Looking for techniques to improve speaking for upper intermediate student

[animal world]

Once again, Imron, thanks for showing me the way.

Renzhe, with respect to "take blood" it might be helpful as a first step to mentally replace the generic "take" by a more specific verb. This would get to "draw" and better yet "donate." You'll probably do this mental exercise in German. For "to donate" my dictionary offers 捐款 but this is for money. Two other entries are not specific: 捐献 - juān xiàn and 捐助 - juān zhù. Neither might be the appropriate verb in this context but they might help your audience to understand the action involved. Btw, i assumed you were donating blood but it's possible that this is part of a medical test that your doctor ordered. See, how vague we often are in our own language? In your actual conversation, you'd probably have given that context (I had pains in my leg this week, saw the doctor the other day who sent me to a clinic for a blood test, blah blah blah).

So, instead of looking for a simpler way of saying it in the other language, look first for an alternative, more distinct way of saying if in your own language. Until one is fluent in a language, one tends to translate from one's primary language and that will always slow things down.

Now i'm curious what exactly "to draw blood" is in Chinese. So, let us know when you'll find out.

[renzhe]

I think you misunderstood me... I can find the word in a dictionary, that's not a problem. Actually, I did look, and found that 验血 (have a blood test) is the word I'm looking for.

But I don't want to consult a dictionary every time I say a sentence. And without a dictionary, the best I could do was 抽血 (draw blood), which sounds like I have batman trying to dry bleed me before feeding me to his dogs

Actually, the context was getting tested for Hepatitis A immunity. Good luck explaining that without a hefty dictionary at hand and lots of zheige neige. And it's such a simple topic.

[chrix]

yeah, in Japanese you say 献血 (kenketsu) or 輸血 (yuketsu). The former more in the context of donating, the latter more in the context of receiving at in hospital

According to my dictionary, you can say that both in Chinese too. Also if you draw blood for a medical examination, then you can also say "抽點血". My biggest problem with telling the story, though, would be deciding which one of the three pronunciations of 血 to use...

[animal world]

I think you misunderstood me... I can find the word in a dictionary, that's not a problem

No, i didn't misunderstand* you. Of course, you're not lugging along a Chinese dictionary everywhere you go (well, at least i hope you haven't become that obsessive-compulsive about Chinese!). I meant after you have found the most specific word in your own language, then you consult the dictionary in your mind to come up with the most meaningful option. In my post, i used an actual dictionary because i wasn't sure how many choices there were for "donating."

As Bush would have said: you misunderestimate me (it's so nice for us Americans that not only do we now have a president who is intelligent we have one who knows English, too)

[chrix]

actually I do I will look up stuff in conversation. That's why I go for nice pocket-size dictionaries, since it's less annoying than flipping out your cell phone to look up stuff online in front of people...

[renzhe]

Unfortunately, 抽血 was the best I could come up with after doing what you suggested.

But at the end of the day "take blood" or "do a blood tests" are very common and fixed concepts, and a good student of the language should learn them. But, once you leave the truly everyday stuff, there are SO many of such concepts which don't occur regularly enough to absorb them through exposure alone.

[animal world]

Just consulted my dear friend, the Mnemosyne database, where i found the following entry: 献血者 = xiàn xuè zhě - blood donor! Hadn't learned it yet because there's still a big backlog in Mnemosyne.

[dillon1530]

I really like Gorman's initial suggestion: sitting down with a Chinese teacher who's going to correct your tones, pronunciation, sentence structure, etc. in a serious one-on-one setting. This is how I've been learning Chinese for the past two years and my spoken Chinese -- and just my overall feel for the language -- has made marked improvement. Not only that, but I now have the confidence to speak outside of class because I've already practiced saying what I want to say in class, have been corrected, and now know the actual way to put my thoughts into Chinese.

Sitting down with a teacher and trying to express yourself is hard and frustrating, but if it wasn't a lot more foreigners would speak great Chinese.

Good luck everyone!

Edited November 12, 2009 at 04:37 AM by roddy

[im.joanna]

I agree with Dillon. A good chinese teacher not only can" correct your tones, pronunciation, sentence structure, etc" but also can help you find proper way to improve your chinese.Different student has different learning situation, so the special designed one to one lesson will help you a lot.

BTW, I suggest not to remember your word individually.When you learn the word "血" xuè /xiě, you'd better also learn these words together."流血"liú xuě,"止血" zhǐ xuě,"验血"yàn xiě,"献血" xiàn xiě. A good teacher should complement these frequent-used words to the upper intermediate student.

[chrix]

im.joanna, while I basically agree with you that it is more important to learn 詞 than 字, but I disagree with your comment about 血, for the following reasons:

• most characters do have one pronunciation, and even those 破音字 that are frequently used, usually distinguish their pronunciation according to meaning, so there's no harm in learning them that way either
  
• as far as 血 is concerned, I'm afraid it's more problematic than just learning which word goes with what pronunciation, because this is an extreme case of a frequently used 破音字 whose pronunciations are NOT distinguished by meaning. As far as I understand it, there are register and regional differences and a degree of individual variation for this character. I wish there was an easy of distinguishing between them. Check out this thread with 40 posts justs on this character.