"Promotion" = Extreme Overwhelm & Frustration - Please Help

[Chief123]

Hi, I am desperately hoping for some advice. Even though I've acted on previous good advice that has been offered here, I have a new situation.

Background:

I have lived in Taiwan for a little over a year. 99% of what I speak during the day is Mandarin and most people can follow along. I can understand much more than I can produce, cannot read (except for the simplest of characters) or write. Even though I give talks and teach some classes in Mandarin I can get stuck on the simplest pre-introductory stuff. For example, I have never learned properly (can understand but not reliably produce) the words for information, employee, or internet. Unfortunately, there are many more like these where I've skated by for too long.

I've recently been thrust into some big new responsibilities that are leaving me desperate and overwhelmed. It would be similar to being a shipping clerk one day and promoted to be the CEO the next day. The shipping clerk has limited needs for much vocabulary and can probably understand but not need to produce much out of his job area. The CEO on the other hand has to understand and produce in depth vocabulary in many different areas.

Lots of advice, including some directed at me says things like "read more" and/or "use a flashcard system".

My question is exactly how to do that.

There are several big handbooks that I need to get familiar with quickly. In the handbooks there are lots of words – hundreds or even thousands - I don't understand but in my current "do or die" situation – I MUST learn them, be able to produce them, read them, and eventually write them as quickly as humanly possible.

What I currently do for those that are electronic, I convert the characters to Pinyin and/or Zhuyin Fuhao.

Today, for example, there was a word that I didn't know nor did I know the characters. I cannot produce or understand it. But the word changes the entire meaning of the sentence and this is a responsibility where I can't "guess" what those words are when dealing with people I'm responsible for.

How should I learn it? And how do you learn it – step by step – while still being able to do your job? In other words you've got to learn it but you also have to USE it – today.

Put the word into Anki? What should go on the card between character, pinyin, and definition on the front and back?

Look up every word as I come across them? When there's one paragraph with 10 words I don't know that would take forever – and yes I know getting fluent isn't overnight but my need to use these words is urgent. I'm already drowning – big time!

One thing I've done in the past is to take a chapter of something and use my Zhuyin Fuhao font to print or at least get to where I can read or understand some things (even though there's still many words I don't know I can at least say them). But I'm not sure this is a good way either.

Any specific advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[imron]

Pleco on the iPhone has realtime character recognition using the camera. Point it at the text and it tells you the meaning. It also allows you to instantly add looked up characters/words to flashcards which you can then revise at your leisure with any combination of pinyin/english/chinese for the front/back cards. See below for a demo (note when he says September, he's refering to last year, the feature is now already out):

[bunny87]

pleco has never let me down... it saved me when i was in a sink or swim situation. take imrons advice and get it!

if you know there are certain words you need, for example as a shipping person:

box

kilogram

price per kilogram

stamp

domestic

by boat

by air

dropship

customs

package

mail

letter

parcel

this side up

fragile

explodable

meltable

chemical

magnetic

you could put all these words you dont know into one flashcard folder called "USPS". (just look up each word, and then add it to flashcards). then it has testing modes that make you learn to read, write, or pronounce it (you pick what you'd like to focus on). When you master that set, make a set called "USPS CEO" and start adding "fired" "hired" "demoted" "promoted" "paycheck" "monthly" "weekly" "biweekly" etc, and study those.

you can then test yourself on both categories every so often and keep yourself up to date. any specific vocabulary you need that's not already in the dictionary you can make. for example, when i was studing the grammar 好是好，可是。。。。 i would make that one whole entry in the dictionary, and then add it as a flashcard too.

i don't know how different Taiwanese mandarin is, but i know it swithces from traditional to simplified pretty easily too.

hope that helps!

[gato]

It would be similar to being a shipping clerk one day and promoted to be the CEO the next day.

Hire a Chinese assistant.

[skylee]

But you said you "give talks and teach some classes in Mandarin "!

I think gato's suggestion is viable. Or have someone read the stuff to you. My office head is British and obviously can't read Chinese. He often asks our colleagues to read Chinese papers / newspapers to him, and he understands it. I know another university administrator who speaks fluent Cantonese but is not able to read Chinese. She uses the same strategy.

[roddy]

My office head is British and obviously can't read Chinese.

This is interesting.

You need, as Gato says, a good assistant, otherwise you're going to be struggling to do your job so much there's going to be barely enough time for learning. I don't care how good a dictionary you have, relying on one for reading job-critical documents you can't otherwise make head nor tail of is not going to work. If your employers don't understand that, then . . . er . . . you need to come up with an alternative solution. Go and do six months intensive study somewhere and come back, maybe.

[Chief123]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I do have two good assistants who are committed to helping "bridge the gap". Others are aware of the problem and are giving me a chance but my personality is that I need it now and don't want to lose their trust over not knowing some words I should already know. However there are some things such as certain interviews, certain meetings, certain conversations, and certain documents that are for me only and can't even discuss with the assistants. Those are the areas that concern me the most. But I will continue to study and do it harder and look into Pleco even though it would require breaking my current cell phone contract to get a compatible phone.

But you said you "give talks and teach some classes in Mandarin "!

I do. Just last week I taught a 45 minute class all in Mandarin. The week before I gave a 20 minute talk to a group of people in Mandarin. Since this "promotion" there is a ton of less formal conversations, meetings, and opportunities to teach, lead, and advise, too. Going back to the shipping clerk -> CEO analogy, I can do this fairly okay on shipping clerk terms. A shipping clerk, in this pretend example however, doesn't need to know about marketing and sales, human resources, dealing with creditors, accounting, etc. like a CEO may have to. I need to bridge the gap as quickly as possible.

[jbradfor]

Congrats on the promotion!

Even though I've acted on previous good advice that has been offered here

And yet you're back for more? Some people never learn :o

However there are some things such as certain interviews, certain meetings, certain conversations, and certain documents that are for me only and can't even discuss with the assistants.

That part really concerns me. So for the most important parts, you are on your own? I really suggest something needs to change!

In addition to the good advice in the above posts, a couple of thoughts.

1) Be realistic on how quickly you can learn vocabulary. Even if you didn't have a full time job and other responsibilities, there is a limit to how many new words you can learn in a day. Trying to go beyond that will not just drive you crazy, but also make you learn slower. You'll need to accept that there is a limit, and just do the best you can. I'm not sure what the limit is, but I think trying to go beyond 25 new words a day is counter-productive. So using that limit, after a month that's only 600 words, which I know is not where you need to be. But in half a year, that's over 3500 words, which is probably what you need. So view this as a 6 month ramp, not a 1 month.

2) Understand that learning new vocabulary does not equal being able to read a text. It can be rather frustrating to know every character / word in a sentence, but have no idea what it means. Fortunately(?), it seems you will have lots of opportunity to practice reading.

3) Related to the above, it seems to me that you don't need to have extra reading practice outside your job.

4) For flashcards, you'll want to go characters -> English, English -> characters, and maybe characters -> pinyin. These will be three different decks, and these three decks will have different words (with some overlap). For characters -> English, put in the words you need to know how to read (and understand). This will probably be by far the largest group. For English -> characters, put in the works that you need to know how to write/say. This will likely be much smaller. For characters -> pinyin, put in the characters you can't remember how they are pronounced. Since you said your speaking level is much greater than your reading, I have a feeling this category will be very small for you.

給力!

[Chief123]

4) For flashcards, you'll want to go characters -> English, English -> characters, and maybe characters -> pinyin. These will be three different decks, and these three decks will have different words (with some overlap). For characters -> English, put in the words you need to know how to read (and understand). This will probably be by far the largest group. For English -> characters, put in the works that you need to know how to write/say.

I think the most vital thing for me right now is understanding these new words when I hear them and being able to produce/speak the new words correctly. The assistants can help me with most reading and writing (even though I've got to get that going quickly too) but the speaking/listening is vital and yes there are circumstances where it's me myself and I having to deal with things.

When you say characters -> English or English -> characters you mean no pinyin/zhuyin?

[jbradfor]

Yes, that is what I meant -- if your goal is to learn to read, adding the pronunciation will just slow you down in the beginning, and it sounded to me that you wanted a quick start.

HOWEVER, in reading your latest post, I withdraw my advice B). I thought that you said your spoken ability was good enough, it was more reading that needs work. But it sounds like I misunderstood you.

What I think you're saying is that in general your spoken ability is good enough, except that you can't recognize (or use) a (large?) number of more specialized words. If so, I'm at a bit of a loss to offer much advice, as I have never found a good way of doing that.

For learning to recognize words, the only way that ever worked for me was to hear them a huge number of times, and eventually the sink in. But it sounds like you don't have that much time. What has worked for me a bit is to get a reading of the words, and then play that reading over and over, and for each word try to say the meaning of the word in English. This gets me a "jump start" on being about to understand them, but doesn't get me all the way there. The downside to this is that you hear the words in the same order, and all the words the same time, even the ones you know and don't know. I'm sure someone somewhere has a program that makes this easier. Anki, I believe, lets you add audio files, but you would need to add them yourself.

Learning to use the new words, I guess you could go English -> zhuyin and SRS them.

[imron]

Anki, I believe, lets you add audio files, but you would need to add them yourself.

Not that I want to continually beat Pleco's drum, but it also has audio (both male and female) for all single character pronunciations as well as for several thousand multi-character words. At the click of a button you have the audio either on the front or back of a flashcard, or just listen to it when you search for a word. One of the major benefits I've found of Pleco and its flashcards is that you never really have to spend time creating cards, and you can create in seconds multiple different combinations of meaning/pronunciation/audio/etc for back/front cards from your existing wordlists.

[gato]

Pleco has licensed a Chinese text-to-speech engine for longer text. I think it will be added in an update in the near future.

http://plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2590&hilit=text+to+speech

TTS System Question

Already licensed it on iOS and about to do so on Android too, so we'll certainly be working it into our products in some form... we might offer an online option as a free alternative if it was built into the OS, but I'm pretty confident this is something a lot of people would be willing to pay extra to get offline / instantly / with higher-quality audio.

[edelweis]

Chief, are you still around?

Did you find a way to solve the issue?

[Chief123]

Chief, are you still around?

Did you find a way to solve the issue?

Yes I'm still around. I saw this when you asked the question but haven't had a chance to reply until now and besides was a little ashamed to admit where I am.

Much has improved overall, but I quickly found out just how lacking my skills are. This has caused some serious problems with some people but others seem to be okay. Several people have honestly told me that I'm doing okay (which of course means there is a lot of room for improvement - but this was the "real" okay and not the "polite" okay) and it's not an issue that needs to keep me up at night. Others have complained about having to deal with the foreigner who didn't understand this or that or the other or can't say xyz and relationships have been stretched.

My biggest problem has been and is settling into a structured consistent study pattern. I tend to go in spurts and jump around too much between resources.

In the last few days I have decided that I need to make this an absolute priority in my life or I'm never going to reach my potential in all areas such as work, relationships, marriage, etc. because currently all that is in Mandarin - for better or worse.

I am very well aware of my weaknesses and faults from an attitude/willingness to buckle down point of view. That part has changed and I'm going to make it work. Period.

I am working the next couple days at setting up Anki as the basis going forward. I never did that completely or consistently even after it was recommended here.

First priority is understanding/using/mastering the spoken language in general and the specialized vocabulary I need as well. Improving/fixing tones and pronunciation is part of this.

Second priority is being able to read what I learn in the first part.

Third priority is writing.

Thanks for bringing this back to the forefront. If nothing else it's a "blessing" because it gave me a kick in the pants that I need right now.

Mark

[roddy]

Thanks for the follow-up anyway, and good luck with the rest . . .

[edelweis]

Mark, thanks for the follow-up.

Good luck with the anki practice and your new study goals. Perhaps getting a teacher would push you a bit?

I think I need a kick in the pants too...