Benny Lewis' 3-month quest to become fluent in Mandarin

[OneEye]

I feel like you think you're gracing us with your presence here, like you're going to teach us a thing or two and we ought to be impressed by you. We're under no obligations to be supportive of you. You're making some pretty far-fetched claims, and we've called you on them. I was originally supportive of you, but the more you post, the less I like you. You don't seem to understand that you're essentially insulting a large group of people who have been working hard at this for a long time, when you barely have any knowledge of the language whatsoever. It isn't appreciated.

You will not reach the goal you originally set for yourself. Period. You may reach your goal if you keep decreasing it like you've been doing. And that's OK. Just don't go claiming that you've become fluent in three months and everyone else has been wrong about Chinese for all these years. But unfortunately, I, like realmayo above, get the feeling that you've already made all your conclusions before you've even started. And I don't see you backing down from them, because you've built up this persona on your website and backing down wouldn't be compatible with that.

Oh well, so it goes.

[irishpolyglot]

"We're under no obligations to be supportive of you."

OK, then I've misinterpreted the theme of this forum as being for language learning advice for those who may ask it. My apologies.

And I'm under no obligations to come back here. I have a mission, and if this forum can help then I will visit it to get help. If it provides mainly discouragement, then I won't return. It has nothing to do with gracing you with my presence. Will this forum help me or hinder me?

If you feel insulted by ambition, then that really is not my problem. I find that to be a poor show of character to interpret someone else aiming high as an insult. I'm investigating possibilities.

Any logically thinking person will see why not being interested in bickering is a priority. I need to know if I can get it out of the way and work with this forum, or if I am better just not posting here and focusing on asking questions via my blog.

[xiaocai]

I think the advice from many forum members has been clearly "setting a realistic goal", which I think is very important when you just started learning a new language and still don't know too much about it. I think they also have been supportive when it comes to methodology in language learning, but not so much on false claims. If you fail to see these effort then I really can not think of what other "help" you will need from them. Stand ovation?

[renzhe]

Those videos were discussing things like the life of an au-pair in a foreign country. I really don't think you are being fair by saying it's A1/A2!

I think it's around A1/A2 in terms of grammar and vocabulary. I have sat A1 and A2 exams in both Spanish and German, and these were the sort of conversations we had in class (usually with more grammar mistakes and stronger accent, though). Make a grammar and vocabulary list and match it against any A2 textbook.

However, I can happily accept that your level goes beyond what is demonstrated in those videos. If you say that you have a C2 certificate in Spanish and German, then I believe you.

I think at this stage everyone has made it clear that I'm aiming too high

It's not possible to aim too high. You should always aim high.

I'd be more interested in suggestions of how to improve my chances of succeeding.

You will need a lot of listening, more than you plan. The TV suggestions all come from the fact that vast amounts of listening are needed. You will need to talk to people constantly, and when you're not talking to people, you'll need to listen to people, on the radio, or in the street, or on TV. Listening comprehension is one of the most difficult aspects of Mandarin, and context is extremely important.

You are not going to concentrate on reading, which is the right thing to do in your situation. Reading is difficult, but listening is more difficult. Plan to dedicate every spare moment of your time to listening, trying to catch the words you know.

Pronunciation work is essential. Record yourself -- I mean it. Record yourself saying things and then compare it to a native speaker. Repeat until you can produce the exact tones and phonemes. Make it a daily exercise. Here is a tip -- tones are easy in isolation, hard in words and phrases, very hard in sentences. Work your way to complete sentences, and follow the melody exactly.

Do vocabulary cramming 3-4 times a day. Use a flashcard program like Anki to help you reduce the load. You should aim for at least 2,500 vocabulary items (words, not characters!) You will need upwards of 10,000 for comfortable conversations, and upward of 20,000 to understand most natives on most topics, but with 2,500 you will be able to cover everyday topics with people from your region. But you'll need to hammer them in, and preferably learn them in context, with some example sentences for better effect.

Grammar and characters are an interesting topic. If you intend to learn Chinese properly, you should lay a good foundation and make them a regular part of your routine. With grammar, you should go through a good grammar book (like Rimmington), and concentrate on tricky issues like aspect particles, counting words, complements, multiple readings of characters and character variants, etc. You won't be finished with this in 3 months, but it will lay a good foundation. If you intend to drop Chinese after 3 months, then it's best to fudge through these with quick-and-dirty approximations that would hurt you in the long run, but will give you some results quickly.

One other tip I will give you is about the perceived easiness of learning Chinese. Every step is easy, but it is unrelenting. Don't expect it to "click" like other languages, after most important grammar and vocab settles in your mind. Chinese never clicks. Every step is as hard as the first one.

I hope that this is useful advice, and I will gladly answer any question if you have any along the way. I think that most people will. This forum is one of the best open sources of knowledge in English when it comes to learning Chinese. Use it, don't hack it alone.

I'll still be unimpressed if you post a basic interview and claim that you can understand natives speaking Mandarin at full speed on any non-specialist topic. But I'll be very impressed if you post an honest summary of your progress at the end of the three months, which highlights what you can do, what you can't do, what you did right, what you did wrong, and how far you think you've come. Because this way, we will all learn something from you too.

[OneEye]

If you feel insulted by ambition, then that really is not my problem.

This is what I meant when I said the more you post the less I like you.

Don't twist my words. Nobody is insulted because you're "ambitious". I hardly consider your original goal ambitious. Ridiculous given the time constraints, yes. Ill-informed, yes. If you had any idea what your goal would entail, then I would say you're ambitious. But you have no clue, so I just think you're misguided and have too big of an ego.

The insult comes from your absurd overconfidence that we're all wrong and you've somehow found a magic pill. But you'll figure that out soon enough. I just have my doubts about whether you'll be honest and admit it.

For the record, renzhe's estimation of how much vocab you'll need is spot on. And 2500 words in three months is certainly doable. I did that last term without really pushing myself. 3000 would probably be a good goal, but you'll still be a far cry from being able to converse with natives on most non-specialist topics.

[irishpolyglot]

Yes, this is much more useful advice than a dismissive "it's impossible". Thanks!!

And yes, I always post full details of my successes and failures. For example, I'll correct you and say that I don't have a C2 in German. However, I sat the exam and explained in depth what my shortcomings were and what I would do better if I was repeating it. Many many people have told me it has been the most important advice they've read for their similar examinations.

Hopefully what you say about this forum being a great resource is true. So far I have mixed feelings. Perhaps it's the best resource IF you aren't ambitious/bold and have specific questions. Perhaps I should create a psuedonym log in, not mention the 3 month thing and just ask specific questions that way Hopefully people will help and support me despite disliking my goal.

OneEye's comments help nobody. He's just venting his frustration and making it personal (big ego, I've got a magic pill etc.) without being helpful. Will others follow suit, or can you point me in the right direction rather than slam the door in my face from the start? ;)

[Olle Linge]

I have one additional piece of advice. This isn't meant to be aggressive or anything, so please read it again with kinder eyes if you think it's aggressive the first time:

Stop spending so much time on the internet.

I've been following the debates sparked by your (Bennyl Lewis, that is) misison. You've received a ton of replies, most of them skeptical, probably. Some peole have posted videos about it, others have discussed on Twitter or on your website. What gets me here is that you turn up all over the place, answering what everyone is saying. I'm not saying this is bad in general, but if you're going to learn Chinese quickly, you'll need to spend time studying Chinese, not defending yourself on a hundred different websites, all using English. Take the advice you have (like Renzhe's post above, which is excellent) and go with it. If you encounter problems, ask and you will get guidance in some way by someone.

Then, when you're "done", you can start discussing whether your goal was realistic or not and what contsitutes a healthy attitude towards language learning. And so on. 學習愉快！

[Guest realmayo]

Confidence / ambition / overconfidence / delusion ... the proof is in the pudding!

[peterlkj]

Frankly I'm not really sure it's so important to set yourself any 3-month goal, realistic or otherwise. I think the general advice of work hard at it and be a little humble goes a long way. From my experience this is an incredibly helpful and supportive forum, but outlandish claims are likely to get short shrift, especially if you make them in advance of actually achieving them. In the experience of most, if not all of us here, learning Chinese has been a tough but highly rewarding exercise, but one which takes determination. In three months, it will be fascinating to see where you are, but there won't be any shame in falling far short of your original goals

I'm not sure if you've come across this article: "Why Chinese is So Damn Hard" - it's pretty funny and a decent use of your 2-hours/day English allowance. Undoubtedly the most famous quotation from it is this:

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

Good luck!

[Guest realmayo]

Oh, & you can aim too high!

[irishpolyglot]

@Snigel I've only been spending 2 hours a day online collectively, although at various times in the day. I can enter in many discussions during this time. As I said, if I can weed out the unhelpful discussions (like the Youtube comments, obviously a bad idea from the start) and focus on the good ones then I know who to turn to.

It's the same offline. I've been doing lots of wandering around the area. Obviously not very productive, but I won't be doing this after I know where everything is.

Your advice is good, but I have had language missions before and am pretty good at managing my time. What I'm doing my first week is attempting to establish my routines. This requires some time wasting, but in the long term is always better to have done. This means it's unlikely that I'd get dragged into discussions a few weeks in, since I'd have eliminated it as a possibility.

The rest of the time, if I'm working on my computer with some Chinese learning software that comes with the books I bought, I enable Leechblock (a Firefox plugin), and chinese-forums is currently part of that list of sites that are not going to immediately help me do something in Chinese ;) So whether I want to or not. After I send this message, I won't be able to come back for several hours.

@Peter Thanks for the link! My time on this forum is up for now, but I'll read it before I get back to my Chinese materials

[Olle Linge]

@Benny: Fair enough. It just seemed like you spent most of your time defending yourself online and if that were the case, you'd definitely fail

[Guest realmayo]

Perhaps I should create a psuedonym log in

I think if Benny was making these claims for three-month fluency while explicitly selling something, he'd get a very negative response here.

If he was aiming for fluency for some completely un-commercial reason, I think he'd get a much more friendly albeit bemused reaction cautioning him to be more realistic.

The fact that he seems to be somewhere in between might explain the variety of responses?

[renzhe]

Perhaps it's the best resource IF you aren't ambitious/bold and have specific questions.

You couldn't be more wrong.

This forum is full of polyglots who love learning languages, and many of them have achieved outrageous things. We have a guy here who is memorising 30,000 words from a dictionary and studying traditional Chinese medicine in China, there are guys teaching themselves Middle Chinese phonology, and a Classical Chinese subforum. We have book reading projects, TV watching projects, newspaper reading projects, reading outloud projects... One of the admin reads 10,000 pages of Chinese per year as a hobby, another one is learning 5 languages at the same time, including Cantonese and Hindi.

But do try to understand us. There is one guy every month who comes and claims that Chinese is easy and he will learn it in X months, and then never returns. I've learned Spanish, Portuguese and German, as well as Chinese. It is your right to dismiss my experience if you wish, but it is also my right to remain skeptical until I see it done. And I'm a curious guy -- I'd LOVE to see it done.

[roddy]

Sorry, but you create the scepticism yourself. Nobody obliged you to mention any particular level, you opted to describe what you are aiming for in terms of an established and concrete framework. When you then come up with various reasons why you won't be actually testing yourself against that, you're going to get some stroking of imaginary beards.

Some people will never believe you? Sod 'em. You don't want to study towards an exam? Then don't - do what you'd do anyway and see what the exam throws up. If you fail but do great on the oral component, job done. You don't like doing exams? Well nobody does, but it's a few hours out of a 3-month exercise, and this appears to be your career.

Alternatively, describe your target as 'As good as I can possibly get in three months'.

As for the quality of advice on here - have a quick review of your posts and tally up the paragraphs actually asking for assistance with anything, versus the paragraphs explaining yourself and talking about how smoothly everything's going. If you don't feel you've been getting any help, it's because deliberately or otherwise you've not given the impression of wanting any. An occassional 'some tips would be great' doesn't count.

No second accounts, thanks, I can do without the 'Where's Benny?' guessing-game

[jbradfor]

I think many are being too hash on poor ol' Benny.

Did he set himself too high of a goal? Probably, but IMHO no harm in that. [As long as your wings are not attached via wax.]

Is his suggested proof of "C1 level" unconvincing? Yes, but let's see what he comes up with before we judge him.

Does he come across as a bit of a twit for saying that Chinese is no harder to learn than, say, your typical Romance language, given that he has (by his own admission) absolutely no experience learning Chinese? Absolutely.

But I'm really surprised at the number of you that rose to take the bait of what is basically a troll. Far better, I think, is to just sit back in your chair and cackle "you'll see, ol' Benny, you'll see."

Personally, even if Benny is honest about how far he gets, I think he'll impress many of us. It should be interesting to see what someone with some (or a lot of) skill in language learning, and a lot of experience, can do in 3 months. Not C1, but impressive.

I look back at when I started learning; in 8 months (5 months intensive Chinese in the USA, 3 months in Taiwan), I got nearly to the point where Benny wants to go. [Not C1, but being able to hold a basic conversation.] That included learning to read (both traditional and simplified) and write (by hand!!!), and a bit of classical Chinese tossed in for fun. Without any computer-assisted learning. I can easily see someone that is not learning to read/write, has more talent than I do at learning languages, knows how to use computers to aid language learning, has 1-on-1 lessons instead of large classes, and has experience with many other languages (including good study skills) could easily progress at 4x my pace, if not faster.

[imron]

He's just venting his frustration and making it personal (big ego, I've got a magic pill etc.) without being helpful. Will others follow suit

No, because admin will step in and put a stop to things if a thread starts to degenerate into a slanging match. Heated discussions about a topic are ok, and especially if a topic is controversial it's somewhat expected, but we'll put a stop to things if they get out of hand. Most regular members here know and appreciate that, because in general it keeps threads and discussions much more useful and interesting.

@benny-haters, jbradford's advice about sitting back and cackling to yourself is probably worth listening to at this point (you're not going to change his mind, and he knows you think he's set himself an impossible goal).

@benny, you should at least try to understand the reason behind such comments. Like roddy said, if you'd set your mission to be 'As good as I can possibly get in three months', you'd probably be getting a lot less heat and a lot more people cheering you on. Also, renzhe's post at #84 is spot on regarding advice for learning Chinese. It's worth re-reading. I've personally found recording myself to be a very productive exercise (you can see my thoughts on it here).

Perhaps I should create a psuedonym log in, not mention the 3 month thing and just ask specific questions that way

If you have specific questions, find an existing thread that already discusses the same problem and post there, or start a new thread if you can't find a relevant one. Admins will remove off-topic posts, or move general discussion about your mission to this thread. There are enough friendly and helpful people here that it won't be a problem.

@peterlkj, that's the exact same quote I was planning to use. It's one of my favourites also (and probably one of the favourites of everyone who's been learning Chinese for a few years).

I've learned Spanish, Portuguese and German, as well as Chinese.

@renzhe, you forgot English! Most people would find it tough to pick you as not a native speaker.

[irishpolyglot]

Thanks for the clarification imron. I'll be sure to search and ask!

After reading that link about How Damn Hard Chinese is, I can see why people would get angry that I'd say I am attempting to do it quicker, since that information does indeed very convincingly argue that it would take decades to learn Chinese. It's quite a funny rant!

But to be honest, I see a lot of holes and more importantly, loopholes, in that explanation, which I'll take apart later. My goal is always to inspire people to learn languages, and in doing this it does include some frustrating of those who have already learned ;) Aiming for "as good as I can" isn't good enough, as that leaves too much room to relax. I've got my ideas to shake up the language learning world a bit, to get people off the monolingual wagon, and if this involves getting on a few people's nerves, so be it.

By the way, has anyone here used the Peco app? I've just installed it on my phone and am talking with the app developper (they'll release the full version for Android next week, I'm on the beta and will present its features on video if I see it as useful. One of the perks of being a blogger with a decent sized audience is that you get free stuff for exposure purposes, so I have the add-ons that are a bit expensive, including the OCR). This seems like quite the game changer - if any of you have ever tested it out in the street on random signs, you'd know what I mean - I knew there had to be an easier way than learning stroke orders and carrying around a dusty old book to be able to look up unfamiliar characters and see their pinyin! Obviously for the purposes of speeding up learning rather than replacing it.

As jbradfor suggests, I'm attempting to enhance the learning experience using technology, and I don't just mean listening to MP3s ;) Apps like this one will take away the frustration of looking up words that perhaps slows so many learners down and are ideal for me since I've explicitly said that I'm not interested in writing on anything but a computer.

Let me know of any challenges in what I'm attempting with an OCR app. If there's something I'm not envisioning, I'll need to think up a solution.

Also, I have a much better idea than just one video interview to share my level with people after the 3 months are up (although I'm still doing that for sure), but I'd prefer to hold you in suspence about it!

It's a new day in Taipei, and I'm going to spend the day out of the house, using my favourite language learning resource in the world, HB 2.0 ;) I'll be back this evening (after my "listening practice" that I'll blog about, which ain't no TV or radio...) to write up my first week, which you'll see on the blog. Feel free to comment there about your thoughts, otherwise I'll check in here too and look forward to your tips about how to best go ahead... and of course your continued scepticism that I'm deluded

[imron]

But to be honest, I see a lot of holes and more importantly, loopholes, in that explanation, which I'll take apart later.

I wouldn't bother. It was written tongue-in-cheek (and by someone with impeccable Chinese) rather than trying to persuade the reader why it will take decades to learn Chinese (although it certainly can take that long depending on the level you wish to achieve).

By the way, has anyone here used the Peco app?

Yes, many. It's probably the single-most useful tool for learning Chinese. Search the forums for more info. There are plenty of threads discussing it.

[irishpolyglot]

It's not his impeccable Chinese I'll be criticising. There are loopholes to speed up learning that even the world's leading expert on Chinese may not be aware of. As well as this, his examples of European languages being easier are really really weak. You can't look many Irish words in context up in a dictionary either for example, because they have initial consonant changes. And agglutinative languages mean that they aren't single unit words either. And I notice he doesn't bring the grammar point up at all, dismissing it quickly, which is rather convenient for a post comparing languages. This is not quite so "impeccable", and the kind of holes I'm talking about, but I like his writing style, so I'll definitely be linking to that post.

Anyway, you'll see what I mean later. "Chinese is too hard" is a big intimidator preventing many from considering it, and sticking to European languages, and something I want to influence some change in.

Thanks, I'll try not to veer off topic too much and join in on established discussions if they've been brought up already. Hopefully those in other threads can give me good feedback on what to test for my video review of Peco for Android, since they may not be able to afford all the addons that I'm getting for free.