repetition

[Scoobyqueen]

as title

[yonglin]

I would think it is a very useful approach for beginners: by memorizing key sentences, it is possible to internalize key structures. I think that if you've got the audio on your mp3-player or the like and listen to it a few times, it comes naturally and doesn't require that much of an effort.

I'm a lot more skeptical to using this approach with more advanced learners, although I know it's used by quite a few Chinese teachers. Of course, some people may find that it suits their learning style, but I would be very hesitant about employing it across the board.

[Janne]

I think it's quite powerful in the beginning. As you say, you get verbatims and get a feel for the grammar "for free". You also quickly learn the pronounciation and tones, and if combined with pinyin studies you quickly can read and pronounce good on your own just by reading pinyin.

I started off with 90 pimsleur lessons when beginning learning chinese 2 years ago, and for me it was a perfect way to start. They use the spaced repetition method exclusively there, and almost never explain any grammar.

After passing through the beginner's stage, actually studying grammar structure and such probaly becomes more and more important if you're aiming for a solid knowledge of the language.

[SChinFChin]

Not only memorizing sentences, but entire passages of a book, or poem had been the time honored way of learning Chinese, and it works well, even for Chinese students learning Chinese

When I studied Chinese as a child, we were required to memorize an entire passage or even an entire short little story from a text book, and then recite it in class. I find it to be a great way of remembering words, it's meaning and pronunciation.

I find it harder to remember a particular word, meaning, pronunciation and all, if I looked it up individually. For instance, I would look up a word in a dictionary, then some months later, I would say to myself, didn't I look that one up not long ago??

Now, many years older, finding my memory lapsing, and I found ready and memorizing Chinese songs and poems to be a good excercise in improving my memory, and after having gotten rusty with my Chinese, I found I refreshed my ability to read and write it considerably.

My girl is studying Mandarin right now, and they memorize short little songs, which works bascially the same way. She loves Chinese calligraphy, but hates studying the grammar. There were a few old Chinese songs she likes to sing and hum, and what I was thinking of is have her learn to sign a few more, which she enjoys, and then have her learn to write it, sort of the reverse of the method you mentioned, namely, "read, remember, regurgitate", i.e. "the three R's"

[renzhe]

There are several reasons why this is good for Chinese:

- Chinese languages are really strong on sentence structure, word position, and sentence patterns which are put together much like lego blocks. There are hundreds of sentence patterns to learn, and you need to internalise them so you can easily understand them in fast speech, and use them easily.

- The tones. Everyone can do them slowly, nobody can do them while speaking fast. The key to tones, for me, has been to etch certain phrases in my memory, which comes from having spoken them many times. For phrases and words I haven't said often, I have to slow down and think about the tones.

Having said that, if the language teaching amounts to just repeating sentences ad nauseam, and nothing else, then the teacher is not particularly good.

What I found helps my tones and pronunciation is reading outloud -- or at least imagining pronouncing what I'm reading, with proper tones, tone sandhi, stress, etc.

[roddy]

Reminds me of this discussion - that was more about repetition for writing rather than speaking, but perhaps still worth a read.

I think there's a place for this kind of activity, but am dubious about it being used on a very regular basis. As you say:

I am finding that I can repeat hundreds of sentences by heart, but when it comes to speaking I never use them verbatim, just replace words in the sentence (if I use them at all).

which is all good, but what about substitution exercises in class where you have a structure and have to slot the words in on the fly - that's going to be closer to real life. Or just being faced with some kind of input and having to produce appropriate output without being told what structure or vocab you should be using. These are both closer to real world situations and I'm therefore inclined to think they should be used more often than learning verbatim.

I also think this is a very easy way to teach, and a slightly lazy teacher could very happily do it all day, every day.

[Scoobyqueen]

Thank you for all the contributions.

[imron]

What I mean about it taking a lot of effort is the fact that some dialogues go on for three or four lines, equivalent to about 10 seconds of continuous speech.

Actually I think this kind of thing is really good for developing spoken fluency. All too often learners will be capable of putting shorter sentences together, but then struggle with putting longer sentences together well over a sustained period of conversation. This is the sort of thing I'm currently trying to do more of myself. Keep at it, and you'll find that 10 seconds of conversation becomes easier, and then you can move up to 20 seconds, 30 seconds 1 minute etc