Getting the most out of Integrated Chinese / Textbooks

[ChTTay]

Background:

I have been living in China for around 5 months but my Chinese study has been quite slow. I have been having conversational lessons (using pinyin only) once or twice a week from a Chinese colleage (we are both teachers). At first we concentrated on pinyin pronunication / tones as well as giving me some 'survial chinese' (numbers, shopping, simple questions).

Once this avenue was exhausted, we took an English language textbook we teach with and flipped it on it's head - teaching the Chinese for the English in the book. I am not sure I like this approach much though. I don't really feel like I have any structure to what I'm doing - it feels really messy. Overall, I can just about scrape by and survive (order food, use money, time, simple questions) but I struggle to have conversations.

Using Textbooks / organising study:

Having browsed a number of forums (especially this one!) and websties devoted to learning Chinese I decided to purchase the first level in the Integrated Chinese series. I have the text books and work books.

However, I am not really sure how to get the best out of these books. From reading posts on here, I know it's important to get some writing practice into your study.

Should I be looking to write out all of the characters given in each 'topic' of the book? What about the common radical in beginning- should I start with these?

It seems like most people naturally develop their speaking/listening skills quicker than reading/writing... would it be acceptable to say this is fine as long as you don't let the gap between them become too large?

There was a most recently that mentioned recording all the characters you learn into something like Anki then going over them that way. I was going to just write them out by hand but I guess having them in a program might keep things more interesting.

Also, do you think I should switch all my attention to going through the Integrated books OR keep going with my tutor and use the Integrated books on the side? My colleague won't have access to the books beforehand but I don't know how much that matters...

I am hoping that anyone with more experience learning Chinese (using the Integrated books or not) can help get me going in the right direct. It does feel a bit like I'm swimming in an endless ocean of words at the moment.

Thanks so much

C.

p.s. I apologize for the LONG post!

[jkhsu]

First of all, let me point you to this great post from icebear: link

Using textbooks is a great way to learn. I've been doing this for years and it's worked out well for me. My suggestion is to use multiple textbooks at the same level but from a different series. This gives you more reading practice and exposure to additional vocab at your level. In your case, I'd also get the New Practical Chinese Reader series.

Should I be looking to write out all of the characters given in each 'topic' of the book? What about the common radical in beginning- should I start with these?

You'll need to decide if you want to learn to write characters by hand in the first place. FYI, you do not need to learn to write characters by hand to be able to read, speak and compose (write using a computer) Chinese. You can become fluent in Chinese without learning how to write characters by hand. Now, everyone's situation is different and I'm not advocating one or the other. Think about your long term goals and how you plan to use Chinese.

It seems like most people naturally develop their speaking/listening skills quicker than reading/writing... would it be acceptable to say this is fine as long as you don't let the gap between them become too large?

Actually, that's not the case for everyone. Many people who started studying Chinese in a formal school setting develop reading skills faster than listening, writing or speaking. My suggestion is to focus on reading first because it will eventually help you with mastering the other skills.

There was a most recently that mentioned recording all the characters you learn into something like Anki then going over them that way. I was going to just write them out by hand but I guess having them in a program might keep things more interesting.

In my opinion, the best way to remember characters is by periodic review. Writing characters alone without reviewing them does not help with retention. I've tried this test so many times when I first started learning. I'd write a character maybe 50+ times and for that day, I'd remember it. Then if I don't see or write that character for a while, I'd forget it. Below are my suggestions for remembering characters. You can do either or combine them.

1. Plug the characters / words from your books into Anki or some other SRS program and do daily reviews. There's a lot of great info in the forums from people who have learned many characters in a very short amount of time, and have retained them. Just don't forget to also include reading when you do this.

2. Re-read your textbook chapters on a periodic basis. The way I do it is every time I finish a chapter, I'd go back and re-read all the previous chapter texts. It gets tedious but you learn to read faster (which is a skill you need to learn) once you're further along. For example, after I've studied a textbook using this method, I can probably get through the text portions (which includes all of the vocab) of that textbook (usually intended for a year long class) in a few hours. That's not much time at all.

In addition, there are also many memory techniques suggested by other members. I had asked this question in a recent post and got some info: link, link, link

Also, do you think I should switch all my attention to going through the Integrated books OR keep going with my tutor and use the Integrated books on the side? My colleague won't have access to the books beforehand but I don't know how much that matters...

My suggestion is to focus on the textbooks first. At least you know that they're structured. Use what you learn in the textbooks as a base and have the tutoring expand from that. The fact that you've gone through 5 months already without much structure tells me you should change it around a bit.

[ChTTay]

jkhsu - Thanks for the quick and helpful reply.

I am in the process of downloading Anki now and will see how that goes. What you have said about writing the characters out seems to make sense too. I actually signed up to a website called "memrise" and learnt quite a few characters in a relatively short time. It is free and pretty effective (it seems) but you can't create your own vocab lists so this means the characters it throws out seem quite random.

I spoke to my Chinese tutor today and they think they shouldn't have a problem creating lessons from I.C for me. I also have the work book so can try to use that at the same time. A good point about reviewing the textbook regularly - I wish my students would do that so I should make sure I get into the habit myself.

As far as writing characters goes, at the moment I plan on staying in China for a while yet so think this will be worthwhile. However, I think recognition / reading might be more useful in the short term.

Which textbooks did you use at beginner / elementary level?

[Manos]

I think that many will agree that New Practical Chinese Reader is a great series to start with. It has been praised quite a lot in this forum, you can find out for yourself if you search around in different threads.

It has 6 books which supposedely get you to an above-intermediate level and their structure is detailed. I must say that what i like the most about this series is the way it teaches you hanzi, very effective way.

[anonymoose]

I'm going to suggest a slightly different approach, and recommend you use Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip and Rimmington. As the title suggests, this is a grammar book, but it is organised in a didactic style rather than being a reference book.

The difference between this book and coursebooks such as those mentioned previously, is that rather than teaching a little bit of this and a little bit of that and building all parts of the language up in parallel, this book divides the language up into seperate grammar points, and covers each in depth individually.

This approach has advantages and disadvantages. I'd say the main disadvantage is that it's not focused on real-life communication, so there are many phrases that one may hear in speech that are not explained by formal grammar. In the same vein, this book does not specifically cover topics that one may need to survive in China.

On the other hand, the advantage, if your aim is to build a solid foundation with a view to becoming an advanced user of Chinese, is that covering the essentials systematically gives you a much more comprehensive approach that is easier to grasp, understand, and put into practice flexibly. By understanding the grammar, it gives you a framework on which to construct your own sentences correctly and with confidence. It takes time to do this. It's not like the other books where you learn an entire sentence and then you are ready to go out and use it straight away (although you will probably be unable to adapt it to suit different situations), but in the longrun (matter of weeks) you will have a much more solid foundation in the language.

Maybe this approach would not suit everybody, but since you mentioned that you want more structure, I think it might be worth considering.

[Manos]

anonymoose, the approach of this book as described by you, sounds quite interesting!

You got me thinking if i should buy this as an addition to NPCR.

Are there volumes for each level or there is this one book that covers the whole language?

Cheers

[anonymoose]

There are actually two books - the Basic one I referred to above, and an Intermediate one. Together, these books fairly comprehensively cover most of the formal grammar you are likely to come across, but of course in real life, you will encounter more complicated sentences that encompass many grammar points simultaneously. My point is that when you have been through these two books, you won't be fluent, because fluency takes practice over several years, but these books will give you the framework on which to base your practice.

Anyway, the link above also allows you to look at some of the pages in the book, so you can see for yourself whether you think it would be useful or not.