just started learning

[taiwaneseguy1146]

I am an ABC (American Born Chinese) who has been speaking a little bit of chinese all of my life, mandarin being my first language. However, after the age of 6 or so I started speaking English almost exclusively to my parents and as a result my Chinese has become very poor. I attend Chinese school every Sunday but only recently have I become interested in learning so it has mostly been a waste of time. I recently took a trip to Taiwan and realized how important it is to learn Chinese for someone like me.

The problem is I don't really know how to learn the language. I wasted too much time not paying attention in Chinese school and as a result their current curriculum is far too advanced to be helpful to me. Should I still try to learn the advanced material that they are teaching? I purchased a few books (the "Practical Audio-Visual Chinese" series) and am watching cartoons and reading children's books. Is it a good idea to watch cartoons and other Chinese movies in order to improve listening skill/vocabulary? What I am currently doing is simply trying to get the gist of what is going on and singling out specific phrases and trying to figure them out from context or asking my parents later to tell me what they mean. The problem with this is that the videos are usually too fast-paced for me to remember phrases and their meanings.

Also, is it a good idea to try to learn from the chinese textbook/workbook that I bought (practical audio-visual chinese) and from reading children's books concurrently? To learn from children's books, I am reading them and looking up words that I do not know. The reason I ask if it is a good idea to use both of these methods concurrently is that the workbook teaches vocabulary/sentence structures in a more systematic way, while the vocabulary in children's books is more random and may as a result be more difficult to retain. Thanks for reading this post, learning Chinese is something that is very important to me.

[gato]

Since you grew up in a semi-Chinese environment, I think you've probably picked up some of it subconsciously and that you'll probably learn it quickly if you put your mind to it.

Try listening to these Mandarin dialogs for practice (in both pinyin and English, plus some Chinese characters). http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2432/mo.../2406more_5.htm

Repeat listening until you can follow it without the help of the script.

More Chinese learning material from China Radio International

http://en1.chinabroadcast.cn/2432/more/2406/2406more_5.htm

Also try http://zhongwen.com/ for learning characters and for some online reading material.

I would also recommend that you read some Chinese history book to give yourself some context for the culture, which will help to keep you motivated.

Good luck.

[roddy]

Is it a good idea to watch cartoons and other Chinese movies in order to improve listening skill/vocabulary?

A couple of topics that address similar, if not identical issues are

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/3445-does-listening-to-the-radio-really-help-your-ability

and

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/5-how-many-characters-do-you-know191

I'm sure there are others. With reference to videos being too fast-paced, don't worry about it too much - it's going to be a while before you are understanding everything. As long as you can understand enough to follow the plot, and you concentrate on listening rather than sitting back and watching the pretty pictures (bad habit of mine) you'll get something out of it. If there's something you almost pick up but don't, that's when it's worth hitting rewind or making a note of the time so you can go back later - it's the almost moments that are the opportunities to learn.

With the reading of children's books, the vocab may be less systematic, and therefore harder to remember, but you can work around that.

One way is not to wrory too much about the vocab - if it looks like it's something useful, sure, look it up. But if you can get the gist of it, and you suspect the word you don't know is a name, or some piece of vocab you will never need then there's nothing wrong with skipping it - learning to make the right decisions not to worry about unknown vocab can be very useful when you need to read something in a real life situation.

Another thing you could do is to impose a system on that vocab. Keep notes classified by noun / verb / adjective, etc.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for reading this post

We deserve it. Paragraphs, man, paragraphs!!!!!

Roddy