大家好！请帮我学习汉语 ?

[kanumo]

Dear all,

 

I made a short introduction in another forum, but I would like to have your thoughts/ feedback on my learning approach, so I thought of starting an own topic for this.

 

My Name is Dimi, I am 37, born and living in Germany.

 

I started studying chinese approx.. 1.5 years ago, mainly out of curiosity and to have a new "challenge" for my brain ? I am not planning to move to China.

 

Currently I am studying for HSK3 - I use the HSK test for Setting a Goal and have something to learn to. I learned around 551 characters/ 370 words at the moment – for these I would say I am pretty solid (tone, writing, meaning) – time spent on skritter in total 155 hours

 

My Overall Goal is to reach a somehow proficient Level of spoken and written chinese at some point… slowly but surely ?

• There is no need to rush and I am not looking for the magic pill to have everything under my belt within the next year ?
• I am curious, if the things that I am doing are a good combination to study Chinese as a whole (reading, speaking, writing (digital and with maybe a little less emphasis also by hand)

 

I am using/ applying the following apps/ Methods for my learning:

- Skritter: About 20-30 min daily for writing and learning hanzi (simplified). (almost since day one of my learning) -

- audiofiles from fluentinmandarin.com: About 60 min a day (passively while driving to work and home)

- Chinese YouTube Videos or reading chinese: About 20 min per day (I started reading mandarin companion graded readers, but recently found (through this forum TCB)

- Chinese Course: 90 min once per week at a confucius Institute (did 2 Courses of 15 weeks each) - helpful for learning Pinyin and pronounciation

- Chinese online tutoring: 45 min once per week - since a few weeks - Its mostly trying to Chat as much as possible in chinese - we are not following a strict agenda

- Grammar: I definitely like John Pasdens books on chinese Grammar and prefer them over classical textbooks we us in class  

- Chinesepod: I used that through the first year, but quit it 2-3 months ago.

 

• In TOTAL: I have around 45 min of active learning plus 60 min for passive learning per day, plus the time I spend on the tutoring 

 

 

So, please let me know what you guys think…

• Do you have any suggestions regarding the actions I am using within my active learning time?
• Should I be doing something different at this stage of learning/ progress?
• Any other remarks from your learning journey?

 

 

Kind regards,

 

Dimi

[889]

I think it's really important in the early stages to have lots of contact with Chinese speakers -- in class, as tutors, as friends, etc. Otherwise it's awfully easy to adopt bad practices that are almost impossible to break. If there are Chinese classes of any sort in your area, I'd suggest enrolling if only for the exposure to the teacher several times a week.

[NinjaTurtle]

Hi Dimi,

 

I strongly feel that you need to start communicating with people in spoken Chinese. You need to start setting up exchanges with Chinese speakers. Have you heard of doing an exchange? For example, do 30 minutes of Chinese only, then do 30 minutes of English only. Or you can do German if you speak German. Or any other language you may speak.

 

The best way is to do this is in person but you can also do this on the Internet. If you need help finding exchange partners, please do not hesitate to ask.

 

Look at my post in this thread for a list of topics to chat about in Chinese and English.

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/58423-what-is-fluency-listening-vs-speaking/?tab=comments#comment-453964

 

[kanumo]

Hi,

 

thanks for your both feedback.

 

with my tutor the chat is mostly in Chinese. 

For the weekly class at the institute it’s a mixture and i would like to have it completely in Chinese, but as we are a learning group, we have to compromise.

 

i tried HelloTalk with several ppl, but it never really was as stable as the talks lasted longer than a few days.

 

as I have two young kids, a lot of my learning takes place in between the daily tasks of work, family and household. Therefore it is easier to use an app like Skritter or TCB whenever there is time..

 

i take the tutoring at 5 in the morning. Store work, so it works with the tutor in china and can happen before work for me.. maybe I should try to find someone for a second weekly encounter around the same time..

 

thanks so far!

[Pall]

•  

Hi, 

If your goal is to approach a level about HSK4, it's enough what you do now. But if it is HSK5 or HSK6, I think it would take years and big effort with learning Mandarin traditionally. See my replies to the previous question in this section (At what known word%...). I think you would sooner achieve the HSK6 goal (and even HSK5) in case of learning Mandarin simulaneously with learning Russian, than if learning only Mandarin. It's not a joke indeed, see all my replies to that post, please.

[Wurstmann]

 

So much bad advice…
Don't speak yet. Use like 90% of your study time for listening to Chinese (and preferably up that time to a few hours every day). You first want to be able to understand spoken Chinese. Then when you get in a situation where you have to speak, you will find that the right words will just come out.
How do you expect to be able to speak if you can’t understand? You would need to somehow use your knowledge of grammar and vocab to construct sentences. That’s slow and painful and you’re prone to making lots of mistakes.
Ask us non-native speakers that got somewhere with our English abilities. Most of us will tell you that even after years of English classes we still sucked. Only after watching countless hours of TV and movies and using the English part of the internet we improved. 

Input comes first, output follows.

Of course, to become really good at speaking you have to practice. But that is the second step.

 

Edit: That assumes that you want to reach a high level in the language. If you have different goals (learning enough for visiting the country and ordering in a restaurant for example) then the method outlined in the other answers can work.

This is a nice interview that explains the approach I follow.

[kanumo]

Hey,

 

thanks again for the feedback! I think it would be great if these different approaches could be discussed a little more.

 

i will take your advice to try to bring up my listening/ visual input:

 

- learning Chinese through stories Podcast: I try to get that in during the day

- watch more Chinese series in Netflix with Chinese subtitles.

 

On the other hand I will still work on my vocabulary input, to understand more and more.. i want to have a solid foundation of words..

 

Do others have more thoughts on these different approaches?

 

Thanks,

 

Dimi

 

[Wurstmann]

1 hour ago, kanumo said:

On the other hand I will still work on my vocabulary input, to understand more and more.. i want to have a solid foundation of words..

Your cards should probably look something like this in the beginning (on the back that is; only the Chinese sentence on the front). Later you can switch to Chinese definitions.

 

Or, if you take them from Netflix:

 

Quote

learning Chinese through stories Podcast: I try to get that in during the day

Podcasts can be hard because you don't have any visual clues. For example: If you watch a TV show and somebody screams "滚！" and then the other person leaves, you probably will understand what it means, even if you've never heard the word before.

 

Quote

watch more Chinese series in Netflix with Chinese subtitles.

If you want to get better at listening turn off the subtitles. ?

[haveheart]

12 hours ago, Wurstmann said:

Or, if you take them from Netflix:

This is a bit off topic but: have you had any luck with downloading subtitle files from Netflix (for using with subs2srs) or do you stick to tried and true copying out from hardsubs? 

[Wurstmann]

Firefox

Chrome

 

You can use this to download subtitles from Netflix. @haveheart

 

[Pall]

Of course, this is too radical an advice, to learn Russian in order to learn Chinese by the gateway method. It may make sense only for those who want to learn Chinese very deeply, up to the level of HSK-5, 6 and beyond. And also for those who are going to learn several languages at once. But I can give a more moderate advice, too.
 

I myself aim at mastering the HSK-4 for the beginning. There is a book, a collection of short stories for teenagers, about 20,000 words. And it covers about 800 words of HSK-4 (including HSK-3, 2 and 1). True, it is compiled according to the method of Ilya Frank, and each sentence word by word is accompanied by a Russian translation - more precisely, with a subscript. Very similar to my superscript. Pinyin is also given. But at the end of each story the text is repeated again just in characters. It is an electronic book, it costs just USD 3.5 approximately (the price is in Rubles). You can buy it at the link. It's there the 3rd one from the top, the title is "Китайские реальные истории." You will get even an audio in addition. There are other simple books too.

http://www.franklang.ru/index.php/kitajskij-yazyk/177-teksty-na-kitajskom-yazyke-adaptirovannye-po-metodu-chteniya-ili-franka

 

But  about 400 words of HSK-4 are lacking. To close the hole I gave them in parts to Chinese students asking them to write short essays with these words on any topic. They wrote, of course, with different quality. Nevertheless, it is written by native speakers, university students. These texts are attached. This book and these texts, taken together, comprise 1109 words of HSK-4 (which is 1200 words totally). Sample pages from paper edition are enclosed.

 

In my opinion, it's much more effective to learn HSK lists using integral texts with them, not just seperate sentences as examples. 

 

HSK4_students.docx

Edited July 12, 2019 at 05:01 PM by Pall
attachment is added

[Pall]

@kanumo Please, see my reply above again, I added sample pages