Need some help from advance Chinese learners/users (John DeFrancis Chinese Reader)

[LearneЯ]

Hey guys,

This is my first post as I have recently registered, but I have visited the forums occasionally in the past. Now a little bit about myself:

I started Chinese in 2006 after venturing with some Korean and Japanese, and surprisingly stuck with it for a few years. I did not take it much seriously though, my biggest learning activity of the day used to be getting online and chat in my awkward Chinese on sharedtalk, MSN, QQ or Skype. Although I downloaded a lot of learning material from the internet, be it PDF books, electronic dictionaries or some random courses, I somehow could never stuck with any learning method for more than a couple of day. Out of all the books I had, I don't remember going through more than a couple of pages in one sitting, which only happened once or twice a month anyway. I never seem to be able to learn from traditional methods and nothing could hold my attention span for long enough. I went ahead and even bought one of the best and expensive interactive learning software (Interactive Chinese from Sinolingua) to keep myself motivated, but enticement wore off within a couple of weeks. I also had one or two electronic handheld multimedia gadgets with dictionaries. Nonetheless, the journey kept going till 2008 and I was even thinking of taking HSK in 2008. I probably got 6/7 in the mock test I tried back then, nothing impressive after 2 - 2.5 year of learning. But then life started changing and then I probably just got bored with Chinese and never touched it since then. That pretty much sums up my journey of learning Chinese that spans over 2.5 years in total.

Since I have some more free time again, I recently found myself getting back to Chinese again. I took me a few days to get back on track with reading speed and brushing up on listening comprehension, then I tried to measure my current level. After trying new HSK mock tests online, I passed HSK 4 with 95%+ (abridged one at 100%) and HSK 5 with 85%, this obviously doesn't include essay writing. I also tried HSK 6, and while it wasn't so bad, I am not contented with the results and I had to make educated guesses way too many times. I believe it is because of lack of formal learning and inadequate exposure more than anything else - I wouldn't really be able to differentiate between 期望, 渴望, 期待 and 指望 due to lack of structural introduction of these words. As far as random stats go, I know about 1800-2200 characters (never kept track or used flash cards) and have appropriate corresponding vocabulary, around 10K words.

After coming back to learning Chinese, I thought of buying some interesting reading material and finally ordered 画皮 of 汉语风 series. It arrived a few days ago, and looks quite easy at 750 word level, it's probably targeted towards advanced-elementary or low-intermediate students, still interesting nonetheless, especially with corresponding audio. I would love to buy more once they publish level 5 or level 6 series, but it may take a couple of years before I see them.

In addition to 画皮, which I only ordered because of the movies, I also paid quite a lot for 'Advance Chinese Reader' John DeFrancis just to see what that fuss was/is all about. Upon receiving and reading the preface, I found that the book was intended for learners with knowledge of around 800 characters and corresponding grammar and vocabulary, going through some random pages from different places of the book also confirmed this. Of course, there were some compounds in the vocabulary list I was not aware off, but I could still easily read around 95% of the passages quite easily aside from unfamiliar traditional characters. I was really looking forward to reading it, but is it appropriate for me? Perhaps thorough grinding through somewhat dated formal text is all I need right now even though the new characters, vocabulary acquisition and dare I say, interest will be minimal? What are your thoughts?

If reading material and practice is the only thing this book has to offer, wouldn't I be better off returning it and reading interesting, categorised, annotated and translated articles from chinesereadingpractice.com? I also found this quality website last month and was just blown away by the effort put into this website and the passion of the owner evident in regular updates.

I have some more PDF books I would like to elaborate on and use as alternative, but let's leave it for the future posts, this one is long enough already!

Thanks for reading this long-winded rambling!

[Quamarine]

渴望 means you want it very very much ( from the condition when you are very thirsty and want to drink very much —— 渴 means thirsty )

指望 usually means negative, like " I had hoped him to do something but apparently I was wrong " or " How could you wish her to do such things? " or at least possibility isn't high, like " I hope I could pass the difficult exam, it's my only hope " 指 means the finger, you point a finger out ahead, saying you want that....but you may not really get what you want

期望 and 期待 don't have a clear difference. We Chinese use it arbitrarily. If we must say something, then 期待 means hope with good expectations, and just like 渴望 & 指望, it can be used as a noun or a verb, both correct and natural. But we seldom use 期望 as a verb but more as a noun.

When it comes to say "I hope..." "I wish....", we Chinese speakers always tend to use 希望 or 期待. 期望 is much less common.

[LearneЯ]

Thanks for your post, Quamarine!

Yes, I do understand the differences, maybe not as clearly as you explained, but I still had/have a general idea. The problem arises when there is only one correct answer in cloze test and you have to pick one without much context and solely based on sentence structure. It is quite like the English equivalent of to hope, to wish for, looking forward to and can't wait to or forgo, forsake, forget and forswear: a native (or fairly advanced) speaker won't have much problem picking the right option, but learners stuck in intermediate-advance phase often have no choice but to make an educated guess in such situations.

Thank you for the detailed explanation though, I really appreciate it.

Grammar:

In any case, that was not the real point of my post - more book discussion: anyone had some experience with both Routledge's Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar (Yip Po-Ching) and 《外国人实用汉语语法》 by 李德津? I have both, but might be leaning towards the latter without any solid reasoning. I also plan to check out Chinese Grammar Wiki, it looks quite decent.

Reading:

I already had Graded Reader 1 and 3 from Selected, Abridged Chinese Contemporary Short Stories series by Shi Ji, but then I read from forum user 陈德聪 that these books aren't numbered in order of difficulty. Graded Reader 2 was the most difficult if I recall correctly, so I have recently ordered it to see if it's true. The books are interesting - I have to admit that I hate pinyin under every line of text, still comes in handy sometimes though. I think the series is good for reading for leisure as well.

I also have NCPR 4, 5 and 6 along with audio. Level 4 looks easy while level 5 is almost fully comprehensible - can read level 6 for leisure to an extent and usually know most of the words introduced in vocabulary list. It also helps that final levels are more literary and formal, which has always been a weakness considering that I relied on conversational Mandarin as primary learning method.

I found two more excellent books in my collection, which I had since 2006 with, but way above my level at that time. One is 'Advanced Reader of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories: Reflections on Humanity' by Corrie Reed and Wang Ying and 'Learn Chinese from Modern Writers' (text book only) by Chung-wen Shih. I prefer the first one although latter is perhaps more authentic. I don't have the interactive multimedia program of 'Learn Chinese from Modern Writers' and I never had much interest in the politics, so it may not be the best option.

Reading and Grammar Combined?

I recently came across excellent learning material made available online by 暨南大学 and found book 《基础汉语》 from 快捷汉语 series. After some searching, I found out that the book was probably meant for teachers and a product of www.quickchinese.com.cn. It looks quite good in the sense that it explained grammatical intricacies along with vocabulary list after lessons. The series goes up to level 10 and is probably more advanced than readers widely available in the western markets, not sure if these books are available outside China.

Listening:

It's definitely worse than reading, especially for formal context. I can understand almost all of contemporary movies like 《天堂口》 （100% with Chinese subtitles) - just watched 《危险关联》 a few days ago and didn't have to look at subtitles more than a couple of occasions. This is not the situation with TV dramas or historic movies though: not too keen on soaps, but had to turn Chinese subtitles on for 《投名状》 and still there were occasions where I did not understand the dialogues. I re-watched Jet Li's 《英雄》 two days ago and had the same experience: I could understand almost all dialogues among the commoners, about 50% between emperor and Jet Li and still had a few occasions where I could not quite understand what was exactly being said!

暨南大学 also has audio recording of 《新闻听力教程》, which seems perfect for my current situation.

I also listen to advanced (and occasionally intermediate and other) podcasts from popupchinese.com from time to time. Advanced lessons seems a little above my level while intermediate are below, but I prefer the lessons completely in Chinese, which also helps with different ways of expressing ideas and just casual chatter.

Speaking:

The worse of all three by a long shot and unless I come over my fear of speaking with native speakers, there's no hope! I only record my voice in Audacity and play it back, not very often either.

Handwriting:

The worst aspect without a doubt! I am not that concerned about it though, I have recently downloaded Android app from trainchinese to practice the most common 800 characters, let's see how far it goes.

Radom Stuff:

I am trying Defense Language Institute online learning material and lessons. I took the test last month, didn't realise it would take that long and skipped some questions in the end (it was 3:00 A.M.!!), got level 2. I am looking at the lesson and seem to struggle with 2 and 2+ material (audio, not so much with reading), but obviously, the lessons are extremely formal and political in nature because of being a DLI course. These tests are perhaps one of the toughest available to test one's proficiency, I tried level 3 and 3+ tests in my native language and still had to hear some audio clips multiple times to choose the correct answer. I am not sure whether I will benefit much from these lessons at my current level because of being brief, extremely formal and my distaste for politics.

So, here - another wall o' text! Heh, I need to come up with a learning schedule and right choice of material to progress accordingly, but I am more or less certain that it will never happen. Opinions, reviews and suggestions are welcome, post 'em NOW!!

[LearneЯ]

Sorry for double posting, but I can't see or edit my post until they are approved from a moderator:

Also, forgot to add it in random stuff, but I should eventually start using 成语/谚语 and 歇后语/典故 CDs from 'Interactive Chinese' and then occasionally put in my 宋诗/唐诗 CD as well. Damn, that course is worth every penny I paid for it! Just wish I was diligent enough to fully benefit from it.

[gato]

It seems that it would make sense to put in more time on your biggest weakness, which is speaking. Maybe try to work with native speaker tutors over Skype, or do some language exchange with overseas Chinese students?

For reading, you could start working with native materials like newspapers (南方周末, for example) instead of textbooks for learners.

[LearneЯ]

Thanks gato for your quick response!

You are absolutely right, this should be (and kind of, is) my biggest concern: but the weakness runs deeper than that. It's more of a confidence thing being an introvert, but I am trying to overcome it. I had a lot of online exchange friends before quitting and still have a few willing to audio/video chat. It's just that I am unable to do it. As I said before, I am working on my weakness. Then again, a language is essentially a medium of communication - what would it be without speaking and listening?! Writing, reading, calligraphy and everything else is just superfluous.

I have been searching the forums and found some "easy" news-paper and magazines to read: 南方周末 like you mentioned, 新民晚报 and 读者 etc. Actually, I briefly looked at all three of them before writing this post and found both 读者 and 新民晚报 quite interesting. Yup, news and politics bore me to death, but I love reading short stories and informative articles. Perhaps the reason I usually stay away from such stuff is the plethora of unknown characters which stand for proper nouns, people's names, agencies' names, towns, local places and many many more, not to mention the style of writing and usual jargon. And you know, it is more harmful and deterrent than aiding in the learning due to frustration factor alone. But I guess I have to bite the bullet, there's no easy way around it and the aforementioned publications seem to have less of that.

Great suggestions, I added them to my bookmarks for extra reading practice and will work on my introvert personality!