Starting Chinese

[ailixia]

Hello everyone,

I'm a new Chinese learner. Currently the only things I have for my study tools is Anki and the book Remembering Simplified Hanzi. The book works really well for me, I'm able to memorize characters with ease but I don't like the idea of having no speaking or listening abilities. What would be a good supplement for this book? I can't imagine myself retaining anything if I simply play and replay pronunciation clips off an online English-Chinese dictionary. Is there anything stimulating and free online to help with listening?

[querido]

Hi. I'm a little ahead of you but looking for the same thing and I just finished a big review of the online *pod-type learning sites.

I suggest CSLPod Elementary. For example, go to Lessons... Elementary Lessons... click on the lesson title... and select the tab "Content" to get to here. I don't know if that link will work for you until you're registered. It gives a sentence by sentence breakdown, with individual sentence audio for the lesson, with hanzi, pinyin and English. Each sentence is read like this: ultra slow, medium, full speed.

The full lesson has an overly long (:35) intro (which you could snip off with Audacity), but these individual sentences don't. Audio quality and accent are very good.

Second suggestion is ChinesePod Newbie, which is what I actually chose for the "Audio Review" (drilling) and "Expansion" (example sentences with individual-sentence audio). You have to pay for these. I also chose this because their Elementary level also looks very easy and I hope to graduate almost immediately, while CSLPod's next level is higher than that. The total vocabulary of ChinesePod Newbie (326 lessons) is 900 words.

Third suggestion is this awesome and free video course at Oxford U. Indexed, grammar, everything. Under "Listening and Speaking": individual sentence *videos*! (Requires QuickTime plugin. I chose to download and play with MPlayer.) Total vocabulary is 456 words.

Hey, you could join the 2010 Goals thread.

Good luck!

Edited December 25, 2009 at 04:54 PM by querido

[ailixia]

Thanks Querido for those sites. I know there's a lot wrote on the forums here that already answered my question, but it's a bit overwhelming to go through it all, so thank you a lot for taking the time.

Since you mentioned the goals thread, I have another question for anyone. What are some realistic goals for the first year of learning? Does it depend on the person, or is there some general guideline of how many characters you should know in such amount of time?

[natra]

I'm not sure how common a method this is for non-native speakers, but the main way I have learned Chinese was through writing in a journal. A tutor would correct my entries for me and then I would memorize the sentence patterns.

Either way, good luck and jia you! ^_^

有志者，事竟成。

[taylor04]

The most important thing is to decide what your goals are. Do you want to master Chinese or just have some conversations. Do you plan on taking any classes or just self study? Do you live in China or plan on it? etc, some more information would be useful

[ailixia]

natra - I keep a journal now in English, so switching to writing it in Chinese when I learn enough is a good idea.

taylor04 - Oh, good point. I'm a self studying student, and I don't plan on visiting China currently. (I'd personally love to visit China, but convincing my other half would be more difficult.) I enjoy a lot of Chinese music, and some TV shows, and that's what has made me interested in learning the language. I don't want to have to use subtitles forever! I'd like to get to the point eventually where my listening comprehension is good enough to understand what's going on in a show most of the time, and when I don't understand I can figure things out by context clues. However, I'd also like to be able to read and write well enough to carry out small talk in Chinese with someone online. (Actually, I have the secret dream of someday subtitling the types of shows and MVs I enjoy as repayment for all the subtitles I've used. But dreams of translating are far off, and a bit irrelevant now.) I don't expect much in the way of speaking since I'm teaching myself, considering most posts here say a person needs to learn from a native speaker to get pronunciation right. My hope for good pronunciation is low.

Based on that is there a certain amount of words I should shoot for being able to write, pronounce, and understand by the end of 2010, or does it really just depend on the person? At this point I don't know how much studying a day is too much, and what isn't enough.

[natra]

I agree with Taylor. This is a good question to ask yourself, since gaining a high level of Chinese requires a large investment of time.

[jakeofcanadia]

Yeah ChinesePod Newbie is definitely cool. Get a dictionary, and also on youtube askbenny is a cool guy to look up. He has like 500 vids or something. I would also recommend getting a written book just so you can visually see the sentence structure.

Luckily, compared to other languages, Chinese translates more or less easily to english. The difficult part is really the magnitude of characters to learn (if you want to learn to write too) and tones with pronunciation.

[taylor04]

So this is more of a hobby than getting to an advanced level of Chinese? Also, find some language partners to practice pronunciation. I recommend chinesepod.com to start out with listening, skritter.com for writing, and a textbook series you like. I think most people start with integrated Chinese or NPCR. I can't stress the importance of finding a language partner. Another good link for starting with your Chinese learning is http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/5007-some-advice-for-beginners

[ailixia]

Thank you all for your replies. =) I'll check out the sites mentioned.

And yes, currently, I'd consider this more of a hobby as I get a feel for the language and decide if I'm really interested in it. But that's not to say that I don't like the idea of someday being advanced in Chinese. I'll just see where things go.

[renzhe]

Since you mentioned the goals thread, I have another question for anyone. What are some realistic goals for the first year of learning? Does it depend on the person, or is there some general guideline of how many characters you should know in such amount of time?

It does depend on the person, the motivation, and the amount of time invested. I think that this is doable in your first year if you are motivated and determined:

- 1000-2000 characters

- 2000-3000 words

- very simple conversations

- reading simple comics

But you'll need daily work and a good SRS program (Anki, Mnemosyne, etc.) for revision. you'll also need a good beginner textbook. I recommend New Practical Chinese Reader, which worked for me. You'll have dialogues, lots of new vocabulary and the grammar explanations.

Don't learn a language without a textbook.

You don't have to learn from a native speaker to get the pronunciation well, but you should minimise the time you spend pronouncing things completely wrong. It is extremely useful to go through a pinyin chart with a native speaker, practicing all the initials, finals and tones. Then you can listen to native speakers and get a decent accent later. If you don't do anything like this in the beginning, chances are very high that you'll sound terrible forever.