Chinese is easy

[Johnny20270]

I have watched this video. Its one of the lesser quality talks from TED. The speaker starts his talk stating glaring incorrect examples. He talk about the path of human progress and then cites 2 examples

 

1) "in 1950 every believed that running one mile in 4 minutes was impossible and then roger banister did it in 1956"

2) "100 years ago everybody believes heavy stuff didn't fly".

 

I have heard these cited examples used by speakers giving inspirational talks in my day job. The myth of the "impossible 4-min mile" being is based on a lot conjecture and invention of an impossible barrier by the media at the time. Aside from the fact that its was 1954 and not 1956 that Roger Banister broke the 4minute mile and that several (not a lot) medical professionals said it was impossible, the roger banister story often fails to point out that some uncomfortable facts. Many athletes were aiming for the 4 minute mile and consistently closing in on the target. There was no big jump as it were. The times were becoming quicker linearly over years and it was timely for the record to be broken in 1954. Further, many broke it straight after Roger. 

 

As regards the Airplane example. Well, being a fan of the history of flight, I have heavy heard that claim. Sound engineering principles were always used since the time of the  wright brothers up to present. Minimize weight and understand aerodynamics / power. His citation of 100years ago puts us in the time of WW1 and the aircraft was becoming known as a powerful weapon of war. The RAF were designing aircraft larger and larger,  and the Germans had air superiority due to the belief of the aircraft. 

 

The problem this speaker has (like other inspirational speakers) is they set scene for their talks and manipulate cited examples and then extrapolated to the bias of the talk, to give credibility to his message. I firmly do not believe in his claim "that that anyone can learn a language in 6 months and 'talent' is irrelevant." 

 

So should I infer that anyone can be an athlete and your physiological state is irrelevant, its just your faith and hard work?

 

He also states, "if your face hurts, then your doing it right", eh?

[Shelley]

Chinese is easy, if you are passionate about learning Chinese as I am, then it is easy in the sense of it being something I find it easy to apply myself and work hard at.

 

It is easy from the grammar point of view coming from English there are few major differences, and unlike some other languages like french for example there is no masculine or feminine to learn and as for verbs - what verbs?

 

It is easy from the point of view that learning Chinese does not leave you out of breath or having to get to the top of the hill ie- no great physical effort is required, although i would say a healthy body is good for a healthy mind.

 

I would agree learning Chinese is easy but not through any gimmicks, shortcuts or tricks, just simply diligence, patience and hard work.

[Lu]

"that anyone can learn a language in 6 months and 'talent' is irrelevant."

My American cousin-n times removed once said that he thought that he could learn Spanish in three months (I think it was, some fairly short amount of time), even though he had never learned a language before, and asked me whether I thought that was reasonable. I said sure, you can learn it in three months, once you've taken six months to find the right method, the right material, the right teacher and such.

Talent helps in learning a language, but I do believe that almost everyone is in principle capable of learning any language to a conversational level. The bottleneck is not talent, but knowing how to go about it. For most people, especially people who've never learned a foreign language before, it takes some time and some tries to figure out what works for them. And since everyone has different learning methods, anyone who claims to have found the One True Method is misleading their listeners, usually because they have something to sell.

[Silent]

 

I firmly do not believe in his claim "that that anyone can learn a language in 6 months and 'talent' is irrelevant."

I do believe talent is only a minor issue. Without doubt talent plays a role, but much of the research shows that effort and practice are a far better predictor of results then talent. Top players in sports, but also in other fields are people that enjoy it and put in a lot of time and effort. I think the major determining factors are putting in your time and effort and doing so efficiently. For 'normal' people without disabilities all the rest is of minor relevance.

 

Of course there are all kinds of feedback mechanisms that may reinforce progress or just do the opposite. Motivation makes it easier to put in the effort, progress then motivates more, progress makes it easier to use the language for practical use and fun activities which in turn results in more practice etc. A little talent may help to create a positive feedback loop.

[geraldc]

Learning from a blank slate is easy. Unfortunately as we're adult learners, we have to turn our brains off, and just accept stuff, that's the hard bit. When a toddler learns to speak he never asks why, he just imitates until he gets it. We're all too smart to learn Chinese painlessly.

[imron]

Without doubt talent plays a role, but much of the research shows that effort and practice are a far better predictor of results then talent

For the mathematically inclined, this can be explained wonderfully by the fact that a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.

[Shelley]

I have found that those with talent tend to rest on their laurels so to speak, those with out talent but who work diligently and consistently will eventually catch up and even overtake those with talent.

 

This was a lesson I learnt at an early age, I was, for some reason unknown to me, really good at chess at about the age of 10, regularly winning games played with adults and older kids in the chess club. I became a bit of a chess star at school. Now in relation to rest of the world I may have been rubbish but in my world I was very good.

 

So I thought I can do this, this is easy, and put no effort into increasing my skills, as the rest of the chess club worked hard at getting better i didn't put any effort into improving. Then I found as time progressed I wasn't winning any more, the kids I used to beat had put in the hours and were now better than me.

 

I got discouraged and let chess slide as I didn't understand at that age what had happened. Looking back with hindsight I can see where it all went wrong.

 

A good lesson learnt, even if you are good, there is more to learn.

[Johnny20270]

Yeah I am not sure about this I do believe talent plays a significant part. Now what the measure of 'significant' is, is dependent on the subject matter. I have always been drawn to technical subjects and found them interesting, easier to make progress. For example I did a PhD in Maths and while it was slow and tedious it suits my way of thinking. When it comes to language learning it frustrates me that things don't fit into neat rules and boxes. Hence why I am drawn to  a grammar book rather than random Chinesepod lessons. 

 

Now I also really like art especially, surrealism, cubism, photography etc.However, say you give me a paper and pencil and say drawn a 'conversation'. I would be lost yet some people have ingrained ability, despite having no experience at all, to produce with much better drawings. Last year I was showing my friend around Ireland. I have a fancy DLR, external flash, professional lens, separate filters She had had an iPhone 4s. I could tell you in detail what settings to use on the camera to suit the external conditions but when it came to actually taking a photo mine were unemotional and dull, lifeless. Her's were far superior, capture moments, expressions, invoke emotions in the observer etc. I really want to be have the same ability and although reading tips online I will always struggle to have the imagination. I guess you can call this 'talent'. 

 

One other aspect I believe is very important and would be interested in hearing your opinions on, is memory recall. I am bad at this. I think I have early dementia setting in   With flash cards, my recall stats are way down compared to others. I could never make ten new cards a day like some have, not a chance. I did some online memory tests and my results are below average. That's why I prefer technical type subjects as it requires problem-solving and memory plays an insignificant role.

 

If I think about my learning path to now, I have done a lot of academic and professional qualifications. However, from my personal experience, language learning is the 'hardest' thing I have done (well....  doing) Annoyingly 

[imron]

I guess you can call this 'talent'.

Talent is the y-intercept in my link above.  Effort is the gradient.  Some people start higher up on the y-intercept.  If you put in enough effort you can reach those points too.  I'm a firm believer that most every skill is something that can be learnt through correct and consistent practice, and have seen the fruits of this myself in my own learnings (not just Chinese but in other things also).

[Lu]

For the mathematically inclined, this can be explained wonderfully by the fact that a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.

But talent here isn't the y-intercept, it's the steepness of the slope. Some people learn languages (or math, chess, tennis, guitar...) more easily than others. Still, almost everyone can learn almost everything to a certain level, even if most people are never going to be great at most things.

[Shelley]

Ah yes, memory recall, one of the biggest things i have had to do learning Chinese. I am not sure why. My business is very technical, I work with Public address equipment. There is to some extent maths, engineering and practical mechanical skills needed for this.

 

Remembering technical things somehow seems easier than remembering characters. Maybe because there is a logical method for this type of thing.

 

But there are mnemonics for things in electronics that help as there are in many other fields so it must be just part of learning.

 

I was given a rudeish mnemonic to remember the resistor colour code and I think because it was slightly rude it really stuck in my head.

 

I like the concept of remembering characters with associated "stories" many different attempts have been made to come up with systems to help with this.

 

I feel its better to come up with your own stories as I think it sticks better. Learning someone else's stories is only one more thing to remember.

 

So the way I go about it is I learnt the radicals (especially the more common ones) not only the simplified version as I am learning simplified but also look at the full form as this quite often is a much better depiction of the idea.

 

For example che 车 in full form looks much more like a chariot. Also knowing what a Chinese chariot looks like helps, so this brings me on to the second part of my method, look at Chinese examples of what the radical depicts.

 

It usually becomes much clearer what is trying to be shown. For example the Chinese for boat zhou 舟 is hard to imagine as a boat till I saw a small Chinese boat in documentary, and it has been etched on my memory, as this used in many characters to do with boats it has proved a good one to remember

 

I had trouble for some reason getting yu 语 for languages to stick, so I looked at the full form of the radical, speech so we start with mouth at the bottom emitting waves of speech. now we know and remember this radical the simplified version is easy to remember now. the top half of the right hand side is wu 五 - five and the bottom is kou 口 mouth so now we have speech, 5, mouths.

 

So into my head pops 5 mouths speaking = language, now I can't separate the mnemonic from the character but I also don't forget it.

 

This may have been thought of by someone else but the important thing is I thought of it so I don't need to learn any thing new cos It has been my idea.

 

I think after a while the mnemonic will fade and the meaning will stick and so i will look at 语 and think language, I also can write it from memory with this method.

 

So try inventing your own mnemonics and see if it makes any difference. I think sticking to what the component parts mean is good because you don't want the stories to become too far fetched.

 

I had my first Chinese teacher in fits of laughter as I tried to remember the character for garage as a roof to park your trousers under. because it was the classifier for trousers under a roof, so be careful

[Johnny20270]

hi Shelley, yes I do something similar but there are so many characters   

 

I am never sure to memorize individual characters or just words. I started memorizing characters recently and I realize that although I can recognize the Chinese word, it’s the individual characters I still miss. So take for example the word List from HSK3. I probably can recall 80%-85% without fail, but at a guess, it’s only about 40%-50% of the characters I will recognize   

 

I think the problem is that as I have to spend so much time of my day on ANKI to complete my targets, I have little time to do anything else like reading listening. Its a bit of a chicken and egg situation. 

[Shelley]

That's one reason I don't like Anki. i feel my time can be better spent doing other things. i use the flashcards in pleco and at the moment i am enjoying a free summer of skritter which i have found to be really big help, but you also get that "help in I am drowning in SRS stuff to learn" from skritter.

 

When it runs out I shall use the flashcards in pleco which also has a character writing test so I won't be losing this aspect and because you can manually add cards to pleco you can go at your own pace, which I like for thoroughness.

 

While I can't knock its quality ,content and execution i won't take a subscription out for skritter, partly cos of the cost (a bit too much for me cos its only a hobby) also because of the "gym subscription " effect of I will go tomorrow and then before you know it the year is up.

 

Maybe it would be worth trying a different approach. What other things do you use, any textbooks, etc. maybe its time to concentrate on those for a while.

 

I have several things on the go at once, variety helps with motivation for me, if you don't feel like one thing maybe something else will grab your attention.

 

Watch Chinese TV if you can or stuff on YouTube, try reading a book at your level and so on. lots of different inputs helps to give you more than one attempt at remembering it.

 

I remember individual characters and words. I use new Practical Chinese reader and it introduces characters and then also words they are in. Knowing most words are usually made up of more than one character is half the battle, so I learn a character then find out what other characters it goes with to make up different words. I don't necessarily memorise them all but just being aware of them I find is a big help.

 

Maybe its time to rethink your learning schedule, try some new things and it might prove successful

[imron]

But talent here isn't the y-intercept, it's the steepness of the slope

I suppose it depends how you interpret the graph.  Personally I see that graph as:

 

Y-axis - ability in something

X-axis time.

 

If the gradient of the slope was only talent, then that would be saying that ability improves over time due to talent, which to me is not true.  Even with talent, it requires effort and practice to improve ability, and to me that is what the slope represents.

[Silent]

 

Talent is the y-intercept in my link above.

 

 

If the gradient of the slope was only talent, then that would be saying that ability improves over time due to talent,

 

I would say the y-intercept is preexisting knowledge. To me talent is the ability to learn something, making invested time more effective. So if x is the invested time rather then just time the inclination is talent. This however is tricky as what many people call talent truely is preexisting knowledge. E.g. If you have a lot of experience with other asian languages you will have a lot of usefull knowledge to learn Chinese. This is not really talent though many people will claim you have talent if they see your progress. In more subtile ways many previously acquired skills and knowledge has the same effect. As those are hard to identify they tend to be called talent.....but really they may be root learn skills, pattern recognition skills..... And then there's something called intelligence, I guess that does count as talent as it is not based on acquired knowledge and skills but real learning ability.

[imron]

To me talent is the ability to learn something

I'm not sure I agree with that, although I think the ability to learn things is a skill - that some people are talented at, but that anyone can learn.  Talent is more like a natural ability or aptitude in some skill/field.

 

Assuming x of 0 as when you are born, some people are going to have a natural ability in certain skills that is above other people (i.e. they start higher on the y-intercept).  People without that headstart can still reach and maybe even surpass the level of a 'talented' person so long as they are putting in the right effort (assuming the talented person is not also developing their skills).

 

I don't think we are in disagreement here, especially considering your previous comment:

 

 

I do believe talent is only a minor issue. Without doubt talent plays a role, but much of the research shows that effort and practice are a far better predictor of results then talent.

 

--

 

So if x is the invested time rather then just time the inclination is talent

This I agree with somewhat (but it could also be down to learning method and a variety of other factors), however that's a separate graph from the one I defined above, in which x is just regular time.

 

 

 

This however is tricky as what many people call talent truely is preexisting knowledge

I have been called 'talented' at various things in various stages of my life.  Often for things I have put thousands of hours of work in to developing.  Maybe natural ability played some part, but for me the determining factor has always been effort put in by myself.

[Guest realmayo]

To echo a comment from Shelley earlier, some kinds of effort are a lot easier than others. Putting effort into a task you enjoy is obviously easier than when you don't enjoy what you're doing. & more importantly: if you're making quick progress -- because you have some natural ability -- it'll be even easier.

[Lu]

My math terminology is not that great, I may have been misunderstood. What I meant was that a talented person will improve their skill faster than a less-talented person if they put in the same amount of effort. So the slope is steeper for a talented person, even if a less-talented person will still surpass someone who doesn't make an effort.

I agree that hard work gets one further than talent/aptitude/pre-existing knowledge alone, but people are not all the same and some are simply better at learning certain things than others. Not everyone can get good at everything, no matter how much time they put into it. However, I do agree that with enough well-aimed effort, most people can get to a decent level in most things.

[lechuan]

For comparing learning to a linear line, y = mx+b, and assuming that the Y-axis represents skill in a language, and the X-axis represents time, I would argue that:

 

b (y-intercept) is pre-existing knowledge (No matter how talented a person is, if they don't know a language yet, they are starting at the same point). Pre-existing knowledge could include knowing how to learn a language from already having learned a separate language.

 

m is the slope, ( talent * work ) where the person's natural ability/memory/talent/etc is a multiplier of the work they put in.

 

In this case, the "average" person's talent would be 1. A "more talented than average" person would have a multiplier higher than 1, a "less talented than average" would have a multiplier of less than 1.

 

Of course, language learning is most likely not going to be a linear experience, so the slope will change as 1) the effort (work) changes, and/or 2) talent has more/less relevance on the language area being studied (ie. talented at mimicking/conversation, but not so much at learning characters)

[Silent]

 

I'm not sure I agree with that, although I think the ability to learn things is a skill

Sorry, I expressed myself very poorly. I meant talent is the easy/difficulty to learn something. If you start from the baby you mention I guess that's a fair start, though a plea could be held you should start at conception. Reality is that a lot of perceived talent boils down to pre-acquired knowledge and skills. E.g. finding and selecting the best tools and methods to learn is a skill of it's own. It has little to do with language learning as such, but may hugely impact the result.