Tired of having 'passable' Chinese

[grawrt]

Hi guys!! Lately I feel like I've hit a wall....

My Chinese just simply isn't up to par. Simple things are easy to converse about but as I tread to more complicated ones (story telling, for instance) I find myself unable to speak in coherent sentences. It's like I get too obsessed with trying to think of a word that when I finally say it I lose my train of thought and just end up throwing a bunch of words together to describe rather than give any real details. I'll be like "ELEVATOR! GIRL. HEAD. DIE. GUY. ELEVATOR. SQUISHED. DEAD." (yes, this was literally the story I tried to tell the other day about why elevators in China terrify me). Talking about topics that range beyond every day is also a bit difficult. I find myself grasping at straws when I try and talk about my opinion on basic human rights or what not. I regurgitate the same simple vocabulary to describe everything. I don't like saying everything is 好 or 有意思 but some how these words just come out. My Chinese is passable, and so these things are accepted by everyone because they 'basically" understand me. But I don't want to settle for passable. I want to fix this but I'm not sure what I can do.
 

I'm currently in China. I'm tired of talking about how long I studied Chinese and where I come from. I'm also tired of the endless praise about how awesome I am when I can't even coherently talk about something as simple as my favorite show's plot.

 

Please help me. I love talking and not being able to talk in detail about anything makes me cringe (I'd literally settle for anything that isn't 'school' related)

[Mr John]

I feel your pain dude. I was trying to tell a simple story a month back and ended up eating shit. Considering that your Chinese level is probably much higher than mine, don't take my advice too seriously. However, I'll tell you how I've been trying to work on this problem.

 

Basically, I tell my teacher the two year old version of a story and she takes my simple words and turns them into something more respectful. Then I listen to our lesson again, practice the new stuff, and try and find someone to use it on.

 

I'm guessing the more knowledgeable on here will probably say you need to work on your reading to. The grammar patters stick a lot better and require a lot less thought once you've exposed yourself to a lot of material.

 

If you haven't already, set yourself a certain number of words to learn each day. The turtle wins everytime...

[li3wei1]

You don't say what you're already doing.

 

Any good tutor can push you to make more complicated sentences, help you if you need it, and then reinforce it with practice. You may have to shop around, and explain to them, in English if you have to, what you need (or better yet write it in Chinese and have them polish it until it makes sense).

 

You love talking; how about listening? When hanging out with people, do you follow the conversation, repeat phrases when you think you know what they mean, ask if you don't?

[AdamD]

grawrt, I'm in exactly your position (apart from the being-in-China bit) and this is what I'm doing:

 

1. Get a one-on-one teacher if you don't already have one. My teacher is picking up all my grammatical mishaps and explaining them to me, and then making me research and practice them in my spare time.

 

2. Write down things you don't know how to say. Whenever you want to say something and you don't know how to say it in Chinese, write down the English and ask someone to translate it for you. Learn and practise that grammatical concept.

 

3. Revise words you actually needed to use. You mentioned human rights. Find a load of words you need for a conversation about human rights, turn them into flashcards, and keep running through them. It's what Mr John suggested, but focused on what's relevant to you right now, because you'll find it easier to learn and retain words you need to use.

 

I second the turtle. This is a long-haul endeavour.

[li3wei1]

I'm currently in China. I'm tired of talking about how long I studied Chinese and where I come from. I'm also tired of the endless praise about how awesome I am when I can't even coherently talk about something as simple as my favorite show's plot.

 

goes with the territory, I'm afraid. Develop some long-term relationships, and they'll have to move on from those questions eventually. But you gotta go through that stuff with every new person.

[AdamD]

Here's John Pasden suggesting how to get around the usual narrow band of small talk. The upshot is it's up to us to turn the small talk into something more rewarding. I've been doing it a lot recently.

[grawrt]

Here's what I usually do every day after class, it's not much these days because I've been slacking but here's what I manage to keep up with regularly:

- Watch tv-shows in Chinese. Admittedly these days it's mostly been the dubbed version of Jackie Chan Adventures, my guilty pleasure. Before that I watched 家有儿女. I also listen to 锵锵三人行 every morning before class.
- Reading Harry Potter every day. I usually spend about 1-2 hours and add new vocabulary and jot-down new grammar usage.
- Practice speaking with natives at ping-pong club.

I like to listen too. My listening is my best quality so I usually don't mind listening. Whenever I notice the conversation start to drift more privately between one another I try and follow what they're saying and answer them before they begin to dumb-down and repeat what they've said so that I can get included. I also like to practice my listening during yoga.

I will definitely be getting a tutor soon. I always knew I needed one but honestly wasn't sure what to do with them. Everything here seems like good advice. I really like what you do with your tutor AdamD & Mrjohn

Where do you guys usually find your tutors? & what's the going rate?

 

@adamD, thanks I'm looking at the article now

[Guest realmayo]

People will tell you that you're currently on a plateau and that these are inevitable when learning a language, and as long as you keep plugging away then one day you'll wake up and realise that you've suddenly made real progress after ages of not seeming to improve at all. I think that's right, it's been my experience too.

 

If you're particularly frustrated at the moment, it's probably because your ambitions have got higher. You used to be pleased with being able to communicate. Now you want to express yourself with more complexity.

 

I find that the gap between where I am and where I'd like to be is not constant: I'll go through long phases of feeling I'm not too far from where I should be at the moment, but then for some reason the 'gap' will widen and I'll feel that I'm way behind where I want to be. I like to think that's just ambition, and if you're getting more ambitious it means that deep down you've accepted that you've made good progress and now you want to make a lot more.

 

For small talk, be ready to come back with a few questions of your own in advance, ask if the person has studied English, what they liked about it, what's most difficult, or if they don't speak much at all do they have children or relatives who are studying it, what does it sound like to them ... or do they find it difficult to understand foreigners speaking Chinese, what is the least Chinese-sounding aspect of your own pronunciation, what should you improve on.

 

It's too easy to just roll over under the barrage of same-old questions but if you force yourself to ask lots of questions back then you end up having conversations, not just interrogrations.

 

Maybe there are some drills you can do for speaking. Personally I'd splurge on listening, making sure it's at a level you can mostly understand. Loads of listening.

 

But I'm not sure you should worry too much, just make sure you keep on studying and keep getting exposure to the language: this is my go-to link for a confidence boost: http://blog.thelinguist.com/confidence-and-trust-in-language-learning

[AdamD]

Where do you guys usually find your tutors? & what's the going rate?

 

My tutor is a friend who also happens to be a really effective teacher.

 

I don't know what tutors in China cost. Given how variable tutors can be in ability, you should set up a single lesson with one and see how it goes. If that person is skilled and the style suits you, you can commit to more. If they're terrible, you're off the hook.

[Lu]

Watch tv-shows in Chinese. Admittedly these days it's mostly been the dubbed version of Jackie Chan Adventures, my guilty pleasure. Before that I watched 家有儿女. I also listen to 锵锵三人行 every morning before class.

Since the shows you watch are already in Chinese, you should be able to mine them for words for a bit. If, say, Jackie Chan stubbed his toe when kicking a bad guy, the show itself probably uses the words 'stub', 'toe', 'kick' and the name of the bad guy at least once. If you hear those words, and learn them, that should help a lot if you want to tell someone else what happened on that episode. Same for other subjects: if you want to talk about human rights, read up on human rights in Chinese first (my first stop is usually wikipedia).

[AdamD]

I find that the gap between where I am and where I'd like to be is not constant: I'll go through long phases of feeling I'm not too far from where I should be at the moment, but then for some reason the 'gap' will widen and I'll feel that I'm way behind where I want to be. I like to think that's just ambition, and if you're getting more ambitious it means that deep down you've accepted that you've made good progress and now you want to make a lot more.

 

realmayo: This is so very true. The more I learn, the more frustrated I am by what I can't do. I'm sure it's progress but it doesn't feel like it.

[TheBigZaboon]

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make you feel any better by saying this, but it sounds like you're trying to express your English language ideas in English language-level sentences in Chinese. I don't want to say that you're not good enough to do that, because that's probably not the case. But it certainly seems that you get frustrated when things begin to go south. How about trying to simplify what you say in Chinese. I don't mean dumb it down, but apply some of the ideas and advice you'd give a you'd give a Chinese person learning to speak or even write English.

 

For example, the "One riot, one Ranger" approach: limit your sentences to one idea each sentence. The farthest you should go in one sentence may be is what the Chinese textbooks call a telescopic sentence. For example, "I came to Beijing to study Chinese." Two verbs, but really a simple sentence involving one straightforward idea. You mention "basic human rights" in your post, but that's not in any way a simple idea, especially if you try to explain it using the terms and preconceptions we westerners carry around in our heads.

 

Try simplifying what you want to say, and how you say it. For example, if you try to say, "In Western philosophy, especially the schools of thought that take individual human rights as sacred and indicative of the greatest good, the individual is given priority in nearly every instance, whereas Chinese thought tends to emphasize the rights of society, and denigrate or ignore the plight of the individual.... Man, that sentence could choke the proverbial bilingual horse.

 

I'm not talking about dumbing things down here, just breaking them up into parts you can manage in Chinese. For example, "When we talk about human rights, Western ways of thinking are different from those of Chinese people. In fact, there are many ways of thinking about human rights in the West, too. Some people think the rights of the individual are more important than those of the society. However, it seems that Chinese people feel that the good of society is more important than the rights of an individual." This way of expressing yourself may not get you a charter membership in Mensa, but it will give you a chance to learn to have a conversation while you build up confidence in yourself. And this situation doesn't have to last forever, just until you begin to feel you are, in fact, able to speak to people about what you want to say in the way you want to say it..

 

Try writing a paragraph in English about an idea, for example, human rights. Then try to rewrite it in simpler sentences (still in English) that get your idea across without dumbing it down too much. You may have twice the number of sentences, but you should be able to manage them better now. Then try them in simple Chinese sentences. Then throw in some connectors like "suiran," "dangran," etc., to make the conversation flow a little smoother. Try this for a while. It is only a little more complicated than "BOY, GIRL, ELEVATOR, SQUISH..", but it should help.

[roddy]

This post by Xuefang on the intermediate to advanced hump might give you some useful ideas and links. I think a key thing to accept at this stage though is that your days of easy massive improvements in your Chinese ("I learned the name for my street! AND the word for beer!") are over and from now on it's a much steadier, incremental process. 

[Mouseneb]

 

 

"I learned the name for my street! AND the word for beer!"

 

Ha. Those days WERE pretty awesome, though.

[889]

Let me reiterate a couple of points above.

First, read a lot. Folks differ, but I find reading more useful than TV, both because the topics, grammar and vocabulary are far broader, but also because there's a tendency to tune out TV when the pace speeds up. If you do want to use TV, then follow the discussion programs, not the soap operas. If you can get Phoenix TV, that evening roundtable discussion program is very good from a language viewpoint.

Second, express yourself in Chinese terms. This means not only simplifying your expressions and argument, but avoiding rhetorical devices that don't come across well in Chinese. Don't try irony, for example, because you'll probably be taken literally.

[TheBigZaboon]

I agree with the previous post about irony (and sarcasm). Though it has its place and is used in other languages, too, I've found that it doesn't go over well in Chinese (or Japanese, for that matter). Chinese can be very sarcastic, and can be as caustic as the best of them, but you've got to use expressions that the listener is familiar with. You cannot expect him or her to pick up on the flow and understand a western phrase translated into Chinese just because you think it fits a situation. If they're not used to interpreting that phrase as sarcasm, they can take it literally. I've been in some important business negotiations where a westerner used a wise crack, a smart-assed phrase, that the foreign negotiator, an important man on his side, took as a compliment. He thanked the westerner profusely, embarrassing himself in front of the younger, better English speakers on his side, and ultimately making the westerner look like a complete fool, which perhaps he was.

 

Sorry, I got carried away...  but sarcasm is a dangerous tool in the hand (or the mouths) of the less experienced speaker. 

[gato]

- Watch tv-shows in Chinese. Admittedly these days it's mostly been the dubbed version of Jackie Chan Adventures, my guilty pleasure. Before that I watched 家有儿女. I also listen to 锵锵三人行 every morning before class.

- Reading Harry Potter every day. I usually spend about 1-2 hours and add new vocabulary and jot-down new grammar usage.

- Practice speaking with natives at ping-pong club.

I like to listen too. My listening is my best quality so I usually don't mind listening. Whenever I notice the conversation start to drift more privately between one another I try and follow what they're saying and answer them before they begin to dumb-down and repeat what they've said so that I can get included.

 

It sounds like most of the practice has been on reading and listening.  How much time are you speaking Chinese every day?  Maybe try to speak at least 2 hours per day?  That might be easier if you have a regular one-on-one tutor or some close Chinese friends.

[hedwards]

I'd recommend memorizing sentence patterns and practice with them. Which reminds me that I need to personally get back to my copy of Common Chinese Patterns 330.

 

But, after saying one basic sentence with minor variations enough times, it becomes natural and you don't have to practice it. When I would go to the store or whatnot, I would practice a few of the relevant sentences that I hadn't yet mastered. It makes a huge difference.

 

As you add more and more of those sentences to your repertoire, and the appropriate vocabulary, you should see that your Chinese improves in a way that's grammatically appropriate and feels natural.

[ChTTay]

I plan on trying to do the ol' drilling sentences using glossika. It's a tad expensive but I hope it will be worth it. As per Imrons advice, I'm hopeful a load of drilling will be helpful in improving my speaking and fluency. Also, I intend on recording my own voice and comparing it to glossika on my days off.

As for reading, there was a hunger games thread on here a while ago which also mentioned the Goosebunps series in Chinese. Well, I found both of those too hard and, because of that, not enjoyable. I recently picked up a couple Roald Dahl books that seem just right (Ths Twits, Danny the Champion of the World and Fantastic Mr. fox). In total they cost 24rmb. Already enjoying reading in Chinese a lot more.

[Johnny20270]

we just had this discussion today in class today (I think I will never get pass this stage either).

 

Our teacher (I rate as very good) said in her long experience the people who make the most progress are the ones who blurt out stuff and its ultimately importantly to have a Chinese brain. Shes seems adamant on this. That is, not to think what you want to say in English and then run through the translation in your head. Don't know whether the users on the forum agree or not. 

 

To me its impossible to do that at this stage but I can see where things like Chinesepod might be useful. Personally I find Chinesepod frustrating but I can see how it would help with a natural and richer flow of a dialogue.

 

I am thinking of English watching movies with Chinese subtitles to make things interesting (like batman). I read the Chinese Breeze books but the stories are usually about some soppy dweeb wanting to find some girl