How much can one learn in 6 months?

[Aremonus]

I'm going to China for 6 to 8 months to learn the language there in January 2009. Yet I'm quite a beginner, I know something like 400 characters and can only have very simple conversations - I hope I'll know 800 - 1000 characters when I start there, but who knows whether I can manage to learn so much next term...

Know for the ones who've already studyied in China: How much did you learn in one term? Do you now understand most of the conversations in daily live and can join them? How many chracters do you know?

What HSK band can one reach in 6 months? HSK intermediate Level 6?

Thanks a lot!

[rezaf]

My Vietnamese classmates got 7 in the HSK only after 6 months. Some people say that it's easier for them but as far as I know it's more about the way they study. First of all most of them are on scholarships and it means that they are smart and hardworking students. Besides if they don't get good results they have to go back to Vietnam. Their spoken and written Mandarin is not very good and they have learnt Mandarin only to pass the HSK which means focusing on learning many characters without exactly knowing how to use them in writing an essay or in speaking. On the other hand I know someone who learnt to speak fluent Mandarin in less than a year. He hardly ever came to class and spent his time with his Chinese girlfriends and starting his business in Shanghai(not luxury expat business!) If you study 5 or 6 hours a day 6 months is enough to do miracles but it depends on the area you want to be more proficient.

[dncdoor]

I would suggest to take these kind of sensational remarks 'learn mandarin in 30days' with a pinch of Saxa salt. My fellow Korean students love to say - an-ni-o I only started learning Chinese 4 months ago, never learnt Mandarin in my life :-) Then they gain 8 on the HSK.

Further on the Vietnamese language:-

"Fung Thi Tue from Executive Vice-President of the Research institute of China, Academy of Social Science of Vietnam integrated Vietnam’s situation and said: “Vietnam is heavily influenced by Chinese culture. Most Vietnam classics and manuscripts were recorded in Chinese and 60 % of Vietnamese language borrowed from Chinese characters. To understand Vietnam’s history, one must learn Chinese. Besides, Vietnamese and Chinese shared many similarities, making it easier for Vietnamese to learn Chinese. Apart from that, if Vietnamese want to learn from China’s success in the reforms and open policy, they will also need to learn Chinese"

http://www.hanban.org/en_hanban/content.php?id=2626

All this being said, if you learn flat out for the HSK i.e. 4/5 months of preparation, then yes you may be able to gain a decent mark on the 初中paper. If however you are starting mandarin from entry level then I would say that 1 year of 'all round' Chinese learning is required, along with some individual HSK preparation.

Ask the experts on the forum e.g. Roddy . All the best!!!

[sebhk]

If you spend your six months exclusively on studying HSK vocabulary and grammar, you definitely can get a high score. However, HSK vocabulary and vocabulary for use in daily conversations are two very different things.

I have a friend who studied Chinese in university for 4 years, spent 1 year in China, and speaks very fluent Mandarin. He attended the HSK without any prior preparation and only got level 5. I have been casually learning Chinese for around 3 years in my spare time and got level 6. But I spent 1 month doing nothing but practicing for the HSK. Of course my friend's Chinese is much better than mine (both spoken and written) - yet one more example that the HSK does not reflect one's actual ability anyway.

I would recommend to use your limited time in China to experience the country, become more fluent in spoken Chinese, and make friends, and not to sit around in a room memorizing HSK vocabulary lists. You can always do that when you are back in your home country again.

[dncdoor]

Sebhk is spot on!

[rezaf]

Koreans and Vietnamese might have the advantage in reading which helps them to get high marks but I don't think that they have any advantage in more practical usage of the language including listening, speaking and writing. In fact in long term Westerners (including Iranians ) are the ones who can become completely fluent in Mandarin without mixing it with their own culture and language. And in terms of accent Westerners(again including Iranians:wink:) in my school are way better than the Koreans and the Vietnamese.

I also think that you should not focus on that bloody exam if it's not a matter of emergency and spend time in learning how to use your Mandarin. I have many classmates who can get 6 ,7 and even 8 but can not write a simple essay nor speak.(is this right in english?)

[yonglin]

rezaf, don't you think that might have to do with that there is a much larger proportion of Korean/Vietnamese people learning Chinese...? The Westerners (Iranians), you will see learning Chinese are quite a self-selected bunch, usually with a very passionate interest in Chinese. From what I've understood, many Koreans learn Chinese because they "have to" get an HSK pass just to get a decent job. I don't know about Vietnamese though, but I would imagine that knowing Chinese is crucial for many job opportunities over there as well.

Thus, I think it is not surprising that the average westerner you see learning Chinese is more proficient or hard-working than the average Korean. I think Koreans have an advantage in writing but not much else. For Vietnamese, some 50% of common vocabulary is derived from Chinese, and it is a tonal language, so I would think that it is easier for them to learn than for a Westerner.

And I seriously do not buy your argument about Westerners being able to learn better because we don't risk into mixing Chinese up with our home languages. Would that not imply that Chinese should be better than other Europeans when it comes to speaking English, for instance...? I'd very much doubt this assertion on an empirical basis.

[rezaf]

Well there are Koreans and Vietnamese who have spent a long time studying Mandarin and some of them even went to school in China. No doubt that they are fluent. I have not been here for a long time and Ijust speak from my experience at school. In my school 95% of the students are either Korean or Vietnamese and there are very few westerners(including Iranians). Vietnamese are known for their bad accents which never gets better and when they write an essay they most of the time use very complicated words that are not suitable. My guess is that they confuse it with their own language. There are just a few Europeans and Americans (and one Iranian:mrgreen:) in our school but all of us are top students(except in HSK:lol:) in our classes and in speaking and writing we are much better than them.

[rezaf]

When I say writing I mean writing a text not writing the correct hanzi. Anyway Vietnamese don't have any advantage in Hanzi and only older Koreans are familiar with Hanzi. My Korean friends tell me that younger Koreans don't study Hanzi seriously these days and forget most of it after the exams.

[Aremonus]

Well I'm going to "sit around in a room memorizing vocabulary" in the 6 months I'm there because I go there for THAT purpose.

In 2006 I went there for sight seeing and in 2 weeks I'm going there again - but in holiday it's diffrent from studying time^^

I mean it's far easier to learn a language when your inside the country and after these 6 months, I will be too busy to go on studying chinese coz I'll be studying business.

When I learnt german or french I just went to Germany or France in order to learn it faster - and it worked. When I learnt english, I went up to england, visited some relatives and it worked as well.

When I learnt Latin, I struggeled a lot and didn't really learn it because it's nowhere spoken anymore. So now, despite of learning it 3 years, I'm still not really good at it...

So that's why I actually think it's gonna work in China as well - but because of the characters probably not as fast as in other languages...

[rezaf]

Maybe you shouldn't spend your time learning to write Hanzi. Recognizing them would be enough. I think that I wasted alot of time learning Hanzi. The time that I could spend on more practical things.

[Aremonus]

yea, I thought about that too - but so far I didn't figure out a good way to remember recognising them. Once I learn it, it won't take long and I forget them again, unless I learn writing them...

How do you practice it?

(btw, it's not that much work when u learn to write 5 hanzi per day and after several months, u've got a good result! 1500 after one year.)

[rezaf]

In my first 3 months I spent 4 hours a day just writing hanzi but I couldn't continue like that Now I can write maybe about 2500 hanzi. My handwriting is good and I can learn new hanzis as quickly as Koreans but I don't think that it's worth the trouble. My Vietnamese classmates can recognise many more but they make a lot of mistakes writing them. I consider myself an advanced beginner, so I might not have enough experience but if you are a beginner too maybe you should spend a few weeks focusing on hanzi. once you get familiar with them you won't need to write them to memorize them.

edit: I have the most masochistic method for learning. I memorize the text of each lesson and then write it by heart two or three times.

[Aremonus]

4 hours a day hanzi? That's cool... I couldn't spend that much time writing or I got my wrist swollen up like a jelly fish^^

My handwriting will never be good, haha - it's not even good in latin letters, not to say chinese

[self-taught-mba]

Maybe you shouldn't spend your time learning to write Hanzi. Recognizing them would be enough. I think that I wasted alot of time learning Hanzi. The time that I could spend on more practical things.

Totally agree. Considering many Chinese are having more and more trouble remembering how to write because of computers (Wubi people notwithstanding) . . .

yea, I thought about that too - but so far I didn't figure out a good way to remember recognising them. Once I learn it, it won't take long and I forget them again, unless I learn writing them...

You can learn to use them by typing and text messaging with out actually writing them.

How do you practice it?

(btw, it's not that much work when u learn to write 5 hanzi per day and after several months, u've got a good result! 1500 after one year.)

It is a lot of work still. You just broke it up into manageable pieces. And it still won't have the yields on your communicative ability that learning new vocabulary would.

[Aremonus]

Yea that's true - i'm actually chatting quite a lot on QQ and MSN, that really helps...

But anyway, when I learn a new one, it's still maybe as hard for me to remember how to write it as to remember recognising it - I mean, when u know what a character looks like, you can also write it, can't u?

[Guest yangbin]

Well, there is this legend in Nanjing of a Korean guy who after 6 months of hard work, managed to get HSK 8. His aim was to be accepted in Beijing Foreign Affairs Uni. or something like that, and he did it!

But generaly speaking, I would say that after half a year, your level should be alright for daily life, and basic conversation, but all this with hard hard work!

[rezaf]

But anyway, when I learn a new one, it's still maybe as hard for me to remember how to write it as to remember recognising it - I mean, when u know what a character looks like, you can also write it, can't u?

No because many characters are used together to form a word and it is easy to regocnize them together. Most of the time you don't need to memorize the details, just the general shape , for example: 戴眼镜。 戴 is a complicated one(is it?) when you see something creepy before 眼镜， you can easily guess that it's 戴。