Worst Advice for Learning Mandarin?

[Shelley]

For me it always been for the love and joy of learning Chinese, never about the money.

[imron]

I'm a visual/hands on learner so that really helps me. Auditory is my worst learning style, which means I have a weak learning style combo for trying to learn a tones based language

It looks like you've picked up some bad advice right there.  Telling yourself (and believing) that you can't do something well is the best way to never get good at something.

 

What you may have is underdeveloped auditory skills - but like everything these are skills that can be learnt with practice (and I'm speaking from personal experience here).

 

In fact, learning a tone based language should actually be a great way to do this - as long as you adopt the right mentality and the belief that you can improve on that ability and structure your practice habits accordingly.  If you focus mostly on areas you feel strongest in (visual/hands on stuff) you'll continue to develop lop-sided skills (strong in one area weak in others), so try to put more effort in to your weakest areas to develop more well-rounded abilities.

[Bad Cao Cao]

My top 5:

 

5- Advice based on your "learning style". Think you are an auditory or visual learner? Scientists say it is unlikely -- http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/29/139973743/think-youre-an-auditory-or-visual-learner-scientists-say-its-unlikely

 

4- Half assed pronunciation advice : the "q" is kinda like a "tch" sound. the "x" is kinda halfway between an "s" and a "sh", blah blah. The "tones are bullshit" don't learn it.

 

3- You *must* learn characters from the start....so, um, 1.4 billion native speakers don't this, but I do?

 

2- You *must* use this textbook, this app, this new boondoggle, anki is indispensable, blah blah.

 

1- I "learnt" Chinese in 3 and a bit months, and you can too. Buy my new e-book now!1! 

[AdamD]

Mine: "You don't need to know how to read."

 

This is why:

 

1. Text is half the language. It just is.

 

2. Reading can get you out of scrapes. I'm sure you can just ask people things, and that's great, but when a bus rounds the corner and you've got three seconds to process whether it's the right one, you'll be glad you can read.

 

3. Native Mandarin speakers respect the fact that you bothered. I'm told regularly that my effort to learn characters indicates my respect for the language and culture.

 

4. It helps you deal with all the homophones. When you say a less common word, or the name of a person or place, and someone asks which character it is, you can show them.

 

5. It helps you learn everything else. When you study a character, the mnemonics you use usually involve the meaning and pronunciation. (Many people in this thread have mentioned tones. I agree completely, and believe a good character mnemonic helps you remember tones.)

 

6. It's bloody insanely fun. Chinese is a beautiful language. Learning only to speak Mandarin is like leaving the nuts out of a Snickers.

 

I'm being unusually boorish in this post because I think this is the thread for that. My usually quiet view is this: if you want to learn Chinese but can't be bothered learning to read even a few hundred characters, you're not learning Chinese. Yes it's hard, but nobody won a triathlon without learning how to swim. 20% of the world reads Chinese and so can you.

[li3wei1]

I agree that it's fun, useful, important, etc. to learn to read. However, you should acknowledge that for some people it makes sense to learn either just the speaking/listening, and conversely there are people who have learned to read without being able to converse. And Chinese is unusual in that both of these paths are significantly easier than learning the whole language. Just because they've taken on a lesser task, doesn't mean you shouldn't respect them for it and support them. It's like learning 'just enough to get by'. If that's all you want to do, fine. It's better than nothing.

 

I'm also not sure that it is important that you learn the characters from the beginning. As discussed elsewhere, there seems to be anecdotal evidence that adult learners make better progress by spending about a year just learning how to talk, and then starting the characters, and that's certainly how Chinese kids do it (with a longer head-start on the speaking). We're used to learning European languages all at once, written and spoken, because the alphabets are largely familiar to us. Even with other alphabets, i.e. Russian, Greek, Thai, the concept is familiar and it's not a huge step to working with the unfamiliar letters and sounds.

[Shelley]

Chinese kids and in fact kids of any nationality all learn to speak before they learn to read and write, then they go to school and learn.

 

I feel as adults we can take on learning both together, not necessarily starting together but maybe about 3 months familiarizing yourself with the sounds of Chinese and learning to speak the basics sounds and tones then add the characters and keep learning it all together.

 

I do think its bad advice to tell people "its too hard to learn chinese characters, so don't bother".

[AdamD]

you should acknowledge that for some people it makes sense to learn either just the speaking/listening, and conversely there are people who have learned to read without being able to converse. And Chinese is unusual in that both of these paths are significantly easier than learning the whole language. Just because they've taken on a lesser task, doesn't mean you shouldn't respect them for it and support them.

 

I support anyone who gives half the language a go, but they can't then say they know Chinese. I've met many people who claim to know Chinese but can't read anything.

 

I'm also not sure that it is important that you learn the characters from the beginning.

 

Of course, and plenty advocate speech first and reading later, but even basic characters need to come eventually. If you've got people telling you 'it's fine, really, don't bother with the reading, it doesn't matter' (and the somewhat more irritating 'pinyin will take over characters soon anyway'), you're less likely to even try and to feel comfortable with not trying.

 

My personal view is that exposure to characters, however circumstantial, should happen alongside speech, even if there's no rigour in knowing the characters at that stage. Textbooks with all pinyin and no characters are frankly horrifying to me.

[hedwards]

@imron, it depends what you mean by "well." You can definitely learn the Chinese that a person typically needs for daily living in less than a year of effort. However, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to do any reading at that point. And your grammar is probably not going to be perfect, but there's no reason why a person can't reach the point of real, deep conversations with people within a year. I've known people that managed that.

But, if you're just wanting to produce fluid speech in typical situations of daily living, a year is way more than what you need.

 

I think the worst advice I see is to ignore the characters completely. Probably the second worst would be to insist upon being able to read the characters immediately. I found that both approaches have some pretty serious drawbacks that greatly decrease the uptake of the language as a whole. An amazing amount of progress can be made in the written system by preparing yourself for it before you actually begin.Getting used to looking at the characters, even before you worry about their meaning.

[Elizabeth_rb]

The worst advice I've ever heard given was:

 

You don't need to study Chinese at all, just learn it by talking to people.

 

Now, communication with native speakers has a vital role to play in language learning, but it isn't the whole story.  I know no-one who has succeeded by using this method, although I know one or two who *think* they have and are now having a bad influence on others....  

[renzhe]

Chinese kids and in fact kids of any nationality all learn to speak before they learn to read and write, then they go to school and learn.

It is possible to learn to speak like a 4-year old without ever learning to read characters. It will take more time than most people are willing to invest, but it's possible.

University level is a different story, however. Waiting for the friendly neighbour to teach you the periodic table while you're playing weiqi or buying a watermelon... Or matrix inversion and linear analysis, music theory vocabulary, philosophy and political vocabulary....

THAT is the worst advice for learning Mandarin. Instead of reading this stuff, you wait for a train conductor to teach it to you. And then you can't take notes.

[Eszter]

My worst advice was (17 years ago when I started to learn):

 

Oh, just go to the Chinese market and listen to them, you'll pick it up!

 

If I listened to that advice, probably I would be still sitting at the market, trying to miraculously "picking it up".....

Even if you're in a Chinese-speaking environment, you won't just "pick it up", I've seen too many expats living in Taiwan for long years without "picking up" anything. It takes work and you definitely need guidance at least for the beginning of the journey. 

[hedwards]

Eszter, that's a common misconception about language learning. You're right in the sense that you're not going to learn the entire language without actual effort and study of some sort. But, you'll definitely be learning constantly in that environment, it's just that it's mostly low level stuff that you have to really pay attention to. I've heard of foreigners in Hong Kong trying to learn Mandarin only to have a thick Cantonese accent because of all the exposure to the language, despite never having learned any of it.

 

I know during my travels I was "learning" a ton even when I wasn't trying to. My accent still reflects the fact that I wasn't staying in one particular location for more than a few months and I'm sure native speakers pick up on my odd accent. Odd even for a foreigner.

 

Also, it takes a huge amount of time if you haven't primed the pump before you start out. But, I know there's folks that learned Chinese before there were formal language training programs, so it's definitely possible.

 

People can and should pick it up from locals, but people generally assume that you can just do it without any particular plan or study and that's where the myth that you need lessons comes from. It's not that a person needs lessons per se, it's that most people aren't gutsy enough to be constantly pushing for more and better ways of communicating. So, you wind up with a ton of holes, if you even pick up enough of the language to conduct your typical business in.

[Chris Two Times]

1- I "learnt" Chinese in 3 and a bit months, and you can too. Buy my new e-book now!

 

Benny Lewis? Tim Ferriss? Is that you? 

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[c_redman]

You don't need to study anything, just watch TV and movies and you'll pick it up.