Crappy Study Materials; is it this common? What's your experience?

[Weyland]

You might laugh, but these were my first Chinese study materials.



It wasn't until way later that I started using study materials focused on teaching foreigners Chinese. So, I kind of skipped HSK 1 through 4. As such I never really knew what kind of study materials most people that study Chinese are using. Though, it seems that if it isn't published by BLCUP or any other University-related publishing house that the "quality" of said studying materials is much to desire after. Though I never expected the tons of low-effort "teaching materials" that populate the Amazon web-store until I stumbled upon this Reddit post.



So, what gives? How bad is the situation really? I know that most Youtube videos are focused on HSK 1-3 students, but how about books? How about apps? Apps seem to sizzle out around HSK5, if not earlier.

Maybe people aren't underestimating how difficult Chinese is, maybe they're all just using these lousy "study resources" that do nothing buy give them a set of words to memorize and then never use.

What has your experience been? I'm, as you might suspect, completely oblivious to the situation and have nothing but prejudices.

[PerpetualChange]

The HSK itself incentives test prep over actual language acquisition, it's not too surprising that there's so much low tier stuff out there based on HSK word lists. And I wouldn't be surprised if someone of this stuff will help you score higher on the advertised HSK level. Too bad that passing the HSK is only partially related to language acquisition...

[道艺]

I've been to 5 or 6 different 汉语 schools here in Shanghai and I'd estimate that 90% of ppl aren't here to actually learn the language or culture, rather to have a cultural experience and return to their countries and say they can speak Chinese. Not really a problem with the resources, just more the nature of language tourism imo

 

To me the best materials are the same ones you found - however a native learn their own language is the best way

[Wurstmann]

9 hours ago, Weyland said:

I know that most Youtube videos are focused on HSK 1-3 students, but how about books? How about apps? Apps seem to sizzle out around HSK5, if not earlier.

 

That's probably because at this point you don't really need any study materials anymore.

[anonymoose]

I started out using a grammar book (Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip and Rimmington). I know that learning grammar is not to everyone's taste, and to be clear, this book definitely does not teach conversational Chinese (nowhere does it explicitly teach you how to greet people and introduce yourself, for example), but for me at least, this was an excellent resource that gave me the foundation for further studies to the advanced level.

 

I think the problem with basic language courses isn't so much a problem with the quality of the courses themselves (though undoubtedly some are worse than others), but rather that teaching language at the basic level is inherently very unmotivating. I think it's like learning to play the piano - it must be a pleasure when you reach the level that pleasantly sounding music can easily flow from your fingertips, but to get there, most courses make you suffer through a seemingly endless slog of tedious exercises and scales, and no course that takes this approach, no matter how good, is going to circumvent the inherent tedium therein.

 

That's why when learning a language, I personally prefer to go the grammar route. Whilst you will need extra work on the side to become conversational, starting with grammar very quickly gets you to the stage where you can start producing complex sentences and makes the learning that much more interesting, without, at least at the initial stage, having to endure learning mechanical greetings, how to introduce yourself and inane talk about your hobbies, etc.

[vellocet]

It's the textbook writers who are at fault.  They are professional linguists, and they think everyone who studies Chinese is also a professional linguist.  So, there's a lot they don't need to explain.  They approach the language from an academic standpoint and don't bother to teach real-life vocabulary.  I remember leafing through a beginner textbook and nowhere did it teach things like "where's the bathroom?"  When confronted with this evidence, the academics get derisive and tell you go to buy a phrasebook.  They regard the beginner stuff as stultifyingly boring and an insult to their superior abilities.  What they really want to do is teach the advanced stuff, ignoring the fact that 95% of people who learn Chinese never progress beyond the beginner level.

 

It's very slowly getting better.  People who went through the horrible old system are starting to write the next generation of textbooks.  It's taking a while, though.