Chinese Learning strategies

[songlei]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been browsing around on this forum regularly for the last three months or so but never got around to posting anything yet. So this is my first one, and I’d like to raise a topic that I’m sure a lot of you are concerned with. But let me introduce myself first. I’ve been studying Chinese at a university for two academic years now, and I have been putting insane amounts of extra time in gathering material on my own and cramming it with my SRS (Anki). You could say I guess that I am at an upper-intermediate level now, which, according to my own personal definition means I can have a decent conversation with a Chinese person without too much interruptions to ask what it is their saying, and I am able to understand, with a dictionary that is (I recommend NCIKU and MDBG), almost everything that there is to read. My vocabulary is still limited, I’d say 5,000 words or so (I can only write some 1,500 characters though), so there are some massive gaps in my knowledge still, but I can also surprise people by talking about Russian roulette and the Dynastic cycle of Chinese history-writing. Anyway, let’s cut to the chase.

I always expected I would be fluent in Chinese within two years. It’s now beginning to dawn on me that that’s not going to happen. However, I am still in denial about this, and therefore I’ve been putting waaay too much time in studying Chinese alienating my loved ones etc. in order to meet my initial expectations. Time to start thinking of a learning strategy right? Well I’ve been doing that a lot recently, and I’d like to share with you the things I’ve come up with. I hope you will all do the same thing so we can all benefit from it and get another few steps closer to attaining 100% efficiency in our Chinese learning endeavors.

First I think some credit is due to those folks at antimoon (http://www.antimoon.com/ ) for gaining the wonderful insight of input before output, i.e. read/listen first before speaking and writing. Thanks to them I have been able to define the Chinese language as follows:

The entire body of speech and writing produced up until this moment by those who can be considered to have mastered the Chinese language.

The implication of such definition is that if you haven’t mastered Chinese yet, then whatever you say or write down is per definition not Chinese, unless it is an exact copy of something that does qualify as Chinese. In other words, focus on reading and listening first. I think this is a good general strategy for your first 2,000 hours of study (=approx. 1 year full-time). Of course, it never really hurts to speak, on the contrary, it can help you practice what you’ve learnt, but it can also be frustrating, and you can acquire nasty habits if others do not point out your mistakes. Finally, I assume you all know that an SRS is extremely helpful in this input phase.

My own contributions to this input idea lie mainly in the details of the study process. What I have found is that for Chinese is helps to transcribe speech into characters. For example, listen to any of the advanced or media lessons by Chinesepod (the speech uttered by the hosts), or for more advanced learners, check out the BBC China Real podcast (http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid_6940000/newsid_6940100/6940195.stm). Transcribing is immensely time-consuming and difficult, so I recommend you to push through in the beginning, and have a language partner check your transcripts. Transcribing will improve your listening skills greatly, and you will also generate loads of vocabulary.

Alternatively, or preferably additionally, if you haven’t got much time on your hands at some point, you can use Radio Australia’s (http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/chinese/news/topic.htm) news podcasts, which include transcripts, or you can focus on the dialogues in Chinesepod’s advanced lessons, as they are included in the pdfs.

Now, what to do with your transcripts? Recently I have been dealing with them in two phases. In phase one I enter the full sentences of my transcripts in Anki in field A. After that, I use Audacity to cut out the corresponding audio from the mp3 to put into field B. This creates a card that asks you either to listen to audio to see if you understand, or to read a sentence from your transcript to see if yo can read all the characters. I use the third field to enter new vocab items with corresponding translations.

Phase two is executed gradually throughout the reviews of the sentences I’ve entered. I look for collocations, i.e. verb-noun combo’s and short noun phrases or sentences (preferably max. 10 characters.) For example:

中国教育部、财政部、解放军总参谋部及公安部等部门近日出台了鼓励大学毕业生投身军队，报效国家的举措。

becomes:

出台举措

I subsequently enter the latter in field A, and a translation in field B. I try to avoid single words, but sometimes collocations are hard to extract. I also avoid cramming full sentences like this because they are impossible to remember completely. The advantage of collocations is that they force you to analyze your sentences in order to indentify them, while at the same time you train yourself to work with larger chucks of Chinese making your speech more advanced and fluent.

This is what I can come up with so far. I will add some new things as soon I anything comes up. I hope it can help you with your study, and I look forward to reading about your learning strategies.

Edited July 18, 2009 at 01:10 PM by songlei
mistake +typos

[cababunga]

Thank you very informative post.

Finally, I assume you all know that an SRS is extremely helpful in this input phase.

Right, about that... Just wondering, did anyone try (do people even know about) Gradint?

[Scoobyqueen]

Thanks for the information provided. I think you have come a long way though. 1500+ characters by hand is very good. You are being too hard on yourself.

I have a question

Transcribing is immensely time-consuming and difficult, so I recommend you to push through in the beginning, and have a language partner check your transcripts. Transcribing will improve your listening skills greatly, and you will also generate loads of vocabulary.

Do you mean listening to the news and then writing down in characters. I agree it is time-consuming. Do you find that you are able to write quicker now and that this has helped you taking notes in Chinese during lectures or any other situation?

I hope you dont forget to have fun as well. At university you should be meeting new people. you are probably never going to have an opportunity to meet that many people again. could be useful for your future career.

[songlei]

@ sababunga:

i haven't tried gradint yet, but i have used pimsleur a few years back for japanese. it's an appealing method because it feels like you accomplishing great things early on, that is speaking perfect sentences fluently from the start. however, i do think that for mandarin, at the later stages of learning, the element of reading is very important. i have found that reading allows you to see the basic setup of longer sentences more easily than listening allows you to hear them (see the chinese sentence in my first post for example). other than that, the mp3 export functionality on gradint is a clever add on that sets it apart from other srs apps.

@ scoobyqueen:

perhaps it helps to understand that i will go to china in 2 months for a year. by working so hard right now i am establishing a basis of knowledge to profit from once in china. i hope it will enable me to have rich enough conversations with locals so that they don't feel annoyed after talking to me for 5 minutes. this way i can make friend early on, i get much more from the whole experience, not only study-wise, but also in terms of just having a good time. in other words, i am sacrificing my summer here in the netherlands so that i won't have to study too much in china ;) about your question: i don't transcribe by hand. with a transcript i mean an exact typed out report of everything that is literally said by the speakers. each seperate sentence you can subsequently enter in your srs.

does anyone else have any ideas he/she would like to share?

[Scoobyqueen]

Thanks again for writing up a post with many astute observations. I also now understand more about what you are trying to do and am impressed with your tenacity.

I have one comment on the following

In other words, focus on reading and listening first. I think this is a good general strategy for your first 1,000 hours of study (=approx. 1 year full-time).

If you dont inlude speaking early on I think one may miss out on an important learning variable, ie the oral part. Some people are visual learners other aural learners and so on. I believe you learn more the more learning methods you cover ie aural, oral, reading etc. 1,000 hours is a lot of time without testing out what one has learnt and I suspect that could be demotivating for some. Most people are learning a language because they want to speak it. Additionally, you can learn a lot from being wrong and then corrected. For example saying something that is not understood and then learning what it should have been. That realisation is an important part of the learning process.

[renzhe]

I don't know what to add. Your story is similar to mine, I also tried to race through the learning progress for a few years, and while I made good progress, I've found out that it might take a bit longer than originally expected.

I think that you have a good basis for going to China for a year. You're at the point where your basics should be solid, and you'll soak up the language like a sponge.

What I found very useful is concentrating on passive learning (reading and listening) because this is less taxing in my experience. Sounds like you're doing this as well. I can only recommend watching Chinese TV shows, as I've had a blast learning like that.

I think that the most important thing to do when you start burning out (which people inevitably do after putting in so much effort over such a long time) is to reorganise your study plan so it's more fun. Nowadays, most of my study time is reading or listening exercise, or talking at the local Chinese Corner. Sounds like you're planning to do this already.

so I don't know what to add other than to do stuff that are fun to get through the burnout rut. Usually that's the time when the brain rearranges an solidifies knowledge, so it's important to keep the motivation and the work going. For me, reading books and comics and watching TV shows is lots of fun and doesn't feel like hard work. Perhaps you can look into some of that.

[zhen_shuai]

Here here to avoiding the burn out rut. I've studied Chinese for about 3 years now and over those three years I've gone through who knows how many study plans. I think the best plan is to be flexible and realize that learning is as much about the journey as the destination. Rather than think about all the things I could be doing if my Chinese were better (like reading 王朔 or 余华 in the original, or even better, translating them..) it's a lot more empowering to think of things I already can do that are easy and fun.

Another thing to remember is you can always set the new cards field on Anki to 0 for a couple of days. That way you're still reviewing, but you get a little break.

[katyjo]

Your chinese learning effort is admirable. You are so disciplined. You have learned so much in a short period of time. Parents of successful Chinese learning kids have told me that reading Chinese books is the key to learning, just like building English vocabulary, one must love reading. My 10 year old daughter is reading Harry Potter with a Chinese person by her side to help with unknown characters. I'm always looking for Chinese learning opportunites. I have tried almost everything that I can afford, I am confident that reading is the most effective way. Hiring a person to read Chinese with my daughter is better and cheaper than sending her to Asia for the summer.

[songlei]

@ renzhe & katyjo: tv shows and books indeed are a great way to learn fast and in a fun way. reading in particular is a good way to get used to the structure of the language and expand your vocabulary. however, i think reading and watching movies/tv only becomes an effective method for learning once you are at a high level already. i believe that you need at least 1 year of education from textbooks and then some six months of anki-battering before decent books and tv shows become accessible. i have come to realize that there were clear stages i had to go through. looking back, i should have been more patient in the beginning, accepting that i was just unable to understand the radio with the knowledge i then possessed and just sticking with intermediate materials instead.

@ zhen_shuai: it's funny that you mention wang shuo. i actually managed to read 5 pages in wan de jiu shi xintiao, which took me about 30 hours... indeed, this was another example of not accepting where i was with chinese. but yes, it should always be about fun and not about pain. for me, the process of learning becomes fun because i too am looking forward to that day that i am quoting from wang shuo to some chinese person who wouldn't be offended by it.

[renzhe]

I agree with you, but it sounds like you are at a level where learning from books and TV shows is feasible.

As long as you don't neglect the other work that needs to be done (characters, vocab, grammar...), it won't hurt.

[Lu]

Songlei, you mentioned you're in the Netherlands, are you perhaps also in Leiden Uni, and leaving for China with a scholarship?

I can't comment on your study method, but I do have some other comments.

First, your expectations were too high (as you're realizing now). It's near impossible to learn Chinese in two years, especially when you're not in China.

Second, some Chinese will be annoyed when you don't understand everything they say right away; many more will be intrigued by you being a foreigner who has learned Chinese, and will be happy to talk with you. You don't need to speak perfect Chinese to make friends in China.

Third, it's very useful to come to China with some Chinese knowledge, so that you don't need to learn it from scratch. You can learn a lot more there if you already learned the basics at home. In China, you'll be surrounded by Chinese all day every day, and as a result learning will be much faster. It's good you studied hard so that you have a basis to build on, but studying in China is more efficient: you get better results than here with the same amount of effort. Not to say that you should throw away all the books now, but there's no need to make huge efforts when soon you can get those results with less efforts.

Good luck, don't be too hard on yourself, and have fun in China!

[Scoobyqueen]

After that, I use Audacity to cut out the corresponding audio from the mp3 to put into field B.

Would you happen to know if this is possible using Mnemosyne? And also, which version of Audacity do you download in order to cut the relevant clips?

Edited July 18, 2009 at 05:25 PM by Scoobyqueen

[renzhe]

Would you happen to know if this is possible using Mnemosyne?

Yes, it's possible.

[wushijiao]

Hi Songlei,

I think you’re certainly on the right path. Are you doing any extensive readings? Any other extensive listening?

Personally, I think reading extensively and doing as much audio work as possible is the best way to go (ie. making this roughly 80-90%) of what you do. Your ideas for radio sound great. Have you thought of cutting an interesting part of an MP3 on Audiodacity to make a 30 second or 1 minute sections of a podcast, say中国从谈 or RFA, and then listen to it, say, 10-20 times until you more or less memorize it (as far as content, but also in terms of sentences intonations and tone)?

For 中国从谈, I might recommend at about the 30 second mark (after they do the intro music), using the next minute or so: when they introduce the topic of conversation and its significance (and maybe even the first 20-30 seconds of the response of the guest). If you were able to do this a few dozen times before you get to China, you’d have a solid base for being able to talk about current issues.

Edited July 18, 2009 at 05:38 PM by wushijiao

[Scoobyqueen]

Cheers renzhe. I noticed afterwards that this is possible by right clicking the mouse and then the option to insert either video or audio (this was not immediately obvious to me). I have still not solved how to cut out the clip from Audacity but I think I have downloaded the wrong version.

[Scoobyqueen]

cutting an interesting part of an MP3 on Audiodacity to make a 30 second or 1 minute sections of a podcast, say中国从谈

I can't find an mp3 on the 中国丛谈. Does anyone know if one exists or if the audio can be converted?

[wushijiao]

I'm not good with computers (and so there might be an easer way to do this), but it seems like you can download 中国丛谈 on iTunes (via subscribing), then copy any particular show that you like, and then paste it onto your desktop. Then, you can import that file into Audiodacity as an audio file. From there, you can cut out the parts you don't want, so as to make a more easier, smaller chunk of listening.

If you don't know how to subscribe, go to this link. Copy the link (underneath 预订网址). Go to iTunes. At the podcast section, up above, look for "Advanced", then click on "subscribe to podcast' and paste the link, that should get one subscribed to it.

[songlei]

@ Lu

yes i am in leiden university's chinese studies programme. are you an BA3 or MA student there?

about your point concerning the speed of the learning process. i don't have much experience with studying abroad for the purpose of language acquisition. however, i do believe that in the end, in order to master a language, it is simply you versus a lot of information. no matter how you do it, that information has to be memorized. the way i see it, the unique advantage that comes with studying abroad is the possibility to practice what you've learned, not to magically absorb everything without any painful memorization sessions. i experienced this in taiwan last year. what i did there i could have just as easily done back home, as i knew too little chinese to even practice it with locals, let alone pick up a lot of vocab outside of university. it was just the classes and the books that did it.

my idea now is to soak my brain with information and get to a level i am technically capable of having decent conversations on almost any topic prior to going to beijing. this way, through practice in beijing i can consolidate all this knowledge. this gives me two advantages: 1. i will have a basis for being able to speak properly with locals from day one (as practice is impossible without knowledge) 2. i can spend less time cramming vocab in my dorm in beijing (because i would know more than my fellow students) and thus spend more time exploiting the greatest advantage of being in china, namely practicing out there on the streets and consolidating my knowledge. the way i see it, the more you know, the faster you learn, the more you learn, the more you know, the faster you learn, etc.

i could be terribly wrong of course, so i'm curious to hear what kind of arguments you, or anyone else, might have against such an approach!

[songlei]

about the bbc podcast, you can get the mp3s through itunes. if you go to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid_6940000/newsid_6940100/6940195.stm

there you can click the + itunes link and the podcasts will load in your itunes library. you can subsequently look up the mp3 on your hard drive, open that in audacity and start chopping away! for exporting mp3 from audacity you do need to download the lamelib mp3 encoder plugin.

[renzhe]

my idea now is to soak my brain with information and get to a level i am technically capable of having decent conversations on almost any topic prior to going to beijing.

That's not an easy goal, especially outside of China.

My advice is not to be too hard on yourself. Do as much as you can, and when the opportunity presents itself, go to China and make the best of it. Don't wait until you're close to perfect.