Are Chinese learning resources hard to come by?

[zhouhaochen]

 

Given you're running a school I'll assume that was a throw-away comment that you know wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny.

You are correct.

[tysond]

What I pity I was about to enroll in the Hanzi-free + Beer + KTV class that zhouhaochen has been cooking up...

[Lu]

Can't sing KTV without Hanzi though...

[imron]

"if you want to read a newspaper, just read a newspaper?"

I should point out that people also need to understand that post of mine in context.  It was replying to someone who had already been studying in China for a year and who would have already had a good base to work from.  I don't recommend this approach for complete beginners.

 

I do recommend people identifying where their weak points are and doing specific work on that skill until it is no longer the weakest point and then identifying the new weakest point, and repeating the process.

 

I'm also a big fan of the graded approach, and in following a text book to get you beyond the complete beginner level.

[Kelby]

Okay, so the takeaway is that success lies not in the resource itself but comes from regular and committed study following a structured, measurable approach. This approach can be narrowed to supplement for weak skills or build desired skills once proficiency in the language has increased past the beginner level.

Anybody willing to quibble with that?

[Elizabeth_rb]

Forgive me if I'm repeating someone else.  I confess to not having read the whole thread this time, but I think that there are HUGE amounts of Chinese language learning resources available, both produced in the Chinese speaking world and, increasingly, in the west.  The problems seem twofold:

 

1) General availability.  Most bookshops in the UK don't stock much more than the odd phrasebook and Teach Yourself course.  There's a lot more than that around, but you can't find much of it on the high street.

 

2) The newness of the popularity of Chinese learning.  Chinese learning is in its infancy compared to the FIGS languages and so materials are not so well known.

 

That's what I think anyway.  May well be rot...

 

Having just seen the end of the last post though:

 

No, there's no quibble that it's regular and persistent study and practice that makes a successful language learner.  The right resources can smooth and speed the process, but can by NO means replace it.

[Mijin]

The thing is, there's plenty of good resources/advice out there, but there is also lots of bad resources/advice. Knowing how to find good resources and how to spot when something isn't getting you anywhere, is a skill in itself.

 

For example, if you do a search for "Learn chinese" apps on Android, about half of the results you get are apps that just have Chinese characters, and their English translation, and some game or whatever linking the two, but no pinyin or sound. A whole phrase in Chinese, with just the English translation...who is that useful for? 

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.

 

In my own case, I've lived in China for 8 months now, and I only just discovered Chinese-forums today...

And I did waste time with things like Rosetta stone (I don't want to diss it too much, maybe it would be useful to someone else, but I got virtually nothing out of it).

[Kelby]

Hi Kelby please don't copy the entire post from directly above, thankokbyeRoddy.

In that case, welcome to the club and welcome to the forum!

You peak my curiosity as you sound like someone who has slogged through bad resources and found some gems.

Any insight on how you go about looking for, vetting, and landing on the resources you use currently?

[Mijin]

I don't think I can offer much help yet. I seem to lack the skill of knowing how to find good resources.
However, I do put into practice whatever I study, so I do notice when something isn't helping. But, I'll try to summarise (sorry long post):

 

Didn't work:

First Mandarin teacher -- lessons were too much fun and we ended up dating, but my progress was slow. Also, of course you *must* review everything you learn, which for a while I didn't do.

Colour-coding different tones (e.g. writing "kai1" in green followed by "shi3" in red) -- didn't help memory at all

Rosetta stone
Some of the lesser-known language CDs e.g. BBC Mandarin
Memrise -- Looks great at first, but the chinese courses tend to focus on characters, not the pinyin, and I haven't got much out of it
Like I mentioned, any app that just has characters and their English meanings -- virtually useless.

 

Worked better:

Pimsler and Michel Thomas CDs. Pimsler is more advanced but also more of a chore to listen to. But both are great -- the vocab I learned here is absolutely cemented.

Flash cards. I put a few cards around my monitor at work, and a few around my monitor at home to review. Works great, but you do need to take the time to make mnemonics of any word that's not going in cleanly and you need to construct at least one sentence for each word.
Taking every opportunity to practice. Yeah, it should be obvious but it's easy to clam up here in china because you will have to go through people laughing at you and all that. Once you are comfortable asking people random questions, it makes a big difference. And *especially* if someone speaks English, try your Chinese out on them because you can always rectify any confusion.
Texting in Chinese on WeChat I always try to decipher the message first and only go into google translate if necessary. I know a lot of characters this way, and I never bothered to use mnemonics.

The TV series "Growing up in China" or whatever it's called.  

There's a HSK app I have on my phone (with audio). Not good for learning new words, just testing myself / reviewing.

 

Stuff I need to work out:

My home study could be more efficient. New grammatical patterns are going in slowly and are easily forgotten.

Given the small number of valid syllables, it's not always easy to work out good mnemonics. 
How to learn vocab via asking people. I mean, I know the sentences to ask, but it's quite a hit or miss affair what kind of response I get and I'm rarely absolutely sure they've told me the right thing. I'm going to try repeating back what they said, but in a sentence.

[Zbigniew]

Good resources for foreigners wanting to learn Chinese are certainly harder to come by than good resources for Chinese people wanting to learn English. 

 

As an example, look at dictionary provision. Both the Pocket/Concise Oxford Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionary and the larger and more recent Oxford Chinese Dictionary are noticeably biased towards Chinese learners of English rather than English-speaking learners of Chinese. The paucity of pinyin in both of these dictionaries often leaves even intermediate learners high and dry, whilst providing Chinese speakers with the help they want readily on tap.

 

The truth is that both of these dictionaries were worked up from existing Chinese dictionaries produced in China for Chinese learners of English, and neither was specifically targeted at the foreign (i.e. mainly western) market. Things like the Oxford Chinese Learner's dictionary are an exception, but it's too elementary to be of much use beyond the first year of study.

 

Provision of annotated texts, parallel texts and readers is worse still. I can go into a bookstore in China and easily lay my hands on a dozen parallel texts of novels and short stories for modest sums of money, even by Chinese standards. Parallel Chinese-English texts are very thin on the ground in the UK, and in some cases disproportionately expensive for what they are.

 

The disparity is down to nothing more than demand, really. Whilst publishers of learning materials for Chinese learners of English will inevitably have a large market for their publications, publishers of materials aimed at English-speaking learners of Chinese have a much smaller market to rely on, particularly when it comes to materials beyond the elementary stage. 

 

Not many Chinese people I know, and not many English either, seem to be aware of this disparity and the extra obstacle (compared with the obstacles faced by Chinese speakers learning English) it represents for anyone brave enough to take the plunge and learn Chinese in earnest.

[abcdefg]

The disparity is down to nothing more than demand, really. Whilst publishers of learning materials for Chinese learners of English will inevitably have a large market for their publications, publishers of materials aimed at English-speaking learners of Chinese have a much smaller market to rely on, particularly when it comes to materials beyond the elementary stage.

 

Very good point. I've seen that again and again.

[li3wei1]

Somewhere on Duolingo someone says the number of English speakers learning Chinese is 20% of the number of English speakers learning Spanish. This is presumably worldwide. And somewhere else, I heard that there are more Chinese speakers learning English (pretty much all of them under the age of 30), than there are native speakers of English. So yeah, a bit of an imbalanced market.