Keen New Leaner

[ThomasSmith]

Hello everybody, (nihao? )

I gave a load of the topics a read last night, and have found some of them helpful, but not purely targeted to the situation that I am in and so I hope you are able to give some advice!

I'm currently on my summer break from university, from now until October. In my next (and final..) year of university, I am planning on taking Beginners Mandarin.

What I'd like to do is, do some learning now through the summer, in order to be able to make the most of the tutoring that I'll have access to post-October time. The problem with this is, I don't really know how viable it is to learn at home without a tutor telling me about pronunciation etc.

So really I wanted to know: Is there any hope for me to learn? Or will an untutored student just end up speaking gibberish? (I had a little play on rosetta stone mandarin - the pronunciation software isn't overly accurate, and I do understand the importance of actually saying the correct tones.. I even coughed once and it said that I was correct)

If this ambition is not in vain - what is the best textbook/workbook/learning software available for me in the UK?

And lastly, how should I approach it? Because on the most part, the threads here seem to be someone who has already had experience learning mandarin (be it a minor or major amount); whilst i've had nothing more than a couple of hours on rosetta.

Thanks guys, I apologise if this has been said before, I'm just eager to learn as soon as possible and I believe this is the quickest way...

Thomas

[rezaf]

There are many online tutors on websites like www.italki.com and many of them are very cheap. Personally I believe learning everything at the beginning needs the help of a good teacher and it can save you a lot of time. Later on you can progress by self-study .

[ThomasSmith]

Okay, sure! I may well have to lump up the courage to give them a go then lol, i'm historically rather shy lol

thank you for your quick response rezaf!

[roddy]

I don't really know how viable it is to learn at home without a tutor telling me about pronunciation etc.

It's not ideal, but what is? Be aware of the pitfalls, do some reading about self-study of pronunciation (here's a couple of discussions that might help). The textbooks all assume zero knowledge to start with (as long as you don't get something with Advanced in the title) so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. New Practical Chinese Reader, Integrated Chinese, Chinese Made Easier, Teach Yourself Chinese - have a look on Amazon or in a bookshop and see which one suits. Avoid anything with the word 'Easy', 'Quick' or any period of time in the title.

You could just work through a book and not worry about speaking. Normally I wouldn't recommend that as you'd get an imbalanced set of skills, but given that you're getting the tutoring in a few months I don't think it would matter so much, that'll bring you up to speed hopefully.

If you approach it carefully, use tools like Audacity, maybe upload some stuff here for comments, I don't think you'll do any harm.

[ThomasSmith]

Okay, I liked the look of the integrated Chinese, however seems quite expensive when purchasing it in the UK (I understands its widely used in the US universities?), so I may have to choose from one of the others.

I made the mistake of naively purchasing a couple of books/CD type things, not sure they're overly competent either (and one of them had easy in the title, darn it!) so I will have to make a better choice this time!

Thank you Roddy for a swift response, this forum's really impressive!

Thomas

[anonymoose]

I started off learning Chinese by myself in the UK, mainly just from reading books and doing exercises. I didn't have many resources for listening and speaking, so I concentrated mainly just on grammar and reading and writing.

In my opinion, you won't do yourself much harm if you leave the speaking until October, and just try and get the basic grammar and character recognition under your belt now. Speaking takes practise, of course, but until you know what to say, there isn't much to say and practise anyway. On the other hand, grammar, getting used to characters, and accumulating an initial repertoire of vocabulary takes time, so I think the next few months would be a good opportunity to build this foundation. I'm not saying this is the most ideal way to study, and everybody is different anyway, but given the limitations of your situation, I think this would be a good start.

Also, many universities have language centres and maybe a notice board for language exchange. If there are many Chinese students (often there are postgrads), you could always try finding a couple of language exchange partners for the summer. That is what I did when I was at uni.

By the way, the book I used to start learning Chinese was Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip and Rimmington. In my opinion, it is one of the best books available for beginner self-study (although I haven't looked at newer publications). As for writing, you should try to follow the correct stroke order. There are many sites on the net which show this, like nciku.com if you search for single characters.

[ThomasSmith]

Hey Anonymoose

Thanks for your suggestion, most reviews on that book seem positive, and I would like something that has written exercises in, as thats typically how I learn best in other subjects.

There was a couple of reviews stating that despite it being aimed at beginners, its actually quite complex? I am considering purchasing it, and would just like to know if you recall encountering any difficulty at the beginning of it? (i.e would it be appropriate for someone with 0 knowledge)

Cheers!

Thomas

[anonymoose]

Well I had no knowledge when I started it and didn't have any problems that I can remember. On the other hand, at that time I just read through it purely out of interest without any particular goal in mind. I don't think it is complex. But the book purely focuses on grammar, and whilst it uses both characters and pinyin throughout, it doesn't, for example, explain anything about pronunciation. However, with the amount of resources that are available on the net now, which weren't around when I started learning Chinese, you'll be able to find loads of supplementary resources.

[ThomasSmith]

Okay, great, thank you for your help.

I'm going to take the plunge and just get on with it!

Thank you everyone for your help - greatly appreciated

Thomas

[roddy]

Keep coming back if you have any questions - that's what we're here for. Well, that and the comedy.

[rob07]

It is extremely difficult to learn Chinese without living in China for a while, so if you are really serious about learning Chinese, ideally you should start thinking about how to do that. A year teaching English in China after you graduate is the most obvious way to do it.

If you want to learn Chinese from the UK without living in China, it might be better to direct your efforts to getting to the point where you can read native materials as soon as possible, rather than aiming to get a balanced skill set. Since all Chinese TV and movies are subtitled in Chinese, if your Chinese is good enough to read novels, you can take your speaking and listening from close to zero to basic conversational relatively easily and quickly just by watching a lot of TV.

It is extremely difficult to learn how to speak Chinese outside of China, a few hours of class each week are very unlikely to get you there (and speaking classes in which English needs to be spoken and/or have a lot of other people in them are of limited usefulness), so this might even be the easiest way to do it. Once you are basically conversational, it is a lot easier to find language partners and go from there, one on one all in Chinese. Of course, the difficult part here is learning to read, but it doesn't have to be that much harder doing it from the UK, although for most people it is not worth the effort, because it is almost certainly a lot harder than you think it is before you start studying.

[rezaf]

I still think that an online tutor would save a lot of time at the beginning. It only costs 3~5 dollars per hour and if you take 4~6 hours a week you'll be able to pronounce pinyin and say some basic sentences after a month. Before my classes started in China I also had a few confusing weeks of self-study but I realized that all the things that I had been working on were taught to us in week in a much better way. In case you choose this way make sure to read the reviews for those teachers so that you can find someone who is experienced in teaching basic Chinese and can speak English. Anyway good luck!

[Tianjin42]

Hi,

If you are taking the course in October, just getting to grips with the theory and characters would be an excellent start. In reference to speaking, I feel that it wouldn’t be very useful without a teacher/ good reference for pronunciation. Personally I don’t even think Skype lessons are completely useful for total beginners.

If you have an idea of the theory and you have some knowledge of written Chinese, this would go a long way. Depending on where you live, you may be able to access a short summer course or even find a Chinese speaker willing to give some lessons.

For example in my home town there was a Chinese family who worked selling computers. They were very happy to help out with Chinese. Also, if you live anywhere near a Confucius Institute they often have cheap summer courses.

If it all goes well then you might consider coming out here – by far the best way to learn. I am by no means an expert but it is important to note that at the start there may be times when you feel you are not getting it etc, but if you get through the first few months your knowledge of the language should really start to improve.

加油！

[rezaf]

I am by no means an expert but it is important to note that at the start there may be times when you feel you are not getting it etc, but if you get through the first few months your knowledge of the language should really start to improve.

I agree with this. Since you are a beginner you should keep in mind that there are lots of things that might not happen as you expect them. So aim for a few years and don't get discouraged if things don't go well in the first few months or the first few years :blink: (hopefully not the first few decades!) because Chinese is really so hard and I haven't figured out why it is so hard yet! :rolleyes:

[abcdefg]

Pimsleur would be an alternative approach. It approaches speaking first and starts from zero.

[skylee]

Consider using a library to cut your expenses on new books / CDs etc.

PS - As you will graduate next year, why don't you enjoy this summer? do some travelling etc?

[Meng Lelan]

Be very careful if you choose Pimsleur. I had a new student last year who studied with Pimsleur first then decided to enroll in my class. She really struggled with making different kinds of phrases and sentences during our in class exercises.

[roddy]

Pimsleur seems like it might be a reasonable suggestion here - it's light on actual content, but should be fairly strong on pronunciation. I read a blog post somewhere a few months ago, let me see if I can Google it up . . . here you go.

[abcdefg]

On Pimsleur again -- I found it fun to use and quite helpful as an absolute beginner. But I learn languages better by ear than I do by eye; always have. Not true for everyone.

I was also thinking of it as only a temporary "head start" program for the OP, not as a definitive, long term language learning system. An easy way to "stick a toe in the water" during his summer months.

[ThomasSmith]

Wow, lots of responses since I last logged in so will try and respond to all of them!

I think that some time in China when i'm able to, would be by the sounds of it - invaluable, and I think it'd be a lovely experience, so it's definitely in my list of future plans. I think I will approach it via anonymooses' method, as I find that I don't always take in the verbal things immediately, and have to refer to written things to work out what it means. So I think I learn better via writing. Based on this - i'm not sure pimsleur would be ideal for me (as i understand its solely-vocal learning? )

So yeah, i'm just doing to try and improve my reading, grammar, writing and everything around that. Fingers crossed i'll have a good tutor in October so that I can get my speaking up to speed.

As for Skylee's P.S - I unfortunately am preeeetty poor! So enjoying my summer by doing anything remotely travel-orientated is unfortunately no possible. (meanwhile my housemates are currently inter-railing through europe..!)

The book suggested by Annoy is said by Amazon to be guaranteed for delivery by 1pm, so i'm very excited awaiting some learning

Thanks everyone for continued support and suggestions.

Thom

PS - out of curiousity - since i started learning briefly on rosetta, has anyone on here been taught via rosetta? is it remotely useful? because I have access to it, so if it's considered on a par or within the same sort of standard as the Pimsleur you suggested, I could try and coincide it with my written/reading textbooks and build a small amount of vocal knowledge!