Should I bother going through a textbook?

[lechuan]

I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for quite a while, but I've never sat down and used a textbook. I bought one a few years ago ("Chinese for Today"), but found it a hard slog because it made you learn characters by frequency without any attention to character components, and the dialog vocab didn't seem to be too useful.

Currently I am studying as follows:

Character Reading/Writing: Heisig Remembering the Simplified Hanzi & Skritter (up to about 1000 characters)

Listening and Vocab: Chinese Learn Online Podcasts with Pleco Flashcards

Listening: CCTV's Happy Chinese: Season 1 (Just watching for fun, don't "study" these)

Reading: Chinese Breeze Series

Speaking: Talking to Chinese family, friends, coworkers, strangers

Grammar: Looking up grammar points when I encounter new structures in any of the above.

My question is, do you think I'm missing out on anything by not formally going through a textbook? If there's value in it, I'd definitely give it a try, but I currently don't see the value.

[Gharial]

Well, you're missing out on the examples, methods and ultimately allusions that a textbook's community of users can share and make, for one thing. Y'know, being a part of a wider learning story and history...it can have its appeal and charms. Plus if the textbook is a good n thorough one, it may even teach you a thing or two regardless of your current level. But unless your aim is to survey the market or something, I can't really see the point in "going back" to textbooks if you're already immersed and functioning well enough in Chinese.

[Kaxia]

Unless you're a total beginner finding the right textbook can be difficult. For me, it was either too easy and I got bored with repeating stuff or too difficult so I got discouraged with all the vocabulary that seemed useless at that level.

I think it depends on your goals. There are good textbooks if you want to take HSK, learn sth specific like 经贸汉语or review your grammar. Otherwise I don't see much point either.

[Flying Pigeon]

Should you bother going through a textbook? Not if you find it a hard slog. That doesn't sound like fun.

I like this quote by Martin Symonds, the author of the Chinese Made Easier textbooks:

"Some people are highly motivated, but feel guilty that they aren't using traditional study methods. I remember once talking with a frustrated western colleague. He told me that by the side of his bed was a pile of textbooks which he desperately wanted to review, but for which he could never find the time in his busy schedule. His sense of guilt was really getting him down! As we talked, he mentioned that he always carried his PDA around with him in which he would note down new words that came up in conversation. Since it seemed to me that he already had an excellent method of increasing (and reviewing) his vocabulary, I suggested that he throw away all those books and stop feeling so guilty!"

Here is a link to the entire article: http://chinesemadeeasier.com/achievers.html

Some suggestions:

Add more "native" reading and listening material. By "native" I mean stuff that's made for native speakers.

Maybe take a look at some different textbooks and see if they are more interesting than Chinese For Today. If you find one, try working through it with a teacher, preferably a native speaker. That can make it easier and more enjoyable than plowing through it by yourself.

But if you're not down with textbooks, don't use them.

Here is a good site for grammar:

http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/

Just some random thoughts. Hope they help. Good luck with your studies.

[li3wei1]

I'd agree. Textbooks are probably good at the very early stages, because they offer structure and guidance, but if you're at the Chinese Breeze level, and talking to people, don't worry about them.

[imron]

I think the main thing to consider is whether or not you are progressing. Doing the above sort of self study, it can be very easy to get to a point where you are coasting on existing skills and not necessarily improving (or only improving at a slow rate). A textbook/textbook series provides not only structure for that progression, but it also offers a nice measure of progress.

Having said that, although I've started on several, I've never actually gone through a complete textbook in my learning. I don't feel it had a negative effect on my Chinese, but there were definitely times when it felt like there were gaps in my learning that might not have existed if I'd taken a more structured approach. If I was learning over again, I'd probably consider picking a well-regarded textbook series to go through.

[Meng Lelan]

it made you learn characters by frequency without any attention to character components,

That is how textbooks used to approach Chinese character learning but nowadays that approach is going out of style because it doesn't work.

New recent textbooks are more aligned with the new approach based on teaching radical components. You might want to take a look at the newer texts just coming out the last year or so before you decide you are missing out on using a textbook to guide you.

[li3wei1]

Can you give some examples of the new textbooks, Meng Lelan?

[Meng Lelan]

Can you give some examples of the new textbooks, Meng Lelan?

Encounters, published by Yale.

Great Wall series published by the Confucius Institute.

Tuttle publishing just started coming out with a line of textbooks by Cornelius Kubler. This series is so new that the intermediate level isn't going to be published until next summer.

[li3wei1]

I was at a teacher training seminar put on by the Confucius Institute recently, where one of the speakers was giving out the opposite view, that there's no point in introducing characters that the student will not be practising, so they should be introduced more or less in order of frequency. So it's interesting to see that the CI is publishing something that doesn't follow that rule.

I can see the arguments on both sides. Is anyone here aware of any studies or evidence to support either one?

[lechuan]

Thanks everyone for the advice.

I took a look at the textbooks Meng Lelan mentioned and discovered that the Confucitus Insitute's "Greate Wall" series is available for iPad. I tried out the demo and liked what I saw: Engaging and funny animated dialog; selective on/off display of pinyin, english, video, audio, characters; a feature to record yourself after you hear each line of dialog, then play back immediately after hearing the dialog again to compare your pronunciation/fluency. I've been wanting to start doing that for a while to help with fluency, and was happy to see that built into the app.

I purchased the Stage 1 (Level 1-6) app, and I'll post more thoughts on it once I've had a chance to play around with it more. It looks heavily geared towards conversational Chinese. There were already some things I learned even in the earlier lessons, so I think this will be a good way to "back-fill" some gaps from my ad-hoc learning program, at least conversationally.