Useful vocabulary?

[itsme]

Hello, I've been learning Chinese for many years but I'm still not good at it. I mean, I was close to passing HSK 5, but I can't speak at all. But this is not what I worry about at the moment.

 

I'm reading Harry Potter in Chinese now and I think I am doing quite well, the problem is the new vocabulary I learn is not very useful. I tried reading some other books too but it's the same. I think I need to learn more of spoken language, I don't know, maybe some weibo posts or something. But I can't find anything that I find interesting enough to keep reading regularly. I find books interesting but I don't learn much from them. I also watch some 电视剧, sometimes i understand everything, sometimes nothing. I tried to stop everytime I see a new word, but I can't continue doing this for long.

 

Do you have any advice? Except for talking to native speakers.

 

Thank you and sorry for my bad English.

[Bad Cao Cao]

Podcasts of native speakers chatting in a group (2 or more people), along with transcripts are good. Native chat radio/talk back radio, along with transcripts, is the gold standard also here (if you really want to learn Mandarin effectively to a high level). I've put links before to this, pm me if you want.

 

Some native online forums are good, particularly some Chinese expat forums, but chatting online is much different to what you get when native speakers just sit around and chat. 

 

HSK 4/5 is a pretty indeterminate level, often people will still have massive gaps here, so hard to tell where you are really at...maybe try Chinesepod etc, as well.

[imron]

I've put links before to this, pm me if you want.

Or don't PM him, ask here so other people looking for the same advice can benefit from the answer.

[Pokarface]

Hi!

Can you post an audio-sample talking or reading in Chinese so we can hear it? http://vocaroo.com/

Why are you not concerned about not being able to speak Chinese?

[jbradfor]

Have you considered reading Chinese Comics?  They tend to use very casual vocabulary, and the pictures make understanding easier.  Plus, many of them are fun! 

 

Take a look here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/27354-grand-comic-reading-project/

[itsme]

Thank you for fast replies!

 

Bad Cao Cao - I think the podcasts with transcripts can help a lot, can you put the links here?

 

Pokarface - about speaking, my pronunciation is ok, the problem is I can only make basic sentences, with a very limited vocabulary. I know many words pasively but I just can't use them. I am a quiet person in general, so it's really difficult for me. I just hope i will start talking when I improve my vocabulary.

 

jbradfor - I will definitely try the comics, thank you!

[edelweis]

Useful for what?

What do you want to be able to do in Chinese?

[Pokarface]

@itsme. Ok. I see. I'm also curios as edelweis as to what kind of vocabulary are you looking for and why are you studying Chinese?

technical vocabulary, business, chit-chat, dating, etc.

[itsme]

Useful in general? Not technical or business, just words that are often used in everyday life. I tried learning those from HSK lists, but it didn't work well.

 

The new words I come across in books seem either to rare, or too above my level - I know am not going to remember the word just yet (usually verbs and adjectives).

 

Chinese is my major, so you can imagine I had to learn a lot of things that are not really useful for real life. I have good basics though.

 

I don't even know if I make any sense, I guess I am tired of "studying" because I still can't see any results.

[imron]

I guess I am tired of "studying" because I still can't see any results.

When studying Chinese it takes a long time to see results if results are measured in things like reading books and understanding most things.  By long, I'm talking years of consistent effort (you mention you've been studying for years, but make no mention of how consistent and regular that study was).

 

Once you get to the point where you are starting to read books (like you mentioned in your first post), the only real way to find relevant and useful vocabulary is to read things that you find relevant and useful.  HSK lists and the like won't be so relevant because as your level increases there will be less overlap between what you want to read and what the HSK lists cover.

 

This means finding material, and keeping at it even if you lose interest.  You also need to make sure that you are regularly looking up unknown words, up to a certain limit each day (see here for a more detailed explanation).

 

In short, try to develop a reading habit, make sure to look up and learn a certain number of words that you don't know, and most importantly do it everyday for a prolonged period of time.  You can use something like "Don't Break the Chain", or my own 100% to keep track of progress.

[abcdefg]

>>"I just hope i will start talking when I improve my vocabulary."

 

#6 -- This is not a realistic expectation. Start using what you know right now in an active manner. Then your useable knowledge base will grow. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Don't be afraid to try things out in real-life situations.

 

Using what you learn as you go along is essential. You never reach some magic point at which you suddenly and magically "flower." It's an ongoing process.

[imron]

You never reach some magic point at which you suddenly and magically "flower."

This is very true.  If you find you are not good at something, the only way to improve is to practice that.  Yes, learning vocabulary and other things will give you some help with speaking, but until you start practising speaking more, your speaking won't improve.

 

Drilling sentences, recording yourself and making corrections and then drilling again are good ways to do that.  You might find the Glossika thread useful.

[edelweis]

(not sure if this is useful to the OP, mostly my own thoughts about vocabulary)

 

I also find that adult textbooks and vocabulary lists lack everyday life words...

Children's books like "1000 first words in Chinese" are interesting for this, as well as visual dictionaries.

But they have drawbacks because the stuff shown in this kind of book is typically of Western household/Western lifestyle stuff.

Also the measure words are most often not included and there are no example sentences.

I wonder whether there are Chinese books for children that teach this kind of thing with sentences that show word usage, measure words etc.

 

Edit: actually there are some Chinese books that show just this! I even have one! it's a small measure word book for foreigners.

Let me look...

[itsme]

Thank you again for all the advices, I will try to follow them, and believe there will be results.

 

My study during those university years wasn't really consistent and regular, because I had to do and study many other things than the actual language, also I had another major.

 

And you are right about the speaking part, I know I should work on it.

[mackie1402]

I'm in a similar boat to you. I actually really enjoy reading materials (which are suitable for my level) but again I found a lack of day to day vocabulary.

 

My girlfriend showed me some 'Subscriptions' (free) on Wechat that update regularly. For example, as I'm from England I follow one called 英国那些事儿 which has very light hearted news, very similar to websites I'd read from Facebook links etc. I found this very comfortable but with just enough words to keep learning. Also, as I'm a dog lover I follow 狗狗帮 which has the usual funny pictures, videos and storys from dogs on the internet all in Chinese.

 

Personally, I'm not too sure how to search to find new, interesting ones to follow, I just got these ones sent to me by my girlfriend,but I can always ask her how to find them!

[Flickserve]

@mackie1402,

 

I'd be very interested in this feature of wechat. Please let me know how to do it. I am very much into badminton and badminton news. I tried picking up newspaper badminton articles in chinese but the vocabulary used is just too deep for me at present.

[tysond]

Some advice:

 

1. Reading is different to memorizing.  I only memorize high frequency stuff, and either skim or look up other things.  I use SUBTLEX-ZH to look up frequencies (it's based on movie subtitle frequencies of words) and also consider HSK4/5/6 to be valuable to learn.  And then, if the word keeps coming up, I learn it too (if you see it 3 times it's probably worth memorizing).  I use Chinese Text Analyzer to help me figure out which words are common in a book/article too.

 

2. You don't need to stop every time you see a new word.  You can just skip it.  The book won't know.  It won't care.  You don't even need to read it front to back.  You can skip whole chapters if you feel like it.

 

3. Reading comics is much easier as there's more story per character.  You can skip what you don't understand and still follow quite a bit of the story.  

4. Intermediate stage is long and lonely, sense of progress is low.  Native content is full of many low frequency words.  But learning individual topics doesn't take too long.  If you really like badminton, grab a bunch of articles and learn the most common words per article.  After a while you'll find that you know 90% of the words used to talk about badminton, and other words will creep in.  Reading Wikipedia or Baidu Baike articles on topics is a good way to get introduced to topics like sports.  

 

5. Check out The Chairman's Bao for more controlled vocabulary versions of news.   

 

6. Try to go back to things you have read before (and found hard) and check to see if you are improving.  Repeating the same texts again and again will yield results.  I've been working on a novel I bought almost 2 years ago.  It was a nightmare at first, but I come back every 2 months or so, and now I can read most of the first few chapters.  Reading the same thing again and again seems to have extra benefit of memorizing the words in place (which seems to be super helpful even when they crop up again in different places).