Masters of Science in Chinese: A problem

[mkmyers45]

Hello Everyone

 

Due to the massive expansions of the china government scheme, more and more people come to china every year to study a variety of things. For most students like myself who get offered Msc in Chinese we come here study for Hsk 4 within a year and start majors and join labs where we most end up not using the Chinese and publishing thesis and academic papers in English (This works for me btw).

 

Now, i would like to ask is it feasible if once planned to take the HSK 5 within this year (Hsk 6 seems too far a stretch) plus major discipline vocabulary and be able to at a minimum get the basic gist of scientific discussions or lectures?

 

Most students i know have to self study in English as the courses they are taking are not useful to them. I believe it might go better to be at least being able to extract basic information from your professors and peers and then going on for further studies otherwise all those hours in class sounds wasted. Its also a big problem understanding anything during lab meetings beyond a word here or a sentence there.

 

EDIT: I am already in China presently and i am doing the mandatory 1 year language course

[Flickserve]

Stating your present level of Chinese proficiency will help a lot in answering your question.

 

Are you already in China studying the one year Chinese course?

[Beelzebro]

If you can reach say HSK3+ by self study prior to going to China, then you might have a chance. Reaching HSK5 plus loads of vocab related to your field seems extremely hard if starting from a base of zero. Also, as someone who is already beyond HSK5 level (vocab of around 6000 words vs the 2500 included in HSK5), trust me, HSK5 is not enough for you to be able to follow lectures meant for native speakers. If you really want to do this I suggest beginning hardcore self-study RIGHT NOW, then for the year of Chinese language study in China, try to completely immerse yourself in the language, don't talk to other non-Chinese coursemates at all.

[mkmyers45]

6 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Stating your present level of Chinese proficiency will help a lot in answering your question.

 

Are you already in China studying the one year Chinese course?

 

I have edited the post to state my present situation...I am presently undergoing the one year Chinese language course. My present level is probably hsk2+++. I'm done with HSK 3 vocabulary and some grammar points but thats about it.

[Alex_Hart]

18 hours ago, mkmyers45 said:

Now, i would like to ask is it feasible if once planned to take the HSK 5 within this year (Hsk 6 seems too far a stretch) plus major discipline vocabulary and be able to at a minimum get the basic gist of scientific discussions or lectures?

 

Probably not. If I understand correctly, you're giving yourself one year of language prep in China to get from HSK2/3 to HSK 5. This is doable, but it means pretty much full time test prep.

 

However, the HSK itself is not a particularly useful measure for your ability to follow lectures. If you are trying to get from HSK2/3 to HSK 5 in one year, you will be studying the HSK full time. You will not be able to focus enough on increasing your listening ability because you will be going through word lists. At your level, this is probably necessary to build some sort of foundation for further language study. But HSK 5 words are nowhere near enough for a college lecture, the HSK is really just foundational Chinese. Try turning on a random drama on TV see how much you understand, then consider that a college lecture is going to be a lot harder. Professors mumble, speak quickly, might randomly jump between points, and the topics are a lot harder than the TV. Once you get to HSK 5, it will probably take another year of attending lectures, reading books and studying topic specific vocab to grasp even 50% of a college lecture, especially at the graduate level. You may still miss a lot of important points after that year. 

 

Does that mean it's impossible? No. You can go home after class and use a textbook in your own language to study whatever you learned in the lecture, but don't expect to understand anything important for that first year. 

 

If you only have one year to get from HSK 2 to graduate level Chinese, I'd recommend picking the English language courses, then sitting in on the Chinese lectures. This will increase your listening and maybe by your 2nd year, you can sit in on Chinese language courses, or talk to your professors in Chinese. If you really want to take the Chinese lectures, I'd start sitting in on Chinese language courses now to start readying your ear. 

 

EDIT: I'm getting my MA in a Chinese language program and suspect that most of my foreign classmates only understand 10-40% of the lectures; most of them have HSK4-5. People who started the 1 year language program with HSK 4-ish might understand 50-60%. Often, that means they didn't understand the 40% that actually matters.

[mkmyers45]

1 hour ago, Alex_Hart said:

If you only have one year to get from HSK 2 to graduate level Chinese, I'd recommend picking the English language courses, then sitting in on the Chinese lectures. This will increase your listening and maybe by your 2nd year, you can sit in on Chinese language courses, or talk to your professors in Chinese. If you really want to take the Chinese lectures, I'd start sitting in on Chinese language courses now to start readying your ear. 

 

My situation is such that my course has no English language substitute (Earth Sciences). @the bolded Unfortunately because of the one year language programme schedule i won't be able to start doing this.  How much will these actually help? Is it something that can be made up for with self-listening practice?

 

Also one of main motivations is speaking with my lab mates, As i stated earlier that although its a Chinese taught course my lab mates and supervisor (we speak in English) all publish in English in very good journals but i find it difficult to get them to explain some ideas they have because their English scientific vocabulary is not great. I just have lectures for the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 sessions so if understanding the lecturers may be too lofty a goal then do you think at least engaging in some basic ''explain this to me'' conversations with my lab mates or other classmate is realistic?

[Alex_Hart]

18 hours ago, mkmyers45 said:

How much will these actually help? Is it something that can be made up for with self-listening practice?

 

In my personal experience, it will be extremely frustrating but it will help a lot.

 

I often started a class barely understanding the teacher, but I understood most of what the teacher said by the end of the semester. This is due to a mix of factors: getting used to their accent, diction, logic, speed, class-specific words, etc. Most professors will rely on a certain way of speaking and you'll start to pick up on that over time. This is true in life, too, obviously - if you watch lots of war dramas or period pieces, future war/period dramas will be easier to follow.

 

You may still want to try and pick your professors based on their Chinese. Personally, I avoid classes taught by men from the north over 50. ? Younger professors will generally have better Mandarin.

 

Maybe try to find a course online (in Chinese) and watch it? It depends. If they're speaking to you one-on-one, they may be willing to slow down, and you can ask questions.

[edelweis]

On 1/29/2019 at 10:36 AM, mkmyers45 said:

i am doing the mandatory 1 year language course

Do you have technical/scientific Chinese classes as well? (I mean classes that teach technical/scientific Chinese vocabulary)

Maybe you can get a high school or undergraduate introductory handbook to the topics you will be studying, this was you can prepare vocabulary lists related to things you have already studied. So you only need to concentrate on the language, not trying to learn totally new sciency things at the same time.

 

On 1/30/2019 at 7:02 AM, mkmyers45 said:

Is it something that can be made up for with self-listening practice?

I think it would be useless to attend daily or weekly lectures, but maybe it would be useful to get your hands on a recording of one lecture by one or several of the teachers whose class you will attend (either do it yourself or ask one of the students to record it for you).

If you can also get a copy of a student's notes and/or handouts or powerpoints, then you can listen to the lecture bit by bit while trying to match it with the written text.

 

I don't know whether there are Chinese MOOC online on the topics you are interested in... maybe it's worth exploring.

There may also be some Chinese language teaching powerpoints online that you could find by searching for keywords related to your field...

[mkmyers45]

17 minutes ago, edelweis said:

Do you have technical/scientific Chinese classes as well? (I mean classes that teach technical/scientific Chinese vocabulary)

Maybe you can get a high school or undergraduate introductory handbook to the topics you will be studying, this was you can prepare vocabulary lists related to things you have already studied. So you only need to concentrate on the language, not trying to learn totally new sciency things at the same time

 

Unfortunately we are not offered any technical or scientific chinese classes. I think your idea about getting an undergraduate introductory textbook is worth pursuing and  i will look into it. I can ask my labmates to recommend some and where to buy.

 

19 minutes ago, edelweis said:

I don't know whether there are Chinese MOOC online on the topics you are interested in... maybe it's worth exploring.

There may also be some Chinese language teaching powerpoints online that you could find by searching for keywords related to your field...

 

Yeah...this seems worth exploring too.

 

Cheers

[mkmyers45]

13 hours ago, Alex_Hart said:

You may still want to try and pick your professors based on their Chinese. Personally, I avoid classes taught by men from the north over 50. ? Younger professors will generally have better Mandarin.

 

Haha good advice but seeing as most of the postgraduate lectures in my school are handled by famous men & women over fifty i dont know how I'll manage. I guess i have to read biographies to screen the northerners ??

 

Quote

Maybe try to find a course online (in Chinese) and watch it? It depends. If they're speaking to you one-on-one, they may be willing to slow down, and you can ask questions.

 

What was your level of Chinese before you started your MA? Do you hand in all your assessments in Chinese? I know in most schools the professor give your the option of using 英文.

 

[Alex_Hart]

11 hours ago, mkmyers45 said:

What was your level of Chinese before you started your MA? Do you hand in all your assessments in Chinese? I know in most schools the professor give your the option of using 英文.

 

I did the one year language prep first and was around HSK 5 once I finished. Again, not a great measure, I have classmates with HSK6 who struggle more than classmates with HSK4.

 

I've heard of many majors here that do allow you to use English to hand in papers, especially among the business majors, but my major does not. Some professors will allow foreigners to do presentations in English, but I have found that my Chinese is generally better than most professor's English so I just use Chinese. When professors ask questions about the English presentations, it often becomes quite obvious that they didn't actually understand the presentation. 

11 hours ago, mkmyers45 said:

Haha good advice but seeing as most of the postgraduate lectures in my school are handled by famous men & women over fifty i dont know how I'll manage. I guess i have to read biographies to screen the northerners ??

 

Haha, don't worry, I was half joking.

[mkmyers45]

On 2/1/2019 at 10:10 AM, Alex_Hart said:

I did the one year language prep first and was around HSK 5 once I finished. Again, not a great measure, I have classmates with HSK6 who struggle more than classmates with HSK4.

 

Did you do this starting from Zero?

[Alex_Hart]

15 minutes ago, mkmyers45 said:

Did you do this starting from Zero?

No; I had studied Chinese previously. Maybe somebody could get the HSK levels necessary in one year, but I doubt they'd be able to actually use their Chinese, or understand any Chinese. 

[艾墨本]

@mkmyers45

 

You've already got some great advise from @Alex_Hart. I second his words. As someone currently engaged in a degree taught only in Chinese (which happens to be about how to teach Chinese), I think it's time you set forth a battle plan.

 

I know of one person that has done what you intend to do with Chemistry, @Sharon_Too From what she has said, it was not a good experience and not recommended. Getting a more solid Chinese foundation and moving slower would have been much better and ultimately resulted in a better education.

 

That said, you know where you are at, and hopefully through this thread you can figure out where you need to go. How do you get from point A to point B seems to be the most important questions.

 

First of all, throw out the time sink that is learning how to write Chinese characters. You don't need that. If where you want to go is mostly discussion and listening based, focus on improving your skills in those areas, i.e. spoken Chinese.

 

This can be split into a few key aspects:

1) listening comprehension: This will be the most important. Do you know what advise your professor is saying. You can reply in broken Chinese and probably still get your message across. But do you understand the question that was asked?

2) Reading comprehension: This will provide a place to move slowly (where audio can often seem fast) and also prepare you to read some academic texts in Chinese.

Some tool for this:

• Lectures on EdX/Coursera/whatever.
• Chinese Text Analyzer (CTA) to extract vocabulary frequency data.
• Textbooks (preferably in copy/paste-able PDFs)

 

This established, the big plan would be:

1. Get up to HSK 4 with a really strong understand of all the language covered in it. That's like 80% of all texts.
2. Get the last 20% in a concentrated effort, which means picking the vocabulary that is most useful to you in the situation you are going into. Get CTA. Have CTA auto-mark all HSK 4 words as known. Make one word document with dozens upon dozens of lecture transcripts, textbooks, and whatever topic-relevant text you can find in a copy-paste-able format. This is your personal corpus. Put that into CTA and starting with the most frequently used vocab, work your way down.
3. After cramming raw vocab for a bit (don't stop), start reading articles and listening to lectures that are in your corpus.
4. Don't die under the monstrous load that you have to learn in a single year what takes most (when fully committed) roughly 3 years to accomplish.

 

 

Note: I would not expect this to get you to the point that you can produce Chinese at high level, but should get you to the point where you can understand topic-specific input. Don't get frustrated if you find you can understand conversation around your major but not around what kind of "jianbing" you want.

[mkmyers45]

26 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

First of all, throw out the time sink that is learning how to write Chinese characters. You don't need that. If where you want to go is mostly discussion and listening based, focus on improving your skills in those areas, i.e. spoken Chinese.

 

I cant afford to drop writing for now because its still a very big part of the 1 year language programme. We have daily 听写 on new words but i guess i can reduce the time i use for it but i was thinking that at least ''knowing to write the 1200 characters'' is a must-have for me.

 

29 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

Get up to HSK 4 with a really strong understand of all the language covered in it. That's like 80% of all texts.

 

How many more points do you think finishing up the HSK 5 course will drop on this? 85%?

32 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

Some tool for this:

• Lectures on EdX/Coursera/whatever.
• Chinese Text Analyzer (CTA) to extract vocabulary frequency data.
• Textbooks (preferably in copy/paste-able PDFs)

 

Yes, I am planning on this after this after taking the HSK 4 but so far not so good on finding copy-paste friendly textbooks but i'll ask my labmates after the holidays. I guess i'll stick to general review academic papers and course outlines i find online. 

 

43 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

Don't die under the monstrous load that you have to learn in a single year what takes most (when fully committed) roughly 3 years to accomplish.

 

? I'll keep it in mind.

 

45 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

Note: I would not expect this to get you to the point that you can produce Chinese at high level, but should get you to the point where you can understand topic-specific input. Don't get frustrated if you find you can understand conversation around your major but not around what kind of "jianbing" you want.

 

I worry a lot about this but i guess the most important thing is to understand and know my research. I believe hard work will see my ability in other parts of the language grow with time.

[Sharon_Too]

Hello, 

I'm the one who did a one year intensive Chinese course (level zero to HSK 4) and then 4 years Bachelor in Chemical Engineering taught in Chinese. First of all, it was not a bad experience at all, on the contrary, I'd recommend it but it depends on what you want.

In my first year, we had comprehensive Chinese, listening, writing and all those classes, but the major difference was that there was only two of us students for nearly all classes, so we made rapid progress and reached HSK4 within 8 months when HSK 3 was min requirement back then. My first year in BEng was tough, I was the only foreigner in my class, and had to digest all the new vocabulary and grammar on my own. I went to Math class without even knowing words like addition, substraction...I admit I should have set up a better study plan for technical vocabulary, but it went fine, just needed to catch up and keep the pace with Chinese students.

I'd say that with A levels in Chemistry, Physics and Math, the content itself is not difficult,  and the good thing is that there's less language compared to humanities, you can easily figure out the numbers and work out the problems. Another bonus about learning Beng in a small uni is that your listening will get used to accents, and your handwritten Chinese reading skills will get a boost.

During my last year, our supervisor had a buddy program, so I had a senior to guide me with the laboratory work, thesis writing, data analysis etc.

Overall, my Beng was ok, my chinese reached HSK 6 within 5 years with strong focus on technical language. 

 

Here's a few words of advice:

Learn the Periodic table, organic and inorganic nomenclature in Chinese. Check my zhihu answer.

Get your hands on secondary school science textbooks in Chinese, technical English books for uni students like 化工专业英语

Start reading academic papers in Chinese.

Watch Open courses in Chinese 公开课

Get to know Chinese friends, esp in Science field

Get ready for the challenge, and get plenty of perseverance.

 

 

 

 

[Tomsima]

@Sharon_Too First of all, I just read through your zhihu answer, and wanted to say thank you for the great motivation (your amazing chinese aside, of course, which goes without saying). Im currently plowing through a masters in chinese-english interpretation as the only 'foreigner' on the course, and your experience struck many chords. As for your recommendation of dictall, that is literally life changing for me. I actually knew of dictall, but had no idea you could view word groups by specialism. I spend all my free time building specialist glossaries with an overall lack of direction, so this will be instrumental in the coming months as I prepare for exams. THANK YOU!

[mkmyers45]

UPDATE 1: 

 

Just passed the HSK 4 

 

听力： 100

阅读：100

书写： 88

 

I have also started consuming my field related vocabulary and so far i have about 600+ in ANKI, recognition is going good but actually being able to speak them out has been a chore. I have been able to hold a small conversation on isotopes in Chinese (small victories) but a lot more work needs to be done. Compiling academic material  and running them through CTA has been a massive help in mining vocabulary.

 

 I found that describing some of the ideas needs way more than HSK 4 level words so after unconsciously adding 400+ HSK 5 words to ANKI, I then decided to go ahead and prepare for the exam. Preparing for the hsk 5 has really helped boost my Chinese to the next level. I'll take the HSK 5 at the end of this month and I'll try to get my technical vocab to 2500 in anki before September.

 

@Alex_Hart  @Sharon_Too @艾墨本 @Tomsima  How much field specific vocabulary do reckon you have accumulated so far? I know its all relative but i just wanted to hear your experiences. How much till you felt comfortable enough with listening and comprehension?

 

 

I hope to have another update after i pass the HSK 5

[mkmyers45]

Update 2: I just wrote the HSK 5 today and well it wasn't a very pleasant experience. If you live in Wuhan, China and ever want to write the HSK then be weary of the Wuhan University of Technology Center ( 武汉理工大学网考中心), I wrote my HSK 4 there and ran into issue the listening section, They had to 重新一下 twice before i could go through the listening section because my headset either lost audio or because the exam started from question 7. After the exam, I and a few other affected were assured that this was a one off occurrence that will never happen again (One of the affected had to change computers 3 times and that is bound to mess with your concentration.) 

 

      Fast forward to today, not only did similar issues arise today but they were worse than last time. This time around i kept loosing audio in the middle of the listening, so much so that we were asked to let the clock run down then start the reading and writing part then we would go back to the listening at the end of the exam. The staff didn't help matters and the exam room was very noisy all through the 3 hours i had to sit there. Out of about 20 students for the HSK 5, 10 had issues with the listening and as at when i left about 4 students still didn't start the listening part. 

 

My initial target before taking the exam of a 250 or more score is now basically screwed and i'll be very lucky to even pass at all (I was averaging 200 in the listening, reading and 1st part of the writing). I don't mean to be a downer debby but the whole episode messed with my concentration and i ended making some silly errors (misused 收获) in the writing part and God knows how many more in the reading and listening section. I probably wont retake the HSK 5 though since there is always the HSK 6 to work my way up to. 

 

So far, learning technical vocab is going well although it slowed a little in the past two weeks because i had other engagements but i expect to get back to normal from next week. In my last post i stated a target of 2500 technical vocab in ANKI by September but now i think they might not be enough words to meet that quota since im just focusing on words from my immediate research discipline and very important general terms from other areas. 

 

Once bitten, twice shy i guess.....

[mkmyers45]

Update 3:

 

Immediate goal: HSK 5 - PASSED (246/300)

 

HSK 五级

听力： 91

阅读： 85

书写： 70

 

Despite the conditions listed above, I did manage to pass the HSK 5 and while i probably could have done better i am happy with my progress so far. 

 

Short-term Goal (2 months): Get 2000 technical words into anki (so far 700+)

 

I am presently finding adding key vocab to be more difficult than i anticipated due to limited corpus and reference materials. Dictall has been a god sent though.... I have revised my earlier plan for 2500 words in anki down to 2000 and i'll try to maintain my present pace for this.

 

Medium term goal (6 months): Pass HSK 6 and start reading academic papers in Chinese 

 

It seems inevitable that i have to sit the hsk 6 as almost any text i come across if filled with several dozen hsk 6 words and 成语‘s and as @Tomsima has said somewhere else on this forum its just the first step on the long journey to consuming native content (slight paraphrasing)

 

Long term Goal (2 years): Write an academic paper in Chinese 

 

This will probably be the most difficult task on this list but i am hope to make significant progress towards this in a year or so. 

 

Bonus goal (now-1 year): Read and consume more native content

 

I hope i will also be able to to delve into native content more...Probably read 活着 and start consuming the news in Chinese. This goal is more of a dream than a goal because i am not sure i will have enough time for it but i do hope i can make some progress.