Learning to Speak and Listen BEFORE Reading and Writing. Mistake?

[PinYin55]

As you all know very well, Chinese is complex. And, as an english speaker, you have to learn new sounds, new tones, and a whole new system of writing.

Since I cannot afford classes right now, I am learning by myself. However, I am finding I can learn how to speak/listen MUCH faster if I just learn via pinyin and ignore the chinese characters.

So, my tentative plan of attack is to learn how to speak/listen at least moderately well before worrying myself with the characters.

Also, as another plus, I figured it would be easier to learn to read/write once I have a solid understanding of the language.

So, to me, it seems like this method is better in every way. I learn to speak faster, and learning to write should be easier/faster.

I mean, this is how children learn their first language. They learn to talk, then they learn to read in school.

But, since I have no experience, I figured I'd ask you experienced people:

How did you learn?

Is there any particular benefit to learning both at the same time?

Am I making a mistake not learning both at the same time?

Thanks for any help.

[anonymoose]

First of all, everyone is different and has their own best study method, so if you find learning listening and speaking first to be advantageous to you, then you may as well stick to it.

I am also self-taught, though I started with reading and writing. This wasn't a deliberate strategy, but rather a result of the circumstances (resources) available to me at the time.

What I would say, however, is that learning to read and write chinese is a much longer process than simply learning to speak and listen, and therefore, if you want to eventually be competent at all skills, you may not want to delay the reading and writing for too long.

Also, learning to speak/listen and read/write are not mutually exclusive, and you don't need to do them in pace with each other. Just spend whatever time you can to learning reading and writing to at least give yourself a grounding, without affecting your progress in listening and speaking.

Furthermore, if you continue for long enough, you will reach a stage where resources for learning to listen, particularly using pinyin, become limited. At this stage, being able to read is a great advantage because many other resources will then become available to you, such as books, websites, etc.

[imron]

I think it's false economy not to learn characters. You will reach a point very quickly where limited knowledge of characters really begins to hold back your language learning.

Native speakers don't face the same problem as initially they are constantly being spoken to in the language and are constantly receiving feedback and correction from their parents and other native speakers. This I imagine will be different from your situation.

I guess it all depends on what sort of level of proficiency you want to reach, but if your goal is to learn Chinese well, then you might as well start learning the characters sooner rather than later. Like anonymoose said, you don't need to do them completely in tandem and memorise every character for every word, however I personally don't think it is wise to ignore them altogether.

[greenleaf1348]

I'm learning that way...

partly a matter of resources; I'm using FSI standard chinese, rapid literacy in chinese and Chinesepod. (and Anki, and Wenlin)

Learning everything at the same time from the very beginning - learning to read/write everything you can say/understand - just isn't working, for me at least.

I find that learning characters isn't that hard, just rather boring and extremely time consuming. otoh, the pronunciation and "grammar" aren't that easy, and it's something the FSI material is good at teaching.

After 9 months, I "know" about 2300 words (know how to pronounce, read pinyin and how to use in context), but can only write & read ~510 characters... adding about 40 characters a week, but I'm stubborn about learning to write them by heart, once I'm up to 1000 or so I'll just focus on reading for the remaining ones...

Starting with a focus on reading/writing would make sense too, I guess...

[FadedStardust]

My personal suggestion is to at least learn to read semi-early on. Writing can come later, but, as was already mentioned, as you progress past the beginning stages, quality listening material becomes scarce and being able to read is a HUGE asset because it opens up resources targeted towards native speakers, which, in my opinion, are the best to learn from because you get the "real" feel for the language: not just what you would find in a textbook.

Also, don't forget that in anything, there are varying stages of fluency; and I tend to view Chinese in a modular way, I can't write everything I can read (at least not from memory), I can't read everything I can say, and strangely enough, there are some words/characters that I can READ but have no idea how to say (re: pronounce) the word...

Everyone learns things differently of course, and I have heard of many cases where people became very competent speakers/listeners but couldn't even read the simplest of sentences if it wasn't in Pinyin until they had studied the language for years.

I suppose my overall point is, keep in mind that reading is an important part and if you can read well you're likely to go farther faster (again, my opinion), but find which method(s) work best for YOU and stick to them.

Good luck in your studies, whatever you decide!

[Lu]

It can work, you can learn to speak Chinese without knowing how to read or write. But I agree with other posters that it's not a bad idea to invest a little time in characters as well.

Also I hope you have someone who corrects your pronounciation, I think it's very hard to get that right without any feedback at all, and you might teach yourself mistakes that can be hard to correct later on.

Good luck!

[wrbt]

I believe you need to suck it up and learn to read, since you'll find that as you get past basic level that the available resources for continuing to learn will narrow significantly if you don't know the characters.

It would be frustrating to be looking thru websites and catalogs of textbooks with good audio components but they are useless to you since the pinyin is only there for the vocabulary lists.

Writing I can see not spending much time on.

Best of luck and have always remember you're learning for fun!

[renzhe]

If you are not learning in China, with everyday exposure to Chinese and being forced to interact in Chinese all the time, I think that learning speaking/listening only will be very difficult.

I actually found it more difficult than reading, but people are different and acquire language differently.

If it works for you, then go for it, but don't be surprised if you hit a plateau eventually. All the good learning materials (movies, TV-shows, radio shows, books, magazines, short stories, comics etc.) come without pinyin.