What your biggest challenge learning Chinese?

[Flickserve]

I guess I've been reversing this. By advanced intermediate I'd think you've spent a lot of time working on grammar and getting a good handle on the more basic vocabulary. Advanced intermediate and beyond seems more like the jump into being able to discuss technical things which demands a rapidly growing vocabulary. Why do you think it is the reverse? Being at advanced low, this would be of some importance to me. Should I push really hard into perfecting my grammar with the words I have as opposed to increasing vocabulary? I was imagining that the nuance would figure itself out with more vocabulary and extensive exposure.

I think it goes both go hand in hand. You go forward in grammar, then you need more vocabulary. Know more vocabulary, the more you can do with grammar.

But I do think it is a valid point to ask how far you take it. If you are not into deep and philosophical arguments, not into scientific discussions nor doing a higher degree, then for most people, advanced intermediate is going to be enough to function in daily life. If you have a hobby or a job, you get exposed to that specific vocabulary which even a native speaker might not know.

When I was preparing for an exam using Cantonese, the words 技术 and 技巧 came up in the technical document. I must have asked at 10 different Hong Kong person's the difference between the two but very few were able to tell me. Honestly, I wouldn't have bothered if not were for the exam.

[yueni]

Well, I think it depends on what you're doing with your Chinese, right?

 

For example, at some points, I think it is important to stop focusing on vocabulary and really focus on using the words you know really well and really flexibly. I've noticed a lot of people focus on vocabulary almost to the exclusion of all else, so they have a large vocabulary, but they can't use it effectively. And as previously noted, at some point, there are diminishing returns on the kind of vocabulary you are using.

 

Once you've learned most of the foundational and grammatical vocabulary (which tends to be around the upper intermediate, lower advanced level), it's more important to master usage than to learn more new vocabulary. By advanced level, I was learning some pretty complicated sentence structures, and I think it was more important at that stage to really focus on learning the sentence structure rather than memorizing lists of vocab. I've found personally that focusing on grammatical structures that are universal and that can be used in almost any circumstance is most important first, because it gives you a framework to build on. Once that framework is solid, you can place all the vocabulary you learn however you want within that framework, and it'll mostly make sense.

 

At the advanced level, you've also got to be careful with the kind of vocabulary you are learning. What I mean by this is, when you're a beginner, everything by default is vocabulary worth learning, because you know nothing. At the intermediate stage, learners have most of the basics down, and are moving on from baby-talk to more sophisticated forms of expression. By advanced level, you can probably hold your own in conversation with native speakers. It won't be perfect, but by and large, you'll probably do just fine until you bump into some more sophisticated/complicated/technical topics that you don't have the vocabulary for. Even so, with the vocabulary you have at the advanced level, you can probably find a way to explain what you mean with the words you have. So at the advanced level, I think learners should focus on learning the vocabulary that they will use more often, or that will come up in their daily life, or that is a part of their life, because those words will get the most usage.

 

Let's use me as an example. For all intents and purposes, I'm pretty much just a tiny bit shy of being considered a native speaker (even though I will never be considered one). Despite the advanced level of my Chinese, I have massive gaps in Chinese knowledge. I'm pretty well-versed in common medical terminology because I interpreted for doctors and nurses for almost three years, but put me in a zoo, and I can barely name half the animals in Chinese. I simply never had to learn all but the most common animals in Chinese, and honestly, even if I tried to memorize them all, I'd just forget because I never need to say hedgehog or lemur in my daily life. Just the other night, I found myself in the interesting position of interpreting Cards Against Humanity for my Chinese friends. I can discuss complex UI and backend issues with developers, but I still found myself stumbling over trying to explain "glory holes", "doggy style", and "pixelated bukkake". And despite not having the actual vocabulary for it, I was able to describe what those things meant because I knew how to string the words I knew together in a grammatical fashion that made sense. (Don't worry, I did some research after the fact, and now know how to say pixelated bukkake in Chinese.)

 

So absolutely, bone up (tee hee) on the vocabulary you need, but don't stress out on the ones that rarely come up in your daily life. If you find yourself talking about computers a lot, by all means, go learn all the computer terminology you need. You know you'll use it. If you speak about Buddhist philosophy a lot, go learn the vocabulary for it, sure. At the advanced level, vocabulary should serve your lifestyle and your communication needs. You shouldn't be a slave to Anki any more, you shouldn't need to be one.

[889]

Speaking so as to be understood.

[艾墨本]

@Yueni @Flickserve

 

Thank you both for very well thought out explanations. I found both of your posts to be incredibly enlightening. I'll think on what you both have said.

[imron]

more like the jump into being able to discuss technical things which demands a rapidly growing vocabulary.

What it actually needs, as yueni has pointed out, is specific and relevant vocabulary.

 

I've recently been doing some investigation and analysis on this sort of thing, and preliminary results are showing that for someone at HSK5 wanting to read newspaper articles, learning ~300 relevant words (as defined by frequency of words appearing in what you are reading) provides approximately the same increase in understanding as learning all the new HSK6 words (about ~2500 words), and learning the top 2,500 words as defined by relevance, provides an enormous increase in understanding over just learning HSK6 words.

 

Chinese has a very long tail.  As you get more advanced, you'll get a much greater improvement in your understanding if you focus on words you are likely to use and focus on being able to correctly use the words you already know.

[Chris Two Times]

Just the other night, I found myself in the interesting position of interpreting Cards Against Humanity for my Chinese friends. I can discuss complex UI and backend issues with developers, but I still found myself stumbling over trying to explain "glory holes", "doggy style", and "pixelated bukkake". And despite not having the actual vocabulary for it, I was able to describe what those things meant because I knew how to string the words I knew together in a grammatical fashion that made sense. (Don't worry, I did some research after the fact, and now know how to say pixelated bukkake in Chinese.)

 

Shizzam! I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. 

 

I find that while I am conversational (fluent? naw, I wouldn't say so, not yet) and can meet head on most of what I run into in my day-to-day life, when I get stumped in conversation on occasion and can't explain something, it annoys me and motivates me to break through some of these limitations in the future. This leads to my motivations...

 

...I find myself at the upper intermediate level and wanting to jump into advanced studies, REALLY jump into advanced (whatever that means), so much so that I want to take a two-year sabbatical and just focus on studying Chinese and getting greater immersion. At the poker game of Chinese studies, I want to move my chips to the center and say, "all in".

 

I am formulating a plan as to how to do this and I am excited to carry it out and see how it all turns out.

 

By advanced level, you can probably hold your own in conversation with native speakers. It won't be perfect, but by and large, you'll probably do just fine until you bump into some more sophisticated/complicated/technical topics that you don't have the vocabulary for. Even so, with the vocabulary you have at the advanced level, you can probably find a way to explain what you mean with the words you have. So at the advanced level, I think learners should focus on learning the vocabulary that they will use more often, or that will come up in their daily life, or that is a part of their life, because those words will get the most usage.

 

I find that the above quote describes my current situation pretty well. As for wanting to take up to two years off to hone my Chinese, I am doing this for specific vocational reasons. Indeed, I would also heed what has been said here and largely focus on the vocabulary that I would meet and use in my field.

 

yueni, your post above is the gold-star standard for posts in this thread. Many thanks! I gave it a +1 and I presume a few others will do so as well, very valuable words posted there. yueni, I will take your advice to bone up on my Chinese (tee hee).

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[victor557]

@yueni personally, there is a specific purpose to getting fluent. being able to converse with normal chinese people, many of whom have never been able to chat with a non-chinese person before. it's something meaningful. i'm able to understand the lives of normal chinese people. and i feel it's quite different to speaking with the highly-educated english-speaking ones. it opens the door to the REAL china. definitely one hell of a motivation!!!

i think you hit upon an important point when you said

with the vocabulary you have at the advanced level, you can probably find a way to explain what you mean with the words you have..

 

this is the golden goose... and i first noticed it when i taught English. when i was able to explain new vocabulary to them in the target language, i was like "ok, this student has made it!". but it was usually at upper-intermediate level rather than advanced. few of them became geunine advanced learners though, perhaps they realised that they didn't actually NEED to reach a higher level. i do think that to reach genuine advanced level, full immersion is vital. and i mean more than just chatting with native speakers. i'm also talking about media. reading chinese novels, news, watching tv series etc. but to say "i will only use chinese media" is massive step. one i haven't yet had the courage to take, and maybe that's what limits me.

 

@imron i seriously question whether a person at HSK6 level should be using lists of words at all. once i had to translate a bunch of scientific abstracts from Chinese to English. far above my level! but I found after doing a few of them, a lot of the general structures and vocab were repeated. i got the hang of the lingo and although i still had to look up words, it wasn't that bad anymore. sure, i could have run a script over the abstracts and "prelearned" the most common vocab by frequency, but is that really more efficient than checking the meaning when you first come across the word in a sentence (in full context)? i do think that going from intermediate to advanced is a completely different kettle of fish than beginner to intermediate, and that a corresponding adjustment in approach/mindset is necessary.

[imron]

i seriously question whether a person at HSK6 level should be using lists of words at all

They should not!  Even at the HSK4 and 5 level learning from word lists is not going to be as useful as targeted learning.  Instead as you mentioned, words should be learnt from context, with people at lower levels adjusting their reading materials to be at an appropriate level.

The problem is, many learners seem to believe learning from these lists is a productive use of their time, and in fact, it was discussions on this general topic that prompted me to start doing the analysis I mentioned above.

 

 

but is that really more efficient than checking the meaning when you first come across the word in a sentence (in full context)?

It depends on what you are reading.  If you are coming across fewer words than you can sustainably learn in a day (e.g. less than say 10) then there is not much point.

If however you are coming across more than that number, then you need a way to prioritise them in order to prevent overload, and frequency of usage is a decent measure of that, especially if you have the frequencies of the words in the material you are reading (as opposed to just general frequencies built from larger corpora that might not be closely in tune with what you mostly read).

 

 

sure, i could have run a script over the abstracts and "prelearned" the most common vocab by frequency

This is basically what my Chinese Text Analyser software does, except it also keeps track of your known vocabulary, making it easy to identify and prioritise unknown words.  The analysis I was talking about in my previous post, was to take 30 HSK5 level texts from The Chairman's Bao, run them through CTA using HSK 1-5 wordlists as a base of 'known' vocabulary, and then mark the top 10 most frequent unknown words from a given article as known (measured against the frequency across all articles), to simulate learning 10 'relevant' words a day over a month, and to see how that compared to learning from generic wordlists in terms of improved comprehension (as measured against 10 new articles not covered in the previous 30).

I'm still putting the data from that together and doing some more analysis, but the results were pretty clear that targeted learning of words relevant to what you are reading provides a marked benefit over studying from generic lists.

[victor557]

@imron i think that type of analysis you're referring to might be very useful for selection of learning material - e.g. if have 100 texts to choose from, which ones would be most beneficial to read? something that helps to select texts just above my level which contain the relevent amount of unlearned target vocab would be quite handy. as for lists, even if you handed me the key vocab to to preload in order to read a bunch of articles, i wouldn't want it. because i know i'm more likely to learn the word when i'm taken by surprise by it in a sentence and am genuinely eager to know the meaning.. after which i'd add it to my deck for review. but yeah, selecting the texts most relevent beneficial to me is the tough part and i think analysis would be useful for that.

[Chris Two Times]

i do think that to reach genuine advanced level, full immersion is vital. and i mean more than just chatting with native speakers. i'm also talking about media. reading chinese novels, news, watching tv series etc. but to say "i will only use chinese media" is massive step.

 

I agree with the above quote. This will entail part of my plan for next year.

 

i do think that going from intermediate to advanced is a completely different kettle of fish than beginner to intermediate, and that a corresponding adjustment in approach/mindset is necessary.

 

I agree with this quote as well. My projected start date for this will be September 1, 2016. I am working on adjusting my mindset now for that start date. I want to hit the ground running when I return to Beijing on September 1st. I am realizing that I should be far from casual in approaching all of this.

 

Hear, hear! I like seeing my thoughts about this in others' words as well.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[艾墨本]

@Chris Two Times

 

What websites will you replace with what websites? I've long wanted to do this and have tried and failed previously. My biggest failure was finding media I enjoyed.

[Chris Two Times]

艾墨本，

 

That is indeed the million dollar question. I am at step one of this, subtracting first and weaning myself off of Western media (in addition to saving money it's why I have gone VPN-less).

 

Step two, which I have yet to approach, will be the point you bring up: which media to add? I agree wholeheartedly with you. I am not going to add/attempt to use media for its own sake. It does have to be practical and enjoyable. I agree 100% with you.

 

I think I want to get back to watching Chinese movies, not only to practice Chinese listening, but to really get to know Chinese cinema. I feel it's quite rich and I want to become knowledgeable about it--making learning about Chinese cinema a serious hobby. I also want to listen to Chinese rock, again not just to practice listening, but to get to know it better--even replacing music with English lyrics with music with Chinese lyrics and only listening to that. I'm looking at 崔健 right now as a starting point.

 

Actually, I may go old school and simply get away from the Internet for a while next semester. I've been playing with that idea. 

 

I do feel that I should consider such "extreme" measures (not really that extreme though).

 

I may follow victor557's words and go back to my roots with the tried-and-true method that I used when I was starting out with Chinese study back in 2000 and 2001: simply pounding the pavement and talking with as many different 陌生人 throughout the city as I can in a single day...every day. I find that I seldom do that anymore. It kills two birds with one stone (not advocating any killing here! ). I can get out and about in Beijing and get to know the place and chat at length at the same time. Doing that back in the day with a focused effort really helped my Chinese.

 

I do use the 附近人 feature on Wechat occasionally and pick up a fair bit of Chinese slang and colloquial usage from that. I'll continue with that.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[abcdefg]

>>At the poker game of Chinese studies, I want to move my chips to the center and say, "all in".

 

I like the analogy, Chris. Hope you win big! "Announcing the new chip leader, Chris Two Times...."

 

Living in China without a VPN will be a noble experiment. I will watch for updates on how that goes. No sure I could manage something that drastic myself.

[imron]

something that helps to select texts just above my level which contain the relevent amount of unlearned target vocab would be quite handy

If you'll excuse the shameless plug, this is something CTA can do quite well, and from what I've seen it's the only tool of its kind that can handle longer texts (eg novel length) in any sort of reasonable time.

[Chris Two Times]

Living in China without a VPN will be a noble experiment. I will watch for updates on how that goes. No sure I could manage something that drastic myself.

 

Well, for my work this is the money year--I am in the fourth and final year of a contract, so the work is bigger and more prevalent. I need to focus on it more...

 

...I found that over the past few years my Internet usage was just contributing to wasting a lot of time and awful procrastination. I was mostly overdosing on stupid Youtube videos and getting riled up over Facebook posts. I decided to step away from it all and I haven't looked back (well, this being an election year in our home country, it has been much much easier to not regret this decision as I am GLAD that I am away from that whole..."dialog").

 

I am actually doing all right with limited Internet use sans VPN. Haha! The irony is, I spent a lot more time on these forums and will slowly pull myself away from these too.

 

I like the analogy, Chris. Hope you win big! "Announcing the new chip leader, Chris Two Times...."

 

Many thanks, good sir!

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

Edited March 31, 2016 at 01:51 PM by Chris Two Times

[Chris Two Times]

 

 

something that helps to select texts just above my level which contain the relevent amount of unlearned target vocab would be quite handy

If you'll excuse the shameless plug, this is something CTA can do quite well, and from what I've seen it's the only tool of its kind that can handle longer texts (eg novel length) in any sort of reasonable time.

 

Shameless!

 

   

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[querido]

CTA deserves more chatter on the forum. I use it every day. 

[imron]

Sometimes more chatter can be off-putting.  I was even hesitant to mention it above because I don't want to seem like I'm steering every topic to 'hey, check out this piece of software I wrote".  Of course I would love more people to be using it, but if people are interested in it, they will find out about it.

[victor557]

@艾墨本

What websites will you replace with what websites? I've long wanted to do this and have tried and failed previously. My biggest failure was finding media I enjoyed.

 

on the question of websites, there's actually a lot good ones out there. often i find chinese news more interesting than western news because of all the crazy stuff that happens in china. so i think you look carefully, you'll find more than enough suitable replacements for your english websites. for convenience, i often use services on wechat. they have the 公众号 (official accounts) where you can enter any topic you like which you can then follow. that way, you can get exactly what you're interested pushed to your wechat everyday.

@Chris Two Times

I want to hit the ground running when I return to Beijing on September 1st. I am realizing that I should be far from casual in approaching all of this.

 

if you want to hit the ground running, make a firm commitment such as "from now, i shall read news only from chinese media!". do what you can while you're in your home country so that when you reach Beijing, you'll be able to fully capitalize on the experience. what i mean is that at home, nothing is stopping you from reading chinese websites, and if you do so you'll have a lot more vocab and knowledge for when you hit beijing. you'll be able to put all that you learned straight into practice and go to the next level.

 

@imron i shall check out your CTA

[Flickserve]

My biggest challenge is myself.

I should expand this a bit more. I feel I have put a fair bit of time into Mandarin yet still trapped at the beginner stage. I do a lot of passive listening but do not have regular interactions with native Mandarin speakers. I have daily contact with Cantonese speakers and switch between Engliah and Cantonese without a problem.

Trying to identify problems clearly helps to find solutions

1) time - solution is difficult

2) lack of daily active listening - can record conversations and review

3) lack of recall of the conversation - again recording

4) being unable to repeat sentences with the right vocabulary - recording and rote repetition

5) not using the right tones in my sentences - prepare sentences and copy a native speaker's rendition by recording them

6) rote repetition is not fun - rote repetition was recommended to me. On my comment that everbody says language learning should be fun and rote repetition is boring , the reply was "you HAVE to do it and yes, it is boring" - something I have to accept.

7) Cantonese style sentence formation during spontaneous speech - need to compare and contrast sentences. This could be part of the reason why people say my Mandarin Chinese sounds very Cantonese. I have a fair amount of interference with tones though the pronunciation is not too bad.

8 ) poor memory for vocabulary- not a great Anki person but perhaps I should make a concerted effort to set it up like TysonD does...except I don't know how.

Even if I take many lessons, I am coming to the conclusion of needing to be based around recording and shadowing more rather than just trying to talk. Although some people state you should not be afraid to make mistakes, they should be an aid to correction - what I have been falling into is making the same mistakes again and again.