opinions on reading a text before listening to it

[ablindwatchmaker]

Hey everyone, I just want to get some opinions on the best way to utiize my study time with respect to reading and listening. I'm curently going through the Defrancis intermdiate reader and also listening after I read. I tried to just study the vocab and then listen to the text without first reading it, but I found that I was having to listen too many times in order to completely understand. Right now I am reading a dialouge and then lsitening to it. I feel that my listening is improving, but I wanted some other opinions on this approach. Obviously, listening first, then reading, and then listening a second time would be even better, but I dont have unlimited time. Thoughts?

[imron]

but I dont have unlimited time. Thoughts?

Personally, I like the following method: listen through first without reading to see what you can understand, maybe even listen a few times.  Depending on your level there may or may not be large gaps in understanding, but these gaps will serve as markers in your brain.

 

Then go and read the text.  Instantly, some of those markers will be filled in and your mind will go 'oh, that's what they were saying', providing a nice firm connection in your brain.

 

Then go back and listen again, maybe even several times, and preferably until you can listen and understand the entire thing.

Does it take more time?  Yes, and you might find you need to spend several times the amount of time you otherwise would have spent, but you are also learning more effectively and creating stronger connections in your brain, which will serve you well later.

 

Sometimes by trying to save time, or cover more material in a shorter amount of time you end up with worse skills which you then have to spend more time later to make up for.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Alas, I know you speak the truth.

I have this arbitrary goal of finishing the intermdiate series within the next two months and am trying to knock out 3 lessons per week, which is pretty brutal since I'm also learning to write 30 new HSK words per day, in addition to some other supplemental studying. The goal is for all of the material to intersect and form stronger connections, but i'm getting really impatient. I just finished my 3rd year of Chinese at university, including two months of intensive Chinese in Beijing, but I don't feel like I'm as far along as I should be, given what some others have managed to accomplish. I'd say I'm conversationally "capable," meaning I can live a normal life in China, make friends, and even date. Unfortunately, I still struggle to understand any kind of media: books, magazines, talk radio, television and movies are beyond me. I'm thinking that vocabulary is my biggest problem, so i'm kind of rushing myself. I think you are right about the listening though. It's the most important thing, and I defintiely shouldnt be rushing it.

[li3wei1]

but i'm getting really impatient.

 

Perhaps you chose the wrong language to study.  

[ablindwatchmaker]

lol, I get discouraged from time to time, but everytime I break a plateau it feels great and I get motivated to continue. Chinese is definitely not to be trifled with....There was a spanish class next to my Chinese class a few semesters ago, and I remember they were reading books, and I belive they were in their fourth semester.. I just shook my head and laughed.

[imron]

but I don't feel like I'm as far along as I should be, given what some others have managed to accomplish

Who are you comparing against?  To do things you mentioned (understand any kind of media: books, magazines, talk radio, television and movies), everyone I know or know of who can do those things says a similar thing - it will take at least 3-5 years of full-time, immersive, study to get a point where you can do that.

 

Beware as well people who inflate their own successes and of people who take shortcuts in some areas which makes them appear ahead.

 

 

 

which is pretty brutal since I'm also learning to write 30 new HSK words per day, in addition to some other supplemental studying.

Better to pace yourself and still be going in 3-5 years time, than going at a brutal pace and burning out before you get to any sort of meaningful level.

 

Set goals beyond your comfort zone sure, but measure progress not by comparing yourself to others, but by comparing yourself to your past self.

[ablindwatchmaker]

When you say immersive, do you mean 3-5 years in China? I feel that If I had a year or two in China, in addition to what I will have learned by next december when I move there, I should be able to do some of these things. I had taken 5 semesters of Chinese when I went to Beijing this summer, in addition to some self-study, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that my Chinese ability tripled within just 2 months. There were students in my program who had been there 6 months and I was shocked at how good they were after that period. That being said many students who spent all of their time studying inside only improved a little. My hope is that when I get a job teaching English, I will be studying and immersing myself in Chinese culture during my free time.

[imron]

When you say immersive, do you mean 3-5 years in China?

Not necessarily, there are other places you can immerse yourself in the language - and thanks to the Internet this includes countries where Mandarin is not the native language.

 

 

 

I had taken 5 semesters of Chinese

How many contact hours a week and was this your major or just one subject of many?

 

 

 

I'm not exaggerating when I say that my Chinese ability tripled within just 2 months

I believe it, but it doesn't change what I said.  Chinese has a long tail, and suffers greatly from the law of diminishing returns.  E.g. say the first 2,000 words you learn gives you 50% comprehension, then the next 2,000 words brings you up to 80%, then the next 2,000 words brings you up to 90%, then the next 2,000 to 95% then the next 2,000 to 97% then the next 2,000 to 98% and so on.

 

Those are all just made up numbers, but the general trend is true - as you improve, then for a similar amount of effort on your part, you get progressively smaller gains in language ability.  You might think 98% comprehension is great, but if you're reading a book that's maybe still 4-5 unknown words per page.

 

 

 

My hope is that when I get a job teaching English, I will be studying and immersing myself in Chinese culture during my free time.

If you want to learn Chinese, teaching English will be a huge distraction.

[ablindwatchmaker]

I'll do my best to immerse myself here in the states, but so far I've found it highly impractical. For me, it will most likely consist of 4 hours of listening, reading, and writing characters, per day.

 

After 4 semesters of Chinese, of which 2 were 5 hours per week and the following 2 were 3 hours per week, I changed my major to Asian cultures and languages with a Mandarin specialization. Unfortunately, those two semesters in my third year were only 3 contact hours each. Beijing intensive was 20 hours per week for a summer with a language pledge, which I did not adhere to as much as I should have. All together, I've had 512 contact hours. When I graduate next December, I'll have had about 650 hours. My dedication to studying varies dramatically from semester to semester. Sometimes I'm obsessed, sometimes I do absolutely nothing for long periods of time.

 

If I had to guess my current level, with a few months of prep, I could probably pass HSK 5. My passive vocabulary is between 4000-5000 words--hard to say though. My plan is to have doubled my vocab by the end of next year, for a total of 8000-10000 words.

 

I'm not too worried about the English teaching being a problem because I spend a lot of time making sure I'm hanging out with Chinese people whose English is below my Chinese level (The first time that happened, I was SOOO happy). I know its always tempting to find a few expat buddies and wile away opportunities though...

 

Btw, I also plan to start using that learning method of listening to the radio and reading newspapers that you discussed in another post. It sounds like an incredible method.

[imron]

Beijing intensive was 20 hours per week for a summer with a language pledge

Compared to your previous amount of contact hours, I'm not surprised your ability tripled.

 

 

 

Sometimes I'm obsessed, sometimes I do absolutely nothing for long periods of time.

Actually, the first half of your statement explains the second half.  If you don't pace yourself correctly, it's really easy to get burnt out and then do nothing productive for long periods of time.  The thing about language learning is that improvement requires regular and consistent practice.

 

If you are doing bursts followed by long breaks, much of what you learn during one burst will be forgotten or very inactive by the end of your break and start of your next burst.  The end result is your wheels are spinning, but you're going nowhere.

 

You're much better off pacing yourself at a sustainable level and making sure you do it every day (tools like Don't Break the Chain, or my own 100% can help with that).  Focus on quality rather than quantity, for example if you are following the radio/newspaper method from that other post don't think that more words is better.  Really focus on getting a small handful of words nailed down pat.

 

Regarding teaching English, it's not impossible to learn Chinese on the side (I was certainly able to learn a lot doing just that), but it is not conducive to good study.  If you are looking at a cheap way to be in China and feel the cost of full-time study is prohibitive, you could consider options such as the CSC scholarships (do a search for relevant topics), or the scholarships offered by the Taiwanese government, both of which can be quite cost-effective ways to study full-time for a very low cost.

 

P.S. if you liked that other post of mine, here are a few others you might like.

[ablindwatchmaker]

You are so right about the consistency thing. I've struggled with this in other areas as well. It shames me to think of how much better my Chinese would be right now if I had applied this principle over the last 18 months. I genuinely enjoy studying Chinese intensively, but I always end up getting occupied with other things that prevent me from 4 hours of study a day and then subsequently just stop completely. This time, I swear I will have completed all of the Defrancis readers, the HSK vocab, and established that newspaper/listening method starting in january and ending next December. I just need to figure out a workable schedule.

 

I just checked the app out and will downloadi t shortly. It looks pretty nifty ;)

 

I'd love to do something like that, but I'm already 30 years old (started university after years in the workforce) and don't feel like there is enough time to accomplish my goals if I take another year or two off to study. My goal is to save money in China and have my own business, preferably in China, up and running within the next 5 years.

 

There is something about turning 30 that lights a fire under your ass....

[ablindwatchmaker]

I just read the other posts and was happy to discover that I am already incorporating many of those elements in both the way I practice speaking, reading, and practicing characters. I don't go into quite as much depth, but I adhere to those principles while studying. I look at a character, say it several times until I can say it naturally, look up the meaning, then read several example sentences. After that I try to create simple sentences on my own and say them several times. Then I write the character 2 or 3 times in a session. I also never look at the character while writing it and always make sure to do it from memory. Once a character goes into review, I'll write it one more time, and thereafter I render it in my mind several times until I'm satisifed. The only probem with this approach is that I spend two hours a day on vocabulary acquisiton alone.

 

As far as reading goes, my approach is nearly identical. I read slowly for meaning, understand the grammar, listen to the native speaker until I can imitate, and then read the sentence as quickly and accurately as possible. I don't always do this while learning, but I have incorporated this technique on many occasions. Actually, this is what I was doing in addition to a large number of listening repeptions before I wrote this post. I just became impatient and was looking for a magic bullet. As with everything in life, it turns out there is no magic bullet!

 

Btw, I listened to your chinese on another post and it's damn good. Maybe I should post myself speaking so I can see where I need to improve.

[imron]

think of how much better my Chinese would be right now if I had applied this principle over the last 18 months.

Said every Chinese learner ever.

 

 

 

The only probem with this approach is that I spend two hours a day on vocabulary acquisiton alone.

The simple solution to this is to cut down on the number of new vocabulary items you are learning a day.  Better to learn 10 words well than half-learn 30 words.  Don't be in such a hurry to reach milestones, put in time to do things properly.

 

 

 

and don't feel like there is enough time to accomplish my goals if I take another year or two off to study

But you can take one or two years off to teach English?  Teaching English will earn you more money than studying (though I'm not sure how much you'll be able to realistically save in foreign currency terms), but a year of immersive study will leave you with far better Chinese.  I was lucky when I was teaching in that I was able to schedule all my classes on 3 consecutive days, which gave me plenty of time for other things such as language learning. Most places aren't that flexible, and the more highly paid the work the less likely you are to have such a flexible schedule.  Anyway, it all depends on your goals, but I think it's definitely worth looking at this a little further.

[ablindwatchmaker]

I think I will look into the scholarships available. It will all depend on how I feel about it this time next year. I think I'll reduce my load to 20 new cards per day and 50 reviews. Basically, whatever amount corresponds to under an hour of vocab learning and review. The rest of my time will be spent listening, reading, and learning sentence patterns. One of my biggest regrets has been ignoring sentence patterns too much. I passively understand most of what i study, but I can use only a ver small fraction.

 

How do you feel about brute forcing a few examples of a given sentence pattern every day? I was thinking about replacing some of the time I dedicate to flashcards with sentence pattern study. I think I could reasonably expect to memorize 3 new patterns along with a few examples each every day. My primary motivation is that I feel as if I can speak simplistic Chinese quite fluently but can't use sophisitcated structures with any accuracy.

[imron]

How do you feel about brute forcing a few examples of a given sentence pattern every day?

I think it's a good idea, and I think brute forcing is highly underated among language learners (I never used to like it until I tried it and found it to be really effective).  When you encounter a new vocabulary item, simply take the sentence that it's from and spend some time memorising and saying that sentence.

 

Make sure that all of your new vocabulary items come from a sentence (either native content or a text book) rather than from a pre-prepared list.  To do this properly, then once again, this will probably mean you need to reduce your new vocabulary items.  The tradeoff is that you are learning the words more thoroughly and also practising other words you already know as part of memorising the sentences.

[ablindwatchmaker]

I'm kind of mixing approaches. The list that I'm working on, which is the HSK list, doesnt come with any sentences, but I use pleco to read them in context. It usually works, but I occasionally find examples that are jsut too complex for me to do with any efficiency. About thirty percent of the time, I just brute force it. When I do my listening and reading practice, I often encounter the words and gradually learn how they operate. The text books that I use have the majority of those words in context as well as many others, so it should end up workingout over time, especially once i start ocusing on sentence patterns.

[imron]

That's the thing, the HSK lists are just approximations of common vocabulary that you will encounter in real life.  If you get words from content instead (where content includes textbooks) you'll eventually get all the HSK words, just not in the same order.  You can always cross-reference new words against HSK lists to help prioritise which words to learn/ignore for now if you so desire.

 

Learning from a list deprives you of good context, and I'm not just talking about a single sentence of context you might get from examples in a dictionary.  Those sentences rarely paint any sort of story in your mind.  If you are reading an article or a novel or watching a TV show though, there is a whole bunch of surrounding context that helps build a story and an image in your mind, it also helps connect multiple words together (unlike a list, which is effectively random), and these things are really effective ways to help remember the meaning of words.

[hedwards]

@imron, I'm with you there. The thing that makes speech fluent is largely a function of repetition. Basically the more times and the more ways in which you encounter and use a grammatical structure the more automatic it becomes and the better it fits into otherwise fluent speech.

 

That being said, I hope it goes without saying that repeating the same phrase over and over again isn't a terribly useful thing to do in most cases. There are stock phrases that don't take any adjustments that are worth repeating like that, but I think the further one gets the fewer and farther between they get.

 

You're definitely right about HSK lists, they are useful, but I've found that getting vocab from either real life or from graded readers tends to be much more useful.

[imron]

I hope it goes without saying that repeating the same phrase over and over again isn't a terribly useful thing to do in most cases

Once you can say a sentence fluently and confidently then I agree there is little further use in repeating it over and over.  Before that stage, repeating, recording, adjusting and repeating again will provide benefit.

 

Mindlessly repeating is no good however.  Always be mindful of what you are doing - one of the best ways is to record yourself, listen back and note any mistakes and/or things you need to improve, then go back and try to correct things.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Hmmmm, I'm wondering if I should even continue with the HSK Anki deck. Perhaps I'll reduce the load further so that it is only taking up between 20-30 minutes of my time. I know that everything you are saying is true, and that is one of the reasons I never used lists that werent from textbooks in the past. For me, it has become some kind of a psychological compulsion that gives me great satsifaction when I wear down a deck like the HSK deck. I've created a David and Helen in China deck, A China Scene deck, a Defrancis Beginning Chinese reader, and am currently working on Defrancis Intermediate chinese reader.

 

Between working through those texts by listening and reading, memorizing the characters, memorizing the sentence patterns within, some supplementary sentence patterns from "common Chinese patterns 330," and a little bit of the HSK Anki (for my own psychological benefit), I hope I'll make some real progress in the next year. I can reasonably expect to put in about 20 hours of Chinese per week in the next year.

 

I'd like to start using the listening and reading methods you highlighted earlier and replacing my textbook study with it, but I feel that my vocabulary needs to improve a little more. As an example, I picked up the Chinese version of Henry kissinger's "On China" book, and within 3 pages I had encountered exactly 41 words I didn't know. I didn't have any issues with grammar, but obviously that just isnt very efficient. It was brutal and pretty much pure translation.