Tired of having 'passable' Chinese

[AdamD]

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.

 

I agree but it's a difficult place to reach. One of my early teachers also told us to think in Chinese, but I couldn't think in Chinese. I just couldn't. I can't even tell you what changed for me to start thinking in Chinese three years later. Immersion? Persistence? I dunno.

[winterpromise31]

I also don't understand the advice to think in Chinese. I can't do it! I translate in my head. I've only been learning for 10 months, though. Hopefully it will happen someday!

[Johnny20270]

If someone has the magic formula, please let me know

 

Although one aspect I have managed to come to terms with now is the

- lack of pronouns especially 我 and 你. It sounded so strange at the start. It felt like I was speaking like a hillybilly

- omitting words, such as,  with the use of 的 etc

 

My Chinese friends explains it as

(1) think of a queue outside a restaurant. In the west people won't queue up, too busy. In china, everyone joins the queue, thinking it must be good, i.e. the 'We', 'you' not so important

(2) I have heard this several times now. They say why walk, take elevator, lift instead, wasting energy. Some seem to see their body like a battery that can run out. I see it as exercise. Similarly with words, my friend says, 该 and rarely 应该, 没 instead of 没有.  I ask why. She says, wasting words, why bother? Sounds dumb, but kindof sticks with me. Read a classic well respected English literature or listen to an inaugural speech**. The abundance of, and perhaps unnecessary use of adjectives and adverbs is nice to hear and considered well written/spoken

 

** like Kennedy, not Bush lol

 

I imagine Chinese is like any subject. For the older people if you think back to your university days, you might have passed your exams and got great marks but its takes years and years of professional experience until it actually clicks and you finally "get it". 

[Bad Cao Cao]

Ultimately, persistence is the main thing that will determine this. Being concerned about "what you should do" and "how you should do it" will only impact 10-20% (using any old well worn method). The rest is just how much time you spend surrounded by, and being active in, native level Mandarin. If you can spend minimum 3-4 hours a day, in 10 years time you, you will be at a comfortable level, no matter what you do.

 

Having said that, in my experience, there is definitely a few things that will get you there 20% quicker. These were my top 3 go-to's:

 

-Native-level chat radio / chat podcasts / chat tv - particularly if you can get transcripts. Chat radio is the gold standard. It's fast, circular, and covers a broad range of topics -- using the language the way natives really use it. Only use content that is by natives for natives. Listen to, and read this content, on a broad range of topics. Practice reading the transcripts, record yourself and compare. Imitate. Imitate. Imitate.

 

-Native internet forums. Hang out, chat, notice how the language is really used. Get off English forums -- what are you doing wasting your time here? no offense, but 212 posts? If I had a dollar for every post a person made here who was still scratching their head.... get onto native forums, got off English forums. Don't like mainland chat forums? Find expat overseas Chinese forums and hang out there.

 

-Drunk Chinese, poker nights. Every Friday night should be 6 hours drinking Yanjing beer and playing poker with natives who don't speak a word of English. Go out of your way to organise a core group. Beer will get you superficially fluent. 250 Fridays of it, will get you the rest of the way.

[roddy]

"what are you doing wasting your time here?"

Getting solid no-nonsense advice from you, of course!

 

FWIW, taking length of membership into account, you and grawt post at about the same rate. 

[TheBigZaboon]

@ Bad Cao Cao

 

Great advice... cogently expressed...  

 

But as Descartes wife was rumored to have said, "'Cogito ergo sum.' is OK for you, but what about me?

 

Not a lot of people on this forum have even the remotest possibility of following your advice. So whadda we do? Throw everybody else under the bus (or under the the rikshaw?) and pop open another bottle of Qingdao's finest?

 

A few months ago, an extremely well-respected member of this forum suggested that people who want to learn to read or understand the news should do as he had, get a job proofreading newspaper articles . I assume he was making a joke. I hope he was making a joke.

 

You've got some good ideas in that post. Some I can vouch for from personal experience. When I was learning Japanese, wooden matches were still in use. It was considered polite to slide open the box, extract a match, and light up a companion's smoke. I didn't smoke myself, but I always had a box of two of wooden matches in my pocket when I went out trolling the bars. And considerably more often than just Friday nights. I would always write a couple of phrases, new words, or patterns on the bottom of my matchboxes. That way, "I was quick with a 'joke' when I'd light up your smoke" and there was nowhere I'd rather have been. But lots of people suffered through inappropriate vocabulary, inane sentences, or silly patterns when they felt the need to have a smoke. 

 

But I think those of us who are not (or no longer) able to do some of those things would appreciate some more appropriate advice.

 

'nuf said. 

[Steingletscher]

I'm also at this stage. One thing I try to do is try to cover the same topics when reading and listening. Pick up a copy of 人民日报 in the morning and then watch 中央新闻联播 before going to bed at night. Though the newspaper isn't a script of the news broadcast, many of the same topics, and along with their associated language, are covered. I find on days that if I don't read the newspaper I have much more difficultly understanding the news broadcast at night. This is just for the news though. A wide variety of both reading and listening material is essential. Perhaps spend two days a week focusing on the news this way, and then another on, say, movies. Watch a movie and then go and read a few reviews on Douban. Since this will take a long time, don't try to sacrifice depth for breath. Get comfortable with a subject before moving on to the next one (though focusing on two or three at a time works too).

 

Lastly, pay more attention to the meaning of each word and character and strive for accuracy. Don't be afraid to re-look up words you thought you knew as many common words have multiple, and sometimes rare, usages. When there just a little doubt or confusion in you, take the time clear it out. Write down words you are unsure as to what their differences are and ask your teacher. Your dictionary is one of your best friends.

[grawrt]

Thanks everyone! I'll start these wonderful ideas ASAP. I never would have imagined some of them, even as simple as bad cao cao suggested.

 

Just curious what are some good native radio/podcasts that you guys listen to? Also, what types of servers do Chinese people use for their forums? It took me a while to find a walking dead related one although now that the mid-season ended it's quite dead..

[Johnny20270]

Also, what types of servers do Chinese people use for their forums? It took me a while to find a walking dead related one although now that the mid-season ended it's quite dead..

 

 

Yeah, I am bored now that walking dead is mid season. 

 

 

I just access the usual main torrent ones from China

https://eztv.it/ --> for TV shows

http://www.yify-torrent.org/ --> for movies

https://kickass.so/ --> for movies if not in the above

 

I only use these ones as many others are just full of popups/spam/going around in circles etc

 

Have no issues downloading except that speed is about half of that in Europe. Acceptable. I use a chrome extension called 红杏 

 

only cost 120kuai per year and can access the use stuff like youtube etc

 

(Mods: any issues with me posting these links, please alter / delete etc)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kelby]

Have you considered researching story telling in Chinese? While I'm not saying you should go and memorize a bunch of Kuai Ban, digging into finding some orators you can follow might be the thing you need to get an idea for transitions, pacing, etc.

 

I myself am realizing nowadays that my biggest problem is that I'm terrible at telling stories. I'll post any useful stuff I find in my own search here if you want it

[grawrt]

Thanks Johnny! Very OT: have you watched Z-nation? It's not as serious as TWD but it's pretty good. Admittedly their season finale kind of rocked more than walking deads, and I'm a HUGE walking dead fan so that's kind of saying something...

 

@Kelby: I haven't but now I'll try. Come to think of it perhaps I have trouble telling stories because I haven't listened to enough storytelling to internalize it. If you come across any tips I would love to hear them

[hedwards]

@TheBigZaboon, not a lot of people have the ability to follow Bad Cao Cao's advice, really? I'd say that you've got that backwards, not a lot of people don't have the ability to follow his advice. If there's a university in town, there's probably going to be Mandarin speakers there. If there's a Chinatown, chances are there are going to be Mandarin speakers there these days. If you've got the internet, you've got plenty of Mandarin speakers there as well. Now, if one is looking to learn a more obscure Chinese, then it might be an issue, but immersion is there for those that want it badly enough.

 

This sort of reminds me of the Ninjitsu instructor that refused to accommodate the needs of students for schedule and location flexibility. His reasoning was that if students didn't want it badly enough to make the necessary changes to find their way to him regularly, then they probably didn't want it badly enough to follow through on the rest of the requirements either. Now, that might not be a good business model, but I wager that his students were far more successful at learning Ninjitsu than instructors that were more accomodating.

 

Personally, I get people at work all the time that make excuses as to why they suck at whatever science we're dealing with at the present. At least 90% of the time the reason for the lack of progress is because the student has convinced themselves that they can't do it. If they'd suck it up and do the work for long enough they would find that they can't prevent progress. But, they'll waste a lot of time and energy about how they're not able to learn it and how the people learning it must have been born that way rather than on trying to figure out how to make it easier for themselves.

[yueni]

Practice storytelling. You don't really need a Chinese teacher for this, just a Chinese friend. Or a language partner.

 

I do this with one of my friends. It used to be a weekly thing, but we've gotten busy lately and there are now time zones involved, so we've put it on hold.

 

What we do is we have a fixed time where we meet, say an hour or two once a week. And I have to have a story to tell him, which I will do in Chinese. As I tell him the story, he'll help correct my awkwardness... my phrasing, my word choice, how I am expressing myself, so that I'm more idiomatic. There's no pressure, because I'm not trying to perform. I'm just trying to tell him about something that happened to me that I thought was notable. Then he does the same, except in English, and I correct his word choice, tone of voice, that sort of thing.

 

We used to do this about once a week for about 6 months, and I got a lot better at expressing myself. The fun part is, I got to pick whatever subject I wanted to share with him, and he got to pick whatever topic he was interested in. Sometimes, we would start off with storytelling, and we'd segue off into other topics, but we'd still use the same storytelling technique even though we were out of the "learning/study" mode.

 

It was really challenging in the beginning, but I got a lot better at expressing myself doing this exercise.

[hedwards]

That's a good idea. And if you know that you're going to be doing it and what you're going to talk about, it gives you a chance to think about vocab you might need. The main downside is that it makes it easier to steer things down an easier path. But, for people starting out that's OK, just as long as one doesn't do that indefinitely. Things should get a bit more complex over time.

[yueni]

@hedwards

 

You know, for beginners, preparing beforehand is a great way to feel confident about speaking. Vocabulary is easy to memorize. Stringing words together naturally is the hardest part, and that's what storytelling is for. However, not knowing the vocabulary is the biggest stumbling block for beginners, because they start to obsess over it. If prepping vocab beforehand will help, by all means do it. The idea behind storytelling to a friend is that it is a low pressure environment to experiment and to take risks with language; where you can laugh at and with each other over gaffes and mistakes. Taking out vocabulary beforehand (but no reading off a script!) is a good way to lower the pressure even more.

 

Both me and my friend are trained interpreters, and we are both trained to find other ways to express words we don't have the immediate translation for. So vocabulary is generally not our stumbling block, though we will interject and ask the other party what the proper word is if we happen to blank out or if we do not know it. For both of us, we don't prepare a ton; it's all mostly off-the-cuff, but we're both considered more-or-less fluent in both English & Chinese. We might look up a couple key words here and there, but usually, we'll just speak like we would if we were telling a story to a friend in our native tongue.

 

The primary goal is to achieve more native and more natural expression, which is what the other party is there for.

[hedwards]

@Yueni, I think we agree. My only point there was that it can be easy to arrange things so that you're telling stories without any growth of language ability. And that's not really a problem for people that don't care to, or don't need to, improve, but it can be an issue for people that are needing to improve.

 

But, as long as somebody is aware of that tendency and purposefully looks for something to improve, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Johnny20270]

Every day our teacher makes us recount a dialogue in our text books. Its somewhat painful as you have to be proactive rather than reactive. However it is useful as your have to start forming your ow sentences. She doesn't want us saying A 告诉 B ...

 

 

However, not knowing the vocabulary is the biggest stumbling block for beginners, because they start to obsess over it.

 

 

I agree with this a lot: It can be detrimental after a while. At the start yes you need to know a decent level of vocab (500 is enough in my view) but in my experience I concentrate on this way too much. I know many words now but in reality I have no idea how to use them. Also because many words seem to have different meanings when used in different context (such as 来) I believe its important to not chase a word count over striving towards limited fluency. I don't actually practice what I preach though, but I see a colleague of mine with far less words and much more ability to hold a conversation. Hence the importance of that is starting to drive home.

 

 

@hedwards: I agree with your general sentiment of "if there is a will there is a way". However human nature dictates a lot, and when learning it is good to remove unnecessary obstacles. I'll give you an example: Our exercise book has no English or pinyin in it. I find it incredibly time wasting and frustrating trying to find the meaning of some hanzi words. I spend unnecessary time using my camera recognition software or trying to write the word into a dictionary. Yes if I persist I can find it but I don't using the book and always tempting to quit.

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, I think it has become a reasonably accepted view that we have a certain reservoir of willpower and therefore any unnecessary drains on that will ultimately reduce the amount of time you can usefully study.

[Wang7]

Try role playing scenarios with a native speaker (of course).