Some Advice on Future Study Direction.

[RichardSTJ]

Hi everyone, I wanted some advice on a few things going forward with my studies and wondered what everyone's thoughts are.

 

So I'm 29 and I've been in China (Tianjin) a year and a half, to be honest I never expected to get so into studying Chinese but it's just kind of hooked me, and somehow I am going to master this language. I started learning seriously when I got a Chinese girlfriend about a year ago.

 

So I'm somewhere between HK5 and HK6 level, I've not taken the official test, but I've taken some HSK5 mock tests and found them pretty doable, that was a couple of months back so I've got better since then. I'm hoping I can hit 6 before the year is out. So I'll first talk about my general study routine and see if anyone has any good ideas of how to improve it. Then I'll talk about what I feel my biggest drawbacks are and see if anyone has any ideas for that.

 

Generally, wake up and before I get out of bed do about 200 flashcards I've got saved in Pleco. I pretty much save every word I learn in Pleco, along with some example sentences if they are in there.

 

During the day I'll listen to Chinesepod lessons or another audio source, and go over the subtitles or provided transcript to attain full understanding. I'll also do a little bookwork (developing Chinese Advanced Comprehensive Course I).

 

In the evening I'll finish off about another 200-300 flashcards before going to bed and maybe watch an easy to understand Chinese TV show. （世界年轻说) where foreigners speak Chinese to each other is my favorite for this.

 

So my biggest drawbacks.

 

Pronounciation: So I still don't pronounce things great. I particularly struggle with differenciating certain initial and final combos whenever I say 出去 (chuqu) my girlfriend breaks down in tears of laughter. 住 and 据 (zhu and ju) also get me quite a lot. So any ideas for great pronounciation resources.

 

Writing: I don't write at all, but more than that, my knowledge of the SYSTEMS of writing is subpar, and is definatly making my character regonition sub-optimal. (I can only recongize radicals when they are obvious seperate things generally, not when they are intrigrated into a character with other radicals).

 

I'd like an assessment whether it's actually worth it learning to write. Now I know lots of you are going to say yes of course, listen, I know it's useful. But considering 90% of the writing we do nowerdays is on electronic devices, is it really worth investing so much effort into a skill that'll almost never be used. The fact that its almost never used as well, means you need to invest way more time into "upkeeping" it for the sake of upkeep than you do with all the other skills (reading, speaking, listening) which you excercise all the time naturally just by using the language.

 

Please note that I am seperating whether i need to learn to write, from learning the writing "system" I.e radicals and character composition, which I know I need to improve upon. So does anyone have any advice how to do this, particularly maybe a list of common radicals with memonic information.

 

Word Usage: My vocabulary is excellent, but the words never quite seem to come when I need them, or I mix them up. I use memonics as much as I can, but often I find myself using words which I know don't quite convey the meaning I know I possess, or just making mistakes.

 

Furthermore does anyone have any study tips that helped them enourmously that they think no one should be without?

 

Why for example does everyone say Anki is a must? I know SRS is an incredibly useful tool, but Pleco has this built into it, plus I can save any word I want instantly as a flashcard along with examples. What does Anki offer that pleco can't?

 

Thanks for the help everyone.

[li3wei1]

My opinion:

 

If you have Pleco, you don't need Anki.

 

I understand where you're coming from as far as writing, and I have similarly neglected my writing. Some time ago, I got a free three-month subscription to Skritter, and used it about 20 minutes a day for that period, running through a list of HSK 5 words. I think it did me some good, and by that I mean it improved my ability to recognize characters, as I still don't do handwriting. To get maximum benefit from it, you'd probably want to give up flashcarding for whatever period you go for. I don't think Skritter is worth paying for indefinitely, but if you buy a 3-month or 6-month subscription and go for it intensely, it might be worth it.

 

http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/pronunciation-of-mandarin-chinese/5 is the best explanation I've seen for how to differentiate the q/j/x sounds from the ch/zh/sh sounds. And rather than listen for foreigners speak Chinese to each other, why not listen to Chinese people speaking with each other?

 

As far as word usage, the only solution is practice. Throw yourself into conversations, listen to the corrections, imitate other people, ask questions about why this word and not that word. Your usage will always lag behind your comprehension, so as long as you keep expanding your receptive vocabuary and practicing using your productive vocabulary, there will be progress.

 

It sounds like you're doing a lot, and if you can keep doing it, you'll get better. You probably know yourself what's working and what's not. Don't be afraid to change things. Try a different textbook, or work on a newspaper, or switch TV shows, or try a novel, or a non-fiction book about something you like.

[Xiao Kui]

I'd like an assessment whether it's actually worth it learning to write. Now I know lots of you are going to say yes of course, listen, I know it's useful. But considering 90% of the writing we do nowerdays is on electronic devices, is it really worth investing so much effort into a skill that'll almost never be used. The fact that its almost never used as well, means you need to invest way more time into "upkeeping" it for the sake of upkeep than you do with all the other skills (reading, speaking, listening) which you excercise all the time naturally just by using the language.

When I started to learn to read, i wrote the words and corresponding pinyin 5 times each. I think this helped me memorize characters. That was before smartphones and all these flashcard apps. I have lots of friends who use these now but i don't think their retention is as good as mine was from writing.

 

Please note that I am seperating whether i need to learn to write, from learning the writing "system" I.e radicals and character composition, which I know I need to improve upon. So does anyone have any advice how to do this, particularly maybe a list of common radicals with memonic information.

I think the main benefit of writing is that it helps you remember and recognize the characters, so i dont think the other stuff is as important in the big picture of learning Chinese. However, knowing radicals can be helpful in deciphering the meaning and/or pronunciation of unknown characters, and knowing the components does help in constructing the characters.  When I started learning I didn't even know there was a stroke order so I didn't do that correctly, but my characters still looked decent and writing still helped me remember. Later I did learn the basic stroke order and though i don't always do it perfectly it is pretty close. i  would mention that I am an artist, so perhaps copying the characters without knowing the stroke order was perhaps easier for me. 

 

Furthermore does anyone have any study tips that helped them enourmously that they think no one should be without?

Yes, that would be writing new characters and words 5 times each. I think this is the element that my flashcard-flipping friends are missing. Writing practice is part of any Chinese person's education, and they read pretty well ;)  Write for the sake of reading and retention rather than the sake of writing itself, which, as you mentioned, is not used much anymore.  (But of course there are still those moments when it comes in handy - believe me! )

[Xiao Kui]

As far as word usage, the only solution is practice. Throw yourself into conversations, listen to the corrections, imitate other people, ask questions about why this word and not that word. Your usage will always lag behind your comprehension, so as long as you keep expanding your receptive vocabuary and practicing using your productive vocabulary, there will be progress.

I wholeheartedly agree, and I would add that I believe that usage is perhaps the hardest part of Chinese - that's why learning the basics such as pronunciation and reading are important, but just the start - then begins the lifelong journey of learning usage

[dementior]

thats a lot of progress for only one year and a half! congrats!

by the number of flascards per day I assume you are studying full-time or your work schedule is pretty relaxed... 400 flashcards a day is a lot of reviews )

 

WRITING. You dont write you will never ever get to HSK6 level... And I dont mean passing the exam... I mean proficient in the language. You have to write. I dont care with or without pen but you have to write compositions. Ask your gf to read-proof or upload them to lang-8, but you need to write to help you with that vocabulary that does not come to you naturally when you want to express something accurately.

 

By the way the full SRS functionality of pleco is only avaiable with the PAID bundle, I guess you are already aware of this...

[RichardSTJ]

I do write, I use Chinese to write all the time, I just do it on a computer or mobile phone rather than with my hands, my post was talking about hand writing. I'm not studying full time, I'm actually working full time in China. I'm pretty hard working I guess.

[艾墨本]

First, on writing: Simply put, it's a sign of education. Being able to speak and read and listen to Chinese is great from a practical perspective. Writing, however, tips the social scales and lets natives know you really know the language. Plus, not being able to quick scribble something on a receipt because you can't write can be really embarrassing. 

 

 

As for your notecard load: I was at HSK3/4 level for a long time, not according to known vocab but according to how I sounded when I spoke. I finally had a tutor that hardballed me, forcing me to slow down on vocab and just focus on simple grammar. Even though all the grammar we learned was stuff I "knew" it was not stuff I used. I actually stopped actively adding words to my vocabulary and just focused on reading more (a lot of simple graded readers) and speaking more. The stuff I "knew" slowly became stuff I used. I've started adding new words to my vocabulary again but at a much slower pace (5 new words a day and reviewing whatever anki says to). As a result the words I'm adding quickly become words I use and understand.

 

Point of my story: learning all that vocab is great, but what parts of the language are you neglecting? 

[Flickserve]

First, on writing: Simply put, it's a sign of education. Being able to speak and read and listen to Chinese is great from a practical perspective. Writing, however, tips the social scales and lets natives know you really know the language. Plus, not being able to quick scribble something on a receipt because you can't write can be really embarrassing.

As for your notecard load: I was at HSK3/4 level for a long time, not according to known vocab but according to how I sounded when I spoke. I finally had a tutor that hardballed me, forcing me to slow down on vocab and just focus on simple grammar. Even though all the grammar we learned was stuff I "knew" it was not stuff I used. I actually stopped actively adding words to my vocabulary and just focused on reading more (a lot of simple graded readers) and speaking more. The stuff I "knew" slowly became stuff I used. I've started adding new words to my vocabulary again but at a much slower pace (5 new words a day and reviewing whatever anki says to). As a result the words I'm adding quickly become words I use and understand.

Point of my story: learning all that vocab is great, but what parts of the language are you neglecting?

Nice post. When you worked with the tutor, how many lessons a week were you doing? Were you living in China? How long did it take to change your habits or you noticing your improvement?

It's just that for me, I feel i have had to take a few steps back, relearn some tones and go through simple grammar again. I still rate myself as a beginner around A2. It's a bit trickier for me as I am surrounded by Cantonese in daily life and this permeates through into my attempts at reading and speaking putonghua.

[RichardSTJ]

 

As for your notecard load: I was at HSK3/4 level for a long time, not according to known vocab but according to how I sounded when I spoke. I finally had a tutor that hardballed me, forcing me to slow down on vocab and just focus on simple grammar. Even though all the grammar we learned was stuff I "knew" it was not stuff I used. I actually stopped actively adding words to my vocabulary and just focused on reading more (a lot of simple graded readers) and speaking more. The stuff I "knew" slowly became stuff I used. I've started adding new words to my vocabulary again but at a much slower pace (5 new words a day and reviewing whatever anki says to). As a result the words I'm adding quickly become words I use and understand.

 

Point of my story: learning all that vocab is great, but what parts of the language are you neglecting?

 

 

Thanks for that, very useful comment. As for what I'm neglecting, I should probably dig further into the writing system, it would certainly help my memonics.

[dementior]

Hi again,

Yes I know that you meant hand writing on your post... And my advice was targeting your problems related to "word usage". When you practice flashcards how do you evaluate your answer:

 

- do you try to remember the most common collocations of that word?

- do you write down an example sentence?

- do you try to think about synonyms of that word?

- do you focus only on the most common meaning, or do you take the chance of stumbing upon the word to learn about about other meanings you are not familiar with?

 

For me getting a good grasp of a noun is not hard, but the combos adj/adverb as well as verbs do take time, that is why for me a block of 400 flashcards can take easily 4 hours or more... 

Again, my advice is that you write compositions: 300 hanzi, 500 hanzi, 1000 hanzi... Pushing yourself to write the best Chinese you can. This involves first the writing and then reviewing the feedback provided by native speakers.

[艾墨本]

 

 

Nice post. When you worked with the tutor, how many lessons a week were you doing? Were you living in China? How long did it take to change your habits or you noticing your improvement?

It's just that for me, I feel i have had to take a few steps back, relearn some tones and go through simple grammar again. I still rate myself as a beginner around A2. It's a bit trickier for me as I am surrounded by Cantonese in daily life and this permeates through into my attempts at reading and speaking putonghua. 

 

I was living in China, which did help a lot but since I was busy with work while attending the 2-4 hours of class monday-friday, It wasn't anything that couldn't be done in an out of country setting. However, being in country is a big boost to motivation!

 

We were working out of a beijing press book called "Road to Success 2" or 成功之路2, which is an elementary level book. I knew virtually all of the words in the book and was rebellious about learning from it at first. It felt below me. Especially considering I had an 4-year degree undergrad in Chinese. On top of that, one lesson would be stretched over two or three classes, but also paired with more entertaining activities of her creation. Essentially what she did is have us use simple structures like 把, 着, V来／去, etc. and then use them over and over. If we wanted more of a challenge, it was up to the student to use a variety of words within the structures. Out of class I was working my way through Chinese Breeze level 2 and then level 3 books and studying the words she used in class that I didn't feel I fully knew, even if I knew what they meant after a couple seconds of thinking. This helped to fill in a lot of basic holes I had. These holes were once filled but never made it past short-term memory. The end result was that I was using simple structures together to form complex ideas.

 

In the past, I kept charging forward, adding word after word and grammar after grammar. I would try to use "advanced" words and "advanced" grammars, thinking this is what it meant to be advanced in Chinese. The structure of university Chinese encouraged this for me, as doing this made it easy to get good grades on tests. I had such a wide vocabulary by the time I graduated, and most of it I couldn't use, and even though I recognized the words, often all the words in a sentence, I still didn't know what they mean. In hindsight, it was like every word was pointing to the English word first, and then pointing to the idea/concept/thing that it was symbolizing. 

 

Stopping, slowing down, and stepping back helped me a lot. I found expressing complex ideas did not require complex words and grammar. Studying an Elementary book for two months turned out to be great help, not to mention how much it humbled me. It took me these full two months to feel like my habits had changed and for my view of my own Chinese learning process to mature. 

 

Looking back, I'm happy with the first couple years of my Chinese learning: packing on vocab and grammar steadily even though I couldn't necessarily use it all or recognize it when someone else was using it. I wish that after those two years, though, I stopped bulking on more words and just steeped in the lower level stuff with graded readers, kids shows, listening to graded readers as audio books, and continued flipping those same notecards and practice making sentences and paragraphs on lang-8.com. 

 

As for pronunciation, I've just come to accept that this is one of my weak points and just take it slow, getting excited when I'm understood, even if it is that I'm understood with a foreign accent.

[ouyangjun]

Here's my take, and keep in mind different things work for everyone...

 

 

 

Generally, wake up and before I get out of bed do about 200 flashcards I've got saved in Pleco.

 

 

In the evening I'll finish off about another 200-300 flashcards before going to bed

 

It looks like you're doing a lot of flashcards.  From my perspective of time put in and value out, this is not a good use of time.  If you are somewhere around HSK5/6, you should be able to read Chinese content.  Instead of spending all of that time going over flashcards, read news articles each morning and evening.  Through native content you will get your review of common characters and will come across new characters as a learning resource.  It is actually a lot more effective.  Also, completely clear out your flashcards down to zero.  Start to re-add flashcards when you run across new words in real life... after a few months repeat the process of erasing all of your flashcards.  Others on this forum have talked about this in more detail, it is very beneficial.

 

 

（世界年轻说) where foreigners speak Chinese to each other is my favorite for this.

 

So my biggest drawbacks.

 

Pronounciation: So I still don't pronounce things great. I particularly struggle with differenciating certain initial and final combos whenever I say 出去 (chuqu) my girlfriend breaks down in tears of laughter. 住 and 据 (zhu and ju) also get me quite a lot. So any ideas for great pronounciation resources.

 

My comment would be to move away from watching foreigners speak in Chinese as a means to learn.  If it is pure enjoyment, no problem, but for learning I would target some real native speakers.  Personally I prefer spoken content like podcasts via 优听radio and 喜马拉雅FM.  When I watch TV or movies I have a tendency to rely on the Chinese character subtitles a little too much, which sometimes takes away a dedicated focus on listening.  In real life there is no 汉字 below a persons mouth as they are speaking.

 

 

 

Writing: 

 

Knowing how to read 汉字 and how to write 汉字 via electronic input is probably sufficient enough for real life and is all you need to pass HSK tests as well.  Being able to write the characters by hand is beneficial if you want to get to the point of being completely independent.  For example, to fill out forms at the bank in Chinese characters, signing up for a membership, etc. is preferred to be done in Chinese if possible and these are often done by hand.  The other benefit of being able to write the characters by hand, is that you can be pretty sure you have remembered the character meaning and it will help your character recall.

 

 

 

Word Usage: My vocabulary is excellent, but the words never quite seem to come when I need them, or I mix them up. I use memonics as much as I can, but often I find myself using words which I know don't quite convey the meaning I know I possess, or just making mistakes.

 

As others have said, just get out there and use it with Chinese people.  That is the best way.  The other suggestion is to move away from mnemonics... at some point you just need to remember these things.  I used mnemonics when I was at the beginner to intermediate level, but as you advance (and especially if you are close to HSK5/6), I find trying to memorize mnemonics is not a good use of time.  There are so many characters and memorizing 3000+ mnemonics for characters doesn't seem reasonable, and I quit using mnemonics early in my studies.

 

In general seems you're making good progress in a short time, there is not "cookie cutter" model that works for everyone, so play around with what works for you and keep moving forward.    

[boctulus]

To improve character recognition and their memorization there is nothing better than the understanding using an etymological approach in my humble opinion.

 

Ok, traditional scripts are harder to write but ... at the end, it's a big deal.

[imron]

艾墨本 makes a very good point. 'Rush to advanced' is a mistake many learners make (myself included many years ago).

In my experience you advance much more quickly by consolidating things you know, and making sure you know them well, rather than heaping on lots of things you only have a tenable grasp of.