anyone tried to recite something to improve oral mandarin

[FLYINGFEATHER2]

Hi,

I wonder is there anyone who tried to recite something to improve oral mandarin, like text book, etc. How is the result? I think it's a good methord although it is not easy.

thanks.

[Xiao Kui]

The good thing abt reciting is it can help improve your pronunciation and help memorize and internalize sentence patterns which are good to have on hand in spoken Chinese (that is unless of course you are memorizing old poems - no useful sentence patterns there)

The bad thing abt memorizing and reciting is it's BORING. There are enough boring textbooks out there - no need to memorize the dialogues inside and further bore yourself and others. I think 2 important keys when it comes to content for learning Chinese are 1, Variety 2. Study topics and learn Chinese vocab for topics that would hold your interest in any language.

[magores]

一个青蛙， 两张嘴

两个眼睛， 四条腿

Add 1 frog, and increase the numbers as appropriate., then add another, and another...

My co-worker has me say this all the time.

magores

[Pravit]

I live in the US and very rarely have a chance to practice my spoken Mandarin. As a result, almost all of my learning is passive: reading and listening. However, I've found that memorizing and reciting entire pages of text is a good "active learning" method: I've found all sorts of words, expressions, and constructions popping up in my speech from texts that I memorized. If you only read a text, you may encounter dozens of new words and expressions, but it is sufficient to understand them once and move on. However, memorizing, reciting, and writing down a text in a way forces you to learn those words and use those expressions in your speech. It's useful in learning to write all sorts of different characters - in my opinion, a quicker and more interesting way to learn to write a given character than writing it dozens of times on a practice sheet. But more importantly, it provides you with a basket of expressions and constructions to use in those times when you wonder "how to say this properly?"

Of course, it's pointless reciting something only once - like memorizing anything else, it's best to space it out in intervals as has been described in other places on this forum. I'm currently using this method with "骆驼祥子" and can still recall entire pages that I learned months ago.

[xianu]

As a student my teacher used to have us memorize and perform sections of our text in office hours. I found it really improved my pronunciation, specially when I memorized it with the audio, and like Pravit, when I finally got to China and was speaking to people, I found myself throwing out little phrases from the memorized texts. I think memorizing the texts with things like directional complements, and other sentence structure things was really good in helping me gain a feel for the language, and helped me speak without having to think about the phrases.

That said, because as a student I hated memorizing (though I understood and experienced the value of it), and because I wanted my students to have more communicative command of the language, I have never asked them to memorize dialogues, though I recommend it to them all the time as ways to study for both oral tests and the essay portion of the tests. It helps both written and spoken Chinese in that, as long as you know what you are saying, you have set phrases in your head. If you can remember a part of what needs to be said/written, the rest tends to come automatically, and you know what needs to be said/written without thinking. It is the automatic part of the language that I think is helpful.

However, somewhat hypocritically, but mostly I can't convince myself to be excited about hearing 20 people reciting the same lines over and over again, so I don't require it for my students.

[gato]

I have a poor memory when it comes to memorizing text verbatim, though I have a good memory for vocabulary. If I have to memorize verbatim, something that would take me ten minutes might take me two hours to memorize. I don't think that would be an efficient use of my learning time. For those who have better memories, it might be ok. I would still encourage people to read more challenging reading materials instead of memorizing, though.

[FLYINGFEATHER2]

Thank you very much for your opinions.

Sounds it is good way to try. Of course, it depends on person. Well, then what material to recite might be good. Is there any book just for mandarin learners to recite? If not, then what to recite maybe good.

What are the lessons when you try this way?

[ZLearner]

Hi

The other thing which helped me on my L's learning mandarin is a demo called Fluenz.

They help you remember the tones by testing yourself writing them out. You can easily test yourself this way and create your own Fluenz way of learning - that's what I'm doing!

Best ever software I've found on the web so far. But out of my budget right now - $299 i think.

I learnt to speak after 2 plays of the demo.

Also check out my reply to 'I don't understand tones'

Hope this helps u!

[villain]

I tried Fluenz too, loved the demo and i have copies of Pimsleur and Rosetta methods. Best software by far, my copy is on the way.

Specifically to this thread, there is a module on it for each lesson that has you recite/interact with a conversation that you can play back and compare with the native speaker.