Work hard at keeping the Chinese you have already got

[Wippen (inactive)]

Yesterday I watched an interview with Sylvie Guillem, one of the greatest ballet dancers. What has that got to do with Chinese? Well for starters ballet has not got any short-cuts. You are as good as what you put in. In the video she talked about ballet dancers working hard every day to improve, and here it comes "to keep what you already got". 

 

This is similar to Chinese isn't  it? Sometimes you have worked hard at a particular low-frequency idiom and then when you need it, because you didn't keep practicing, it wasn't there when you needed it.

 

 

[Tomsima]

I remember the very first time I went back to the UK after being in china for a year, I stayed for 3 weeks and didn't speak, listen or study any chinese in that time. I was so gutted when I got into Beijing airport and couldn't order a coffee without stuttering. The next time I went home the following year I reviewed every evening and took speaking classes on italki.

 

When I got back to Beijing airport that time, I went back to the same coffee shop as the year before and proudly said in a non-stuttering voice "一不美式咖啡，熱的" (to which the waitress replied 'ok no problem, would you like anything else with that' but whatever…)

 

The point is, even if you're not learning new stuff, 'maintaining' is actually still improving. You're solidifying knowledge so that you won't stutter and fail when the crucial moment comes.

[DavyJonesLocker]

Every student has this experience, they go home for a few weeks, first day back in China and they have forgotten how to say 你好. Its quite dissapointing

I haven't spoken chinese in about 5 months, well apart from a bit here and there on wechat calls, but it seems like I have forgotten just about everything.

 

However! The longer you were studying the faster it comes back. Hence I am really against this "learn Chinese in 6 days and 5000 characters by tea time " learning style.

I would bet any money in an experiment that if student A studied to HSK 4 level  in one year and student B did it in 6 months. Both did zero study for 1 month after passing the  exam, Student A will retain a lot more information

[Wippen (inactive)]

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

I was so gutted

This feeling is a really good one as it spurs you on. It is a negative sentiment that somehow has a positive effect. It made you more determined for this not to happen again. I often find embarrassing moments within language learning help cement certain word or expressions or whatever it was one said wrong.

 

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

couldn't order a coffee without stuttering.

perfect example of this idiom 我还给老师了 (though my friends say people haven't said this for "donks" ...Yeah people also don't say donks anymore)

 

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

The next time I went home the following year I reviewed every evening and took speaking classes on italki

That is really inspiring. Also, it shows you have your own drive, not relying on others to give you a kick. See, that is also a quality required to improve.

 

So glad you gave this example. I have had similar things, where I have felt my Chinese was so poor and 每况愈下, but I thought it was just me not being good enough.

[Wippen (inactive)]

49 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

it seems like I have forgotten just about everything

But don't you think it can all come flooding back if you "hear"  Chinese. Ever had that where the brains switches automatically to the language you are hearing but without you having any control over it. So if you hear Chinese after not having heard it in a while, your brain tunes in immediately. For example you may say 对  instead of yes and this is all instinct. @tomsima have you had that, when you go back, you  still think in Chinese? if you bump into people, instead of saying "sorry" in English, you say it in Chinese.

I was in France last weekend and ended up saying 对 instead of oui all the time. ( I am not French).

[imron]

6 hours ago, Tomsima said:

"一不美式咖啡，熱的"

More study required, third time's the charm I'm sure

[Flickserve]

For Cantonese and English, I just switch. Rarely get those errors.

 

I feel the same switching process for Mandarin. However, in my earlier Mandarin learning period , on one occasion, I was playing around with some French (no practice whatsoever) and the Mandarin word would come to mind. 

[Lumbering Ox]

8 hours ago, Tøsen said:

Ever had that where the brains switches automatically to the language you are hearing but without you having any control over it.

 

My father was bilingual French for his first 20 years back when the earth was still cooling. He lived in an Anglo world after that, work, home life etc. After about 40 years of that he found himself losing some of his French. We moved close to Quebec in is late 60's, he is seeing a girl from near his home town [widower not divorced, just sayin] and the French is came back really quickly. Didn't take much time at all.

This is he will often speak to me in French, especially after getting off the phone to someone in French but not always. I like to bust his nads when he does that, it's what bros do. He doesn't seem to be aware what language he is using, as they are both effectively native level.

 

As for maintaining. I tried to do a bit of research on it. The closest I came to a result is

For languages at the C level [advanced on the Euro framework] the claim was you don't really need to do anything as you are advanced enough that if you don't use it for a few years it won't take much to knock the cobwebs off of it and it will come back to you.

For languages at the A level [beginning, aka, Where is the library, I like Cats etc] there is no point maintaining as you put very little time in it anyway.

For intermediate level half an hour a day was considered enough, mixed with reading, writing, speaking and listening, preferable spread out as much as possible, the example used was 2 15 minute sessions in one of the skill sets per day.

 

1: The person who originally wrote this was going from one euro language to another [I think English to Spanish or Portuguese] I am not sure how this would apply to tones and Hanzi

2: It is just one person's opinion, my google fu was not up to finding much else other than maintaining is a good thing

3: If I put in enough time to get to a C1 or C2 level, I don't think I would want to trust to the idea that one can pick it up and get back in shape quickly. Sure my father did it after 40 years but it was his native language. There are people who have fully lost their native languages. I half suspect the half an hour a day would be sufficient to maintain a C2 level although there is more material than a B1 or B2. Say 1 hour of reading, 1.5 of listening, half of speaking and writing. If one can read at a good clip I suspect it should be enough to encounter most of your vocab about once a year although I won't embarrass myself by showing the math [which I've done because I have no life]

4; Id figure maintaining intermediate would be more difficult than advances. You would struggle with any native material in the wild, at advanced you can pretty much pick and choose. Also if you are not in your target country, it would take a good friend who would put up with your modest skills, in your target country you will find people who can only communicate in your second language. When I suggested to an Anglo friend who knows the French that if I learned it we could get our French on, he said it would never happen, we would just fall back into English, he seemed to be speaking from experience. I donno.

5: I hear tones go real quick.

 

 

[ZC]

11 minutes ago, Lumbering Ox said:

There are people who have fully lost their native languages.

I’m one of them, since I haven’t used Urdu once in ~15 years since moving to the US I realize that if I went back to pakistan I couldn’t speak more than a couple words at all! Maintaining skills is (at least for me) absolutely necessary!

[happy_hyaena]

It's funny because after spending 10 months in Asia speaking only English and Chinese, my oral skills in my first language had actually noticeably detoriated. I met one person from my country during my semester in China while at a bar who had also only been speaking English and Chinese and it was a struggle  I remember speaking to my mother over phone and interjecting with a "对对对!"

[ChTTay]

My parents think I speak weird now. Too long away from an English speaking environment so I’ve picked up American sentence patterns and throw in the odd bit of Chinglish. 

 

Agree with the thread. My Chinese is more useful now I don’t study at all. Just speak daily. 

[Wippen (inactive)]

On 3/1/2018 at 6:48 AM, Lumbering Ox said:

My father was bilingual French for his first 20 years back when the earth was still cooling

I thought your whole post was well written. The first sentence nearly sounded like Arthur Dent was going to appear.

 

On 3/1/2018 at 6:48 AM, Lumbering Ox said:

As for maintaining. I tried to do a bit of research on it. The closest I came to a result is

For languages at the C level [advanced on the Euro framework] the claim was you don't really need to do anything as you are advanced enough that if you don't use it for a few years it won't take much to knock the cobwebs off of it and it will come back to you.

I think this is probably true. The language lies latent and sometimes just takes a bit of prompting and the brain automatically starts thinking in that language.

 

On 3/1/2018 at 6:48 AM, Lumbering Ox said:

There are people who have fully lost their native languages

@ZC

@happy_hyaena

@ChTTay

 

Also in that boat. I have lived outside my original country for many years and hardly get to speak my native language. When however I do, my countrymen tell me "you speak that really well for a German". So they think I am German instead. I have asked why exactly and they say it is the intonation that has gone, it is the stress on words that are a bit off and some direct translation from English(the language I use to think in). However, I can watch a film in my native tongue and will immediately start to think in that language Weird.

[Lumbering Ox]

What is really sad is there are some people who move to a different country at that special time before their native language solidifies but too late to be truly native in their new language. They get to be full grown adults who only know one language but speak it with a strong accent and don't feel they know it at a native level. Apparently it's a thing. I've read at least one article on it in the Globe and Mail.

 

My father apparently has da haccent but I don't notice it. I am sure he identifies as native level English though.

I just found out around Christmas time that my brother's wife only understood about half of what me mudder says. I never noticed a Newfie accent with her but apparently it was there and strong. I've never been accused of having an accent, bog standard Canadian unless I am putting on an accent for fun.