Problem with introductionary material

[hei ren]

Flipping through my old textbook I used for my chinese class, I noticed that the vocabulary was extremely dull and a lot of times quite useless too me. Maybe I'm over exaggerating this, but I'm sure that I couldn't use half of this stuff in a normal conversation. If I recall, there hasn't been a situation that allowed for me to ask someone else to pick up my pencil when I dropped it. After those two classes, we didn't even learn how to express basic human emotions. Come on, language is suppose to be dynamic and expressive!

Now, I know it's not fair to make this claim off of one textbook (I still really don't like Practical Chinese Reader), but I noticed this same problem when I was learning french. All the vocabulary seems random and not useful most of the time. Just my beef with introductionary material is all.

[HashiriKata]

Without offence, I think you're a bit spoilt. My attitude to language learning is: grab whatever material there is available to you and learn it with passion. With that, you will have a better chance to discover later that in spite of all the faults in the material and circumstances, you've made praise-worthy progress.

Concerning the "situations" you find in your text books, just regard them as "excuses" for introducing the vocabulary and structures, and not as situations you're definitely going meet after the lessons.

[OneEye]

Without offence, I think you're a bit spoilt. My attitude to language learning is: grab whatever material there is available to you and learn it with passion. With that, you will have a better chance to discover later that in spite of all the faults in the material and circumstances, you've made praise-worthy progress.

There's something to be said for that, but I think it is better to tackle good materials with passion. PCR may have worked just fine in its day, and by no means is it a bad course but there are certainly better approaches available now. Of course, it's better to use lesser courses passionately than to use the best courses half-heartedly, but assuming you've already got the determination, it makes more sense to find the good courses, even if it takes a bit of searching.

Plus, if the material is boring or irrelevant, it can quickly kill any excitement you had for learning. For instance, the FSI Standard Chinese course is a great method, but the material is very dry and much of it isn't useful. "I work at the military attache's office" (FSI) is not nearly as useful as "What time does the bank open?" (China Panorama). One keeps my attention because I can use it. The other is useful for learning a structure, but I have no use for that vocab, unless I one day find myself working at the military attache's office.

[Xiao Kui]

i think Chinese Made Easier's dialogues are pretty practical and useful in the mainland

[-葛亚辉-]

I don't know about Integrated Chinese I, but I've found Integrated Chinese II to be a great textbook, full of useful vocab....every time I watch a Chinese movie it feels like they wrote the script using the units of vocab I've studied. John Pasden of Sinosplice fame has also said that he found it to be really useful. I used it for second-year Chinese in college and I thought it was very well put-together. (I don't know about the grammar sections as much though, our teachers gave us their own supplementary texts for that)

[novemberfog]

ow, I know it's not fair to make this claim off of one textbook (I still really don't like Practical Chinese Reader), but I noticed this same problem when I was learning french. All the vocabulary seems random and not useful most of the time. Just my beef with introductionary material is all.

You're going to find this for almost all of the languages of the world. The majority of foreign language learning is often mandatory in schools and thus most of the textbooks target the 13 to 22 year-old student market. Foreign language textbooks also have to be designed such that the language can be used while at the same time forming good grammar habits. Boards of people with doctorates in education or years of teaching get together and decide on standards and methods for measuring progress, and their focus is entirely on traditional students. It is annoying to me that the majority of texts are written for students, but we must also remember that the book publishers want to make the most money and that markest is not the self-taught linguist or the adult learner; it is the traditioinal classroom student.

My advice would be to just grind though the beginner texts until you have a decent character base down and a solid feeling for grammar. In fact I recommend trying out different texts and not simply following a series. Jump around, find some books that work for you. Everyone learns differently from one another, and for me I don't really make progress until I feel really comfortable with grammar. So I worked my way through a beginner book, and then I sat down and worked on grammar with grammar-only books for some time. Now, I am back to going through readers, but specialized readers. I am interested in traditional folk tales and stories, and while in Taiwan on vacation I picked up some readers all about folk tales and it is always a pleasure to work through. When I finish those I found a nice reader focusing on social and economic issues in Taiwan, and I am looking forward to it for learning moden vocabulary.

So I guess you have to discover your learning style as well as your learning goals. Is this your first foreign language? I studied Latin in secondary school and then Japanese in the university, so with that experience I was able to direct my Chinese learning at a much faster pace and with more efficiency. I had to have that experience of learning a first foreign language though to really figure out my strengths, weaknesses and my own learning process. What about your goals? Do you hope to study abroad? Do you want to work in a Chinese speaking environment? Do you just want to learn culture and appreciate the language? Is it for communicating with in-laws or family?