As a beginner addressing experienced learners, what makes Chinese exceptionally difficult

[Ruben von Zwack]

That is a concise description of the difficulties. I wish to add one thought: because of the foreignness, what works for someone when learning French might not necessarily work for the same person when learning Chinese.
It should be obvious, so I wonder why that comparison has been coming up a few times, especially in the context of reading adult native content.

 

If you're English and you're an ambitious newbie to learning French, get a dictionary, pick up a nespaper and it will be an easy ride and you'll effortlessly learn some advanced vocabulary that way. Because as an English speaker, you passively know French anyway*, you're just not aware of it.

 

But for a beginner in Chinese, in my eyes, it would be a waste of time to venture into adult native material before you learnt verb complements, ways of expressing negation and comparison, points of time and duration. To name a few things that come to my mind where Chinese is "foreign" to speakers of European languages.

 

(* Norman invasion, etc. ppp. ...)

[Rowan]

Thanks, mayo, very clear post. 

 

 

It should be obvious, so I wonder why that comparison has been coming up a few times, especially in the context of reading adult native content.

 

Yeah, that's my only extended experience with a foreign language so it's the only thing I do have to use as a comparison. But you are right that the usefulness of such comparisons could be seen as dubious looking at the alien nature of Chinese compared to French. Though, I would say that all the parallels between French and English due to the Norman presence in Britain aren't as much of a boon as people usually say, but that's neither here nor there.

 

 

But for a beginner in Chinese, in my eyes, it would be a waste of time to venture into adult native material before you learnt verb complements, ways of expressing negation and comparison, points of time and duration. To name a few things that come to my mind where Chinese is "foreign" to speakers of European languages.

Yeah, I would never recommend that either, whether for a similar language or a very foreign one, definitely get though the basic grammar and such before trying to read on your own.

[querido]

To Rowan:
In your previous post you agreed that it would be a good idea to work up through graded difficulty lessons - graded reading - to learn how to read. I'm sure you would agree that to listen to those lessons as you go - graded listening - would be a good idea too.
The most popular textbook series such as New Practical Chinese Reader would serve you very well through that process.

Also, still talking to Rowan:

Are you interested in following me through a thought experiment?:

Suppose you've worked up through those lessons, both reading and listening, up to the 1000 word level. You can read those lessons easily and understand that audio easily. And now you're in China and you face two tasks: 1) reading a text that uses only those 1000 words but is talking about something else (and you don't know what) or 2) listening to a native speaker using only those 1000 words but talking about something else (and you don't know what).

 

There is a strong consensus on this forum that task #2 is much, much harder than task #1.

 

Therefore, although you could read at that level very well, before you could honestly say that you were 4-skill competent at that level it would be helpful if you had a great deal more listening material at that level (saying different things using the same words with the sound flying through the air without stopping). You could listen to it as you continue through subsequent lessons. This way, you could avoid piling up too many thousands of words that you can't really understand in speech. As I said, to me it was painful.

 

I posted again because I noticed that in your reply above you were still talking about reading (see the fourth word from the end). As your original post was about what is "exceptionally difficult" (and was not limited to just reading), I shared my warning to watch out for task #2. Good luck. :-)

[querido]

Which textbook series includes the most cumulative supplementary listening? Thanks.

[Rowan]

Double post

[Rowan]

Querido - 

 

I see what you are saying. I think it's especially true taking into account what someone else mentioned recently, that the different skills don't reinforce each other in Chinese as much as they do in other languages. In French reading a word and going over it a few times in your head goes a long ways towards recognizing it in conversation. On the other hand, learning a character and its meaning does nothing of the sort in Chinese, not to mention the tones. 

 

In my Mandarin class we are using a set of three textbooks that each look like this (the red and yellow ones that come up near the top). It includes weekly graded conversational passages that go along with sound files. Have you heard of it?

[querido]

"I see what you are saying."

Thanks Rowan.

"Have you heard of it?"

I've heard of it but I've never seen it.

[querido]

Many will suggest a tutor to lessen the above problem. Yes, of course.

When I did, I found that our sessions were also continuously blocked by unknown words, and I did NOT want to spend that time learning new words (as I can do that on my own). I wanted to talk, talk, talk!

Of course my tutor understood this. And I gave her the list of words I knew, hoping we could exercise those. But, it's asking a lot of a tutor to be able to stay within a list and also exercise all of the words on the list. This - accounting - is annoying and probably kills real spontaneity etc.

 

Thus my suggestion of graded reader audio (graded audio). It would be ideal if the textbook and graded readers were both keyed to the same wordlists, and some of them are; some are keyed to the HSK lists, which go up to 5000 words. That's a good start!

 

Edit: I did benefit from the tutor in lots of other ways.

[Rowan]

Yeah, the one we're using is in fact keyed to the same word lists. Each passage will only use words contained in previous lessons. 

[mouse]

 

Many will suggest a tutor to lessen the above problem. Yes, of course.

When I did, I found that our sessions were also continuously blocked by unknown words, and I did NOT want to spend that time learning new words (as I can do that on my own). I wanted to talk, talk, talk!

 

I totally agree with you about both the importance and difficulties of listening, but I just wanted to add: in a tutor situation, as long as unknown words are explained exclusively (or as much as possible) in Chinese, they don't necessary block things, just make the conversation less "natural" and perhaps a bit stilted. I mean, you can remember the word for the duration of the conversation, then drop it. This isn't ideal, but has to be done for the sake of lessening the burden of revision. Also - and maybe this is your experience too - but for me I've just accepted that I will regularly come across words I don't know which break my understanding of a sentence, so I've tried as much as possible to learn ways of talking about words and meaning. To this end I started looking at definitions in Chinese when I could find them and putting them into anki. Of course, in the early stages this is more difficult to do, so maybe I'm taking things off-topic a bit. Carry on!

[querido]

"I've tried as much as possible to learn ways of talking about words and meaning"

Good idea.

Yes, despite my tutor and I agreeing on this I still collect about ten new words per session. Not bad.

[Demonic_Duck]

I see what you are saying. I think it's especially true taking into account what someone else mentioned recently, that the different skills don't reinforce each other in Chinese as much as they do in other languages. In French reading a word and going over it a few times in your head goes a long ways towards recognizing it in conversation. On the other hand, learning a character and its meaning does nothing of the sort in Chinese, not to mention the tones.

It's true that the different skills don't reinforce each other quite to such an extent in Chinese as in most other languages, but I think you're confused as to the reason why.

 

First off, compare words to words, not words to characters. Learning a word (that is, both meaning and pronunciation, the latter of which includes tone) and familiarising yourself with it in the same way goes a good way towards recognising it in conversation. The two things that will make this more difficult are the indirectness of the relationship between form and sound of written words (hence, if you don't know the characters, you'll have to look that word up in your dictionary to know how to pronounce it, and may well forget the written form even if you succeed in remembering the sound and meaning), and the large amounts of homophony in Chinese.

[APWiseman]

1) I have found for the most part, the words I use in a textbook are very dry/formal/not useful for daily conversation. It often feels like a learning chinese textbook just jerks you around, wasting your time for the money part.

At the pre-intermediate/intermediate level, I think people benefit more from just watching TV dramas on youku: the subtitles allow you to practice reading and listening at the same time; while understanding how they use grammar you learned in books; get exposed to local vocabulary and high-frequency (as well as used in the right situations) cheng-yu.

 

2) Learning Hanzi and radicals takes forever, and I have a very short attention span.

 

3) Having to ask these series of questions for most every word I encounter now: A) Does the word have a negative or positive connotation? B) What part of speech is this word typically? C) How do I use this word? In what situations? Is it formal/Informal?

Ex: 执著 (+) and 任性 (-) both essentially mean stubborn, but one is positive, the other negative.

 

4) (One of my ex-Chinese-girlfriends said this) As a native english speaker, we put our focus more on the beginning of the sentences, while chinese puts the stress on the end. Understanding the 语感  I feel is impossible. Alot of times I can read parts of a complex sentence and have to figure out what the clauses modify and where the focus of their sentences are.

 

5) Not knowing 2-3 words in a sentence will mess you up, because you start thinking about the wrong words/context (atleast for me).