How to sound more "natural"?

[Koxinga]

My level of Chinese is somewhere between beginner and intermediate. I pretty much know how to pronounce individual syllables/tones. As for whole sentences, if I hear someone say something, I can easily imitate that. When I imitate, according to my Chinese friends, my pronunciation is very good.

However, I have a problem with saying stuff that I'm not directly imitating. If I want to say my own sentence as a response to something, I don't sound as good as when I'm imitating. The same thing happens when I'm reading out loud. My Chinese friend says that I sound like "jumping from character to character".

Also, when I'm speaking, a few unrelated people occasionally say it's "not very clear". I asked them what exactly they meant by that, but since they aren't teachers, they weren't able to explain it or help me fix it. Saying it louder helps, but I don't think that's the solution to my problem.

So, how do I fix that and sound more natural and easier to understand? Please don't just tell me to practice more, as I am practicing, but not improving.

[Hugh]

Do you have a textbook that comes with an audio CD? They often have recordings of entire sentences that could be helpful if you listen and repeat a lot of times. Also, getting as much exposure to Mandarin as possible every day should do some good. Have you seen AJATT? It's for Japanese but has some good tips on cramming in as much exposure as possible.

Please don't just tell me to practice more

Well, this is probably still the most effective thing. It does take ages, but it's the sort of thing that comes with time.

Sorry I can't think of anything more specific, but I do think it just takes time, practice and exposure to get the knack of it.

[abcdefg]

Sounds like it might be a "phrasing" issue more than a matter of tones. Where to pause, what part of a sentence to say slower and what part to say faster, what part to emphasize and so on.

Lots of imitation of native speakers may still be your best road to having what you say come out sounding "natural."

An afterthought: If your sentence structure is not correct, that also makes you more difficult to understand.

[Koxinga]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm going through the NPCR, loading the lessons in Audacity and repeating sentences over and over. I listen to Chinese radio stations almost every day without understanding anything. I also went through the first fifteen or so Pimsleur lessons. That's as much immersion as I can get.

I didn't think I'd get to the point of bumping my head against the wall so quickly

[Lu]

When I imitate, according to my Chinese friends, my pronunciation is very good.

Keep in mind that 'your pronunciation is very good' can be 客气 for 'I can tell that it is Chinese you are speaking'.

As to how to improve your speaking, you can ask your teacher if you have one on specific things that you can do differently. But in the end, it does come down to practice. Listen a lot to get a feel for what Chinese is supposed to sound like and for the 'melody' of a sentence, imitate a lot to get used to speaking that way. Good luck!

[renzhe]

It will help to concentrate on phrases and short parts of sentences. Learn to say those in one breath, instead of word by word. I have found that listening helps, as you learn a repertoire of common phrases and how to put them together. Repeating sentences from a CD is also a good way to leanr some common ohrases.

[abcdefg]

That's as much immersion as I can get.

From what you've said, it doesn't seem like immersion is the key. What you need is some one-to-one time with a skilled teacher. You can try to say something the way you think it should be said and then he or she can say it in a "native" way. Then you can imitate the way it sounds when it comes out of the teacher's mouth.

Not sure if such an arrangement is feasible for you in your current situation.

[anonymoose]

I pretty much know how to pronounce individual syllables/tones.

I think this is a stage that everyone goes through initially. Now, instead of practising individual syllables, try to move onto multisyllabic words, then short phrases and so on, and work your way up to complete sentences.

[rezaf]

I suggest this attachment:

suining hua.mp3

[Glenn]

Speaking of building up to sentences and such, I had thought it might be a good idea to learn some poems and practice those, because they generally sound pretty cool too. However, I'm not quite sure how to go about finding them and readings of them by Chinese people to model myself after. I don't suppose anyone has any ideas, do they?

[Gleaves]

Glenn - How to Read Chinese Poetry has recordings of the poems from the book available online here. I never thought to use them for pronunciation practice, but it's not a bad idea.

[Glenn]

Ooo, nice. I think I might try to learn 赤壁. Thanks!

[Hugh]

Personally I don't think reading poetry is a good plan for improving your oral Chinese in general. A lot of Chinese poetry is Classical Chinese, or at least similar to it. In any case it's usually very elliptical compared to modern Mandarin. If you want to improve your natural Mandarin speaking ability, practice speaking natural Mandarin.

[Lu]

I agree, learning poems is a cool thing to do (always have your favorite poems with you! not to mention impressing your Chinese friends), but mostly useless for developing natural speaking skills, in my opinion.

[rezaf]

In my view standard Mandarin is very unnatural and thus difficult to use for speaking however when you add the spice of local dialects to it will become more natural and agile. The only way to sound natural is to use the language in your daily life with Chinese people. Personally dealing with my Chinese wife and her family (especially arguments) has helped me a lot because when you argue with someone you won't have the time and need to think about grammar and vocabulary and the words will come out naturally.

[Glenn]

I agree that they aren't exactly conversational, but that's not entirely the point here. I like the way they sound, and practicing them would make me practice pronunciation, and I would get them down fluently (at least that's the hope). I don't think that's not transferable to ordinary speech (which I'm currently getting lots of exposure to, way more than poems, in fact). Plus fluent pronunciation is fluent pronunciation. How do you feel about learning modern songs?

By the way, I don't have any Chinese people to talk to, so that's not really an option (I'm not exactly in a good area for that).

[Lu]

Then try listening a lot (movies, tv series, podcasts, etc), and perhaps talk to yourself (there's a thread on that somewhere I think). Or perhaps you can try to find Chinese people to talk to on skype.

Learning songs is good for some things, like understanding more and more of them and have that as a reward, and because singing is fun. But like poems, I don't think they're that great for fluency or pronounciation. Chinese songs mostly ignore the tones, and are not always good for grammar either. If you do want to sing, a nice blog is ktv xiaojie.

[Glenn]

I'm already doing all those things save talking to people on Skype.

So songs kind of lose to poems, then, because poems don't ignore tones (well, at least in that area).

I wasn't saying that I was going to not listen to/practice more conversational Mandarin. Learning some poems and being able to recite them isn't a strategy that I was ever considering in exclusion to everything else. I just thought it would be a fun way to work on pronunciation and stringing words together into phrases, mostly because I like the way they sound. That is to say, it's a supplement.

Oh, and I was also wondering if it's naive to think that poems would help with learning 成語.

[Lu]

Oh, and I was also wondering if it's naive to think that poems would help with learning 成語.

That should work, many chengyu came from poems I think, if you learn those poems that should help in remembering the chengyu.

[Glenn]

That was the assumption that I was working under. OK, cool. Thanks!