How do you do it ? Maintaining a good level of Chinese

[LaFleurOrange28]

Hello CF members!

After wandering through the forums and picking up some tricks, I wanted to ask you : for those of you who speak Chinese, how to you manage to maintain a good level outside of China ?

I should explain my situation a little better. I have just graduated from university with a Bachelors in Chinese Studies and have spent a year in China already, I would say my level is between HSK 5/6. But as I leave in Europe, I feel like my language skills are slowly slipping away even though I try to still keep my chinese habits (listening to music, watching TV shows and talking to my friends by Skype in Chinese)...

I would love to hear any recommendation and advice!

Thank you

[skylee]

A degree in Chinese Studies! This is impressive.

I think on top of passively keeping up one's Chinese by listening to and reading in Chinese, it is important to keep expressing ideas in Chinese. I blog in Chinese, and I used to use a stylus to hand write in Chinese to prevent myself from forgetting how to write (now you can write with your finger on the screen of your smartphone or tablet).

[tooironic]

I think socialising is quite important. Keep chucking yourself in deep water - i.e. situations where you are forced to speak Chinese with people from as many different backgrounds and ages as possible. Once Chinese becomes part of your social life (and work too, if you have the chance) it's relatively easy to maintain your language level.

As for me, I'm fluent in Mandarin - however, though I've travelled extensively throughout China, I've never lived there for more than a month at a time. So let me tell you that becoming (and staying) fluent in Chinese outside of China is totally possible. You just need to make sure that you're living in a city which has some kind of Chinese community. In Australia this is a piece of cake in almost any medium or large city. Can't speak for Europe though.

[kdavid]

Marry a Chinese.

[HusbandOfWuhan]

1. One way is to watch Chinese dramas online in your spare time. There are heaps on Youtube. You can learn new words this way or just maintain what your current ability.

2. Read a page or two of a Chinese newspaper, book, or online article(blog) etc. in your spare time.

3. Make a few Chinese friends. There are heaps even in Europe depending on your exact location. More Chinese live around cities.

4. Keep on asking questions about Chinese language and culture.

[WestTexas]

I think SRS helps maintain reading level if you don't have time to read in Chinese an hour or so a day.

Other than that, get some Chinese friends on QQ or Skype and just talk in Chinese for a few hours a week.

[dnevets]

Just to extend kdavid's suggestion... Marry a Chinese who's English isn't as good as your Chinese!

I have a hard time speaking Chinese to people I don't know here in the UK. They'll understand what I say but then reply in English - even though I've spoken fluently, without any errors, and their English is worse (significantly so, sometimes) than my Chinese. I've been back here (post-living in China) for 3 years and I've yet to find a person that will reply to me in Chinese. I should add though that most of them are probably students, so they're concentrating on practising English as much as possible.

[陳德聰]

Perhaps consider making friends/getting cozy with some of the people who work at the Confucius Institute near you.

[JustinJJ]

I'm having those considerations also as I think I have more career options (i.e. easier to get a high/fair wage) back in Australia. If I return I'd probably live in the most Chinesy area and live in a place where I can rent rooms to Chinese people to try to create an 'immersion environment'. I think Skylee's blog idea is fantastic as it forces you to think in detail in Chinese as you don't want to write something that sounds terrible for lots of people to read.

I'd struggle to think of an example where I spoke to someone in Chinese and they responded in English in the year I have been in Beijing (other than maybe a sentence, before they became embarrassed and started using Chinese). I think they seem to find it interesting/surprising to hear a foreigner speaking Chinese (I'm not sure if its common or not for foreigners speak Chinese since all my friends here are Chinese). Either I have been choosing the right people to speak to or just been lucky.

[Lu]

Some good suggestions upthread already. Make sure some of your social life is in Chinese; read Chinese; watch movies or series in Chinese; practice your vocab. You can also consider taking advanced classes, which forces you to not only keep up the level you have but also learn some new things. Even then, your Chinese will probably deteriorate a bit, so it's best if you spend some time in China/Taiwan regularly.

[LaFleurOrange28]

Great! Thanks a lot, everyone.

I really like the idea of blogging myself, it's an excellent way of not only expressing myself but also do it with subjects that interest me.

Once again, thank you and more comments and advice are always welcome!

[joshgibbs]

What you are currently doing sounds great for maintaining your Chinese level. If there would be one more thing that I would recommend it would be to write in Chinese. That would be the quickest skill to go if you don't practice, so make sure you are stretching your abilities when writing. Once or twice per week would probably suffice for maintaining your skill level.

[evasiege]

Download PPS TV and Fengxing. Free Chinese movies and TV 4 life yo. Maintaining your spoken level will be the hardest part obviously. You'll need to live in a place where there a lot of Chinese.

[skylee]

I would advise against fengxing (funshion). It behaves like a malware in my opinion. Be careful if you use it.

PS - I had a very hard time trying to uninstall something called baidu browser. It could not be uninstalled by windows or its own uninstaller. In the process I downloaded three uninstaller programmes and the first two failed. After finally uninstalling it using the third programme I still had to manually remove its exe file. So be careful when you install such things and in any case do not use a baidu browser. But the baidu player (not browser) is fine in my opinion.

[gato]

Funshion is basically a front-end for BitTorrent (BT).

Be careful with it, as programs like BT and eMule are demanding on hard disks. I've had a hard disk go dead recently while Funshion was running. I've also had another hard disk fail due to eMule several years ago.

http://forums.animes...3527#post113527

It's not hard to understand why this could be when you look at the way BT works. Because files are both downloaded and uploaded in random chunks rather than in order, it forces the HD to spend long periods of time seeking all over the place.

Remember hard drives are mechanical devices and the read/write heads are on arms that move over the disk. When reading a normal file in order the movement it pretty much a smooth sweep. However, random file access also can cause the heads to jump around randomly, which is far more stressful.