Learning reading and writing at the same time as speaking

[jesswill]

Hello,

I need some advice. I am a complete beginner in Chinese (only one term of part-time study) and I am finding it difficult to find a teacher that will teach spoken and written Chinese at the same time. The two I have had so far have insisted I needed to speak before I read anything. I've found that it is pretty common here (I have some friends who can speak decent basic Chinese but can't read one character) for private schools to insist that only spoken Mandarin be learnt. I there a logic to this policy?

To be honest I'm more interested by reading and writing than I am speaking but is it possible/ reasonable to learn both at the same time?

Thanks

Jess

[JimmySeal]

Learning the Chinese writing system is a sizable undertaking. Some people spend years learning it and still can't use it to any useful extent. On the other hand, you can learn to speak without learning any characters, and that's probably what your teachers are thinking. You can learn reading, writing and speaking at the same time, but you'd be juggling a lot more balls in the air at the same time.

[Shadowdh]

Hi there,

I think its perfectly reasonable to learn both at the same time, in fact at my uni they teach speaking reading writing and listening together... when I did the short course last year at BLCU they taught reading and speaking with listening but not so much of the writing as we were expected to practice that on our own I guess... I think that learning all the aspects of the language give a better understanding and makes it easier to learn.. but I am interested in why you want to learn reading and writing over speaking..

[roddy]

Entirely reasonable. I suspect that the schools and teachers concerned are just used to students who aren't interested in learning characters and have therefore got used to teaching only speaking. There are a number of comprehensive textbooks which will teach all skills in parallel.

[jesswill]

Thanks for that!

In reply to Shadowdh I don't really know why I want to read/write more than speak, in part I think it's because I hope to work in China in the future. Also it seems to me that the speaking comes eventually by listening and speaking to people etc. The writing takes time and work. To be honest I'm also fascinated by it, I just love looking around and recognizing characters I just feel I want to know what it says.

[ben_gb]

Hm...I'm not sure that learning to speak is quite as easy as just "listening and speaking to people", certainly not if you want to pick it up reasonably quickly.

For me, learning some speaking/listening skills first, has made it easier to learn to read the characters later. Also, once you have a reasonable grounding in the structure of the language, you can really teach yourself to read the characters. It's really just a big memory exercise, which I'm not sure you actually need a teacher for.

Of course when you become more advanced, you will probably need a teacher to help your writing style.

Regards,

Ben

[simonlaing]

You have to learn the reading and writing at the same time as speaking. If not you will waste time later relearning the words.

In addition no one in China uses the pinyin text to write to people. Chinese all use characters. When you do learn characters be sure to learn the radicals that make up the characters and learn characters as composites of radicals not strokes. Radial are like the letters of Chinese, without them a q becomes half circle , vertical line, slash line.

Don't let anyone say you can't learn chinese it is definitely doable.

have fun,

SimoN:)

[wushijiao]

To be honest I'm also fascinated by it, I just love looking around and recognizing characters I just feel I want to know what it says.

I think that if that is the case for you, you might as well learn to read (and less importantly, write) at the same time. You might as well base your studies on what you like to do. Good luck!

[OneEye]

Check my blog (in my signature) for how I approach this. I watch an episode of the video series I'm using for learning Mandarin to develop listening skills, then I put all the characters into a flashcard program and drill them while practicing speaking in the car by chorusing with short clips of dialog. I've explaned this in detail in my blog.

[xianu]

From a teaching standpoint, this is a bit of a debate. US classes generally teach all at the same time, though some people beleive you should learn to read, speak, listen before even introducing characters (as writing practice). The idea is that you learn the basics of the language and the structure first, learn to recognize the characters, and thereby, because you are not spending time memorizing how to write the characters, you can internalize the langauge faster. Reading, as an imput mode, is much easier than the output (writing). When you begin writing, a lot of the basic structure is already in place, and so writing is a little more "natural" (kids learn their mother langauge through Listening and Speaking first before they learn the written language). Therefore, you will be able to learn to write much faster (plus you have more to say at first). Being in China, the major benefit is the fact that you are surrounded by the language, and can really improve listening and speaking quickly. You can always work on your writing on your own by keeping journals (begin by introducing yourself, use your new listening/speaking vocab to talk about yourself, likes, dislikes, etc.) Then, ask your tutors to look them over. Having writing "homework" makes the teacher spend more time outside of class, or usuing up your tutorial time, and generally demands more work of the tutor/teacher, so it is understandable why they wouldn't want to teach it. However, since you are at the very beginning level, writing just a couple sentences, mimicing your spoken level is probably plenty of writing practice, as is, of course, learning to write and memorize how to write the characters. You can do it all on your own, but DO　NOT forget to follow stroke order! It'll make a difference and make sense once you get to using dictionaries, etc.

[yan420honggg]

Your teachers' advice may be reasonable.Learning to write and read is difficult for beginners.It is a right way to neglect character at the beginning of learning Chinese.They make people think Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world after all.But,as you say,they are charming.You teachers seem not to intend to teach you that(it's wrong),if they really interest you,you can master them by yourself after you can speak.This work can start when you have a general impression on Chinese(the way to express,the structure of sentences) .In the further studying,it possible to learn to read and speak at the same time if that is what you mean.

[xianu]

yan420honggg: I am not saying that I agree that characters shouldn't be taught from the start. I teach characters from the start. One of my reasons, besides the fact that people want to learn them, is that I think it makes reading come easier when learning characters at the start. Plus, it gets students in the habit of recognizing the same and very similar components in a character (and distinguishing them) for later. I was just giving the point of view of some teachers. Also, while you can learn characters on your own, I find that, even with a very clear and detailed character workbook (that shows stroke order, how to make the strokes, and where to begin the strokes), students often don't do it correctly - or if they start by following the character book, several weeks later, the characters are written incorrectly again, based on how they remember the character looks. While drawing characters may be an easy task when you are copying it, memorizing how they are written (aside from just the chabuduo shape) is difficult. In teaching characters, introducing radicals as complete units within the character or on their own, with their meanings, and hopefully, if it is clear, with the evolution of the character from oracle bone (or other early form) to modern shapes helps students understand the character as an entity unto itself. I think writing characters can be learned on your own, though a critical and HONEST eye (many CHinese teachers are not honest with their students about how crappy their characters are formed) is often not only useful, but essential to correct forming of the characters.

[yan420honggg]

No,xianu,you mistook me.I am in favour of not teaching character at the beginning.Even for a Chinese student who begins to learn character,remembering and writing them is not easy task.All the basic characters are taught during the primary school time ( 6 years,though the last year few are learned). Chinese students are surrounded by characters ,but the way by which they manage to get familiar with characters is still to write each for many times.How can a foreigner do it?

Chinese is hard to learn for

1.Sisheng.

2.Character.

The former is less difficult.The grammar part is even easier than most languages.So studying can go like this:

learn Pinyin---learn to pronounce---learn to express(and basic grammar)---learn to recognize characters---learn to write.

The key is the last two steps.First,one should can recognize characters,but write skill is not required at this phase.Students need just to identify characters,knowing how to read or what's its meaning when coming across it.As to writing part,it's the advancest.It should be taught at last----almost only teach how to write at that time.Practising frequenlly is a good idea.Yes,knowing something about components is essential,yet it still belong to wrting part.The first steps would not take a long time.The basic thing has been done ,character studying begins.In the writing part,how crappy charaters written by students formed is not the most important thing to be concerned unless it is uncorrect.Let sudents get familiar with components by themselves when they are writing.If they have difficulty to know the forming ,ask them to write HUGE charcters.It's may be helpful.Then they can learn more ways of expressing by reading a lot (it's important).Learning reading and writing at the same time may hard and unefficient.But learning to read and speak or something else is OK.

[xianu]

yan420zhonggg: I don't mistake your meaning. I just disagree that it is not efficient. I think you also underestimate the ability of foreigners to learn CHinese. You obviously learned english. Did you do so without learning to read and write? And there is more to writing Chinese than just writing characters. There is grammar, there is proper formal Chinese language that is not learned while speaking (who says "yushi" or "erhou" when you can say it in simpler, more "kouyu" terms?) Do you feel that writing English or another foreign language is just as simple as speaking it? Does spelling make a difference in speaking the same way it does when writing? Can you write (properly) in incomplete sentences as you can when speaking? Is pronunciation an issue when writing? In speaking Chinese you can use de de and de without worrying about which de it is. When you speak in English you can say to, two and too without worrying about how to spell it. Everyone has different learning styles. Some have stronger visual memory and recall than aural/oral. Some are the opposite. I have run across many students whose writing is good - and I don't mean just characters. I mean that their linguistic command is much stronger in written CHinese than in spoken. Different parts of a person's brain is triggered by different modes of communication, and all helps to reinforce a more holistic understanding and, more importantly, commmand of the language. People also have different aims in learning a language - some just want to communicate orally enough to spare from getting lost in a country. Others want to gain proficiency in Chinese to read classical texts - which I know anyone who has studied, can vouch that classical is different from modern Chinese. Reading doesn't require speaking and pronunciation. You are correct in asserting that spoken language is diffficult for English speaking students of Chinese, but most students tend to have less trouble learning characters than tones.

[simonlaing]

Yan Zhong,

I would like to agree with Xiannu, I followed the only learning to speak and listen with writing pinyin when I first got to China, But I could reach a high level and forgot many things because I didn't have a real way to write. I could read a few hundred characters , but was consistently stumped.

After learning radicals and practicing using radicals to write out Characters my Chinese improved much faster.

In english we have latin roots that we can use guess at word's meanings even if we haven't seen the words before. When I learned Radicals it allowed me not only to learn how to write characters more easily but to be able to guess at the meaning of some new words.

It is much more time consuming to go back and learn how to write the words after you have learned them as pinyin. I fully recommend learning to read and write at the same time and using character radicals to learn how to write characters.

Good luck

[JimmySeal]

@xianu

I believe that English, even with all of its strange spelling conventions, is leaps and bounds easier to read and write than Chinese. And I don't think anyone here is suggesting that someone never learn reading and writing ever. Any student who sticks with their studies long enough will eventually learn the formal written Chinese and grammar, but that's not to say that they have to learn it from the beginning.

For my first several years of studying Japanese, I was considered relatively talented with kanji, but still I struggled a lot. Then two years ago (after 7 years of studying) I tried a non-conventional method to learn all 1945 general-use characters from the beginning. I learned all of the kanji in English, with the help of mnemonics as outlined in James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, Volume1. Only once I had learned them all did I resume learning how to read them in Japanese.

In my short time studying Chinese, I've reached the conclusion that hanzi are easier to learn than kanji (because they have fewer pronunciations), but I still think that this method can help learners of Chinese. And because trying to simultaneously learn the characters through other methods is detrimental to the process, it's the perfect thing to combine with all-pinyin lessons.

The adaptation of the book for Chinese, Remembering the Hanzi, is set to be released later this year. I encourage early learners to look out for it.

[leosmith]

This is a very interesting thread. I also used the Heisig method to learn Japanese kanji, and this knowledge allowed me to learn to read. But I used it in my first year. I'm still learning to read Japanese, mainly because I don't know enough vocabulary yet.

Now I'm learning Mandarin, but I'm starting with pinyin only. I'll wait until I become proficient at Japanese reading before I worry about Mandarin characters. The main thing is I want to reach the highest proficiency in the spoken language as possible before my trip to China this August.

I think either way will work - learn characters in the beginning or wait until you are proficient in the spoken language. There are plusses and minuses for both techniques. To decide which is better for a specific learner, the details of their situation must be known. In other words, I don't believe it can be said that one method is always better than the other. But that's just my opinion.

[DrZero]

I agree, Leo. I sometimes get an inferiority complex because I concentrate only on speaking and pinyin while most everyone else here studies characters. But speaking and listening are really the only areas I am concerned about right now. I'm like you, I try to get better before each trip I take to China. Being able to read would make my trips better in terms of menus and signs and so forth, but the return on investment for time spent wouldn't make it worth it yet.