Another blogger setting out to learn Chinese in 3 months

[bluetortilla]

 

 

There is a need for skeptics.  Note however, it is possible to both be a skeptic and provide constructive dialog as well.  You question whether he's planning on selling it as an ebook and that you'd be upset if you paid money for it.

Sorry, I'll try to be more constructive.

Yes, of course i read it and I did comment a bit on why it does not, in my opinion, constitute a book. I wrote earlier that I liked his ideas, but the main problem is the brevity of the work (in my mind it's an introductory chapter, not a book). What Scott is writing about is an approach to learning that draws on experience and memory when solving scholastic problems rather than by using rote memory. I think it would be a great scholastic paper but it lacks both concise definition of method or pedagogical approach, and concomitant task-based examples showing results are absent as well. The arguments against over reliance on rote learning (and the place for rote learning if any) needs to be expanded, and the 'holistic method' thoroughly explained both conceptually and even physiologically if the author wants to get into that (it's touched on, and sounds intriguing). Finally, unfortunately (for me anyway- others may not care) there aren't any references at all to other scholarly research on the topic, though much has already been done in this area (there is nothing beyond a subjective conclusion).

 

This doesn't mean that I think his paper is a bad idea for a book- not at all! It is timely and refreshing as other new learning methods (repetitive methods such as Rosseta Stone, and hey!, StickyStudy) aren't quite what we hoped them to be either. I just don't think it's a book because of the above reasons and should not be sold as one (at least, I myself would not feel right about selling it as one). Mostly I feel he's just getting started and the work needs developing and editing. I'm not too savvy with the the definition of ebook these days with the advent of Kindle et al. I've read that a short story on Kindle is typically 10-20 pages and I found a freelance writer saying that an ebook should be 'as long as it needs to be.' That's sounds like a pretty good definition, as she cites examples from 150-300 pages long. Scott has a long way to go to meet that.

 

I do see a lot of scholarly papers online and I think, unless Scott wants to greatly expand his work, that's where his paper belongs too. Publishing as a paper would probably generate the most enthusiasm from scholars in the field and he would find his work more widely read as a paper I would think (but please, don't take my advice, find out for yourself!). I like the ideas and wish Scott the best of luck in developing them.

[Shelley]

@Elizabeth_rb

 

I have just celebrated my 56th birthday and I love tech, smartphones , tablets, laptops, desktops I have got them all and enjoy all the things they bring. So its nothing to do with age.

 

I use apps on my phone but I have pretty much ditched most of them and now only use Pleco on my phone.

 

I use HanPing on my tablet because its too old school for Pleco, and loads of eBooks on it.

 

I use WenLIn on my desk top, and I used to have Twinbride and Asian suite on my laptop but since i have had my tablet the laptop sits in it bag lonely and unused

 

But having said all this as you can see from my pictures on the "share your shelves" topic I have loads of books too.

 

I am a "bit" of a Chinese stuff hoarder. Its good thing that I have the room.

 

Sorry if this has gone a bit off topic.

[bluetortilla]

 

 

That's great, because you don't have to pay for it if you don't think it's worth anything.

Yes, obviously I would not. So how do I know if it's worth anything without buying it? It was only because I had already read the piece that I made that statement. But no, I would not buy a book that said I could learn Russian in ten weeks (just as an example). Gut feeling and research usually means almost all my book purchases have worked well for me. Often you can indeed judge a book by its cover (e.g. who can't help but to love the cover title 外国人是用汉语语法!)

 

 

 

I'm sure it's a nice gig if you can get it.  I don't necessarily think that that people being paid to learn (or to do what they want) by itself is worthy of the sort of scorn or criticism you're applying to it.

I was merely stating a fact. Aside from scholarships, which pay 'for' your learning rather paying you to learn, and perhaps cooperate grants making money off of study is something I've never heard of. I fully support renumeration for things like internships or training, and appropriation of funds and grants to pay for equipment and other incidentals for research, but those are value added resources that contribute something bottom line. I'm an old school person who fancies brick and mortar colleges. I don't what kind of gig you are referring to, or whether it would awesome or not. 

As for being paid to do what you want, I would think it very sad if you are not doing that (yes I'm an idealist)! I know I'm definitely doing exactly what I want to be doing with no fear of financial insecurity.

I don't scorn anyone- I just feel disappointed and angry at how society encourages to feel that we need to make a buck off of everything. What about free stuff? What's wrong with that? And I feel like I'm in a real minority. Who cares about the money, if you add value to this world you will be cared for. So if researching phonemes and meter of ancient Tang poetry is your thing, I'm sure you have a place. 

 

 

There is a need for skeptics.  You question whether he's planning on selling it as an ebook and that you'd be upset if you paid money for it.  Presumably that means you've read it and you think there are various problems with it.  A much more constructive approach would be to point out what you consider the actual flaws to be, rather than just provide empty criticisms.  That would at least provide meat for further discussion.

...but I don't understand all the invective.  It would be different if he had come here and made posts pretending he'd 'found' some great site on the internet for learning and then linking to it.  That sort of behaviour is worthy of scorn. 

 

Note: If is a skeptic's job to rule out possibilities in order to get to the truth, not be a negative grouch. Unfortunately I seem to come off as the latter at times.

If you have read all my posts you will see I have criticisms against charlatanism, not Scott. I never attacked him personally nor was I invective toward him. After reading his paper (that's what I'm calling it), I have tried to be friendly and supportive. I know his is a sincere, supersmart, and likable young man, but it was the other practices you point out that had many of our hairs on end, and rightly so. But they had nothing to do with the blogger personally- at least not for me.

I have tried as best I can to describe what I see as the shortcomings in his misnomered 'ebook' and I hope I have done so fairly. If not, someone else can tell me (and also pardon my sophomoric writing in my critque- it's been a while. I've tried to show what he'll need to fix to sell his paper as an ebook. I think my points are fair, and I don't think he'll take it personally. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is scorn anyone!

As for the forum, I hope such topics such as language acquisition in theory and practice can become even more commonplace. I think this thread has given us a primer in that, with some excellent suggestions for approaches to study. All in all, I'd say he has inspired a lot of insight. I know I would love to hear more about other people's study techniques. 

[Guest realmayo]

I know I would love to hear more about other people's study techniques.

 

I'm sure once we discuss a reasonable price, bluetortilla.... :mrgreen:

[Guest realmayo]

... which is actually what makes me uneasy with the concept of these 'pay-to'play' e-books. No way would my advice be worth paying for, nor would my progress merit confidence that it might be. I'd feel embarrassed to charge for it. And as soon as you do, I think you raise the bar: you're now being judged as someone who reckons he 'has the secret' and it's worth people paying money for. Which is why people are going to look more critically at what you're offering and if it doesn't seem particularly new and exciting will probably say so.

[Elizabeth_rb]

I have just celebrated my 56th birthday and I love tech, smartphones , tablets, laptops, desktops I have got them all and enjoy all the things they bring. So its nothing to do with age.

 

So it would appear!! I must just be the one with the dinosaur gene! 

 

I find screens a bit hard to read intensively and I think that may be where my lack of interest in the app world comes from.  I don't like working with GUIs so much - I find I want to turn away so much faster than with a printed page.

 

Anyway, there's something for us all and I think it's persistence and regular work that will help us get to fluency etc, not the tools we use.

 

PS I'm planning on getting a Kindle to replace my classic novel collection if and when we move.  Does that modernise this old fossil a bit??LOL!

[Guest realmayo]

Kindles are utterly brilliant, but won't do anything for your shelfies.

[Elizabeth_rb]

True for you. However, I don't plan on Kindle-ising my Chinese books, just novels and stuff that's easy and practical to read on e-reader. I can sacrifice a a few good shelfies for the relief of only needing to cart 20 boxes of books next house move, instead of 40!!

[Lu]

You're right that blogs don't make money without ads, products, or (the missing part) selling other peoples things through affiliate relations, i.e., writing a review for something and linking to it with a special link that gives the blogger a kickback if the reader buys after coming from the blogger's site.

So I pay you for writing a good review about me. I see.

 

If I'm not mistaken, I've seen Roddy mention somewhere that if someone bought a book through a forum link to amazon, he could make 'literally cents', so it appears this very site has an affiliation (however small) with Amazon. Not to mention the fact that this site, too, has ads. If you don't like what a certain website offers, by all means, don't visit that site. If you do like it, don't be surprised if someone who is behind the site hopes to get some of your money one way or the other. This goes for virtually all blogs and websites and forums out there. Some people hope to pay their rent with it, some just hope the site pays for its upkeep and hosting, some use it to promote their brick-and-mortar business, and sometimes it's not the person making the site but the person offering free hosting who hopes to make money of ads, but virtually always someone is hoping to make money of the views. If someone has principled objections to that system, they'll probably need to quit the internet altogether.

 

I do agree that it's a pity that it seems there is a price on everything, and that things like Tang poetry and research into ancient linguistics have inherent value not related to any monetary value.

 

I also learned everything on paper first (only learned to type in Chinese in my third year), and that worked just fine. Now I use Anki and Nciku and many other electronic aids and I'm very happy to have them. If one is not comfortable with them, or finds the learning curve to use them too steep to be useful, or just likes doing things the old-fashioned way, by all means go without, but if you choose that, you are potentially missing out on things you'd find useful.

 

As to blogs: some people write about what they had for dinner and that's boring, or they write about their dog or their baby and it's only interesting if you happen to be interested in that particular dog or baby. Some people write about their field in a way that anyone can understand and I can learn something from them. Some people write about my field (China and stuff that goes on in and around it) and I keep up with things, or I come across new insights, and that's interesting. That's why people read blogs. If you don't like blogs, don't read them, but personally I think that just means you haven't come across a good blog that writes about something you happen to be interested in (haven't met the right blog yet, so to speak :-) ). And if someone with a certain expertise plugs their book on their blog, or runs ads, well good for them: they're making money by giving me something interesting.

[Gharial]

I would like to give those Hugo 'in three months' books a serious trial one day with a relatively new language (something like Norwegian) and see how much I could really accomplish.  I'd never be a high-profile blog figure though, so you'd probably never hear.

 

 

Elizabeth, just imagine if a blogger intending to study a language simply said "I'm going to complete e.g. Chinese in 3 Months within the title period, or possibly within 3 weeks or even 3 days depending on the difficulty of the material (in which case I'll soon be supplementing it with X, Y and Z)". People could then all respond "Oh right, that's a good book. So you'll be learning the standard pronunciation, several hundred words and phrases, and the basic syntax of Mandarin. Obviously the quicker you try to complete it, the more risk there is of you not getting everything down pat, but don't go too slowly or overlearn the same things either!".

 

Not that exciting a conversation, I know, but it might leave time for other things. I'm looking forward to the day when these ventures result in an innovative and quality actual resource. I mean, theory is fine and progress can be more or less rapid depending on the methodology used, but a lot of language learning IMHO comes down to empirical facts and data. That is, I'm more interested in the assembling of the data than in quite how it (or "competing" data) is exactly marshalled. Then again, I'm not saying that everything one could possibly learn or gain from can be found within the pages of just a book or two...but a good course is always a good and decidedly unmysterious, sensible starting point. (It's at this point that Scott or somebody on his behalf points out where he may've posted his proposed study materials, if I missed that bit LOL I haven't read the whole thread that closely yet, in other words).

[bluetortilla]

 

 

This goes for virtually all blogs and websites and forums out there. Some people hope to pay their rent with it, some just hope the site pays for its upkeep and hosting, some use it to promote their brick-and-mortar business, and sometimes it's not the person making the site but the person offering free hosting who hopes to make money of ads, but virtually always someone is hoping to make money of the views. If someone has principled objections to that system, they'll probably need to quit the internet altogether.

 

Well, I don't think it's the Internet itself- we are free to choose to support the things we like. I have no problems with pennies for clicks unless it goes to something exploitive or criminal, and running a web page certainly deserves renumeration. The Internet is a lot like real life, I suppose. 

 

I think the Internet has staged a revolution in free information the likes of which humanity has never seen before. I really hope it stays that way. We'll see. They burned down the Library of Alexandria too you know.

 

Speaking of free, I know that I can set up my own server. But I think I'll still need the service of a provider to access the Internet. Is that right?

[Elizabeth_rb]

Gharial, Excuse my lack of brain (I'm going through an insomniac phase just now....), but could you sum that up in one sentence?  I'm not really sure what the main message was?? Sorry!

 

I'm interested in trialling something like 'Norwegian in Three Months' as a multi-pronged experiment, but I don't expect to do it any time soon and, yes, I'm sure I'd want to run 'TY Norwegian' at the same time for conversational matters.  I would like to learn a totally new language at some point.

[Shelley]

@bluetortilla

 

Yes you still need a provider and its better to have fixed IP address.

 

We have a small sever here and that's how it works here in the UK.

[gato]

No one has mentioned that his main book (out of three or four books available on the website) is being sold for US$40, with a US$14 per month subscription to a newsletter as an added option. That may affect one's view of value of the books and the promotional strategy.

[Lanchong]

To be fair, that blog post and his comments here give the impression he is learning Chinese over three months - learning FOR three months. That's more reasonable than somebody saying they're going to learn Chinese IN three months.

On the other hand, it would be nice to see something other than yet another FOB getting to a lower-intermediate level and then moving on. It would be much more interesting to see a Chinese version of the Dan Plan - someone studying Chinese (and Chinese culture, and everything else in the Sinosphere) intensively for six, eight, ten years, or more. That kind of blog would offer something fresh and interesting for everyone.

[Elizabeth_rb]

yet another FOB

 

What is an FOB, please?  Something something blogger??

[Lanchong]

What is an FOB, please? Something something blogger??

FOB means "Fresh Off the Boat". In other words, someone who has just arrived in a country.

[bluetortilla]

 

The Chinese language related blogs I follow are:

 

Hacking Chinese

Learn Chinese Every Day 天天学中文

Sinosplice- I just follow the 'Language' label

Carl Gene Fordham

 

 

Thanks Elizabeth!

[bluetortilla]

 

 

No one has mentioned that his main book (out of three or four books available on the website) is being sold for US$40, with a US$14 per month subscription to a newsletter as an added option. That may affect one's view of value of the books and the promotional strategy.

 

Was his 'main book' the essay he's giving out for free?

 

Because this is not a book. Please refer to my 'reviews' above (esp. #81). Does anyone have a link that lead to all these books and promotions? I think it makes a huge difference.

 

Here's the link to what I have (from Imron):

 

  HolisticLearningEBook.pdf

[gato]

That's probably a free chapter from the book. The whole book has 200-some pages.

http://www.scotthyoung.com/lmslvidcourse/

When I first introduced holistic learning, it created a sensation. Hundreds of thousands of people have read the free articles and ebooks. Thousands more have purchased and downloaded the first edition of Learn More, Study Less, my detailed guide to learning faster.

His four books are listed on the right side of his website.

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/