How much conversation time per week?

[Flickserve]

Just a little survey to see how much time people get in face to face interactive using the language.

I probably get about two hours a week in with tutor and a bit outside in daily life. I would put myself as advanced beginner trying to transition on to intermediate. I do listen to a Mandarin radio station about 45mins average per day(don't understand most of it). Not good at watching films or YouTube.

[tysond]

4 hours with tutor, 2-3 hours of meetings in Chinese, 2-3 hours of conversations with strangers.

So about 8-12 hours of conversation a week.

 

At your level I wouldn't recommend listening to radio.  I would recommend intermediate level podcasts.  

 

Not a lot of point listening to something you can't understand at all.  You want something you can almost understand.

[Mr John]

Nowhere near enough:

 

On a good week: 1-2 hours

Generally: 1 hour a week

[chinesemaster]

Besides face to face interaction, any other ways you think can improve listening and speaking skills? like using some apps.

[tysond]

Besides face to face interaction, any other ways you think can improve listening and speaking skills? like using some apps.

 

 

 

 

Well, podcasts with transcripts are an excellent way to improve listening.  Listen, look at transcript, listen again.  Repeat until bored.

 

Movies with chinese subtitles are great for listening too.

 

To improve speaking, do shadowing.  Listen, repeat what they say.  Record it and compare with the original.  Repeat until bored.

 

Also, Glossika style prompts: They give English, you parrot out the Chinese sentence.  This helps a lot with fluent responses. 

 

You can make it as complicated or as simple as you like.  What matters is that you do it frequently (every day is best) and that there is a feedback mechanism.

 

Apps:  

 

One app I found really useful was an HSK testing app for my iOS device (they are just called HSK4, HSK5 etc).

It basically does the HSK audio test at whatever level app you download.

 

Has about 50 questions, you need to listen and select from multiple choice on the answers - requiring you to understand the sentence.  The transcripts of sentences are there.  

Doing 10 or more questions a day you will get better.  You really want to focus on hearing every single word - not just memorizing the answers.   

[abcdefg]

All my live, face-to-face conversation interactions are in Chinese, 24/7. Rarely use English. At most once or twice a week here (Kunming) or during international travel.

 

Most of my reading and writing is in English, and that has impeded my overall progress. Mobile phone 短信 and QQ chats are Chinese, but that's pretty simple stuff.

[Flickserve]

At your level I wouldn't recommend listening to radio. I would recommend intermediate level podcasts.

Not a lot of point listening to something you can't understand at all. You want something you can almost understand.

Agree. Radio just happens to be very convenient. I use it to train my listening to words and tones and also the rhythm of the speech.

Judging by the lack of responses, quite a few may be getting zero practice.

[abcdefg]

Judging by the lack of responses, quite a few may be getting zero practice.

 

I no longer think of it as "language practice" per se. Just as getting along in daily life. There may be others here who view it the same way and that's why they haven't posted.

[JustinJJ]

Just got back from my first trip to

kunming (+Dali, Lijiang, xianggelila) where I was basically conversing in Chinese three weeks all day every day (other than when my girlfriend and I didn't want others to understand us). No time for reading, TV or anything else there as spent the whole time travelling and outings with various friends/family of my girlfriend.

In Australia I would probably spend an average of an hour a day on Chinese conversations in daily life.

[Demonic_Duck]

• At work: Relatively little. Our little corner of the office is all foreigners at the moment. The office as a whole is majority Chinese, but our team doesn't have much interaction with most other departments. Meetings are often partly or all in Chinese, but that depends on who's present. Similarly to Tysond, I'd estimate around 2-3 hours a week on average, though of course it varies.
• At home: My communication with my girlfriend is mostly in Chinese (I'd say 80% or more), although we don't live together. Our schedules also don't match up very well, so we mostly only get evenings together, even at weekends. I'd say this works out to about 8-10 hours a week.
• Socially: Difficult to say, as it varies a lot from week to week. At the moment my social group is mostly comprised of foreigners, so perhaps only an average of 4-5 hours a week.

Even that might be over-optimistic. I feel like I've really been slacking lately. I also haven't been taking any classes, which I think would be helpful to do, even if only for a couple of hours a week. A good tutor would help direct my attention to aspects I need to focus on, if nothing else.

[Shelley]

I have to admit to zero time spent in conversation. But strangely enough I have just this week made contact with a Chinese friend of a friend who is in the UK for awhile and has agreed to help me with conversation.

 

We have made contact on wechat and are in the process of agreeing mutually convenient times to chat, a bit nervous   but also looking forward to it.

[chinesemaster]

We have made contact on wechat and are in the process of agreeing mutually convenient times to chat, a bit nervous    but also looking forward to it

 

 

Excited, not nervous, right

 

before talking to a person, you can talk to yourself first. Or pick up some app which can "hear" your pronunciation.

[Shelley]

Excited, not nervous, right

 

No, nervous

[stapler]

Maybe 10 minutes a week of really basic stuff. Trying to talk to my friends in Chinese is uncomfortable because there's too much I want to say and using English to do it is infinitely easier for everyone. I also often find myself in situations where everyone is speaking Chinese and I respond/interject with English. It's pretty funny now that I think about it.

[Ness]

Since I'm getting back into learning and trying to at least get to an intermediate level, I'd say my exposure isn't as much as I would like which needs to improve. Most of my conversation comes every Friday when I meet up with an unofficial Chinese learning group which is about two hours. There are multiple groups so I might see if I can go to more than one. Other than that it's on my own. I usually try to watch a little bit of Taiwanese drama everyday just to get the exposure. There are podcasts out there so I might listen to those.

[ouyangjun]

work...  25% of the time spent in Chinese on average (more or less depending on who I need to entertain - US visitors or local Chinese).  With my management team, i try to use close to 100% English, because their English needs to continually get better so they can interact with our foreign colleagues.  Below my management team level I mostly use Chinese.

 

home...  60% of my home life is done in Chinese.  It used to be more, but I got lazy over the past year.  My wife and I go in and out of both without thinking about it.

 

socially... really depends who I'm hanging out with.  If my Chinese friends - 100% in Chinese.  If my foreign friends, outside of ordering a beer, 0%... but most often it is a mix of foreign and Chinese

[eion_padraig]

Well, daily I use the language for interacting in restaurants and stores, but that tends to be very basic language skills that I've mastered a long time ago so it rarely stretches me linguistically.

 

I have two hours of week of one-on-one tutoring all in Chinese. I probably use Chinese between 6 - 10 hours during the week when hanging out with friends and speaking with Chinese colleagues. Although my work environment is theoretically an English speaking one, I do speak with some of our Mandarin teachers in Chinese because they know I study for fun though that is usually limited to non-work conversations.

 

I tend to listen a lot to what people are saying around me, so I get a lot of listening practice on the subway, in restaurants, in my building's elevator, and on the street.

 

I'm also taking the online edX intermediate grammar course, so I'm watching those videos which are in Chinese.

 

I do think making the jump from upper elementary to intermediate takes a lot of input and it requires you to use the language a lot. It's probably very hard to do if you're not in a Chinese rich environment and even if you are in a Chinese rich environment it takes a willingness to use the language as much as possible in ways that challenge you to broaden your usage. You probably need either need to work using Chinese or have lots of Chinese speaking friends whom you just speak to in Chinese.

[wulfgar]

I'm also taking the online edX intermediate grammar course, so I'm watching those videos which are in Chinese.

 

Ditto. How are you liking it, btw?

 

I'm in my (small) home town in the US, so I have to do all my conversation online. I'm currently on a spurt trying to raise my Chinese from a B1 to a B2, so I talk with a tutor 1 hr everyday; it's pure conversation. Unfortunately my Chinese tutors aren't as disciplined as teachers of other language I've worked with, so it averages out to about 5.5 hrs per week due to cancellations.

 

When I'm in a "just maintaining" phase, I typically do about 2 language partners per week, which amounts to 30 min Chinese. 

[Gerxy]

I am a Chinese native speaker, so almost every secs except sleeping. I will chat with my foreign friends through QQ or wechat. Most of my foreign friends are in United States. LOL.

[kawakusong]

I chat with my Chinese friend once a week through wechat voice call. Generally half an hour everytime.