Studying with People at Different Levels

[ZC]

Howdy! The situation is I have regular study meetings set up with two friends, both of whom are also students from the US and are both at very different levels from me. One has been studying Chinese longer than I have and the other has been studying for less long than I have been. (Of course I also work with people at my own level too). The question I have is, do you all have any suggestions on how to approach studying with people at different levels?

[Wippen (inactive)]

I once did a course in Russia and was placed in a group with people above my level and below my level. I found that people were good at different things. Grammar, oral and reading. I was better at speaking but were a lot worse than them reading loud.(which they loved to point out). It worked out in the end and I would do it again. It also serves as motivation if someone is good at something .

[艾墨本]

What do you mean by "studying with people?" Are you in a classroom setting or self studying? More information here would be necessary for me to give any meaningful advice without having to write a book.

[Jim]

Wrong on so many levels 

[ZC]

3 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

studying with people?" Are you in a classroom setting or self studying?

These are both self studying sessions. I have been learning since January, my more advanced friend has been studying for several years, and my less advanced friend has been studying for close to a week. Typically I work on reading (like character recognition and pronunciation) every morning with my friend who has been studying for ~1 week and work on speaking fluency and listening to natural speed speech each evening with my more advanced friend. My goal to is to be able to learn in a Chinese class, so listening comprehension and understanding dense written text are my main focuses now.

[Flickserve]

1 hour ago, ZC said:

Typically I work on reading (like character recognition and pronunciation) every morning with my friend who has been studying for ~1 week

 

Better get yourself a teacher or a native speaker for feedback. 

 

1 hour ago, ZC said:

My goal to is to be able to learn in a Chinese class, so listening comprehension and understanding dense written text are my main focuses now.

 

Do you mean Chinese class where you are learning Chinese?

 

what is meant by 'dense'??

[Publius]

I think OP means to attend class taught in Chinese and read academic papers.

[ZC]

1 hour ago, Flickserve said:

Better get yourself a teacher or a native speaker for feedback. 

Yup! I’m definitely in touch with my local friends, but i’m talking about working through workbooks and graded readers together! But I think it def is a good move to try and be more careful with pronunciation. I hadn’t even thought about it but if we both say a word wrong we might reinforce the wrong way to speak XD. These are more that as friends we are studying outside of formal Chinese courses we are taking.

 

1 hour ago, Flickserve said:

Do you mean Chinese class where you are learning Chinese?

 

what is meant by 'dense'??

As Publius mentioned, the goal is that I do not fail my medical imaging/diagnostics course which will be taught in Chinese. The text in question is primarily textbooks, but likely some journal articles too.  So of course while I would like to practice by reading exactly what I hope to read I’m a bit of a way from that level of understanding.

 

(As a note I am currently taking other technical classes as bilingual courses with lectures in Chinese including English summaries. I have found this very helpful for learning to listen in a classroom setting.)

[Flickserve]

Ok. Here's my take. Please don't take offence.

 

Some of your written English is quite difficult to understand. If you are going to take a scientific course such as medical imaging, you will have to be very precise in analytical thinking, ordering your thoughts and communication. From your written text so far in this post, this could be improved quite a bit as some of the information is quite confusing. What I would be concerned about is, if the clarity of thought coming across in English is jumbled up, how will you cope with explaining the concepts in a second language?

[ZC]

I’ll keep that in mind.

[Wippen (inactive)]

3 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Some of your written English is quite difficult to understand

This is a harsh criticism. He omitted one explanatory sentence and you are judging this person on his or her 

ability to use  logical argument, his ability to do higher education and do so in English. What? 

 

This "please don't take offence" is redundant. 

 

Do we have to write perfect English to post on this forum? 

[Publius]

Yeah, a bit too harsh. I think Flickserve probably wasn't aware that ZC's native language is Urdu.

[艾墨本]

13 hours ago, ZC said:

15 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Better get yourself a teacher or a native speaker for feedback. 

Yup! I’m definitely in touch with my local friends, but i’m talking about working through workbooks and graded readers together! But I think it def is a good move to try and be more careful with pronunciation. I hadn’t even thought about it but if we both say a word wrong we might reinforce the wrong way to speak XD. These are more that as friends we are studying outside of formal Chinese courses we are taking.

 

15 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Do you mean Chinese class where you are learning Chinese?

 

what is meant by 'dense'??

As Publius mentioned, the goal is that I do not fail my medical imaging/diagnostics course which will be taught in Chinese. The text in question is primarily textbooks, but likely some journal articles too.  So of course while I would like to practice by reading exactly what I hope to read I’m a bit of a way from that level of understanding.

 

(As a note I am currently taking other technical classes as bilingual courses with lectures in Chinese including English summaries. I have found this very helpful for learning to listen in a classroom setting.)

 

Honestly, sounds like you're doing all the right things. What's your timeline? How much are you studying per day?

 

Try to limit yourself with new vocabuarly. Also, learn new vocabulary with paired words.

 

As for getting to reading journals, don't skip steps on the learning process. Make sure you get a solid foundation in word order and pronunciation. Those two cores will take you farther then any other 500 additional words. Pronunciation done right early on will only get better. Word order because that will be your crutch when reading technical language and get bogged down in technical vocabulary.

 

Unless necessary, I'd totally drop learning how to write characters in your situation. It is a non-essential for what you are aiming to do.

 

My broad scope would be something like this:

 

Pronunciation + word order, learned via simple dialogues. Dialogues would be on my phone and listened to on repeat until I could match the dialogues word for word.

 

Low level graded readers and grammar patterns. Vocabulary coming from graded readers and listening practice from the audio files of the graded readers. Grammar would be from the HSK standard course books, ideally done with a tutor. Try to identify the grammar in use in the graded readers.

 

Once the low level graded readers get easier, now is when I'd start adding a lot of new vocabulary and grammar patterns, never forgetting to learn vocabulary with words that it get paired with frequently and grammar should also be learned with context (not just in context), which is to say, know if the grammar is formal or informal, polite, or rude, or etc. Maybe work up to the HSK 4 standard course books

 

Then I'd loop back into Graded readers, their audio files, and doing everything I can to focus on production (speaking and writing (which would be typing if you decide to ignore handwriting characters)).

 

Once production caught up with my other skills I'd start being more comprehensive in my learning. Finding reading material on the Chairman's Bao, reading lots of graded readers, continuing through HSK 5 coursework, writing a daily journal, do language exchanges to practice speaking, etc. etc.

 

After HSK 5, ignore vocab lists, it's time to create your own. This is when I'd move into the  medical terminology that I'd need and start slowly working through medical lectures relevant to my field and textbooks at the introductory level.

 

A final note, while I mention where I'd focus attention, this does not mean I wouldn't do any of the other skills, they'd just take less of my time. Which is to say, you should always be doing some of everything, slowly adding new vocabulary to your SRS deck (if you don't know what that is, go check out Anki and Pleco Notecards), and also making time to practice production (speaking and writing) even if the focus is on input (reading and listening).

 

 

[Flickserve]

2 hours ago, Tøsen said:

This is a harsh criticism. He omitted one explanatory sentence and you are judging this person on his or her 

ability to use  logical argument, his ability to do higher education and do so in English. What? 

 

This "please don't take offence" is redundant. 

 

Do we have to write perfect English to post on this forum? 

 

In fact, I looked on the whole thread and you can either follow a process or not. I didn't write that the English has to be perfect but it is the thought process that comes across. If it leaves many assumptions to be made, then this is how errors occur. Maybe I am having a bad hair day but I honestly could not follow some of the description of the process because of lack of information rather than the English itself. Maybe you don't need it with Urdu but the course itself is in English and Chinese making things doubly difficult in a medically related subject. 

 

Some of my hobbies are peer reviewing journals and examining for postgraduate degrees. Where I work, one small error can kill so yeah,  maybe I am a bit harsh and critical normally. 

[ZC]

@FlickserveNo worries, everyone has those days. How would you word it or what info would you add in the original to help clarify? I can edit the post so that it is easier to follow. I don’t think anyone meant to imply that not understanding was your fault. If you let me know what specifically was confusing to you I can help make it clearer for everyone!

 

@艾墨本Thanks! That’s a lot like my current study plan! I’m actually already using some of the course books you suggested.

 

Do you think it might be a good idea to work with a partner to write summaries from our more technical classes in Chinese to practice production and clearly conveying information. Like Flickserve pointed out it will definitely be important!

 

 

In general a lot of the tips I have got here focus on  more personal study plan, but I think one thing I was looking for was ideas for how a pair of students at mismatched levels might work together so that the less advanced student is not left in the dust and the more advanced student is not relearning material they are already far past.

 

 

[Wippen (inactive)]

44 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

Some of my hobbies are peer reviewing journals and examining for postgraduate degrees. Where I work, one small error can kill so yeah,  maybe I am a bit harsh and critical normally

I understand what happened then.

 

Most people write here in their spare time and sometimes posts will not be perfect,  because it is not for professional reasons. Also I have said this before: It is easier to pick people's post apart than to write and start something creative yourself. The objective on a forum is to get people discussing in a constructive way. This does involve an original poster writing a question or an opinion.

[Flickserve]

32 minutes ago, Tøsen said:

Most people write here in their spare time and sometimes posts will not be perfect,

 

I have not asked for perfection. 

[Flickserve]

1 hour ago, ZC said:

If you let me know what specifically was confusing to you I can help make it clearer for everyone!

 

Thanks. Will let you know later when I am at a computer. Using a smartphone is not so convenient. 

[Lu]

2 hours ago, ZC said:

I think one thing I was looking for was ideas for how a pair of students at mismatched levels might work together so that the less advanced student is not left in the dust and the more advanced student is not relearning material they are already far past.

I suspect that the setup will be most useful for you and least useful for the advanced student.

 

If I were you I would not practice pronunciation with either friend, since they are both non-native speakers and neither of them is all that advanced. You can easily end up reinforcing each other's bad habits. What you can do is practice dialogues, chat in Chinese with each other, perhaps ask each other to explain grammar points (usually the more advanced person can explain it to the less advanced). Practicing is always useful; explaining things to someone else helps reinforce the knowledge in your own head. The more advanced student would be better of with someone of their own level or higher, but if you can show that you work hard and make progress, it can still be enjoyable and somewhat helpful to them. You can make sure the less advanced student is not left in the dust by catering your dialogue to their level.

 

It would be very useful to get a native-speaking teacher, or at least a native speaker, somewhere in the mix, to help with pronunciation and to ask more difficult questions to. If the three of you are unsure of something, don't just trust each others' judgment, ask someone who really knows.

[艾墨本]

4 hours ago, ZC said:

 

In general a lot of the tips I have got here focus on  more personal study plan, but I think one thing I was looking for was ideas for how a pair of students at mismatched levels might work together so that the less advanced student is not left in the dust and the more advanced student is not relearning material they are already far past.

With this in mind, I stick by what I've said above. The friends would be best suited as support to keep you on task and working toward meeting your study goals. I would not recommend studying with them as much as next to them.