A Chinese willing to offer hekp

[Yichao]

Hey guys!

I'm a Chinese from southeast of China, just near Shanghai.

I just fortunately found a forum disscusing Chinese by Americans as I wished

hope I could fit in here

[langxia]

Welcome to the forum.

BUT keep in mind that a lot of people posting here are not americans, there are europeans (like me) australians, africans, and asians (chinese and non-chinese) posting here.

[roddy]

Actually I think most of us are from Texas.

[amandagmu]

Hi, if you're from China I'd suggest using a forum where a lot of people use the "classifieds" section to post language exchange announcements, or just talk freely on the forums about various topics. For example, in Beijing there's thebeijinger.com. There must be the equivalent in Shanghai....? Maybe http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/phpbbforum/ ? Alternatively, just google "Shanghai expat" or something.

[Yichao]

Apologize for that...

And for the 4th floor, I just wanna help you guys learn Chinese and get to know you simultenously

[abcdefg]

Actually I think most of us are from Texas.

Some of us sure are.

[Yichao]

Yeah, I know that. I have friends there

[roddy]

So, Yichao, what do you do?

[Yichao]

I'm a high school students still. I'm now writing a paper for the topic that how the foreigners learn Chinese. So I got here, willing to teach you guys and by theway, I can know how you learn Chinese

[roddy]

Well, ask away then, what would you like to know?

[imron]

how the foreigners learn Chinese

Watching TV

[jbradfor]

how the foreigners learn Chinese.

The vast majority learn the standard way: in a class, with a teacher, using a textbook, at a university.

However, the vast majority of posters here are not learning that way, and are largely learning on our own.

[Yichao]

Yeah, That's what I wanna know. If possible, could you tell me the sequence you learn Chinese? Like pinyin first, then character. Or just learn it like your mother language, get sth to listen and imitate first, then study the grammar stuff

[amandagmu]

Everyone's different. Most textbooks teach you everything at once. Some start with learning pronunciation and tones before any words or conversations. The better ones (in my opinion) stop using pinyin in the dialogue after a few lessons and only use pinyin for the vocabulary word list.

I can tell you this. I'm a native English speaker, but I learned French at age 8 when my family moved to France. They taught us French the same way I learned English: reading, grammar and spelling practice, dictation exercises, and occasionally watching movies or singing songs. I now speak it fluently. However, I didn't start learning Chinese until age 24. I discovered quickly that I cannot learn a language like when I was a kid. Back then things seemed to "stick" without me even trying... and they seem to have lasted forever. To learn a new language these days I need an immersive environment and lots of practice.

Let me say this again just so you write it in your paper: Everyone really does learn differently. Here's my experience. In mainland China, I found it difficult to learn Chinese if you don't follow the main method used: repeat dialogues and memorize a billion characters per day. There is little opportunity for diverging from the dialogue and little encouragement of experiential learning during classroom time (like watching movies, the news, or going to the market in the middle of class to practice new words, something I did both when I was learning French and German). In China, the only way to get this is to go to a private school, tutor, one-on-one teacher and insist on this method. As a side note: my Chinese teachers at a U.S. university often encouraged experiential learning outside of class, but the classroom was often just as uncreative and boring, largely because the textbooks were also extremely dry and boring and my teachers didn't seem to know how to come up with anything else.

There is not one "sequence" to learning Chinese. I hope you realize that. I found I learn Chinese best through constant practice of listening and reading, but that I *must* know the character, pinyin, and usage before I feel confident speaking something. For example, I cannot learn by just listening to the TV. I always read subtitles or look up characters in the dictionary. My worst experiences have been with teachers who insisted I repeat dialogues word by word, memorizing everything. Some people learn this way. But guess what? I often can't repeat exact phrases I just heard in English! I have mostly learned through teachers who encourage me to make up my own examples. They correct me when I use the wrong word or grammar. The teachers who scolded me for not being able to repeat something verbatim (every word exactly as the dialogue says) just made my life a living nightmare.

[Yichao]

That is really helpful!! Thank you very much!!

Well, same as you, we are also required to repeat the English passages exactly on classes which I think is useless.

I just do it the same as you as my English skill now is better than the most students at my age.

Anyway thanks a lot!

[rmpalpha]

I'd like to add to this discussion since I'm deaf - because I'm deaf, it is quite difficult for me to learn to speak and lipread Chinese so I haven't seriously tried to learn these two skills. Instead, I have focused all of my studies on learning to read and write Chinese characters, and learning to read Chinese texts.

The traditional way of teaching first-year Chinese at my university (and I suspect many others also) is to concentrate on listening and speaking skills, with writing skills being studied on the students' own time at home. The idea is that, since listening and speaking skills are quite difficult for students to master (tones and pronunciation), these two skills needs to be especially emphasized during the first year. The problem is that this method is completely ineffective for my learning, and, since learning to read and write is de-emphasized somewhat, the classroom setting is not really beneficial to my learning experience.

What I typically do when I study the Chinese language is three things: (1) learn how to write characters on Skritter, a great website for learning how to write characters in general; (2) read the dialogues and text in my textbooks, and transcribe them by hand on paper; and (3) do lots of exercises to practice my Chinese grammar. I think that, someday, when my Chinese is good enough, I'll get up enough courage to actually practice my language skills with a native speaker (online or through writing). A previous poster said that repeating the dialogue word for word isn't particularly effective for her, but for me, I find it helpful to see for myself how I can use certain grammatical patterns or learn set phrases. Transcription of the dialogues into pinyin and then writing the dialogues in characters is also a good test to see if I remember the characters being taught in a particular chapter.

I think that, if I take the second-year Chinese language course sequence at an university, I would definitely try to work with the teacher and incorporate as much reading and writing as possible. I really don't want another year of sitting through every class waiting for students to finish reading (and re-reading) the dialogues or answering oral questions asked by the instructor.

[TheChinnoo]

I'm definitely introduce this site to my husband. He's oh-so proud of Texas. He thinks Texas is the best COUNTRY on earth.

[Brian US]

He thinks Texas is the best COUNTRY on earth.

From what I hear it is easy to get into the Union, but not so easy to get out.