrained. We just need the language, spoken and written, on a wide variety of subjects of potential interest to learners.

[L-F-J]

i, for one, will be on there for learning mandarin and cantonese! probably most mandarin learners on this website would be up for trying this system. cant wait for it.

[flameproof]

I find it interesting that Steve doesn't want to speak until he is fluent. On this page http://effortlessacquisition.blogspot.com I found this:

I still do not speak Russian with anyone and have no real desire to do so. I guess I would summarize my philosophy as follows; until I can read and listen to a novel, news programs and recorded conversations in Russian and enjoy doing so, I have no desire to speak with anyone. I might be extreme but I feel there is so much I can do on my own to improve in the language, I am not sure that stumbling around in a conversation at this stage in my learning would really help me. I think the same is true for English learning.

--Steve Kaufman of The Linguist (Learn English With The Linguist)

I don't really agree with him here. Depends probably where you are. If I would learn Russian I may agree, but with Mandarin, it would be difficult for me to avoid speaking since I am often over in China and I am forced to speak.

[L-F-J]

well, its kind of true. i know a korean guy with an american wife and children who dont speak korean. so most of his life in america is spent speaking english except with the occasional korean visit. but he never studies english. he's been living here for nearly 30 years and his english is terrible. its very difficult to understand him. although he understands everything. he cant talk hardly at all.

now along side my best friend learning chinese. he spent time learning characters because he liked them and then learned phrases and words and spoke to people in chinese a lot. i never spoke to anyone. mostly because i was shy. but i also spent a lot of time studying the language, listening, and reading. over the course of years i've found that i am much more able to understand people when they speak to us and am more able to speak back to them with somewhat non-beginner chinese anymore. while this guy still says the same things all the time and has poor grammar. because he doesnt study or listen. he just speaks to people....

i agree, you cant really learn that way mainly because half the dialogue is non-native response and accent from yourself. you never hear a fully native dialogue. so what can you learn?

p.s. i'm still waiting for that chinese version of the linguist system. where is steve anyway?

[L-F-J]

i guess he lied...

[flameproof]

Steves blog is still active and his new website (lingq or so) has a soft opening too.

[L-F-J]

do you know if when lingq launches it will provide a mandarin version?

[koreth]

In theory I like the "read and listen a lot" technique. In practice it's not so easy to do, especially on the reading side. I've had a difficult time finding interesting reading materials that are mostly comprehensible. By "mostly comprehensible" I mean that it's possible to read them and get the gist of what they mean, even if there are some new words or unfamiliar sentence patterns. Challenging enough to learn something, but not so challenging that I'll toss them away in frustration.

Textbooks are good on the "comprehensible" side but often not so great on the "interesting" side, especially for those of us who aren't full-time college students interested in discussions of life in dormitories. Newspapers -- at least, all the ones I've found in my area so far -- are much more interesting, but most of the time I can't get through a paragraph without consulting a dictionary ten times, pushing the frustration level high enough that I rarely make it to the end of anything but a short article. (My vocabulary is low intermediate level; I know about 1600 characters.)

And of course Chinese has the "I've heard this word spoken and know what it means, but have no clue how it's written" problem. If you pick up vocabulary in conversation, it'll still send you back to the dictionary the first time you encounter it in writing unless you happen to know the component characters from somewhere else. I think there's nothing to be done about that but memorize more characters, but it does IMO contribute in a big way to the difficulty of finding good intermediate-level reading material.

"The Lady in the Painting" by Fred Fang-yu Wang is an example of the kind of thing I'd love to see more of at various levels. It's a folk tale retold using only 300 basic characters (plus a very small number of others that are introduced with English definitions and pinyin along the way). There were still new words to learn when I read it, but to me at least, it's MUCH less frustrating to encounter a new word made up of characters I already know than to run into a completely unfamiliar glyph or two in every sentence. As far as I can tell, that book is nearly unique.

Children's books are kind of hit-and-miss; the very lowest level ones seem to be aimed at parents reading to their kids, so are nearly as full of unfamiliar characters as a newspaper article is. The bilingual series by 大山 is a good example. Even now, when my study materials are second- and third-year college texts, I still can't fully read most pages of those books. And of course as an adult learner, they are not so high on the "interesting" scale anyway.

What do Chinese kids read when they're older than toddlers but younger than teenagers? What are the Chinese equivalents of series like, say, Nancy Drew or the Secret Seven?

My girlfriend tells me that when she was growing up in Taiwan, she used to read a kids' edition of her local newspaper that had regular news stories written using much simpler vocabulary than the normal newspaper. Neither she nor I have ever seen such a newspaper in any of the Chinese bookstores or supermarkets we've visited in northern California, though; apparently they just don't get imported for whatever reason.

Steve or anyone else, what did you do about finding good reading materials when you were still coming up to speed?

[flameproof]

do you know if when lingq launches it will provide a mandarin version?

No. But it looks like "other" languages (French, plus a few more) start soon, or have already a soft opening. Steve said Chinese will "come some time later". I wouldn't be surprised if it's 2008....

In theory I like the "read and listen a lot" technique. In practice it's not so easy to do, especially on the reading side. I've had a difficult time finding interesting reading materials that are mostly comprehensible.

I think there is very, very little adult reading material with limited number of different characters. I gave up looking. I think you really have to start with primary children books.

I did suggest "Jiandan de Nanti", for Chinese it will be very easy, for beginners it's quite a struggle. And struggle ain't good as it can lead easily to frustration.

[gato]

What do Chinese kids read when they're older than toddlers but younger than teenagers? What are the Chinese equivalents of series like, say, Nancy Drew or the Secret Seven?

My girlfriend tells me that when she was growing up in Taiwan, she used to read a kids' edition of her local newspaper that had regular news stories written using much simpler vocabulary than the normal newspaper.

There used to be a few newspapers and magazines published in China designed for elementary school kids. I'm not sure if they still exist. There are comic books and novels written to young people, too, just like in other countries. You can browse through them on dangdang.com: http://www.dangdang.com/book/index_main541_children_11-14.shtml

As I wrote in an earlier thread:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=71552&highlight=elementary#post71552

Mainland children are typically required to recognize 1600-1800 characters and write 800-1000 by the end of second grade, recognize 2500 characters and write 2000 by the end of fourth.

Many second graders who are native Chinese speakers already have a fairly large spoken vocabulary, that is, they already know lots of words. Once they learn 1800 characters, they'll be able to recognize most words in a lower-level newspaper article.

[wrbt]

Koreth -

I think if you look at textbooks that are targeted towards 3rd year college + you can find the window of "mostly comprehensible" yet somewhat interesting that you seek. In my (granted limited) experience books published outside of China around that level often have far more interesting topics than the standard dorm life type topics covered in the more elementary ones... overpopulation, pollution, abortion, divorce, abandonment of the elderly, inconsiderate bastards, swindlers, and so forth.

Try looking at Cheng & Tsui website, some stuff off the top of my head that fits =

Shifting Tides

Beyond The Basics

Across the Straits

At the very least those intermediate textbooks will have lots of dialogues with vocabulary lists and listening materials with native speakers to practice, and they don't tow the boring line on topics.

[wrbt]

I've uploaded a brief excerpt on Housing Reform in China from "Shifting Tides" as an example. The book has audio CDs included, clear grammar points, and focuses mainly on current events and news instead of dorm life type stuff of many college texts.

35 Track 35.wma

[koreth]

That sounds like a good one to get. I have one book like that already, though as far as I know it has no audio companion: "A New Text For a Modern China" (the one from 北京大学; there are two books with that title.) It covers some of the same topics, which is nice since presumably there'll be a lot of vocabulary overlap. Thanks!