Need Help With Personal Study Plans

[lucidriled]

Hi, first time posting here but I've been trolling around this forum for about a month- thanks for all the great posts. I apologize to begin with if these questions have been posted elsewhere; I just haven't received the answer I was looking for and thought this might be quicker. I started studying Mandarin last June at a community college using the Integrated Chinese series. I bought several of those writing booklets with the squares for practicing my characters and would write each character over filling the page, which was about 88 times. I found it tedious but meditative at the same time. I was doing well but had to leave to another state in the U.S. before finishing my second course. Where I'm living there isn't instruction readily available so I've been learning on my own. I started using Mnemosyne each day, anywhere between 45 and 60 minutes. Last month I learned all 214 radicals and now I'm trying to learn 1,000 characters this month using flashcards from the Practical Chinese series. Here are some of my questions:

Is it a good idea to cram a lot of characters at once, just to become familiar with them, and continue to use Mnemosyne to reinforce them each day?

Is one hour even enough each day? What's the minimum amount I should study each day?

What methods for learning vocabulary do you recommend? I find that I don't have as much trouble recognizing the characters as opposed to retrieving it from my memory with no aid.

How can I memorize characters quicker without having to write them down 88 times?

After I finish this month's list I want to start having conversations with native speakers online. Which services have the best reputation? Also my computer is rather inexpensive so I'm worried that the audio and visual might not be the best.

I'm also going to start watching more movies and television shows. Are there programs for beginners that are actually interesting and not so silly? If soap opera types are the only (or best) options available to me then I will take that route.

My goal is to eventually have a strong enough grasp to be able to work in the country with facility. I don't need to a have a mastery in specialized vocabulary, like in the medical field- I just need to be able to talk with "regular" educated people.

I realize this will take several years, but I'm in no real rush and just want to practice everyday at a manageable and effective level. I'm also practicing French and Spanish each day, so I can't be as totally obsessed with the language as I've seen others do it.

Apologies for such a lengthy, egocentric post but any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. This forum has been a tremendous help in maintaining my motivation.

[smiletrl]

Firstly,i have to say i'm impressed by this long post :o .

Then, view your questions,

"Is it a good idea to cram a lot of characters at once",I believe this is nesseary. But you need to make a plan, not just remember new characters everyday. For inatance, you can set a time period(like 30 days) for 30 charater groups. The first day, you read group 1 and 2. The second day, it turns to group 3 and 4 before you have scanned group 1 and 2. The fourth day,scan charater group 1 and 2 again before you remember group 9 and 10 and so on. The fifteenth day is another time point, and you have to do what you have done as the the fourth day. The character number of each character group depends on the difficulty of characters and your personal level. With such time cycle (you can also find some other memory methods suitable for you), i guess you may memorize characters much easier in this way. Probably this also answers another question "What methods for learning vocabulary do you recommend? "

"How can I memorize characters quicker without having to write them down 88 times?". Well,the times you write them down is not essentially fixed by 88 times. To some extent, 88 times are kind of too many, and please don't tell me you write down characters 88 times at the one time, which would be quite time counsuming, yet not give you ideal results. There's no very quick ways of memorizing characters, unless you practice them (in any possible ways) agsin and again. At this time, I would recommend you memorize little stories or essays interest you in Chinese. Personaly sepaking, this is a very effective way for me to study English.

"Is one hour even enough each day?", I guess the more hours, the better. From my perspective, only one hour is not enough, given that your future work is highly involved with Chinese. Two hours would be better, but you need to cut the two hours into different time parts, instead of using the whole two hours doing the same things with Chinese.

As for which service or programs better for beginners, i think you can figure out these problems yourself by trying it in different levels.

Meanwhile,"I'm also practicing French and Spanish each day", I don't think it's wise to learn three languages at the same time, espeically including Chinese language :blink: .

Wish this could help!

By the way, can i put (some of) this post on my website, in that this post is very informative to me and i hope this could help othes sharing the relevant situation with you. You can check my site on my signature.

[renzhe]

Is it a good idea to cram a lot of characters at once, just to become familiar with them, and continue to use Mnemosyne to reinforce them each day?

Very controversial topic. I did it and found it very useful, but it might depend on the way you learn.

In any case, learning characters just for the sake of learning characters is quite pointless. You should always try to learn the associated words, try to see these words in different context. That's when the abstract definition get a meaning that's intuitive. So I recommend reading and listening as soon as you can and as much as you can. The more you see the characters in context, the more they will "stick" and leave some of your brain free for new ones.

Is one hour even enough each day? What's the minimum amount I should study each day?

I used to do 30 minutes to 1 hour a day on weekdays (flashcards + reading + TV shows) + several hours at a go on weekends (mostly textbook study, reading and watching).

It worked fine. I find that being consistent (studying a bit every day) is the most important factor. You must make sure that you're still enjoying your study programme so you don't burn out. So make it interesting, mix it up.

What methods for learning vocabulary do you recommend? I find that I don't have as much trouble recognizing the characters as opposed to retrieving it from my memory with no aid.

Production is much more difficult than recognition. At the same time, if you can write characters from memory, usually you remember them longer (just recognition takes many repetitions before characters stick).

I concentrated on cramming words and characters in Mnemosyne and I coupled it with lots and lots of reading. I think that the reading really helped me remember better. If you only do dry memorisation, your brain will inevitably forget after a while.

How can I memorize characters quicker without having to write them down 88 times?

Learn the meanings of the radicals and common components and then make up funny stories about how to combine them into new characters (mnemonics). There are good books full of mnemonics, like Heisig, but many people manage to get by by making up their own.

I'm also going to start watching more movies and television shows. Are there programs for beginners that are actually interesting and not so silly? If soap opera types are the only (or best) options available to me then I will take that route.

Read everything in this thread, you will definitely find something interesting for you, and there are many vocabulary lists and discussions too. For example, Fendou has complete vocabulary lists for all episodes, and lots of summaries, discussions and even transcripts for the first few episodes.

Give it a try, it's fun.

[mfgillia]

Generally agree with Renzhe's post above.

I would add to that by saying if you're spending the majority of your study time memorizing characters via a flashcard program then you will largely not be advancing towards the goal of becoming functional / conversational in Mandarin at your current level.

Nor would listening to film and radio be a high value activity until much later. As the typical beginner / basic level learner will largely just be hearing noise and unable to improve the ability to recognize the vocabulary and grammar in real time without prior exposure and practice to them.

Instead, listen to lots of basic level dialogs (e.g, chinesepod, popup chinese and/or audio from a good textbook), work through a good textbook series that provides a balance of activities, get plenty of basic speaking and tonal correction from native speaking tutors (hard to do over the internet initially), and start forcing yourself to think in Chinese - i.e., when you see a new vocabulary item think how you would actually use it in basic sentences and questions versus in isolation.

Furthermore, an hour spent doing an exercise like the one described here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/31133-language-partnerstutors/ will make a much bigger difference to the typical student then the same hour randomly memorizing characters or listening to news in Mandarin.

Best of luck with your new hobby. B)

[lucidriled]

Thank you very much both smiletrl and renzhe for your prompt, helpful responses.

For smiletrl:

I will definitely study the characters in groups. The flashcards are divided according to the book's lesson, like transportation or shopping. This is what you mean?

I will also increase my studies to two hours after building up gradually to that mark.

Yes, I would write each character for 88 times straight in a row. I didn't memorize many characters a night, my hand was sore, but I got better at making my characters look visually pleasing.

Lastly, of course you can reproduce any part of the post.

For renzhe:

Thank you for the Heiseg recommendation. Are you familiar at all with Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary by Rick Harbaugh? (Amazon recommends it along with Heiseg's book).

The Grand First Episode Project piqued my interest before. I will check out Fendou now and the other episodes too.

Any good short stories for reading that I can find online?