Year One Reflections (Perspective for Beginners) (Part 3)

[David Ma]

As you might already know, I’ve been living and studying Chinese full-time in China at Xiamen University for the last year (I’m currently starting a second year). This is Part 3 of a series of posts discussing all things related to my quest to reach native-level pronunciation after 2 years. I am posting in reverse order and Part 4 can be found here.

 

This post is just a list of what I felt like were the most important realizations after studying abroad full-time for a whole year. I started out as an absolute beginner and so my intention is always for that student who is currently doing their research and deciding if studying Chinese is something they would like to spend a large part of their life pursuing (i.e. me, a year and a half ago ).

 

Disclaimer: The word “difficult” is often thrown around when Chinese comes up and there is no denying it but when did difficulty ever become a bad thing? If this last year has shown me anything, difficulty is the single greatest motive for some all of life’s best epiphanies. If you don’t already believe this, hopefully studying some Chinese will soon enlighten you!

 

1. It is a long, long road to good pronunciation. I remember first starting character writing and being completely overwhelmed by what felt like an impossible number of details to remember. A simple dash here, a shorter or longer line there, or a few sloppy lines and it felt like the character I wanted to write looked like something else. 日 (rì) vs. 曰 (yuē)  is a good example of this. But despite this seemingly unconquerable problem, after a few weeks of writing characters and watching teachers scribble unintelligibly on the board, you soon realize the “tolerance” for error and how much you can deviate from the perfectly written character while still being understood.

Getting to this point for pronunciation is a much longer story. It’s been around 1 year and a month now and I’m still hearing new nuances, practicing differentiating the tones, and making certain that I am speaking with that same level of “tolerance” so that I can be understood.

 

2. Technology is increasingly making learning a faster, better, and cheaper process. Textbooks with native-level pronunciation, digital flashcards, spaced repetition software, digital character writing apps, stroke animations, etc. It is really incredible how much easier learning Chinese is today versus a few decades ago, especially for the self-taught learner. It will be very interesting to see what learning Chinese will be like (if it is still around!) in a few decades. Greatest piece of new material I am looking forward to: Outlier Linguistics dictionary.

 

3. Living in China for the absolute beginner isn’t helpful for the reason most people would think it is. Sure, reading signs and hearing the language helps but not as much as it helps an intermediate student. What is great about living in China is being confronted daily with your ignorance. This constant reminder gives ample motivation to put in the large amount of effort for the initial climb ( I really like wushijiao’s roller coaster analogy). When you start out, Chinese will seem impossible, but as you keep studying, it gets exponentially easier. At some point along the path, learning Chinese becomes easier than learning new English words.

 

Character frequency lists are a great example of this. Somewhere between a semester and a year, every new word has a least one familiar character. Once you reach the magical 3000 character mark, almost every new word is just a matter of putting known characters together, like using an alphabet.  The best part though is that the pronunciation is standard (unlike Phonics in English where French, German, Latin, Spanish and all sorts of foreign pronunciations are tossed into the mix). For this reason, I think at some point my Chinese will probably surpass my English in the pronunciation department.

 

4. Living in China as an absolute beginner student can get pretty difficult. I felt guilty for a long time because I spent 100% of my time in my room studying. All the glorious interactions I was supposed to be having with Chinese culture, people, and media was largely off limits (and still mostly is after a whole year). I gave up on my language partner, going to student clubs, and generally communicating with Chinese people because it didn’t really help all that much to improve my Chinese. This is normal! It isn’t until after a semester or two where you can haltingly speak that China opens up to you. I think a much better use of time is really burning the midnight oil early on so that you can get out and start interacting with the massive world of Chinese much sooner.

It is also a chicken and egg problem. You can’t study at home full-time due to school/job commitments and then if you win a scholarship to study in China, you spend most of your time in your room studying.

That being said, moving to China will undoubtedly be a life-changing experience (if Asia is an unexplored frontier for you). So even if 90% goes over your head, living and studying in China is bound to be unlike anything else you’ve experienced before.

 

5. I will say, though, that if I had a choice I would still rather start learning Chinese in China. The way tones are explained here were much more thorough than the semester I took back home in Ohio, even using the excellent Integrated Chinese series of textbooks. Chinese is also crazy overwhelming at the beginning. So doing a large initial push (even if only one semester abroad) will do wonders for your ability to keep studying. Even after a whole year abroad I still doubt how much progress I have made, so I can only imagine how difficult it would be to take it slowly over many years. **The next part in this series is a timeline of major milestones just for that reason** It can also be really hard to gauge progress and determine what is actually a “normal” pace.

 

6. Tones, tone pairs, sentence cadence, and tone sandhi practice are required by the beginner student and advanced student alike. Another way Chinese overwhelms the beginner is in the existence of the pinyin chart ;). For the prodigious student who wants to master pronunciation right away, he/she might think that it will take a lifetime to master all the possible combinations. Even though there are 400 or so pinyin combinations plus four tones for most of them, patience is key. Add in tone pair combinations and it can seem impossible, but, somehow, you do get through all of them. Every chapter is a new set of words and even if classes seem to not stress pronunciation later on as much as in the beginning, that journey continues well on into the second year. There really isn’t any shortcut to getting good. Practice, repetition, and more practice. Chinese is difficult because almost nothing from English translates over. It’s like learning your first language all over again which is really cool.

 

7. Listening is all about repetition. Sure, if you are planning to take the HSK test you will want to have some test-taking listening strategies, but the way we learn to listen well is by hearing any given word, phrase, and/or sentence a gabazillion times. We do this so well that we can often piece together sentences when we’ve only heard a few words, and can even read lips when there is no sound at all. I suddenly feel a lot less guilty about not understanding textbook recordings on the first, second, or even third listen. It’s the failing for the fourth time that makes your listening better not some superhuman ability to parse unknown words and grammar on the fly. I just think about how I use my mother tongue on a daily basis and compare my Chinese learning to that as much as possible.

 

8. The reason kids have such great pronunciation comes down largely to one fact: No one has qualms about telling a child that they are wrong. Just remember learning your native tongue. It was years and years of people willfully (and sometimes joyously ;) ) telling you that you were absolutely not correct. And as a kid, whether you liked it or not, you learned a lot very quickly (but still not as quickly as adults). And it turns out, kids end up being the best pronunciation teachers because they have no reservations about telling you your Chinese sucks, laughing hysterically, and correcting you for the 49^th time.

 

9. And speaking of kids, tutoring English has been an eye-opening experience on many accounts. Put simply, there is a much deeper appreciation for the teacher-student dynamic when you are suddenly on the other side. A lot to be said here, but I will leave it at that.

 

10. After a full year abroad, the analogy I return to most to visualize the Chinese learning journey, is throwing mud at a wall. Though this phrase is usually in reference to shot-gunning random ideas and seeing what works, here I’m referring to a different phenomenon. Imagine a hose full of muddy water being sprayed towards a wall. At first, most of the muddy water will run right off, but a few specks will remain. If the hose is pointed at the wall for long enough, and maybe taking breaks allowing the wall to dry, more and more mud will accumulate on the wall. And the more the mud accumulates on the wall, the easier it is for even more mud to stick and accumulate.

 

Maybe the analogy doesn’t need much explanation. When I first started learning Chinese, those few small specks felt mightily underwhelming compared to the large blank wall that was unlearned Chinese. But as the months passed, the more random specks I got to stick on that wall, especially when the specks were close together, the easier it got to add more and more understanding or mud (proximity being how closely related two pieces of info about Chinese are, i.e. characters with similar functional components). All the mud that didn’t stick is the countless times I’ve forgotten characters, vocab, grammar etc. But even when mud doesn’t stick I’ve realize that there is usually some imperceptible dirt left behind and maybe on the fourth or fifth try, that spot will finally get a piece of mud that sticks permanently. As the process continues, the hose gets discarded and it’s possible to just toss handfuls of wet mud at the wall and get them to stick on the first try. (The depth of mud corresponding to the levels and framework that build up strokes->characters->words->grammar->sentences->experiences) The more mud, the better everything stays in place (it’s much more difficult to lose the language you’ve acquired). I would like to think that I am starting to toss pretty small chunks up on the wall at this point, which is quite motivating. Hopefully this will gave a ray or two of hope to the beginner who is putting up the first few specks and can’t step back to see the larger picture. Best piece of advice when learning Chinese: patiently enjoy the journey.

 

+ A downside to practicing pronunciation well? “No way!” you may counter. Hilariously enough, because most foreigners don’t make much of an effort with pronunciation aren't aiming for native-level pronunciation, if you do, people will immediately assume you can understand WAY more than you actually do. The case usually being me asking a simple question and then the native rattling off a couple sentences at what feels like supersonic speeds only to be confused by my very obvious lack of understanding. Or sellers think I'm playing them with a lack of Chinese to haggle a better price.

 

Study well!

[Mr John]

Nice post.

 

As someone that went to China with no more than hello and goodbye under my belt, I found myself nodding sagely when you mentioned the benefits of going over with an intermediate level of Mandarin. It also reflects research someone pointed to in another post. However, as you also suggest, there are some advantages to going over as a beginner; the main one being that it is somewhat easier to develop a more neutral accent. Naturally, it also comes with the drawback you described, people tend to massively overestimate your level.

 

I also like your mud analogy. While I was over there it was hard to see the mud gradually accumulating. Letting it bake in the oppressive heat of an Australian summer has definitely given me greater perspective.

 

I'm looking forward to hearing how your project plays out.

 

Lastly, I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of Australians with decent tones and pronunciation. I can't remember which country you're from but I hope you continue to add to the pool of learners aiming for more than just passable.

 

Who knows, one day learners of Mandarin might actually need decent Chinese to get a compliment haha!

[AdamD]

Great post!

 

Hilariously enough, because most foreigners don’t make much of an effort with pronunciation aren't aiming for native-level pronunciation, if you do, people will immediately assume you can understand WAY more than you actually do.

 

It's actually hard to force yourself to slow down, or even to pretend you're at a more basic level. Nerves? Politeness? I don't know what it is, but if I walk up to someone and speak like a beginner I just feel condescending.

 

imron has helped me to see that this could be part of my chronic problem with understanding pretty much anything. Ignoring my battle with pre-recorded material just for the moment, It seems so weird that my ability to converse has collapsed as my speech and reading have matured, even when the other person slows right down. I dunno.