What is a realistic timetable for learning Chinese?

[Jabri]

Quote

15 hours ago, Alex_Hart said:

But we're all touching on the same thing here: whether or not you can actually use Chinese has almost nothing to do with HSK so it isn't a good metric. It is a test. I have met many Chinese students who passed TOEFL or the GRE reading section but I can barely understand their English. It is the same with the HSK. I have a Korean classmate who passed HSK 6 and yet I would classify him as somewhere around level 1 for spoken Chinese; he can barely communicate at all, even things like "how are you" can throw him for a loop. I am not sure he even knows what tones are because he doesn't use them at all from what I can tell. He can read and understand far better than I can, but he cannot write or speak. Most of my classmates have passed HSK 5 and yet some are able to handle virtually any conversation in Chinese ranging from politics to TV dramas while others struggle with basic conversations.  

 

Good point. I actually want to throw this point out but it was a little bit too long to write it here. So, the above point is absolutely true.

[Jabri]

8 hours ago, agewisdom said:

Now you dashed my dreams of being fluent in Chinese. ?

HSK5 is ONLY the end of the beginner stage? Sigh...

 

Although it's kinda of true though. I finished learning HSK Level 1 and 2 characters and it seems I've hardly made a dent in the amount of characters I need to know to be able to converse in Mandarin. Not sure why the HSK Levels are so, dare I say dumbed down(?), or rather simplified...

Hey I would say that if you pass HSK 5, it's a big achievement and congrats you have a solid foundation that's gonna bring you far in the 'long term'. Maybe not 'long term', as long as you keep going you will improve over time as you now have access to a more authentic and for sure an interesting content which will keep you motivated to learn Chinese. The hill is not so steep anymore but a long line. This is so far what I have experienced along my journey. I think there are more people out there who have learned Chinese for a longer period of time than I am and is more qualified to share their opinion.

[Alex_Hart]

 

10 hours ago, Jabri said:

you have a solid foundation

 

18 hours ago, agewisdom said:

Although it's kinda of true though. I finished learning HSK Level 1 and 2 characters and it seems I've hardly made a dent in the amount of characters I need to know to be able to converse in Mandarin. Not sure why the HSK Levels are so, dare I say dumbed down(?), or rather simplified...

I agree with Jabri - I think it would be more helpful to think of all the HSKs as foundational Chinese. I haven't taken HSK 6 (I have taken HSK5), but I've looked at the HSK6 books and I wouldn't say they're terribly difficult when compared to what you find in the "real world" in terms of listening and reading. In terms of reading and listening ability, you're certainly not going to be at the level of a Chinese high school student, much less a college student, even after HSK6. These tests may get you to the point where you can start reading easy books and watching easy TV shows. You won't be able to read most books because they will have specialized language that the HSK does not cover, and whenever you enter a new situation (e.g. a new job, a new class) you'll need to learn a whole host of new words. At this point (HSK5/6), you should be able to continue your studies without the formal framework of a textbook. 

 

imron has a lot of posts on this, but the problem is that the HSK glosses over too many topics and most native-level content is going to be more specialized. Whenever you pick up a book or watch a TV show, it will have mountains of "specialized" or context-specific language/words that the HSK never covered. He has a program (link here, forum thread here) for learning the specialized words in a given text. Basically, even the easiest novels will still be beyond someone who has mastered HSK 6 vocabulary until they learn the most frequently used words in a field/novel/article/show. 

[agewisdom]

50 minutes ago, Alex_Hart said:

imron has a lot of posts on this, but the problem is that the HSK glosses over too many topics and most native-level content is going to be more specialized. Whenever you pick up a book or watch a TV show, it will have mountains of "specialized" or context-specific language/words that the HSK never covered. He has a program (link here, forum thread here) for learning the specialized words in a given text. Basically, even the easiest novels will still be beyond someone who has mastered HSK 6 vocabulary until they learn the most frequently used words in a field/novel/article/show. 

 

Many thanks for sharing your opinion and the links. Whilst somewhat depressing, it's good to know the actual situation as well. I'm guessing the old HSK levels that goes up to 11 (?) were more representative of the levels attainable?

[Random Person]

I don't see how it is possible to pass HSK5 with only the 2500 words in the official vocab list.  All the exam questions seem to include a large number of words that aren't in that list.  My feeling is that you'd need to have learnt another 1000-2000 words beyond that to have a good chance of understanding everything in the paper.

[Tomsima]

On 12/24/2018 at 7:05 AM, Darryncosta said:

What would you consider a reasonable expectation for Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced/Expert conversational skill in Mandarin Chinese (Reading/Speaking)? 

Beginner: 2 years

Intermediate: 3 years

Advanced: 5 years

Expert: 10+ years

 

 

[Wurstmann]

26 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

Beginner: 2 years

Intermediate: 3 years

Advanced: 5 years

Expert: 10+ years

At how many hours per day? Years are not really a good measurement.

[Tomsima]

4 hours ago, Wurstmann said:

Years are not really a good measurement.

 

2-4 hours a day? depends on your efficiency, method of study, prior ability etc.

[Alex_Hart]

On 12/29/2018 at 8:46 AM, agewisdom said:

Many thanks for sharing your opinion and the links. Whilst somewhat depressing, it's good to know the actual situation as well. I'm guessing the old HSK levels that goes up to 11 (?) were more representative of the levels attainable?

Had to look it up, current HSK 6 has 5,000 words/2663 characters. The old HSK 11 had 8840 words/2865 characters. 

 

Don't be depressed - we tell you this out of love! Almost all of my language classmates (most of whom were in China for one year and then left) considered it "impossible" for anybody other than a Japanese student to get to HSK 6. From this admittedly anecdotal experience, most Chinese learners seem to think HSK 5 is the important one and HSK 6 is for people who care about 书面语，written Chinese, and they don't bother with that, much less continue beyond HSK 6. My language teacher lamented that a lot of students stopped coming to class or doing their homework after they passed HSK 5. I've heard many people describe themselves as "fluent" because they passed it.  This was really odd to me; I passed HSK 5 easily but Chinese people still giggled at my pronunciation at times, I still struggled to read a newspaper, I still had a hard time following multi-person conversations. I think that a lot of language learners become so obsessed with finding "the end-goal" that they actually start to believe that HSK 5 signifies fluency, or that they could read a newspaper if they tried (after all, HSK 5 says we can read the newspaper now! It must be true!). This is also a convenient lie to tell oneself; getting from HSK 5 to 6 means doubling your vocabulary (HSK 5 has 2,500 words, HSK 6 has 5,000). For people who have been studying for a long time, this can seem rather daunting. 

 

This isn't just in Chinese, obviously. My girlfriend had a similar experience with English: passed TOEFL, passed the GRE language section and flew off to America to get her masters. When she was in China, she was considered "fluent" in English. People even pushed her to teach it in college. She felt like she had finally finished the journey. When she got to America, she went to her classes and found that she didn't understand 50% of the lecture and 65% of the books. 

 

I will note one thing: Chinese becomes way more interesting once you get past these HSK levels. In the beginning, it's really fun to read about Gao Wenzhong and Wang Peng's romantic pursuits of Li You, but it gets really boring after awhile. Even HSK 6 is not all that similar to what you'd normally read (though what you normally read is going to depend on you!). 

 

EDIT: Found this thread discussing the old and new HSK(link here). Imron says the current HSK 6 is equivalent to HSK 8, and later says 

Quote

If you could get an 11 on the old HSK there would be no doubt that you could read newspapers/novels without much difficulty, likewise for watching film and television.  The same is not true of the new HSK 6.

 

 

[agewisdom]

11 minutes ago, Alex_Hart said:

Don't be depressed - we tell you this out of love!

Tough love! ?

 

Seriously though, I know what you mean. It's good to hear frank opinions and get a realistic understanding of the time and effort required to reach a certain level. Appreciate you sharing your opinion. At least I have a realistic roadmap to know where I'm going. I realize now that the HSK is general yardstick, so won't get too obsessed in reaching there. Instead, maybe focus more on other activities associated with Mandarin learning such as watching TV shows, listening to podcasts and hanging out here... Probably will be more rounded than just blindly memorizing characters at the expense of everything else

[Dawei3]

As Alex noted, I think it's tough to estimate the time needed to learn Chinese.  What I can say is that it's the most fascinating learning experience of my life.

 

While Chinese has a reputation as a "hard" language, there are aspects of it that make other languages look difficult:  1)  Chinese has NO verb conjugation 2) no declension of words/no male -female nouns 3) virtually no word endings  4) word order can similar to English (Subject-verb-object), 5) likely the simplest most logical numbering system in the world (eleven = ten one, twenty three = two ten three, 6) skips "unnecessary"  words, "The weather is very nice" in Chinese is just "Weather very nice."  

 

Tones and reading/writing are the harder aspects of Chinese (albeit, technology makes the learning of reading/writing more manageable).  My sense is that speaking in Chinese will come much more quickly than reading/writing.   

 

On the positive side, every bit of progress you make in Mandarin is warmly embraced by Chinese and I find this very motivating.  My biggest surprise about China continues to be the number of "foreigners" I meet who speak little to no Chinese.  I've met people from many different countries who despite living in China up to 15 years can say almost nothing (An American I met who lived in Shanghai for 10 years somewhat bragged about not being able to speak any Chinese). Because of this, foreigners that can speak receive incredible warmth.  My friends there often want me to meet their families and their friends.  

[Flickserve]

I have been four years doing Mandarin intermittently (long breaks) and can do simple conversations.

 

I thought I was low level intermediate but then I took the glossika placement test and came out as advanced beginner. Ahh well. Keep on trying. 

[roddy]

Aaaaand... it's back. We lost this topic temporarily when we identified the OP as a spammer (a particularly sneaky one, but not sneaky enough!) and in our excitement accidentally deleted the entire topic. I had to recover it from back-ups and then it took me a while to get round to restoring it. Posts, likes and follow data should all be back, there are two attachments to a post by Alex Hart which I've not got. 

 

Any posts made in the 24-48 hours after the above post by Flickserver are, I'm afraid, gone forever.