Realistic Study Methods?

[cxianmei]

Hi everyone!

I'm fairly new to these forums, and I've only recently started studying Mandarin at a Uni. My class at the moment is only focusing on speaking and listening skills, with no emphasis on character writing which happens to be part of a different class altogether. I appreciate the use of pinyin, obviously since it helped me to establish using tones, but I've come to realize that if I have to read a sentence or group of words, I rely too much on reading the tones straight off the page, and I have a tougher time actually remembering the tones for each word on my own. I noticed that I have been able to better memorize tones by reading the small list of characters that I do know. From those of you who've been studying for a long time, do you think it would be a good or bad idea if I attempted to learn the characters on my own simultaneously with the new vocabulary? Also, when you were at my beginning level, how many new vocabulary words/characters did you make an effort to study per day/week? As in, what's realistic in terms of being able to memorize the majority of what I've studied in a given period? I'm a biology major, so I'm used to memorizing tons of new words, but I can't help forgetting almost everything after a short period of time or after testing is over. I really want to study Mandarin well, aiming for fluency. Any tips you can provide for a newbie like me, I'd definitely appreciate. Thanks!

[Iriya]

I personally found it hard to remember tones without being able to associate them with characters. My progress got much better when we finally got to the characters after a month of pinyin only.

[abcdefg]

From those of you who've been studying for a long time, do you think it would be a good or bad idea if I attempted to learn the characters on my own simultaneously with the new vocabulary?

Not sure if my five years qualifies as a long time, but I would suggest by all means learn the characters up front instead of just the Pinyin with tones if it does not overload your mind and you can handle it without too much strain. Otherwise you will have to go back and learn the characters later as a separate operation, which is less efficient.

[Silent]

From those of you who've been studying for a long time, do you think it would be a good or bad idea if I attempted to learn the characters on my own simultaneously with the new vocabulary?

Don't study Chinese that long, but I think it's absolutely worth to learn the characters from the start. I've tried several things but it didn't stick until I started learning characters in Anki (flashcard program). It doesn't make much difference in effort to add in the characters. There is more to remember, but it also helps in memorizing. Some characters reveal a lot of info on meaning and pronunciation through shapes and components. The characters also have more to offer when it comes to distinguishing one word from the other. Due to the very limited number of sound(combinations) only pinyin(sound) tends to turn in a forest of nearly identical sounds where I feel it's very hard to find your way as a beginner. Ankering it all to characters makes it easier to memorise.

With respect to the numbers... it strongly depends on how easy you memorize them. I started out with about 20 or 30 characters a day, but cut down on them fairly quickly and also diversified to words. Now I'm at around 5-10 words a day it varies a bit on the amount of reviews and what I come across during study/reading. When on vacation or travelling I usually don't add any new words but still try to do my reviews

I guess best is to just start out and see how things go. How it works out depends a lot on your personality/preferences. I tend to say the first few days you can handle a fair amount of characters. Then you should cut down to keep the review time to an acceptable level so you're able to make it a daily routine.

[navaburo]

cxianmei,

If you are motivated to learn characters, go for it!

Two words of warning however. In order to prevent you from getting into bad writing habits, I strongly recommend you do the following:

(1) Start with a character writing book that shows the proper stroke-order and gives you many little boxes to practice writing. [ When studying Japanese, I used this book. If you are learning traditional characters it could work for chinese also.]

(2) Obtain and use a stroke-order reference. This will be essential as you learn to write new characters, whether or not you bootstrap your character-writing knowledge using a practice book. There are many on-line ones, but I find the stroke-order animations in the "E-Stroke" iOS app to be particularly helpful and quickly accessed.

慢慢写字！

-Chris

[imron]

If you're aiming for fluency then you'll want to learn characters eventually, and the sooner you start the better. There's nothing wrong with getting ahead of your class - it just means you'll be the top student once everyone else starts on characters

As others have mentioned using spaced repetition software such as Anki can be very helpful for memorising vocab. Just remember however that memorising vocab is just one piece to the puzzle. I personally find that learning 5-10 words a day (where one word can have more than one new character) is a comfortable level that I can sustain for long periods of time even with other commitments (work, life etc). See also this discussion.

[icebear]

I'll refer you to this lengthy post I made about my own experience with characters and why I think you should learn them early on (once you have a solid grasp of pinyin and pronunciation concepts - a few weeks or month in at most). Decide early where you'd like to take your Chinese and adjust your plans accordingly, rather than deciding in two years that you are serious or not.

3 characters a day (terribly easy with SRS!) would lead to nearly 2000 in 2 years... vs. none if you decide to go about it slowly!

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36384-how-do-you-deal-with-characters-at-a-very-early-stage/page__view__findpost__p__270889

[cxianmei]

Thanks for the hepful replies, everyone!

Yeah, I actually have the Anki flashcard program, which I got originally for my uni subjects, but I realized that I have more of a kinesthetic learning style, wherein I learn and remember the most when I use my hands or am doing the activity. So that was another reason why I wanted to get started writing the characters, because just looking at the pinyin and reading over and over does very little for me.

@navaburo: Thanks for recommending the E-Stroke app. I downloaded it, so I'm going to give it a try. I have some experience writing Kanji when I studied Japanese in high school, so I know the importance of stroke order. I'm just hoping I won't be too lenient on myself looking with my own eyes and critiqueing myself. I make those dumb writing errors where I cross lines I'm not supposed to, or I over-extend/don't extend the strokes enough.

The discussions/posts you guys posted were also very helpful. I'm inspired to study well now.

Are there any good resources you guys can recommend to also improve listening skill? I just realized how much more challenging it is to recognize someone else's tones too.... more specifically, native speakers.

[navaburo]

Are there any good resources you guys can recommend to also improve listening skill? I just realized how much more challenging it is to recognize someone else's tones too.... more specifically, native speakers.

I'm finding Making Connections to be useful for improving 听力. But you might want to look/search for other threads on that.

Btw, I recommend E-Stroke over Pleco because it is (1) easier to access the stroke order diagrams, (2) the stroke order is given for a Kai-type font (which is closer to handwriting than the bookprint-like font used in Pleco), and (3) it costs less iirc. -- But, I don't recommend relying on the dictionary (CCEDICT) built into e-stroke. You are better off with something like the ABC or the dict that comes free with Pleco.

Cheers!

[icebear]

Popup Chinese is a good daily podcast that is freely available via iTunes (paid expansion content at their site).

ChinesePod is a good daily podcast that is available at higher levels only via subscription.

I find the later's explanations (primarily in Chinese) easier to follow, while the first's dialogues tend to be more interesting.

TV is a great source once you're at a comfortable level and can at least get the gist of conversations; before then it probably isn't the best use of your time.

[tofukozo]

If you're using Anki, I'd say if you stick with a slow and steady pace (maybe like 5 words a day), you'll last longer and probably find it more enjoyable in the long run. Starting out, you could probably do more than that (like 10 a day). You'll eventually get to a point where you're too busy to keep learning. I get swamped and tend to give up at that point. Just stop learning and keep your reviews up. If you can anticipate ahead of time stop learning. Let the review items go down.

[alanip]

I would suggest not to learn any characters first, especially you're just in the beginner level.

You need to learn how to speak first, it's universally applicable for learning all foreign languages, and it's been proven by countless research.

Sooner or later you can teach on reading and writing, if you change the order you're gona shoot yourself at your feet only, counter-productive.