I think I'm doing something wrong here

[NiklasPh]

Hi

Shortly about my background. I'm studying industrial engineering and mandarin for about 2 years in Taiwan. First for 3x3h a week at the NTU and now for the last 9 month 5x2h a week at the Shida.

My reading and writing improved alot and I'm at the upper part of B1 or lower part of B2. My listening skills are also more or less decent beside if my father in law tries to tell me anything because he is constantly mixing up mandarin and taiwanese 
However, my speaking skills are almost not existing. I have a hard time recalling the proper grammar/ patterns when it comes to speaking. 

Do you have any tips for fixing this issue beside just speaking? I know in the end only speaking will help but I can't even get out more than a basic sentence or it takes way too long for even a half decent response to an answer at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

[DavyJonesLocker]

it might seem like a cop out answer but "practice makes perfect" especially with speaking. 

 

Try not to tense up when someone speaks to you and if you don't understand, tell them straight out, don't let the conversationion fail immediately at the first hurdle and walk away dejected. With speaking you often need to stumble your way through as unlike reading its a real time action.  Don't be afraid to ask them if they don't understand as remember they will also can well be a bit put off by a foreigner speaking chinese. 

 

1 hour ago, NiklasPh said:

However, my speaking skills are almost not existing. I have a hard time recalling the proper grammar/ patterns when it comes to speaking. 

 

 

Most everyday run of the mill speaking (i.e. not a lecture, presentation) whether in any language seems like it mostly contains simple grammar so I wouldn't get too worried about that.  Also a slight delay before speaking can be great to collect your thoughts rather than immediately blurt out a sentence. This only takes seconds and can be enough. 
 

[Dawei3]

Other than your family, do you have a language partner(s)?  I find language partners invaluable.  They want to improve their English and I want to improve my Chinese - and we both do.  From your comment, I'm guessing your in-laws speak Chinese, but these discussions can be different than that with a language partner.  I've found you need to identify people with whom you have the "right" chemistry for them to be an effective language partner.  I have very close friends who are Chinese, yet we still don't "click" as language partners.    

 

With some, it's fun & dynamic and the discussion easily switches back & forth between languages.  They can correct me and I can correct them without a bit of tension (we usually laugh about our mistakes).  It's a great way to learn. 

 

In contrast, with those with whom I lack that chemistry, it's just difficult and not educational for either of us.  Correcting mistakes is uncomfortable. 

 

Also, I want partners with whom there is natural balance between how much we speak in either language.  

 

Finally, an extremely insightful perspective from the linguist John McWhorter might motivate you.  McWhorter notes that adults have 2 main motivations for language learning:  

1) Concrete reasons, such as for a job or for school

or

2) Wanting to enter a fascinating culture or communicate more fully with another human being. 

 

#1 tends to speak very correctly, but not very fluently. #1 also tends to be book correct as opposed to what people actually say.  In contrast, #2 tends to be much more fluent, makes many more mistakes, and makes much more progress.  By asking your question, I'm assuming you are a #2.  Hence, speak more, make more mistakes, and make more progress.

 

Some of my best grammar "lessons" were when I made mistakes talking to friends/language partners.  They corrected me and it imprinted the correct way of speaking.    

 

[Flickserve]

12 hours ago, NiklasPh said:

My listening skills are also more or less decent

 

I just wonder if your listening skills are also at B1/B2 level. You might be filling in missing gaps and using educated guesses when you listen to people speaking.

 

To make things more efficient for improving speech, try to get into more conversations and write down what you wanted to say in a notebook. Get a translation in Chinese, record someone saying it and then just basically follow the recording again and again and again speaking out loud and very importantly, NOT looking at the written Chinese sentence.

 

By not looking, at words, you have to totally focus on your speaking. Start off with basic sentences and phrases as building blocks. Then later, you can add a variety of common vocabulary. Be wary of trying to get the 'perfect' sentence which has the best grammar. Just go for simple sentences to build up your confidence.

 

You can also get language partners or community tutors on itaki to help. But you have to insist that they type out a wholly correct sentence in Chinese for you. It's perfectly fine to use English to  ask "how to say xyz in Chinese". It's up to you how you want  to get a voice recording afterwards. Maybe someone in the family with a clear voice.

[NiklasPh]

Hard to say @Flickserve I passed the B1 level of my last test and I can follow my university lectures far better when the Professors are speaking mandarin (might also be that they just struggle to explain  more complex concepts in English) but I wouldn't pass B2 at the moment..... well  I actually have 0 motivation to take the test at the moment because I accidentally chose a course in data analytics this semester and now I'm stuck with learning Python and R . 

 

My idea was to put together as many phrases as possible together  to have a decent amount of phrasings in mind so I won't have to think about how to say something. 

 

However, I was also planning to change 語言中心 again in June because I noticed that the quality of the classes at the 師大 is too inconsistent. My first class was pretty good, my second class was ok but the teacher tried to teach mandarin like someone would teach German. She basically explained everything like it's grammar and just based on stare rules rather than the usage of the patterns is linked to the context. My teacher now is a catastrophe. She spends 2,5 days a week on letting us repeat the texts from the textbook, 1 day on reading  and repeating the vocabulary and the rest of the time she spends on quickly going over the sentence patterns and test.

So classical lazy language teaching methods and we all now how well they work

I think when this course is over I'll take a tutor for June and August (have to go back to Germany in July) and change the 語言中心 from September on. 

  

 

 

[Flickserve]

Python might be quite useful for language learning to write some apps.