Studying in China, I need some big help

[Guest realmayo]

Haha, never thought of that! Are these sold in HK? http://www.mcvities.co.uk/product/rich-tea

[Lu]

You will probably find that they are reluctant to correct you out of concerns that it might be impolite. Chinese friends may promise to do this for you, but seldom will keep with it consistently.

Also because it interrupts the conversation. Do ask them to correct you, but also make some time to sit down with someone (tutor, patient & critical friend) and especially work on correcting your pronunciation.

[evasiege]

I think you're assuming a lot here, and being fairly rude about it to boot.

Call me out all you want, but I'm not sure what I would stand to gain by lying on these forums about my Chinese level. It comes down to the fact that I've worked extremely hard since I moved to Taiwan. I haven't met anyone who's worked harder. I moved to Taiwan to study Chinese, and I'm now preparing to do a master's degree in a Chinese literature department here in Taiwan with a focus on pre-Han philology. The majority of my time is devoted to studying Chinese, and it's out of necessity (if my Chinese isn't good enough, I won't survive even the first semester). Add that kind of motivation to a large amount of study time and work as hard as I have, and then we can talk about what's possible and what's not. Until then, I don't think I have any need to defend myself to you.

What can I say, I'm skeptical. Especially when someone makes eyebrow-raising claims.

There is a natural process of forgetting and remembering in every aspect the langauge, and according to the rate you claim to aquire new vocab (1000 new words a month), it's as if this process cannot even exist. Let's assume you could actually ingrain 150 new words per week, meaning you'll recognize 100% of them thereafter (a feat in itself). That means 100 words will require further review at a later time. Meaning the next week you're trying to learn 250 words PLUS the 100 you forgot from the week prior. Out of these 350 words, 150 are effectively ingrained. Next week there are 450 you are trying to learn. It might not be as clean-cut as this, but the point is that a spill-over effect exists when you study a lot of things at once, and that old vocab, though more easily obtained the second time around, again becomes new vocab at some point. As the frequency of each new set of words you study drops, the spill-over becomes a bit bigger (assuming you're incorporating reading and TV into your studies) because the process of being able to recognize something is to forget, then see/hear/say it again.

So you either have an insane memory, and therefore should have your own TV show, or you're lying. No amount of effort alone could produce those type of results.

[imron]

I'm guessing he uses SRS software to manage all of that.

[Guest realmayo]

I think evasiege doesn't work hard enough.

Plus, the idea that anyone has 100% retention for vocab is flawed.

old vocab, though more easily obtained the second time around, again becomes new vocab at some point

Incorrect, it remains old vocab, but becomes vocab which you've forgotten.

I wonder if there is a sweet spot where learning words in Chinese becomes easy for a while. You know all the characters, and most new words will typically be either nouns, or new ways to say things that you've already learned. A large amount of new words will be guessable. Plus, following the discussions about "word families" versus words earlier in this thread, much of this vocab can be interrelated. As creamyhorror says, "Chinese words are composed of characters, so they have a higher level of 'guessability of meaning'." Finally, you've been studying for a good while so you are accustomed both to the language and to the process of learning a language.

I'd guess that this window could not extend indefinitely: as you learn more words, what's left becomes rarer and vaguer?

Just a theory.

In a thread some time ago imron suggests 20 new words a day as being viable. OneEye's 30 a day doesn't seem extraordinary compared to that.

the process of being able to recognize something is to forget, then see/hear/say it again

Incorrect. The process involves the effort of trying to remember -- successfully or unsuccessfully. SRS is designed to test your recall at a stage where it's difficult, but not impossible, to remember.

Best get back to the books evasiege!

[gato]

The 17,000 number comes from c_redman's test. It's possible that the test is over-estimating the words known. There was some skepticism discussed expressed in this thead: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/38726-how-many-words-to-be-known-by-beginner-and-elementary-level-chinese-learner/#comment-291347

OneEye said that in another thread last month that he still can't comfortably read newspapers, so I am not sure the 17,000 number is right. As I said, the old HSK list only had 8000 words and 17,000 is about half of the words in 新华词典. I'll take c_redman's test and report back.

[renzhe]

17,000 sounds quite high, but I can't judge that.

I know that I had at one point known more than 10,000 words, I counted them all. Newspapers are still tricky, though I have no problem understanding most of them.

[Guest realmayo]

I think he said the number of flashcards he has suggests he knows more like 14,000 but the test said 17,000. Both those numbers are basically the same for me too, suggesting that either c_redman's test does overestimate, or that totting up your flashcards underestimates how many words you can understand because there will be a few that you've not seen before but guessed right in the test. Then again there will also be perhaps 10-15% of words in an SRS deck that you forget at any given time.

It's all a bit of a nonsense because no one has really agreed what constitutes a word!

End of the day, take 10 people very motivated, working very hard, all day long -- I reckon at least one of those 10 could sustain 30 *vocabulary items* a day for a year. Is that so unbelievable?

Edit: for newspapers, he said he finds them less comfortable than books on early Chinese phonology which hardly suggests he must have a small vocabulary.

[imron]

@realmayo, I maintain that 5-10 words a day is a sustainable rate for someone not studying the language full-time. I imagine 20-30 words a day is definitely possible if you were studying full-time and is certainly not large enough that I would call someone claiming such a rate a liar. In any event, the impressive thing for me is not the number of words per day, but the sustained effort over a prolonged period of time. That's where the real difficulty lies.

[gato]

The way to settle this is for all of us to take the c_redman test and report back. The test is here: http://www.zhtoolkit.../apps/wordtest/

That includes you, imron, renzhe and realmayo ;-)

UPDATE: Just took the c_redman test. Out of 165 words, I got 3 wrong. I got an estimate of 34,400 words known. That's more than the number of words in 新华词典, though the bigger 现代汉语规范词典 has more words, at around 60,000. I would estimate my own vocabulary at native upper high school level, but probably not college graduate level yet (though I can read just about everything comfortably).

There were some questionable items on the test (which is based on the Lancaster Corpus). Among the 165 test items were 越来越, 这项, 昨晚, and 诗篇. These are more like phrases. Seems to be a segmentation problem. Names like 阿萨德, 大亚湾, and 释迦牟尼 were also included. I know who 释迦牟尼 (Siddhartha / Buddha) is, having encountered a number of times before. I also said that I know 阿萨德 and 大亚湾 because I do know how to read them. I am not sure where 大亚湾 is, but this is not a geography test.

[renzhe]

The way to settle this is for all of us to take the c_redman test and report back. That includes you, imron, renzhe and realmayo ;-)

26233

That is definitely nonsense ;) though I can't blame the test-makers. Estimating this stuff is tricky.

[hackinger]

Hi,

I feel flattered and embarrassed at the same time:

14123 +- 1960

This may be an overestimation by almost a factor of 4.

I used perapera to verify my answers before hitting the wrong or correct button. I counted as correct only words which I had seen previously and which I knew. There were several cases where I correctly guessed a word which I had not encountered before. I counted these words as incorrect. There were other words which I guessed incorrectly but which I will certainly remember from now on.

I guess the test measures words and derivative words and not word families, but the number looks still way too big.

But it made also clear to me that after a certain level some new words which are based on already known words and characters can be acquired rather quickly. I think I have learned at least 5 new words during the test which I will never have to look up again including the anthem of a certain country.

Cheers

hackinger

[abcdefg]

I think this test significantly overestimated my knowledge as well.

[OneEye]

OneEye said that in another thread last month that he still can't comfortably read newspapers,

No, in fact that post was in the thread you linked to (and which I linked to on the previous page), so you could at least quote me properly. I said:

"I haven't spent a whole lot of time reading newspapers, especially recently, so I'm not as comfortable reading them as I am with, say, books on early Chinese phonology (which I've been reading a lot of lately). Over the summer I read a decent number of recent newspaper articles for class, so I have no doubt that if I focused on that for a while it would come back quickly."

Not quite the same as what you said, is it?

The way to settle this is for all of us to take the c_redman test and report back.

That's going to prove whether I'm lying or not? I wonder gato, what do you stand to gain by "settling this?" Why are you so interested?

Like I said before, I don't feel any need to defend myself. It's just not worth the time and effort. evasiege and gato can think whatever they like about me. I don't even think I've said anything all that outlandish. Glossika claims on his facebook page to have reached a similar level in a much shorter amount of time (here's a quote: "By six months I had already checked off more than half the vocabulary in a 20,000-word dictionary and my character recognition had surpassed 4500"). I don't doubt him, because I've seen how good his Chinese is, and because I know he's also learned Taiwanese, Hakka, Cantonese, and several Taiwanese aboriginal languages (all of which I've heard him speak) since moving here 10 years ago or so.

I answered this thread to help the OP. I'm surprised the thread has derailed this far.

[imron]

31733. With 7 unknown, 2 of which I realised I knew after clicking show (but still counted them as unknown).

If you look at the results table, I think the main problem is that the highest bands contain a large number of words and with only a few errors you get given a generous amount of known words. A larger sampling of words at these levels would help smooth this out.

[gato]

That's going to prove whether I'm lying or not? I wonder gato, what do you stand to gain by "settling this?" Why are you so interested?

Settling this means testing the accuracy of the word estimate given by c_redman's test. That's all. To give the 17,000 number some context by having more people report their scores on the same test. I don't think you are lying at all. I am more interested in figuring out a good way to measure how many words we know.

[OneEye]

Ah, my bad then.

[icebear]

I understand it's mostly my fault. At my University in the US, I wasn't a good studier at all. I did the homework, would cram the characters 30 minutes before a test and that was about it. I never studied or practiced on my own.

Good - now that we have that out of the way...

You need to break all connections with English speakers. This includes your Chinese friends that primarily speak English with you.* Hit the recordings (of native speakers, and yours for comparison) hard. Start engaging in many language exchanges - any situation where you are speaking Chinese less than 50% of the time isn't worth your time. You'll find you start to improve quickly, especially since this will focus your studies on what is immediately important for 口语.

As for time that isn't with a tutor/language partner/native friend (that ONLY speaks Chinese), hit the books and podcasts hard. Force yourself to transcribe one episode of a Chinese TV drama per day - this alone will take a few hours (for a 40 minute show) and will be incredibly painful. Following transcription rewatch the show without pausing. After doing 5-10 episodes you'll find you're following a lot more without pausing, even the first time through, and eventually (maybe that early) you'll realize the transcription isn't necessary anymore.

Basically, you need to put in hard work and be disciplined - just what you haven't been/done in the past. But you knew that already, so stop looking for magic bullets and realize its a monumental task - and that just because you haven't done it so far doesn't mean others haven't, or that you are not able to. Pull yourself up by the boot straps and all that.

*Of course, maybe you want to designate Saturdays as a day you can spend with English speakers. Still, I think you should be trying to keep your "free" time primarily Chinese 5-6 days a week. Don't come all the way to China to take that cute foreign girl to the mall and show off your mediocre Chinese.

[rebor]

I think a lot of ambitious(and overly optimistic ) students can relate to your experience. I know I never put so much effort into anything before coming to China to study the language, and still my results were fairly unimpressive. But this has a lot to do with perception - a lot of people underestimate the time and effort required for learning a language so different from your own. So relax, it's OK that you're not fluent yet. What you can to is to:

1. increase time spent studying

2. increase the efficiency of your studying methods

Since you're learning a language, studying can be going out with Chinese speaking friends or watching TV. Generally, being more active is better. Transcribing a tv show is better than watching and listening really hard, which is better than reading the subtitles, which is better than guessing what's happening from the images on the screen and catching the odd phrase. That said, being more active requires more energy, so it's about finding some manner of balance, if you're not a cyborg with endless reservoirs of energy(you know if you are; most people are not).

Apart from being active, feedback is important. Study methods which give you instant feedback make it easier to work out what you do not understand or know yet. This can be audio with transcripts, flashcards, a grammar workbook with a key, posting on lang8, a tutor, a friend, to name a few.

It is sometimes tempting to study passively, without feedback. It makes you appear more knowledgable than you are, and therefore feels good. Avoid this trap by accepting your level of Chinese. Not in the sense of giving up the will to improve, but in the sense of knowing were you stand right know. If your pronunciation is crap(as an example, I'm not saying yours is), accept this, find someone to help you and work hard at it.

I also used the Road to Success books(reviewed a few chapters just this morning, actually!), and yes, there's quite a bit of more formal/written language. I disliked them before, but I think they're a decent choice if you wish to be able to read novels and newspapers later on. You must graduate from the basics some time. That said, if you only study the main books in the series, you will be lacking in everyday situations. There's listening/speaking books in the series, though. If you want spoken language stuff, get books for it! There's quite a few kouyu books out there, and you can always mine them for vocab.