I need to build spontaneous thinking/speaking

[querido]

may not suit you temperamentally

Right. But if it appears necessary to take some remedial courses in "How to be a Human Being", I will do that. Even Spock would, if it were the logical thing to do.

Because it is still "controlled", like school, chineseteachers.com looks good. Thank you again.

[abcdefg]

That's OK, Amigo. Many roads lead to Rome. Power to you.

[querido]

I made it clear that I valued your advice, was considering it, and thanked you for it, right? My previous post is was a joke. :-) I'll explain it: Taking your advice would be for me like a remedial course in "How to be a Human Being", but I might do it if necessary.

Chineseteachers.com is live (though not in person).

End.

[abcdefg]

Joking here is always so difficult. Sorry I didn't get it. End and 八八六。

[querido]

I underestimated the value of the sound effects, the dramatization, and the banter (give-and-take Chinese-English) in the ChinesePod lessons. They help set a stage, are pseudo-visual in that they prompt me to imagine the scene, and they offer a pseudo-human-interaction effect.

Almost always striving to strip the non-essential from materials to be studied, I hadn't wanted the above, but that was a mistake.

[chalimac]

A part of FSI can be done without any book or repetitive drills if you pick only the tapes labeled C-1 and P1. They form a very nice audio-only course:

http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Chinese

I would recommend that you expose yourself to a lot of chinese listening before attempting to produce ex-tempore. You will avoid picking bad habits. I listen to short stories many times with a reader until I can understand them without a book. A good reader series is:

http://www.amazon.com/Graded-Chinese-Reader-MP3-CD/dp/7802003741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266754932&sr=8-1

[Hero Doug]

Querido, particularly in light of the desired spontaneity alluded to in the title of your thread, i wonder whether you might be relying too much on structured lessons and SRS.

I've found this to be quite true recently. I've ditched SRS altogether and have been just sticking to studying, and more importantly, using the language.

The point of this exercise is not to seek perfect grammar/avoid mistakes at all cost but to develop the ability to think in Chinese and to feel comfortable ad-libbing in Chinese.

This is really important. Thinking in English and then trying to express (translate) those thoughts into Chinese is an impossible task. One's native language is so far beyond their second language (at the early and mid stages anyways) that a stumbling block. I find it's best to go directly from The Language of Thought to Chinese.

[querido]

chalimac

I would recommend that you expose yourself to a lot of chinese listening before attempting to produce ex-tempore. You will avoid picking bad habits. I listen to short stories many times with a reader until I can understand them without a book.

Agreed. I do this too.

Hero Doug

I've ditched SRS altogether and have been just sticking to studying, and more importantly, using the language.

I'd like to hear how this works for you over time. Would you report sometime please?

Thanks everybody.

[chrix]

I wouldn't ditch SRS altogether, you could cut down on it though.

I think reading a lot helps build your vocabulary and sentence patterns too, though it might not help your pronunciation.

[HedgePig]

querido, have you come across the zhongwenred website and its sister sites, zhongwengreen and zhongwen blue?

They have sample sentences built around vocabulary. e.g., picking arbitrarily from Zhongwenred, lesson 69, you have the following

老师 常常 说 笑话 。 The teacher often tells jokes.

胡 先生 常常 吃 火锅。 Mr. Hu often eats hot-pot.

他 上午 常常 读 报纸。 He often reads the newspaper in the morning.

我 午餐 常常 吃 卷饼。 I often have crepe-wraps for lunch.

她 常 出去 散步。 She often goes out for walks.

她 不 常 穿 高跟鞋。 She does not usually wear high heels.

孙 小姐 常常 和 朋友 出去 玩儿 。 Ms. Sun often goes out with friends to have a good time.

There is also pinyin and a very literal translation. You can download this in a pdf and there is accompanying audio with three or four or sometimes even more readers, so you hear different voices and speeds. Each of the sites has 120 lessons and it's all free.

That's the good news. The bad news is that it is incomplete and I'm not sure that any active work is going on. So zhongwenred actually only has 110 lessons, although almost all have audio. Zhongwengreen has around 60 lessons but not all have audio. Zhongwenblue has still fewer lessons and no audio. Even so, there are around 1400 sentences altogether with the audio available for more than half of them.

Regards

HedgePig

[Hero Doug]

I wouldn't ditch SRS altogether, you could cut down on it though.

I've really questioned it's value recently. I feel that it's actually a hindrance because I spend all my time inputting and reviewing vocab. I'd rather use this time using Chinese as I find that I remember content much better that way.

I'd like to hear how this works for you over time. Would you report sometime please?

I've only done it recently so I'll do a report later, probably in the 2010 aims and progress thread.

[chrix]

I've really questioned it's value recently. I feel that it's actually a hindrance because I spend all my time inputting and reviewing vocab. I'd rather use this time using Chinese as I find that I remember content much better that way.

I think you need to do both. Before I was using SRS, I often had situations where I dimly remembered a word, and sometimes wouldn't have any means of "recovering" it, and in that regard SRS has helped me a lot. If you use a plugin like pinyin-toolkit, the time of inputting words is minimised, and if you use shared packages such as the HSK vocabulary you don't have to spend any time inputting at all. Even if you don't find the time to regularly review, at the very least you can use it like an electronic notebook...

[Hero Doug]

You're right when saying that SRS is good for helping to make sure you don't forget what you've studied; I really understand this point because I used to be an avid user of SRS; but lately it's really fallen out of favour with me.

I just find that I remember vocabulary (plus grammar) very well via language drills and general communication (reading and speaking) and have very little need for SRS. I feel I get more out of my study time with this approach.

[querido]

To HedgePig:

Those websites are beautiful. Thank you.

To Hero Doug:

I'm with you.

I've offered strenuous arguments of various kinds, but it isn't something that will be provable. Here is one possible summation or justification, as though one were needed: Doing or not doing them falls within the reasonable range of options governable by personal preference or style. The idea that they are almost indispensable, of almost miraculous effect, is a bit of a false religion.

Last year, I collected words, as documented here. Noticing that my real language usage was lagging, this year I've tried to adjust my approach. Thus, this thread. What I think I will find, what I think I see already, is that the nature of my progress will not be so easily measured. The experience of taking words I already "know" according to the flashcard program, and helping them into the places in the mind where they're actually accessible on the fly as language, is ...personal and ...delicate and ...despite what some scientist has supposedly proven, is the truly indispensable process. This experience happens when reading/listening, above all when I am NOT doing the approved minimum-information flashcards. I wonder how many here observe this. Finally, I think the nature of this experience is *so far removed* from that of the flashcarding session that it exposes the latter as to some extent alien to language learning and equivalent to the pigeon pecking at a colored disk.

[chrix]

If you have a full comprehensive exposure in all genres and round the clock, and are fully immersed in it, you might not need SRS at all. But for most learners, especially out of the country, this is not the case, thus the need for SRS. If you've mastered the 8000 HSK deck, you'll have a good range of words you can use in a variety of situations you might not have been in before.

If you're unhappy with your SRS'ing, you could stop entering words and just rely on extending your vocabulary based on shared decks, or only add certain words that you keep forgetting in speech or confusing words.

[renzhe]

SRSing levels off after a while. I haven't been intensively learning new words and characters through flashcards for a couple of months, and now my daily review takes 5-10 minutes, even with my 10,000+ cards. And it comes with the fluffy feeling that you're minimizing your forgetting rate.

If you insist on adding 300 new ones each day, then yeah, it's a bummer.

And I agree with Chrix. Without flashcards and SRS, I wouldn't be speaking Chinese right now. If I were actually in Beijing or Shanghai, I might not bother with SRS, but here I have to. Now that much of the basic vocabulary is deeply entrenched in my memory, I find learning new stuff through "osmosis" much easier.

For me, it's a tool, once I don't need it anymore, I'll stop using it. But it was crucial and irreplaceable for getting a basic 10,000 word vocab under my belt.

[Ed Log]

practice practice practice - just think of phases in your head to everyday situations

[Hero Doug]

I've offered strenuous arguments of various kinds, but it isn't something that will be provable. Here is one possible summation or justification, as though one were needed: Doing or not doing them falls within the reasonable range of options governable by personal preference or style. The idea that they are almost indispensable, of almost miraculous effect, is a bit of a false religion.

I think linking SRS to religious belief is kind of accurate. People have a tendency to inflate their own values, abilities, and methods while and deflating those of others1.

As was said already, there are so many variables going into this that there will never be a definitive answer. I for instance live in China and have a Chinese wife who I speak to everyday in Chinese. I also study daily and regularly review previously learned material. I do have quite a bit of exposure and many opportunities to use Chinese on a day to day basis. In this way I feel that SRS isn't adding much to my progress. If anything, I feel that it's taking away from my study progress.

Environment aside, we also have to look at what kind of learner someone is. I for instance am more of a right brain thinker and rote memorization just doesn't do it for me. I find that I have a much better study to retention ratio by spending a half hour writing articles and making sentences as opposed to spending half an hour using SRS.

The last large variable that I think has to be looked at is ones values. Taking the word 挂号 for instance. I always forget the character 挂, although I know how it's said. Some people might feel that this character is a perfect candidate for SRS; and according to their study ideals they would be right. But I really don't care that I don't know the character. I have rarely had a need to use it and it really isn't valuable for me.

I know one might say that one day I may regret it when I make a trip to the post office (I'm unprepared); but I see it as providing a perfect opportunity to learn the word in context, when and if it's needed.

Kind of like lazy learning.

I'd much rather learn words I find useful rather than learn words I think I'll find useful.

[renzhe]

Dudes, it's just a tool that reminds you of words just before you forget them. The rest is up to you.

Just like dictionary is a tool. You don't have to use it. A notebook for writing words down is a tool. You don't have to use it. Internet is a tool. There are people who have learned languages without any of these.

Learning without these tools is not necessarily the most efficient method, but this will depend on you and many other factors.

[Hero Doug]

Everyone here is just stating their reasons for or against SRS by relating it to their personal experience and beliefs. I've actually found it to be a fairly interesting discussion, as short as it's been.

So here you go renzhe, this little smile is for you , to show that I'm not trying to get you all rilled up.