how long do you have to stay in china to make it stick?

[jujubeans119]

my friend is finishing his first year at uni and may have to return to his home country after this semester ends. he is number one in his class in terms of tingli and spoken mandarin, although he admits his weakness is writing and characters. he is definitely more fluent than me and is 3 levels higher.

anyways, i was struck by what his mandarin teacher told him when he said he'll be going back to his country. the teacher said that one year in china is not enough to make the language stick or reach a level that you wont forget it even when you live in another place that has no mandarin speakers. the teacher said he will need to stay in china at least 3 years so that he won't forget the language.

is that true? and what do you when you go back to your home countries? how do you maintain your putonghua?

[Xiao Kui]

It really depends on the intensity of your year of study, your personal study habits, and your determination. I think it is probably true for the majority of foreigners who stay in China just 1-2 years - they retain very little and don't keep it up when they go back, but there are definitely exceptions, and it's possible to actually improve your Chinese outside of China, instead of merely retaining it.

What you can do in your home country:

-listen to Chinese podcasts and audiobooks online

-make friends with Chinese international students at a local university or workers in a Chinese restaurant

- take Chinese classes with a tutor or do a language exchange using Skype if there aren't any real live Chinese in your area, but I've lived in some pretty obscure places, even they had a few Chinese living there.

just a few options, there are many more!

But it will take effort on your part to keep up and improve your Chinese once you leave China - I live in China and it takes an effort here as well.

[flameproof]

Language does not "stick". Nor does is fade into you when you are in the country.

In the country you need to learn it, outside you should keep some chinese activity wherever you are. That could be youtube videos, books or whatever.

>his weakness is writing and characters.

I find (hand)writing not very useful, but generally reading helps a lot to get a general good passive character knowledge base.

[Scoobyqueen]

As an adult once you have learnt a language fluently, you never lose the aural comprehension. You may forget how to speak but aural comprehension is not affected, ie you dont suddenly forget what a word means which you once were able to actively use at the fluent level. Therefore it is more important to practice the oral skills when you return.

This is not the case for languages learnt as a child. Both aural and comprehension skills can disppaear if not maintained. The last thing to go is aural comprehension. Some argue that it stays latently.

[renzhe]

In my experience, there is a point where you know a language. They say that this point is when you start dreaming in a language. Once you reach this level of fluency, you never forget the language, even if you drop it for 20 years. You do get rusty, but you get it back up within weeks or months. Your speaking and grammar suffer, but you can still understand it.

There are no hard and fast rules as to when you reach this, it has little to do with grammar or even vocabulary. I think that it happens once you have internalised all the basic building blocks, prepositions, grammatical particles, conjunctions, etc. plus a basic vocabulary of a couple of thousand words. The most important thing is the exposure to the spoken language for your brain to start understanding it natively, without translating these or recalling them from memory.

I first learned Spanish as a kid, got to the point where I did have a dream in it a couple of times, then I stopped because I moved. Many years later, I did two more semesters with minimal effort on my side. Even though my vocabulary was very limited and having forgot much of the advanced grammar, I could watch movies and read newspapers without great problems. If I had stopped learning Spanish a bit earlier, like I did with some other languages, I would have forgotten it completely.

I think that the 3 years timeframe is a rule of thumb. It depends on the person and their level of exposure to Chinese. A person who goes out of their way to talk with random people every day will internalise a language far quicker than someone who only does it in class.

[hunxueer]

wait, i heard there is no language in dreams. that's why sometimes you can be fluent in a language you've never studied ... in your dreams, heh.

[fireball9261]

One time, I was fluent in Japanese in my dream. I actually could understand every words in a Japanese TV news program!!! I think that was due to the fact that I have watched enough Japanese movies and Animations.