Ideal personality traits, habits and attitudes to master Chinese

[AlexBlackman]

Mastering Chinese seems a lot easier for some people than others,

 

What personality traits contribute to efficient and successful study, and fluency?

What habits are good?

 

What kind of attitudes do successful learners have?

[anonymoose]

Well, at least one needs perseverance. And preferably attention to detail and self awareness.

[Hofmann]

Most importantly, learners must want to learn the language.

[imron]

What anonymoose said.

[li3wei1]

At the early stages, if you're studying in a class situation, you spend a lot of time repeating meaningless baby noises in front of other people. And not just baby noises, baby noises with tones! So you have to have the sort of personality that can handle that sort of performance anxiety. It gets better, but as with any language, you have to be prepared to make mistakes, be misunderstood, be laughed at, etc.

[renzhe]

OCD

Patience

Discipline

Musical ear

Memory

Lots of spare time

Masochism

[li3wei1]

OCD

 

 

Let me just say in advance that I don't know that much about OCD and I don't want to offend anyone by this, but I'd say I've met people who obsess about everything and have to know and understand and remember each fact before moving onto the next, and I'm not sure that's a good trait to have with this language. Sometimes you just have to accept that there are things you don't understand, that you won't remember, that have explanations that don't make sense and are shrouded in the mists of time. Character variants, regional pronunciation, tone sandhi, I've studied for many years and I still haven't graduated from the 'as long as they understand what I'm saying that's okay' phase to the 'I need to say this absolutely perfectly' phase. I suspect studying English is similar. Apologies if I am misunderstanding the nature of OCD.

[Ruben von Zwack]

A rational, clearly-defined goal.

 

This is especially important when you're a spoilt brat (like me) who's been told all their life "oh whow you're so good at languages, you're so talented".

There you are, confusing how to write  给 and 结(婚) for the millionth time, listening to a "Miss Mouse" CD (age: ~2 years) and not understanding a word. You feel like drowning in a stormy sea, no land in sight, not even a life rescue boat. But then I would look at a picture of Jay Chou, and know I have the strength to carry on.

And I won't give up before I reach good conversational level. It's legendary that he doesn't speak English. So when I meet him, I got to be able to talk to him, in such cool/funny/interesting way, that he'll ask for my phone number. And when he does so, I better know 1 is "yao" and not "yi"!

[renzhe]

Apologies if I am misunderstanding the nature of OCD.

The whole post was partly tongue-in-cheek with no offence meant to chronic sufferers, but I've met some successful learners who mentioned having it.

Wiki also says: "Its sufferers commonly share personality traits such as high attention to detail, avoidance of risk, careful planning, exaggerated sense of responsibility and a tendency to take time in making decisions." These are the sort of people who will not say "I'm tired, I'll do my flashcards tomorrow", or "tones don't matter, it's close enough for me".

Getting obsessed about Chinese is a good starting point.

[roddy]

Avoidance of risk though - those high anxiety levels aren't going to help them get out there and risk making mistakes 

[Guest realmayo]

Nice thing with Chinese is how the requirements it puts on learners are varied (tones/characters/vocab/idioms/dialects/culture) so different people will find different things to really motivate them or which seem more interesting. 

[gato]

Smart, friendly, handsome/pretty, with a great sense of humor. Humble yet self-confident.

[tooironic]

学中文，一定不要脸。

[abcdefg]

Don't be afraid to try to talk; don't be afraid of making mistakes. The world will not end if you fail to communicate smoothly. You will grow by trying.

[sparrow]

Yellow fever.

 

 

Also, you need nice pecs for some reason...

[Jeremy Andrews]

Money, social skills, self-confidence, determination, and good hearing all help a LOT.

Interest in Chinese culture, friends or family that speak Chinese, patience, time management skills, and persistence also help.