Cutting too many corners? A new students approach to learning

[nickpellatt]

Hello! I thought I would ask the more experienced and learned members of the forum for some advice! (Which I may or may not take onboard) :rolleyes:

A little about me and my Chinese experience. I worked as an English teacher in China for almost 2 years from 2006-2008, and returned for another 6 month stint last year. I also hope to return to China for about 8 months later this year. My China experience was fruitful for many reasons (like it is for so many), but I didnt learn much Chinese when there (again, a similar experience for many I think!).

I came home able to speak some very basic Chinese. As a result I enrolled on the OU course to learn Chinese, and I have started to learn again from scratch. The OU course covers all basic skills, with an aim of students being able to read/recognise 400-500 characters, and to be able to handwrite 200-300 of them.

Now - I am not actually learning to write them at all! This is my first corner cutting referred to in the thread title. I feel (rightly or wrongly) that learning to actually hand write the characters is too time consuming, and I dont believe I will ever actually hand write them often enough to make it worth devoting study time to that skill. I want to be able to read them, use them in emails, and speak. I learn to recognise characters by using my course material, flashcard sets, and by typing in Chinese characters. My course doesnt require me to hand write any, as I can type all assignments. Is this really going to be detrimental to my learning at some stage? Has anyone else followed this study pattern? Can some of you read/type 100s of characters yet be unable to handwrite them.

I should add my approach is unusual amongst my fellow students. The argument for writing is 'what happens if you cant make yourself understood and need to write something on a scrap of paper when in China?' I personally dont feel that is likely to happen TBH. Technology overcomes a lot of this, should it ever arise.

The second thing, is I dont pay much attention to radicals and head components, stroke order etc etc either. I accept this does make using a dictionary slightly harder as I struggle to dissect the character, but how important are these things in the greater picture and in the aim for communicative competence?

Are any of you competent at using the language and able to read characters, but not really recognise the components of them? Am I likely to hit a wall in my studies at some stage? Im interested to hear your experiences and views.

Now someone may just say learning them is part of learning Chinese, so just do it, why the heck arent you?

I just feel that I am taking on quite a lot, and I am committed to it, but I am only able to juggle so many balls at once. I dont believe the ability to handwrite characters is likely to be useful in the settings I will be using language in (Damn, I dont even handwrite English much, so writing Chinese is even less likely). Spending hours per week learning this skill is time better spent learning or practising something I will use.

Ditto with understanding radicals etc. My course material does have small sections on them each week, but I simply read these, and pay little study time on the topic. I feel I have enough to do in learning the whole character, learning how to say it, use it, remember it, so learning the different components that make it up is once again, a little too time consuming. When I do look at my course material on them, I do sometimes think the links between characters and components is often slight anyway.

So ... am I on a hiding to nothing that I am likely to regret big time in the future? Or do other people have nice little heart warming stories they can share with my about their successful learning that followed a similar path?

I should just add the stage Im at now. I can recognise (and so type) around 280 characters. I can use them in limited contexts, and I recognise a number of compounds used in said characters. I probably recognise and know another 50 words that I am able to use in oral settings, but havent encountered characters for them yet. I guess that makes me beginner/elementary level.

[aristotle1990]

This was discussed a bit here. I agree with you in some respects -- I have no need to learn how to write the characters properly or learn the correct stroke order, as it takes way too much time and is just not important to me. But I do like that I can produce a lot of characters from memory with a pen and paper, thanks to my classroom days -- it would be difficult to compare characters and radicals mentally if you couldn't pull up images of the characters in your mind.

If you don't want to learn how to write by hand, you don't have to, but one thing you should try to learn is how many strokes are in a character (e.g., 口 is 3 strokes, not 1 or 2 or 4) -- this is important for looking them up when you don't have Nciku handy. Also, I do think a knowledge of the radicals is important, but I don't think you should worry about not paying attention to them now -- when you learn enough characters you'll eventually get curious and start looking them up anyway.

[jbradfor]

I would recommend paying some attention to how the characters are decomposed into smaller units. To some extend, this will come naturally as you learn more characters, but if you focus on it it should come faster.

Part of this is that it makes the characters easier to remember; rather than thinking "line line line line line line line line line line line line line", you can think in parts. The other reason is that most characters decompose into radical / phonetic parts, and the sooner you learn and recognize them, the easier it is to learn.

[feihong]

I agree that handwriting is a pretty useless skill, but I still took the time to learn how to write the most common 2000 characters (give or take). The reason is that I just found it much harder to remember new characters if I didn't know how to write them. Nowadays I know more than 3000 characters, and when I learn a new character I don't bother to learn how to write it. The reason being that I pretty much know all the radicals and when I see a new character I don't see a bunch of strokes, but rather a collection of radicals arranged in a certain way.

My advice: If you notice that your ability to retain new characters is slipping, you might want to add handwriting to your daily practice. And I would just add that there are no meaningful shortcuts to learning Chinese, since all you're doing is shaving a few months off an endeavor that takes multiple years. It's more important to make your learning and practice enjoyable and habitual.

[Shelley]

Hello,

You make many points most of which I don't feel qualified to comment on, except for not learning how to write characters. I would disagree that it is not necassary. This is one of the main ways I learn characters is by writing them over and over to ingrain them on my brain.Correct stroke order because the order is usually there for a good reason, mainly cos its the most logical way to do it. I think some time should be spent on writing. Also it is not as daunting as it seems if you learn speech,pinyin and characters all at the sametime. I don't expect to write a novel in characters:) but I do think its an important part of the language. If you learn the basics it helps. Good luck Shelley

[nickpellatt]

Thanks for the replies, and I read the thread that was linked.

I did wonder if I may hit a wall, so writing may be something for later, as will radicals etc. maybe.

As noted above, I guess I am picking up a little about how the characters are formed as I learn more. I guess the more you know, leads to noticing patterns between them.

Im not convinced Ill ever be into the writing though. When in China in 2007 I did have a go at using a brush (difficult I know) with pretty terrible results. This was a bit of a shock because I was a keen calligrapher when younger and used to enjoy experimenting with thick nibs and gothic/italic/cursive writing styles. Exact stroke order was very unnatural for me because Im left handed. Im sure lots of people have overcome that though! I found that if the stroke was left to right and then down, (For example - not sure if any stroke does follow that path) my natural way of doing it as a leftie was up and right to left, so backwards.

I did also try using a pencil but I found the characters looked so different to both fonts on a computer, and the more traditional printed font, that I was unable to recognise them!

[Gharial]

Hi Nick. Nobody can tell you what is best for you, but I think you must be a pretty amazing learner if you can absorb things effortlessly and flawlessly the first time around and without asking yourself ANY questions (especially about such a thing as the structure of Chinese characters!). It might help to become a bit more curious about things, as doing so could accelerate wider learning (and sooner rather than later), and I suspect that there will come a point (let's say around the 1,000 character mark) when things will all start looking the same and you'll be needing to do some remedial work in order to really make things stick. All that being said, the danger with a subject as potentially "rich" as Chinese characters is that those little "must know" questions can indeed become distractions from the real task at hand. (And sorry to be flogging my 'Guide to Simplified Radicals' [see the thread with that title] again, but in it I've tried to answer as many of those little questions as possible, in the light of returning to Chinese after a ten-year hiatus which gave me plenty of time to reflect and come up with a gut feeling about what would be useful...I certainly would've liked to have had such a guide to help me use my dictionaries more efficiently, especially when I was having to speed-translate newspaper stories with the aid of those dictionaries in timed exercises as part of a postgrad diploma ten years prior! And one doesn't have to read it all in one go - though the footnotes are reasonably readable, the main part of it can be kept primarily "for reference purposes only", as and when you have questions that hopefully the guide will have anticipated and thus be able to answer).

Ultimately I guess we'd all prefer to be(come) able to speak flawless Chinese than be just so-so at speaking but "literate" with it, but how likely is it that foreign adult learners will really improve their speaking to that extent without grappling with Chinese characters (indeed, without the partial aid of them, even if they sometimes are or seem an irritating crutch)?

[Guest realmayo]

The stuff teaching you about radicals might seem very abstract and unnecessary now but in a lots of cases they do help with the meaning: this means you can i) remember & distinguish a character you've already learned ("this character 苹, I know that main part is 平 <ping> and I know the grass radical often indicates a plant, and yeah, the character 'apple' is pronounced ping and is a plant, aha, 苹 is 'apple'..." and ii) guess the kind-of meaning of a new character you see for the first time ("狮 has a radical that's usually used for animals, so I guess it's an animal we're talking about here...").

The more words and characters you learn to recognise, and the more you read, the more this stuff will start to slot into place naturally, but if you make additional effort to work out if the radical for a new character you've encountered will help you remember the character the future, I think you can speed up that process and speed up the mini-eureka moments as parts of the puzzle start fitting together.

[renzhe]

I haven't really put much effort into writing characters, and I'm doing fine in terms of reading. This a controversial topic, though, and people will disagree vehemently. I'm missing an important skill, but I find that I've spent the time on things that are more important to me, like reading and listening. Personally, I think that you can learn to read without learning to write, but it will take more active exposure to the written language (i.e. much more reading). Personally, I think that time spent reading is time well spent, so I went this road. It doesn't mean that it will work for everyone.

I'd just warn you about cutting corners in general. Cutting corners is OK, leaving some stuff for later is ok. But you should be aware of two things. The first one is that there are many skills required for Chinese proficiency (listening, speaking, tones, reading, grammar patterns, writing, vocabulary, chengyu, etc.) and they often complement each other. Which means that being very bad at one of these will slow you down a lot. Aiming towards a well-rounded set of skills will actually help you learn faster overall -- listening will reinforce reading, reading will reinforce speaking, etc. The list of things you need to tackle is daunting, but it's not a problem to leave some of them out for the time being, and pick them up after you notice that you are missing them (keep running into chengyu all the time, can't remember tones to save your life, etc.) You will naturally concentrate on different things at different stages of learning, just don't leave any important parts completely out.

The second thing is that you will need a considerable time investment for Chinese, whether you learn to write or not. Plan on an hour a day on average. Learning Chinese as an adult NEEDS time and repetition. Picking priorities is OK, but if you cut too many corners and invest too little time, you will most likely fail.

My advice to you is to aim at 2000 characters as an absolute minimum. Without that, you won't be able to read anything, and then it's better not to bother learning characters at all. 2000 characters (and the corresponding words) can be done in 2 years spare time, with some flashcard software and lots of reading. Once you reach that, you will find completely new materials, and fantastic learning resources you cannot imagine at this moment. That's when learning Chinese becomes fun and you don't want to stop it.

[abcdefg]

One must prioritize. My main current goal is conversational fluency. Number two is being able to read. Number 874 is being able to write characters nicely. I allocate my study time accordingly. My priorities may change as time goes by, and if so, I will adjust my study methods and time allocation.

[wushijiao]

The second thing, is I dont pay much attention to radicals and head components, stroke order etc etc either. I accept this does make using a dictionary slightly harder as I struggle to dissect the character, but how important are these things in the greater picture and in the aim for communicative competence?

I would argue that learning radicals is well worth your time. You don't need to know all of them, but they are very valuable in getting the reading process off the ground, as realmayo pointed out above. Learning to write by hand is, to a large extent, a waste of time. However, some people find that they remember characters much easier when they do character practice by hand, so if that is the case, then by all means spend time writing by hand.

What I would do if I were you?

1) Complete a few beginner intermediate textbooks

2) Do at least an hour of audio per day (repeat listenings to dialogues)

3) Learn the core characters and vocab ASAP, as renzhe mentioned below.

That might take a year or two. Then start to mix in more and more real and authentic materials (TV, newspapers, movies, books...etc) with textbook work. And of course, always take advantage of opportunities to speak to people and make friends.

Perhaps my experience might be of use:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/5007-some-advice-for-beginners/

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/21143-my-recent-studying-methods-part-ii/page__p__171278__hl__fudan__fromsearch__1#comment-171278

As far as cutting corners, feel free to cut them! It's good, however, to take stock of your studying every month or two, access your progress and weaknesses, and then adjust. That might mean noticing that some corners were well cut, while in other areas, you need to go back and do it over. There's no perfect studying plan, really.

Good luck!

[T-revor]

I've tried cutting corners and it works for a while. Eventually I always end up hitting a wall and having to go back. I tried to learn speaking Chinese without knowing more than about 500 characters. Very difficult. Had to learn more characters. Started learning more characters (not caring much about the composition or how to write) but after about 1000 characters (just like Gharial said) they all start looking very similar and you've got to go back. Also, writing characters made it easier for me to remember them. More tactile I guess.

Now the silver lining in all of this is that when you cut corners, you expose yourself to a lot of stuff. That familiarity and exposure will help immensely when you "go back". Over all, I would say yes, cutting corners works. As long as you don't get frustrated when you have to go back and fill in gaps along the way.

But in general I think you've got the right idea. Just push yourself hard and fast and recognize when you need to go back and add a little more to the foundation. Good luck!

[Gibbs]

I self studied in the U.S. for about six months, never learning to write thinking I would never have to. I came to China to study and during the first week, in a class composed of mostly Korean and Japanese, I was called to the board to write a sentence using one of our new vocab words. To much embarrassment, I realized I did not know how to write 喜欢。Sometimes embarrassment and fear of further humiliation is the best motivation. Now I write everyday and although it takes more time, the increases in my vocab retention and reading ability outweigh the extra effort.

My advice: the next chapter you start, learn the new words/characters in the vocab list by writing them ten times. The chapter after that, do not write out the vocab list. If you find that you have greater recall and recognition of the words you wrote out, congratulations you just found a personally-superior studying method. If not, don't bother writing but I must advise against enrolling at a Univ. in China where a majority of your classmates are Japanese and Korean.

and remember... learning Chinese is not a race.

[nickpellatt]

More interesting reading ... have also looked at the more recent threads linked.

Perhaps I will go back through my textbooks and read the radical sections again to review etc. Still not convinced about the writing although the 'write ten times' suggestion is a nice one. I definitely wont be studying at a University though, and if I do have any formal classes in China later this year, they will be through my employer and I already know the teacher so wont have any fears about not being able to write.

I did use a website yesterday, cant for the life of me remember which one, and it had a grid where you can draw characters with the mouse, and the box alongside will recognise them. Anyway, I wrote 五 to try it out, and it didnt recognise it as I dont use the correct stroke order. The final character I wrote was correct, but not knowing stroke orders is obviously likely to be an issue. In honesty, that will probably put me off more! I think I could write some of the high frequency characters in my small vocabulary just by familiarity with them, but I dont know stroke orders.

Anyway, its all good. Im not learning Chinese with a goal in mind, I am learning for the learning experience more than anything. I teach English, and will hopefully continue to do so for many years, but I have never learnt a language before. I kinda think a teacher of language should have experience in being a learner of language!

[jbradfor]

Re: stroke order. MDBG has an animated stroke order for many characters. Both MDBG and nciku have boxes in which you can draw a character and it will try to find matches.

[aristotle1990]

I did use a website yesterday, cant for the life of me remember which one, and it had a grid where you can draw characters with the mouse, and the box alongside will recognise them. Anyway, I wrote 五 to try it out, and it didnt recognise it as I dont use the correct stroke order. The final character I wrote was correct, but not knowing stroke orders is obviously likely to be an issue. In honesty, that will probably put me off more! I think I could write some of the high frequency characters in my small vocabulary just by familiarity with them, but I dont know stroke orders.

This is why you don't use MDBG, whose recognition engine seems to based entirely on stroke order. (Because everyone immediately knows the precise stroke order of a character they've seen in passing only once or twice... :blink:) Nciku does not really take this into account and is thus infinitely more useful. Also, Sogou Pinyin has a built-in handwriting recognizer that is faster and better than Nciku's and can be used offline.

[simple101]

For me Chinese characters are a massive aid to learning Chinese. If I already know the characters in new vocabulary I can memorize that vocabulary with much less effort then it would take me in say Spanish for example. And I personally find learning characters doesn't take up much of my study time BECAUSE i break them down into components... sometimes radicals, sometimes more basic characters. Stroke order is generally also pretty easy... there are basic rules to it etc and a a character's strokes can usually be made in the same order of it's component radicals - it's not like you need to put in effort to memorize the stroke order of each character. I also find it easier to remember characters if I learn to write them.

[jbradfor]

Because everyone immediately knows the precise stroke order of a character they've seen in passing only once or twice... :blink:

I do. At least most of the time.

It's really not that hard. There are just a couple of rules to learn (rules which I'm sure Hoffman will tell me I'm wrong, but yet, somehow everyone still uses them and manages to communicate). And since almost all characters are made up of sub-components, if you learn the order for sub-components, you know the order for the characters.

I'm sure any advanced learner or native speaker could immediately come up with a dozen or more character for which I'll get the order wrong. But my point is, for most characters, correct stroke order is really not that hard and should be learned if you want to learn to write by hand.

[nickpellatt]

It was nciku I used! I just went back and tried it again ... On my fourth attempt at writing 五 it recognised what I was doing. I had to use the most unnatural stroke order to get the correct option though! That might be a left handed thing? I do believe that correct stroke order (and direction) is actually the order I would be least likely to use when writing myself.

I have written the character in the natural way I would write, and the correct option doesnt even show when I scroll through the boxes. Hmmm, I think I will definitely keep going as I am rather than worrying about writing!

Natural stroke order for me is; top line - drawn from right to left. bottom line, from right to left. Vertical line, from top to bottom, final stroke from left to right, then down.

Being a lefty I hold my pen in one of those awkward angles where most of my hand is above the letter/character I am writing. I think re-learning everything to write in Chinese isnt going to be for me! :unsure:

So having just gone and made a cuppa, and had a smoke ... I think I am clear on NOT learning to handwrite, although the advice about learning radicals etc might be something for me to think about.

[aristotle1990]

It's really not that hard. There are just a couple of rules to learn (rules which I'm sure Hoffman will tell me I'm wrong, but yet, somehow everyone still uses them and manages to communicate). And since almost all characters are made up of sub-components, if you learn the order for sub-components, you know the order for the characters.

I mean, I think my stroke order on a lot of the basic components is roughly “correct,” but the thing is that MDBG has a very low error tolerance, and as it often happens that the characters you want to look up are obscure and complicated, it doesn't work all that well. Really, unless you want to be a calligrapher or look up individual characters in a dictionary by stroke order, I don't think it's valuable enough knowledge to justify forcing yourself to learn and use something that's not very intuitive (e.g., why are the three main horizontal strokes in 笔 right-left, left-right, left-right?). I'm sure there's some underlying logic (oh man, that 王羲之 was such a great calligrapher), but it's not easy to see. The average beginner spends too much time worrying about how to write the characters when he could be memorizing them.