Knowing Characters, but not understanding sentences

[Melanie1989]

I apologise if a similar thread has already been made. As you might be able to tell from the title, i have no idea how to really sum it up to search for it.

 

Anyway. Recently i have been reading lots of Chinese short stories and dialogues and a very annoying thing that i've noticed is that though i know a fair amount of characters (about 3000 and odd at this point. i know that's not a lot at all so i'm bound to be illiterate, but still), i still have lots of trouble understanding sentences. 

 

There seems to be lots of times where i know every last character in a sentence, but i don't actually understand it. For example, one made up off the top of my head, i know the characters 马 and 鸡, horse and chicken. But then i'll see them together in a sentence and i'll be like "what the heck is a horse chicken?" and i can't figure out what the sentence is supposed to mean.

 

That was such a bad example, sorry. 

 

It's weird that you can take two characters as above and understand them alone, then together they mean something completely different. Or is this just me being thick? Is this a common problem?

 

If anybody has any advice or opinions, please share them. Thank you.

[querido]

That's a pretty good collection of characters but haven't you studied multi-character *words* too? See this most recent post by Imron about words vs characters: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/45681-n1-word-reading-website/#comment-344333 . Sorry if I've misunderstood your question.

 

I guess you should continue reading the short stories and dialogues while flashcarding these words you don't know, maybe along with the sentences too.

 

(There's grammar too, but that doesn't seem to be what your post is about.)

[shuoshuo]

Okay, so you know a lot of characters which are great. Now it's time to start learning words. Words comprise of a combination of characters and if you can learn a few thousand words then you will be able to understand the sentences with no problems. I don't really know if I understood you though. Would an example be: 对，不，起...all good so far. But then 对不起...and now you're like WHAT?! Obviously, that's the simplest example but I'm trying to figure out if that's what you meant? Cheers.

[Melanie1989]

I have been, but i was advised a while ago to stick to learning words that would be especially relevant to me until i got to a decent degree of fluency. Grammar i rarely have a problem with, but mostly it's just hard to find decent teaching material. Most things i can find seem to be either for absolute beginners (the 您贵姓 stage) or for near native level so there is no English explaining it.

 

I dunno, sentences just seem like gibberish to me most of the time. I know the characters, but not when they're together...

[Melanie1989]

Shuoshuo, yes that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. Sorry if i was unclear, i'm very tired

[shuoshuo]

If you are looking for good Chinese books, check out the ones from BLCU. There is beginner level 1 and 2 for speaking, listening, grammar, comprehension, and then there are books at higher levels such as beginner 2 (pre-intermediate), intermediate and then advanced. I noticed that there are different intermediate levels.

 

They usually publish it complete sets, try to buy these sets that start from beginner all through advanced. That way, it will be coherent. Best of luck!

[querido]

Melanie1989, I added a link to my previous post.

[imron]

Don't worry, it's perfectly normal, and something every Chinese learner will experience at some stage.

 

The cause is that despite misconceptions to the contrary, Chinese is not made up of characters, it's made up of words, so raw character knowledge isn't actually so useful.  Like an example I mentioned in another thread just now, if you know the word 'up' and the word 'set', it doesn't mean you'll know the word 'upset', and in fact you're more than likely to be confused by it.  Sure it works for some words, but there are many where it doesn't (法国、马虎、好容易).

 

Even if you have amassed a large vocabulary of words, it's still not enough for reading, because in order to read you also need to be able to split and identify word boundaries in text.  The best way to do that is through reading something where you already understand a high percentage of the meaning, and slowly working up to more difficult texts as your vocabulary and reading skills improve.

 

There are no shortcuts for breaking through this stage, you just have to work at it.  The first step is to make whole words the focus of your study rather than characters.  In addition to requiring a decent-sized vocabulary, you also need to start getting exposure to native content in order to learn how to split word boundaries.  'Decent-sized' will vary depending on what you are reading, but pulling numbers from the top of my head, probably 5,000-6,000 words for simple content (comics, material aimed at a younger audience), and over 10,000 for getting in to newspapers and novels.  Note, these numbers are not absolute, just approximations - there have been other threads that discuss where these numbers come from, but it's late for me here, so I'm not going to look them up now (but will probably post them later if anyone is interested).  There are also graded readers that begin from a relatively low word count, and they are a good option if you are not yet ready to tackle native content.

 

If you are at that point, then deciding to increase your vocabulary before getting exposure to native content is probably not going to the best use of your time.  The reason being that at those levels, and with the appropriate material, you'll be understanding upwards of 95% of the text.  Learning another 1,000 words rather than spending time reading native content may only gain you an extra 1-2% comprehension, which is nothing really, and it also won't help you develop the skill you need more at this stage - identifying word boundaries in unbroken text.

 

If instead you focus on reading native content, you'll be reinforcing existing vocab, learning how to break down sentences, and still be getting enough exposure to new words that you can continue to expand your vocabulary (if a novel has 300 words a page, 95% comprehension still means 15 new words a page).

 

Lastly, I'm going to give yet another shameless plug for my Chinese Text Analyser software, which can help with all of this (further discussion here).  It lets you load Chinese text from a file, and will segment that text in to words and highlight any words that you don't know.  You can then mark words as known/unknown (and import lists of known vocabulary) and export these words for further study in flashcard programs.  Over time the program will build up knowledge of your vocabulary and let you quickly identify if a piece of text is suitable for you level.

[Melanie1989]

Thanks very much guys. I skipped right past Imron's post for some reason. I will take a look now and also have a search for BLCU.

[imron]

I skipped right past Imron's post for some reason

Either because it's a) a wall of text, or b) I only just posted it

[grawrt]

You should definitely start studying actual words. I honestly don't find learning characters in isolation much use at all.

 

Also I think you should try finding reading material with recordings. That way you can start to hear how they break down the sentences in spoken speech, as you listen read along so that you can train your eyes to read the sentence how it should, instead of mixing character couplets or pairs etc.
 

I recently finished "Learning Chinese Through Stories" By Lindo Ho (Peking University Press) 讲故事 学汉语, there are 2 books in the series but I'd recommend the first more. The stories test your understanding of the story because each story ends with a cute kind of twist. it comes with a CD, and the book has language points, etc. It's fairly simple, it was beneath my level but still a good read.

[Melanie1989]

Thank you, Imron! Shameless plug and all, very helpful. Saved the link to your text analyser, will take the free trial when i've looked at the rest.

 

Thanks again, everyone. Good to know it's not just me. 

[Melanie1989]

Seem to be posting at the exact same time as everybody else today. Haven't left the bloody page yet.

 

I will add that book to my list too then, grawrt, thank you. 

[Melanie1989]

Imron - that and having my glasses on top of my head instead of my face!

[imron]

Thank you, Imron! Shameless plug and all, very helpful. Saved the link to your text analyser, will take the free trial when i've looked at the rest.

There's even a few licences left from the Chinese-Forums giveaway if anyone's interested.

[ilovelamp]

 

Either because it's a) a wall of text, or b) I only just posted it

I don't get to post here very much because I spend most of my time reading your posts! (in a good way, not bad )

BTW, I am interested in your text-analyser application.. would there be a license giveaway available for me?? :D

[querido]

Hey ilovelamp, go to the link he posted in #15 and do what he says there! Good luck!

[imron]

Also I think you should try finding reading material with recordings

This is really good advice too.  A great show for doing this this is 锵锵三人行, which is a topical current affairs and general interest chat show covering the greater China region and contains full-transcripts.  Realmayo and others are also providing detailed breakdowns and discussion on various episodes, see further discussion here.

 

For those interested, here are the links to other discussions I mentioned above but was too lazy to include last night.

 

reading fluency

Extensive Reading and Vocabulary Range (video)

The Next Step in Chinese Reading... Reaching for fluency.

SRS: best 'environment' to remember?

[Silent]

 

about 3000 and odd at this point. i know that's not a lot at all so i'm bound to be illiterate

I think the Chinese government defines basic literacy as knowing 1500-2000 characters depending or you are a peasant or a citydweller. So 3000 is really a good amount. For a learner these figures are not that relevant as a native who is already fluent in speaking can do a lot more with those characters.

 

As already mentioned by others, it's not just characters you need. You need words, sometimes the meaning of a word can easily be deducted from the characters, but sometimes little logic seems involved. Some people even plead that you should also learn sentences. I think sentences would help a lot, but what it really boils down to is grammar. You need to know how to (de)construct a sentences. What part of the sentence works on what part. E.g. a negation may work on an entire sentence, but also on a single word, an action may work on different parts of the sentence etc.

 

Added to all above, it takes practice. Even if you know all theory you have to put it all together the right way and preferably smoothly. Only practice will help you with that. So apart from different learning methods read, read nd read more.

[rebor]

I wholeheartedly agree with imron, but I would argue that it is possible to attack novels and newspapers with considerably less than 10000 words under your belt, if you use pop-up dictionaries or Pleco Reader. I started reading newspaper articles with a vocabulary of around 5000. It didn't make for comfortable reading, but with a bit of patience it was perfectly doable, and for me far more rewarding than textbooks. I understood around 90%, but then I already had a decent grasp of basic grammar and sentence structures. At first the parsing was gruelling, but within six months it wasn't too bad, and by now(a couple of years later) I can read for a couple of hours without too much strain. With Pleco it couldn't be easier to create flashcards on the fly and then drill them, building your vocabulary as you read.