Starting to study again

[JenniferW]

I've had a complete break from studying Chinese - a break of maybe 4 years. I live somewhere there are no Chinese classes, but before I had to stop (other things in life took over), I'd found a private teacher and was having a once-a-week 1-hour session with private study in between. I'd got as far as passing HSK Level 4 (just). I can't believe how much has drifted away in the break! Can anyone recommend good tests for trying to work out where I am now?

[roddy]

Welcome back! I'd go over your old materials, assuming you have them still. That'll act as a reminder, and as you get closer to where you left off you'll perhaps find a good re-starting point.

[Shelley]

There is this little tool http://www.wumaocorp.com/hskcheck/

 

It gives an idea what HSK level you are at, there are few like it out there, there was some discussion about it here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/46752-hsk-check-a-tool-that-helps-you-estimate-your-hsk-level/

 

Hope you enjoy your return to study

[GotJack]

Hey, although I've not had a break of 4 years, I've certainly had periods of time where I haven't been exposed to or studied Chinese. I undoubtedly can remember feeling I had forgotten nearly everything. At these times I've found however, once I've got back into it these old memories and learning patterns come rushing back with relative ease (certainly in comparison with the difficulty with which it took to learn them initially).

 

Best of luck to you, and I imagine it will all come flooding back !

[abcdefg]

I wondered where you had gone, @Jennifer. Welcome back!

[JenniferW]

Thank you all for the welcome back. It must say something about people who learn Chinese that they're still hanging on in there even if you wander off for a long while.

 

I'd tried one online HSK test but wasn't sure out the several which turned up, which ones were rated as good. I'll try what's suggested here.

 

I'd wondered whether to either go back to the old materials or whether to have a complete change. I'd been working my way through a series published by BLCU - a version which I know has now been revised and updated. My last teacher commented a few times about things being out of date. I'd started to use that series some years back in classes in China. So there was some reason for thinking about a change.

 

I'm studying / living in the UK, have taken HSK exams here so know I can do more of that. But I also wondered whether to have a change and prepare for the British AS and A level mandarin exams. I did the British GCSE Mandarin a while back so know the approach is a bit different.

 

Long term, this all just for my own pleasure, so whose exams I take is almost neither here nor there, but aiming for an exam is great for planning and motivation!

 

I was also a great Anki user, and had set up my own decks from my vocab lists. Well, that's all changed a bit since I dropped out!

[Shelley]

I would add that if you used Anki it might be an idea to have a look at Pleco, if you are not familiar with it, I think it is a better way of making and using flashcards and it has other useful things, a dictionary, OCR, stroke order and more.

 

Have a look here http://www.pleco.com/

[JenniferW]

Shelley - Pieco looks good as a dictionary, but from what I can see on their website, I can't see any flashcard details. Is it just staring me in the face somewhere?

[Zeppa]

It's not just a dictionary, it's a collection of dictionaries and a document reader where you can look characters in a document up in the dictionaries, and a complex flashcard system, and that's not all:

www.pleco.com/pleco2ip.html

[abcdefg]

When you look up words in the dictionary, you can add them to a flashcard deck at the same time. (Talking about Pleco) In my case, these are just words I didn't know when going about daily life in China. May be from conversation or from watching TV or reading the newspaper.

 

Every day or two, I review the words I had to look up when I have some otherwise wasted time, such as riding the bus. Then, every weekend, I review all that week's looked-up words a couple of times.

 

If some are particularly useful, but for whatever reason difficult to remember, I write them a bunch of times. (Could do this on Skritter, though I use pencil and paper.)

 

Not a particularly sophisticated study plan, but probably helps some in expanding vocabulary.

[Shelley]

If you look here on the products introduction page it is in the list of major features http://www.pleco.com/android.html

 

It is similar for iOS I believe but I am an android user so my experience is with that version.

 

it has been said the free version of Pleco flashcards isn't real Pleco flashcards because it doesn't have all the options but the free version is good enough to get an idea of how good it is.

 

I started with the basic paid bundle and as I learnt what I needed I added it. It is all very reasonably priced, support is excellent and I have been using it very successfully for years now.

 

IMHO no student of chinese should be with out it.

[abcdefg]

I think one of your more pressing tasks, Jennifer, should be to get familiar with the new tools that were not available, or at least common, 4 or 5 years ago when you last studied. Lots more is available now in the way of learning technology that will make the job easier.

 

You might even consider starting a thread posing the question to the forum in general. "What's new in learning Chinese in the last few years?" Mastering some of these tools can make the difference between just "working hard" and "working smart."

 

Four years is a long layoff: You will need all the help you can get. And personally, I'm a believer in the maxim that old dogs can learn new tricks (being an old dog myself.)

[Shelley]

abcdefg's suggestion is a good one.

 

For a start you could have a look at my blog about my learning materials and how I use New Practical Chinese Reader which is a popular text book and is good for self study as there are answer books to help you check your work. http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/blog/108-my-chinese-learning-blog/

 

Four years is enough time for quite a few new things to have arrived.

 

 

 

 

[JenniferW]

Thanks for the suggestions - good advice.

 

I had reservations about going back to the old coursebook - apart from anything else, the idea felt boring. But I have a mixed collection of other material on the shelves (some of the easy readers, for example), and I might start of working my way through some of them as a first step. Starting on a new series of course books could well end up then waiting till I get to a stage of thinking about which exams I might aim for next, and whether I go off for a holiday with some classes in China next year, for example.

 

For flashcards, as I do most of my studying at home, I want something that works across my laptop plus a phone (for standing at bus stops, etc). Pleco looks good - but I'm still attracted to Anki. I'll look around to see what other people are thinking now.

[abcdefg]

Comparing Pleco with Anki is like comparing apples to oranges.

[li3wei1]

I had a break of very nearly 20 years. For the first 13 or so, I was living in HK, and I made a few brief trips into China and Taiwan, but I was living in English among people who spoke Cantonese. Then I was in the UK, not even thinking about Chinese. Then one day I had to get up to speed as quickly as possible, so I listened to tapes, read books, struggled with a dictionary, and it came back remarkably quickly. Plus I was changing over from traditional to simplified, and learning pinyin properly for the first time. Now, maybe it had been more firmly entrenched to begin with (I'd lived in Taiwan for four years), but it was all there, or enough of it to work with. You can do it.

[mackie1402]

I've never had a long break between studying (longest was about 6 months), but when I did come back to it I tried going over my old textbooks. It was a little tedious and I found myself 'remembering' rather than reviewing. I could remember some of the dialogues and sentences so clearly, yet couldn't recall some of the words.

 

I ended up buying some different textbooks from different series which were a similar level to where I left off. It helped me review greatly, it wasn't boring, plus it had a new word every so often which was nice. 

 

The difference is, I'm living in China and at the time had a vast selection of textbooks to choose from. If you're in England, variety could be one of the problems.

[LantauLarry]

I did two years of daily (5 days a week) online tutoring in Mandarin, which was great and fun, yet I was still frustratingly unable to put together an elegant, grammatical sentence. So I quit. Then, months later, I did several visits to mainland China and Taiwan, and just spoke without worry, and discovered that somehow, mysteriously, the language had been brewing in my head, and I felt absolutely at ease. Maybe Mandarin is like that, it takes time to settle and form, like Jell-O. Lots was forgotten, but I've been finding it so much easier to pick up new words and phrases and correct my tones, all in a natural way. I think after a while, that is, for me, the best way to learn.