Learning Third Language in Chinese or English?

[afriday11]

Hi, I am seriously considering moving to a Spanish speaking country next year, so I need to begin studying Spanish. I have lived in China for about a year and a half and studied an additional year of Chinese in Uni (I started learning Chinese when I was 21 and am now 23). I started studying Spanish from 14-17, then an additional year when I started Uni at 19.

My question goes out to all of you knowledgeable in Psychology or Education。 I know that when you learn a language as an adult that information is stored in a different place than your native language, and that if you learn two foreign languages you sometimes mix them up, probably because the same words are stored near one another and get mixed up in the speech process. Since Spanish and Chinese are so different I am not too worried about mixing them up a lot, but I am wondering if I should buy a study Spanish book in Chinese or find something online that uses English to learn Spanish. I am worried that if I make flashcards that are Spanish/Chinese and read Spanish/Chinese books it will hurt me in the long run. Since English and Spanish are so similar it might be easier for me to understand/master the sentence patterns if I think about Spanish in English.

On the other hand, studying Spanish using Chinese will give me the opportunity to improve my Chinese along with my Spanish. I am probably thinking about this too much, but I am interested in the Psychology behind learning and proper methods for learning languages. I don't have a Chinese teacher, so if I don't know these things nobody's going to tell me unless I ask.

Thanks

[daofeishi]

I know that when you learn a language as an adult that information is stored in a different place than your native language

Do you have any credible sources on that?

No matter how early/late your learn a second language, you will make occasional slip-ups. I certainly do, and so do friends of mine who were brought up bilingual. Steven Pinker writes about this in "the Language Instinct." (A book you should have a look at if you're interested in the psychology of language) The research seems to conclude that making occasional mistakes has to do with the way the brain stores languages and connects concepts with words through weak associative links. Problems like choosing an anglicism when speaking in Chinese or suddenly coming up with a Chinese word mid-sentence in English, as has happened to me, is likely to have to do with choosing the "wrong" association. How late you start learning a language doesn't seem to factor into it.

Therefore, how you want to go about improving your Spanish probably won't make any noticeable cognitive difference. It might affect the speed of your progress, depending on how good your Chinese is, but otherwise I'd just advise you to do what feels right.

English is my second language, but I've been learning Chinese through English. The reason is mainly because it's easier to find CSL-material in English than in my native Norwegian, but even if that wasn't the case, I still think I'd go by the same method since I live and study in the US.

[anonymoose]

I don't know about the psychology behind it, but I'm learning Japanese using Chinese materials, and haven't encountered any difficulties yet (although I'm taking it quite slowly).

As for learning Spanish using Chinese materials, provided your Chinese is good enough to understand the technicalities, then it should be OK. The only thing is, Chinese learners of Spanish are likely to find different things challenging from native English speakers. For example, tenses probably cause more of a problem to Chinese learners, and may be covered in unnecessary depth for an English speaker. This is just my guess, anyway, but personally, I find learning Japanese in Chinese quite fun.

[Lu]

I'd recommend learning Spanish from English.

First, as English is your native language, you know it very well, which will make it easy to understand exactly which grammar point is explained, or what a word means. If you use Chinese for this, you might learn things wrong.

Second, English is closer to Spanish than Chinese is to Spanish. This will, in my opinion, make Spanish easier to learn from English, as the similarities are clear. Also, an English textbook will cater to native speakers of English, and address exactly the things that they will be most likely to have trouble with (and leave out the things that are obvious to English speakers, like the difference between pero and pelo).

[Token_287]

Hmm, I learned a lot of Uyghur through Chinese language books, and found it to be a useful experience. A word of caution though, most of the Chinese language textbooks that I've found, though especially so for Uyghur, are heavily geared towards a "linguistic introduction to the standard language" (complete with lots of phonology information, diagrams of points of articulation in the mouth, etc.) and then mostly for reading competency, so if you're actually looking to speak the language, there might be a bit of a disconnect from what you find in other courses. I do find it useful to be able to pull out words like "unaspirated unvoiced consonant" at the right moment, though. I don't know about the Spanish edition of the series, but I have a few of the "300 Sentences in X Language" , and always found them to be pretty good at giving a mix of idiomatic example sentences and a good grammatical overview, and at 15 kuai for the book and mini-cds for listening, the price is pretty reasonable. Hope this helps.

[simonlaing]

I am an English native speaker who learned French and spanish before learning Chinese. (I have forgotten most of the spanish from non-use mostly) I am thinking of learning Arabic which language should i learn it from?

I am still in China so the choices are English or Chinese?

Thanks,

Simon:)

[Caidanbi]

I think generally it will be easier to learn another language from your native language, but I have used Chinese resources to help with learning other languages, and it doesn't bother me any. If your Chinese is very advanced, I think it should be ok.