suggestions for intermediate learner in need of specific language items?

[hunxueer]

hey all,

i'm reaching a point of frustration--i'm somewhere in the intermediate/upper intermediate level (not exactly sure as i've never sat for an exam but according to my two semesters of formal study and chinesepod that seems about right). i've been learning chinese more out of necessity/duty/on principle than any inherent love for mandarin as i've been living here the past 3.5 years. i'm at that point that i read affects a lot of people--you can get around easily, carry on conversations about general topics comfortably (though in unsophisticated vocabulary), etc. so my motivation to study has really dropped off. most of what i learned i'd say i learned on my own, with books, tutors, and other patient people as although i tried enrolling here it really wasn't suited to my learning style and i felt more frustrated, annoyed, and inept than productive when i went to class.

now i'm finding that i need some specific language, though, and i wondered if you guys have any helpful suggestions? i was thinking of making a list of words i need each week and then trying to memorize them. i tried it but it wasn't very effective for me. when i try to study out of books lately i also get frustrated and annoyed because it takes so much time and effort to figure out what it says and then you realize it's talking about the stupidest, most inane story about some dumbass foreign student in beijing. something i do like is reading news stories or discussion forums or whatever online, with the aid of pera-kun because there are invariably tons of characters i don't recognize but with the pop-up tool it's not the arduous process of looking them up separately. but i don't think i really retain any new vocab that way.

hmm, maybe i'm also needing to vent as i just had a rather unsuccessful attempt at interviewing a tea seller over the phone for an article i'm working on wherein he just sort of ended the conversation. it's disheartening as i'd been putting off making the call for a while as i was petrified of such a thing happening. finally i sucked it up and made the call, and my fears came true. ... my coworkers, who are polyglot european types--none of them are native english speakers but of course all our communication is done in english--just laugh at me, the monolingual american. argh!

[gato]

i was thinking of making a list of words i need each week and then trying to memorize them.

something i do like is reading news stories or discussion forums or whatever online, with the aid of pera-kun because there are invariably tons of characters i don't recognize but with the pop-up tool it's not the arduous process of looking them up separately. but i don't think i really retain any new vocab that way.

Have you tried writing down new words you learn from articles and reviewing them on a daily basis? Sounds simple, but it works.

[lilongyue]

Read the newspaper every day. Don't write down every word you don't know, but wait three or four days, and then write down the most often encountered words. There are some very useful words that will come up a few times in every day's newspaper. If you try to write down every character you don't know you'll be overwhelmed and not learn anything. But if you're learning those words and little phrases journalists like to use, they will be reinforced in your memory by reading them again and again, day after day in the newspaper.

Start reading books in Chinese, ideally books about a topic that interests you. I'm a Buddhist, so I started reading books about Buddhism in Chinese. Not easy, but rewarding. Actually, I started out looking for history books, but had a hard time finding one that wasn't written in some cryptic, scholarly manner. When I finally did find a book about the Tang dynasty that seemed about right (still not easy, mind you), it was part of a set. They wouldn't sell the books separately. Still hoping to find a history of the Tang dynasty suitable for my level.

I also started a part-time translation job, and even though there are a lot of words I forget as soon as I finish the article, some words stick. Recently I discovered that my reading ability shot way up, and that I can get through a lot of the newspaper without too much trouble, at least compared to before. It's rewarding, and helps me to keep going in my studies.

By the way, don't feel bad about have trouble speaking Chinese over the phone. Most people who have studied a foreign language know that talking on the phone in a foreign language is very difficult in the beginning. We're probably at about the same level, and I'm also an American, so I can relate to your experience. Most of us single language American's are at a disadvantage compared to Europeans in that we lack the experience of already having learned a foreign language. I think it does make a difference.

[gato]

i do like is reading news stories or discussion forums or whatever online, with the aid of pera-kun because there are invariably tons of characters i don't recognize but with the pop-up tool it's not the arduous process of looking them up separately.

Oh, Chinese pera-kun can save the words you look up in a text file. Go to Firefox's "Tools->Add-ons" menu and look at the "Options" menu for the Chinese pera-kun plugin.

[renzhe]

I also found that writing important words you encounter on TV, in books and in newspapers helps.

When learning German, I always had a few blank pieces of paper on the table when watching TV, after a few days, I had pages of important words.

They are much easier to remember if you actually write them down and read them a couple of times.

[roddy]

There are a number of traps with self-study. I've spent the last seven years crawling between them, I think. I hope at some point to go three or four months without finding another.

I'd query some of the things you are doing. For example, with making a list of words you need per week - you say these aren't sticking. But if you need them, you should have opportunity to use them - even if you need to engineer these opportunities somewhat - and if you are using language you need, in real life, it really should be sticking. What are you doing with these words? Is it just a case of writing them down and thinking 'right, must remember those', or are you actually making a point of using them - even if it slows you down a little while you bring them to mind - in conversation, etc. Flashcard sessions?

Also, you say you get frustrated with book study due to the time and effort involved. If that's the case, I'd ask if the book is the right level. Obviously it should take some mental sweat to understand, but if it is so much you are giving up then something is not right. Are you maybe - and this is another aspect of 自学综合症 - suffering from imbalanced skills across the levels? Reading fallen way behind your speaking? If that's the case you may want to go back and boost the skills that are lagging - or at least make a conscious decision to let them lag, rather than letting it happen accidentally.

Regarding reading stuff online with a pop-up dictionary - the pop-ups are great, but I firmly believe that the stuff you look up will not stick in active vocabulary, and possibly not even passive vocabulary, without quite a bit more effort. You need to capture the words you want to keep - be it because they've come up multiple times, or you think you have need of them - and put them somewhere else for later review and use. It can be hard to do that with authentic materials as it's hard to know how valuable a vocab item actually is. A word for 'exhausted' may sound useful, but if that particular word is very obscure and only appeared in that forum post because the writer was showing off you might be better off with something else.

My advice - self-study is great, but it needs to be self-study with structure. Don't just muddle along because unless you are blessed, you'll progress at a fraction of your potential speed. Write down where you are with your reading, writing (in terms of handwriting, letter-writing, etc), speaking, listening, grammar and vocab. Decide which ones you want to improve, which ones you have to improve, which ones can be ignored for now. Then decide what you're going to do with each one. If you need half a dozen separate textbooks, so be it. Try where possible to multi-task - you can practice speed-reading a newspaper and pull out new vocab you want to retain at the same time. Similarly you can spend the entire day talking in passive constructions.*

As for the phone call, stuff like that can be a real blow to confidence. Rather than beat yourself up about it, figure out what went wrong - pronunciation issues? You didn't have the vocab you needed? Other party was talking too fast for you to follow? - and make that part of your plan of attack.

Roddy

*This has not actually been done by me, and you may be laughed at by people.

[hunxueer]

thanks for the suggestions, all. the tip about pera-kun was great; i've changed the settings now.

obviously a big part of my issue here is laziness or just not making studying a priority in my life. generally i'm content about my progress until something like what happened today happens; and then i feel less than satisfied and more interested in putting in effort to improve.

how do you determine which book is right for your level? i've always had trouble with chinese textbooks, but i also didn't pick one up until i was able to speak a bit. so i guess my reading has always lagged behind my speaking, which is actually counter to my nature (i'm far more comfortable reading and writing english than i am speaking it, generally, and the same is true with the only language i've studied other than chinese, which is spanish) and i presumed would naturally balance itself out once i started reading more. actually there are very few things at this point that i know how to say but don't know how to read--the difference is when i'm talking with somebody i can get around my immense vocab deficiencies by explaining; whereas you can't really do that when you're writing or interviewing somebody.

the textbook thing has really thrown me for a loop as i generally love reading and when i studied spanish i loved studying out of the book and doing the exercises and whatnot. but with all the chinese books i've tried--which is a good number and includes perennial classics such as the 新实用汉语 series, that blue one from blcu with the depressingly inane and pollyanna-esque 《差不多先生》 passage which gave me a feeling i haven't had since i was 7 or 8 and being forced to take piano lessons despite my utter lack of musical aptitude--i just find them dull and frustrating. both the passages and the exercises. so, just like with the classes, i figured maybe i ought to give up on the textbooks altogether if they were doing more to make me resent studying the language and question my abilities than anything else. but maybe that's more to do with my getting older and questioning the whole idea of institutional learning in the first place than to do with the actual quality of the books.

in the end all the philosophizing and theorizing doesn't make a difference; what does is just sitting down and learning, but i was hoping for the least pain-free route possible.

[fireball9261]

I learned both Chinese and English the same way: Reading a lot of books and watching a lot of TV and movies. When you read Chinese books, don't keep on checking the dictionaries for the words. Just guess what it means and jump over. The trick is to understand the approximate story, etc. After you are more familiar with the words and their possible meanings and definitely where they are used, you could check the dictionary to confirm their meanings. This way, you would remember your words easier. And once you confirmed your words, you already know how they are used in many different ways. In addition, they must be commonly used words for you to have such strong impressions. Avoid any books with English translations next to the Chinese text.

Do not worry too much whether the book is in your level or not. If you can't understand a section, jump to the next. The best thing to do is to read a translated English book that you already know the story so that you could guess at how the Chinese words and sentences work. You also want to pick a genre you like and not something you think you should read. When you are reading a genre you like, it's fun to find out what 's next. Otherwise, it's a pain. You want the learning to be fun and not pain.

I also watched a lot of TV and movies. Again, make sure there are no subtitles -- at least, no English subtitles. The best movies and TV series are the ones that you have watched and knew the stories so that you could pay attention to how the words were used and pronounced together in different situations. The news programs would be good too because you need to learn the common terms. Newspapers is good also for the same thing.

Furthermore, try to use whatever you have learned with others. My husband did that with Chinese and retained a lot from what little I taught him even months after his last usage of the words or sentence structures. You will also get corrections if you understand wrongly of the meanings and words and grammars.

When I was learning English, I borrowed about 10-15 or so Science Fiction from the library every week and scanned through them and watched lots TVs and movies. I did exactly like what I mentioned above. Within one year, I was able to follow normal classes in the University of California, Irvine, and got A's. Before that, I did know the English grammars, but I had very limited vocabularies and minimum listening skill. Within a year of this type of practice, my English was greatly improve. When I was a child, this was also how I learned Chinese, so I know this method works also for Chinese.l

[amandagmu]

For textbooks with relevant vocabulary I highly suggest getting your hands on someone's textbooks from an IUP or ICLP program (Qinghua or TaiDa in Taipei, where I currently am). For your level, ICLP has a book called Thought and Society for Advanced Modern Conversation, as well as several highly useful books on newspaper readings (4 different levels) and books on other aspects of Chinese---TV news, radio plays, history, literature, etc.

I've met a few people in my current program at ICLP who ended up there after years in other programs, self-study, or living in Taiwan or China and being unable to move beyond the upper intermediate level. ICLP is way expensive but it does cater to these people quite well. Most take 1-3 hebanke (2-4 students per class) and then 1-2 danbanke (one on one tutorials at 50-60 minutes each) every day, 5 days per week. After a quarter, danbanke is usually tailored to specific needs, which of course depends on who you are and what you need. In my first quarter this fall, I convinced them to let me take a listening/speaking newspaper readings in my danbanke so that I could practice reading and discussing current news items. It worked out and my active vocabulary jumped because my one on one teacher hammered them into my head with constant questioning and repetition of what we were reading. Sure, we may have gone slower some days than I wanted to go, but two months later I still remember and can use words from an article we spent a week on.

One thing you might want to consider is getting your hands on some of these books and then finding a tutor to work on them with you. I think you might be a good candidate for the newspapers readings/ speaking + discussion one in particular.

If you're willing to drop the $ for a quarter and try something that will move you a whole level in 10 weeks..... then I recommend going to ICLP at TaiDa. You have to be willing to spend a lot money, but at your level I think it might be worth it.

~Amanda

[myann23]

Amanda,

Does ICLP, being in Taiwan only use traditional characters? It sounds like a great program, if they only use traditional then this may limit peoples' options for those who want to focus on simplified. IUP I've heard has been going through some rough patches, but they have a new academic director.

Also, if you don't want to focus on writing, is ICLP still an option?

Mike

[dporter1465]

There are a few useful resources for intermediate readers on the Clavis Sinica site. For the wide-ranging reading practice that other people are suggesting on this thread, the Chinese Voices Project has about 60 short articles about life in modern Beijing at different reading levels. They're all annotated in English, so you can see what you're getting into before you start. And they also come with mp3 audio files, so you can (if you want) listen along as you read, or read along as you listen.

The other good suggestion that's been raised has to do with "capturing" the new vocabulary that you pick up while reading. In my experience, simply viewing the English def with a pop-up dictionary doesn't do the trick. The Clavis Sinica software has a feature where you can automatically add new words and characters you encounter to any number of customized vocabulary lists. You can then drill yourself on the words in these lists with the built-in flashcards tool, or print out a vocabulary review sheet (showing chars, pinyin, & English) with a free tool on the website.

The website is http://www.clavisinica.com/resources.html . Good luck!

[muppetwonder]

I really like the suggestions from fireball and amanda. Here are the only things I can add:

- There's nothing that beats reading lots of books and conversing with a lot of native speakers in terms of learning efficacy, and it sounds like you at least have access to the latter, so your outlook is actually very good; cheer up!

- Choosing non-textbook reading materials is the way to avoid inane and puerile readings, as fireball and another poster has suggested. If you find the prospect of diving into a novel or the newspapers forbidding, you might try reading the 副刊 section of the newspaper (do they have these in mainland papers?) They are usually collections of essays on various topics that are of general interest and the vocabulary is usually fairly accessible. Reading newspaper articles will be a bit daunting at first because there is a lot of specialized vocabulary for discussions in politics and economics. Similarly with novels, depending on the particular novel, there may be a particular vocabulary preference given the author's style. I guess variety would help here.

- My wife, who was born in Canada, but studied in the IUP program for two quarters (she spent the last couple months of her stay traveling by herself) went from very basic proficiency to just shy of Advanced Level 9. This, given she didn't study for the test, and the fact that the test only tested a portion of her vocabulary. Further, she says the most important factor for success in such programs are the actual teachers themselves, and not necessarily the academic directors, so this might still be an option for you.

[muyongshi]

The thing I hate most about my textbooks is that they really don't push me and I hate when I get to the end of the reading to see the dreaded words 改写. Keep it real and you will improve a lot. But also make sure that you have someone who can explain the really difficult things that are massively above your level too as there a lot you can't just look up and understand it. And of course the forums are always here to help!

[fireball9261]

I also learned that some of the most light weight books I have read in English, the Romance and the Science Fiction, actually taught me many words that I would need to know in the TOFEL test!!! It is really called 寓教於樂 (keeping the teaching in the fun/playing). Therefore, I really suggest you to do the same -- with the subject of your choosing. If you like cars, read lots Chinese ads on new cars. If you like sports, read lots of sports news reports. It would at least increase your vocabularies and help your grammar. In addition, you might be able to converse with some native speakers in these subjects you like a lot. Good luck!

[LaoZhang]

Ditto what everyone has said.

My own experience is that there is no perfect class, no perfect tutor, no perfect teacher, program, software, school, and so on; everything should be relegated to "supplemental status" in your mind. Each supplement can play off one another and unless you have a lot of time and money to go through years of Chinese school, you really need to be active in creating your own environment. "The world is your classroom when you are your own teacher."

Also, when reading, *read aloud*. I met a student who spoke wonderful English. She had never met a foreigner before and said that from the time she began studying English, she always read out loud because she had no one else to talk to. The results were astonishing.

[anthony_barker]

I'm in a different yet similar situation. Live in canada - but mandarin in the house and don't ever seem to progress to the next level. mostly because reading takes so much ## work and I don't really have time.

One thing I find fairly good is I read comic books - again you can skip characters that you don't know. After reading them I use a mp3 player and have my wife read sections to me. Then I read it again.

Disney kids shows are ok sometimes. But my strange favorite are taiwanese talk shows - trashy yet entertaining. You can download a lot of them on torrent sites as well. Canadian radio has a couple of call in shows where people complain about their problems. Also not bad. Most of the mainland tv is dry except for the odd hunan tv production. - Occasionally I also by HK movies on DVD - so i can watch them a couple of times with subtitles and dubbed into mandarin.

[Qiuyue]

¨Avoid any books with English translations next to the Chinese text

Why is that?

I learned german by using this method, sitting at my desk with a german book, a translation and a dictionary every day for a few years. It worked well, I learned a lot from the books and I learned the language as well.