Which Method Do You Think is the Most Efficient Way to Learn Chinese?

[Gymnosopher]

Think about this, when was the last time you read an English book and had to even look up a few words per page?

Aside from studying philosophy at degree level, or taking a dip into one of Steven Hawkings, I actually think I had this with Lolita - though perhaps more due to the fact it liked to keep dropping into French. The thing is though you're never going to be an expert in all areas, I don't understand being spoken to about classical music compositions in English so never will in Chinese ;)

I agree there is a lot more real world Chinese out there than covered in a few textbooks, taking the old 'the world is your classroom' stance, however with regards to whether this is the most efficient... For instance, if I'm reading a text with a bunch of new words it seems to be a much better use of my time to already have them pulled out and defined alongside exercises to practice them in grammar models to make them stick rather than spending hours finding these in dictionaries and writing them out only to forget them a day or 2 later. Sure you could review them, but you would have done that with a textbook anyway and not sunk so much time into the whole endeavour!

Of those who take lessons, true, the most serious students put in plenty of extra hours outside of the classroom - 好好学习 and all that lark

[jkhsu]

I am actually with you on the usefulness of textbooks. There are a lot of folks who are opposed to them but I like them (for the same reasons you mentioned). However, what I try to do is read many textbooks from various sources. When I was in China, I picked up the 汉语教程 series. To tell you the truth, I didn't like them as much. I like the ones that I got from the USA that have both simplified and traditional characters side by side so I can learn both easily.

[Wang7]

" ....one of the teachers I met says that Online Live Learning will dominate the future language education. Do you think it will happen? And it will happen soon??

Not exactly, but in the form of blended learning, where the student uses his/her online learning resource, with supplementary one - one and/or classroom discussion to master their field of study. The blended learning theory has been proven to be very comprehensive, yet holistic in its approach to learning.

[yersi]

I think almost any student would benefit greatly from a tutor or classes in the beginning and intermediate stages of learning. Bad habits form quickly in the absence of instruction. Once the basics are in place, self-learning and immersion are the best ways to improve.

I should add here that most auto-didacts I've met in real life have weird grammar and pronunciation issues, ones that I don't think they would have developed if they'd had a teacher to point out their mistakes early on.

[markwong]

In my opinion, total immersion by actually living in a chinese speaking city is the most effective way to learn quickly. I took chinese school for many years in my youth but because of my attitude and because I was living in an english speaking country, I learned very little. Later on, I spent 1 month in Beijing at the BLCU to do language study and i learned a lot, and very quickly. Sadly its slipping away again, but actually being in the country accelerated my pace of learning by a huge margin. it made my accent better too!