I want to learn Chinese after Japanese. I am not in China and there are no Chinese language schools nearby. Is my plan good? + a little Japanese rant

[gintama]

Hello

 

For background information -not important-

I have been studying Japanese for 4 years now. I know around +6000 words and all the joyo-2000- kanji(Japanese Hanzi). I learned Japanese to be able to read manga and novels. Right now I can read Japanese Just fine and my listening is not all that bad. BUT my production skills are a joke. My speaking is very bad and writing is not THAT bad as long as the topic is easy. I have been working on improving my production skills and it is coming out nicely so far.

 

 

 

Now I want to learn Chinese. I don't want to be able to read only, but to actually speak and listen. I thought about joining a language academy but there is none around me

Instead, I wrote a plan to be rounded in Chinese. I want my speaking/writing skills to be as good as my listening/reading ones. I don't want to have a HSK5 reading skills and HSK1 speaking skills. I think it would be fine if my reading was HSK5 for example and my speaking HSK3. I just don't want the gap to be THAT huge between production and consumption. Here is my plan and some justification:

 

1. For vocabulary & Hanzi => Anki: this is the same method I used with Japanese and worked quite well. I tend to have two card per note, one to test recognition -guess the meaning and reading- and the other for production -write down the characters/words on a paper-. learn 15~20 words a day
2. For textbook and grammar=> HSK standard course(textbooks and workbooks) + Chinese zero to hero: I think the textbooks alone are nice but the course would be better to enforce listening and explaining. One of my problems while learning Japanese is almost all of my language resources where written even the grammar ones, so I didn't get much "formal" listening. 2 lessons per week
3. For writing practice => langcorrect + hello talk: I am using them both with Japanese at the moment. Honestly the native speakers feedbacks were not as important as the courage to write and look up words. Also, the more I wrote the less mistakes I made. at least once a week
4. For speaking practice=> italki for one hour a week: this should have been number one.. I have regretted NOTHING more than the fact that I didn't practice speaking from day 1 with Japanese. I think it would be worse with Chinese with all of their tones and similar sounds. one hour a week

 

My questions are:

• is this enough? or are there any useless resources I should throw out?
• for italki: is one hour a week enough? I am planning on going over the words pronunciation together each week + speaking practice. I think Chinese zero to hero would cover the understanding part
• I will be completely free for the next four months. 24 hours a day free. what should I expect? is reaching HSK3 reasonable? what about HSK4?
• I didn't include additional reading practice as I am a bookworm. I am 100% sure I will be looking around for something Chinese to read from day2. I have learned Japanese and English before and my reading skill always end up becoming too good compared to the others -I took IELTS recently, got 9 in both listening and reading compared to 7.5 in speaking and writing-.

 

 

Thank you

 

tl;dr: I know Japanese, I learned pinyin. Is using anki(20 a day), HSK standard course + Chinese zero to hero(2 lessons a week) , hello talk, italki(an hour a week) enough to be WELL ROUNDED

 

 

[Jellyfish]

Hey, well done you for picking up so many languages! From the sounds of it I'm the exact opposite of you (maybe your evil twin? hehe) - I started learning Chinese first and would like to get into Japanese now. My speaking and listening are very good, my reading and writing really poor. So, here are my recs for listening and speaking in Chinese:

 

As you pointed out, I think speaking may be harder in Chinese than in Japanese (from what very very little experience I have of Japanese so far that is). So I'm not sure if 1h a week on italki is going to be enough. You can try one of the many audio courses that also make you speak and repeat during lessons. I personally used the Michel Thomas Mandarin audiobooks parallel to my evening courses at the Confucius Institute in my first year and I found them immensely helpful at the time. Looking back now I see that there were issues with the course (his pronunciation is awful, but there's always a native speaker there too!) and the MT method is widely criticised now from what I hear but personally, the relentless repetition and emphasis on very simple structures gave me so much confidence to actually go and use what little Chinese I had when I first went to China. There are probably better alternatives now - I read good things about Pimsleur but haven't tried it myself yet. Here is a list of other Pimsleur alternatives which I haven't gone through yet but which looks promising at first glance: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/pimsleur-alternatives/

 

Hope some of this is helpful and you find a method and course that works for you! Good luck, 加油！

[roddy]

For the speaking practice, especially early on, you might be better with 15 minutes 4 times a week, than one hour once a week. I might not worry about the 20 words a day target, but make sure I capture course vocab and anything else I came across that seems useful. That should be plenty. Perhaps add in something for a change from the books - Pimsleur / Michel Tomas type audio courses are something you can do while out for a walk and will reinforce what you're already learning. 

[Flickserve]

Practice tones and pronunciation again and again early on. It needs dedicated time which will take you away from trying to form sentences. However, you will get long term benefits down the line.

 

Need more listening materials.

[roddy]

Oh yeah, why didn't I mention that. That'd be worth paying a bit extra for a tutor for if you can. And don't do a week of pronunciation work and think you're done. You need to be coming back to it again and again and again.

[gintama]

Thank you everyone! I didn't expect the fast replies. I am truly grateful for all of your advices ❤️

 

So my first week should be spend with a teacher to nail down pinyin and tones. After that, my plan is okay except:

1. anki is used to learn words I come across/in the textbook. so the goal of 20 a day is unnecessary in the beginning

2. italki would be better used more frequently, perhaps in a shorter intervals.

3. in each italki session, we should do pronunciation/tones drills. Then practice the words I learned during the week + speaking practice as fit -such as pronouncing full sentences, speaking very short dialogues, forming sentences ..etc-.

4. add independent listening practice. I don't know where from yet but so far peppa pig, Pimsleur, japanesepod101, shows

 

 

Thank you again! I will do my best

[roddy]

2 minutes ago, gintama said:

So my first week should be spend with a teacher to nail down pinyin and tones.

No, some of your time every week should be spent with a teacher on the possibly years-long process of nailing down your pinyin and tones. You can learn enough in the first week to make yourself understood when using simple language, but I'd recommend regarding this as an ongoing process - just like you improve your grammar and vocab every week, improve your pronunciation. Imagine a sculptor chipping away at a rock, getting it slowly and steadily into the form he wants it.

[gintama]

This makes sense. I liked your suggestion of shorter intervals more frequently.

So at the beginning week focus solely on pinyin and tones, perhaps a class daily until I nail them down even for a bit.

Then the next weeks as long as I am a beginner I can start learning and meet with the tutor 3~4 times a week for 15~30 minutes. one session should be dedicated to pinyin and tones, while the others on pronouncing the words and sentences and such.

I will leave thinking about what I will do when I reach intermediate stage for when I actually reach it

 

Thank you for your help!

[Flickserve]

You can also find some apps to help practice pinyin when you are not with a teacher. They have voice recognition to help you get feedback if you are on the right track.

 

I think I spent roughly 15 hours on italki lessons for pronunciation during my beginner phase. I got fed up of sounding crap to myself. I gave up trying sentences and gorged myself on pronunciation practice. 

[gintama]

3 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

I think I spent roughly 15 hours on italki lessons for pronunciation. I got fed up of sounding crap to myself. I gave up trying sentences and gorged myself on pronunciation practice. 

EXACTLY why I look like I am overthinking this whole thing. Japanese pronunciation is very easy compared to English or my mother language. Yet with the lack of practice I managed to screw it up. I don't want to repeat this with Chinese especially that its pronunciation is far from easy. That is why I am more than willing to spend a lot of times and money for speaking/pinyin and tones drills. Because honestly I feel like I can practice reading easily independently, there are a lot of places to practice writing and get feedback too. But speaking? nothing much

 

I tried hello Chinese and I feel like they don't really "correct" me. Yes if they showed bo3 and I pronounced it xi4 then obviously the detect it. But subtle difference don't really get detected. I feel like nothing would beat actually practising with a human being.

 

Thank you for your reply

 

[roddy]

26 minutes ago, gintama said:

meet with the tutor 3~4 times a week for 15~30 minutes. one session should be dedicated to pinyin and tones, while the others on pronouncing the words and sentences and such

I think this, done conscientiously with a good tutor, should be fine. But you don't need to separate pinyin/tones and words/sentences. Ultimately you need to be talking in words and sentences, so focus on these. If you or your tutor notices a particular problem - you get zh and ch mixed up, you can't pronounce a third+second tone combo, whatever - you can focus on that for a while. 

 

Even just five minutes a week where your tutor focuses on your pronunciation will be valuable. "What's my most obvious pronunciation problem?" Fine, fix that. Next most obvious? And keep going. 

[Flickserve]

10 minutes ago, gintama said:

That is why I am more than willing to spend a lot of times and money for speaking/pinyin and tones drills.

 

Yeah. Good investment. See if there are community tutors who have the PSC exam or broadcasting degrees or new professional tutors. These will come cheaper and still have good pronunciation. I followed a pro teacher and another community tutor who used to broadcast on radio.

 

10 minutes ago, gintama said:

Because honestly I feel like I can practice reading easily independently, there are a lot of places to practice writing and get feedback too. But speaking? nothing much

 

Definitely agree.

[gintama]

One last question. Do you think there is a need for Chinese zero to hero? if I were to meet 3 times weekly with a tutor, wouldn't we be able to cover the parts I don't get? and perhaps use Chinese wiki for grammar explanation?

 

[gintama]

21 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

Yeah. Good investment. See if there are community tutors who have the PSC exam or broadcasting degrees or new professional tutors. These will come cheaper and still have good pronunciation.

Great tip! never thought about it!

 

24 minutes ago, roddy said:

Even just five minutes a week where your tutor focuses on your pronunciation will be valuable. "What's my most obvious pronunciation problem?" Fine, fix that. Next most obvious? And keep going. 

Will do that! thank you!

 

Thank you everyone!

[Dawei3]

I think you'll find it's fascinating to learn Chinese after Japanese.  Before starting to learn Chinese, I spoke a little Japanese and then I've subsequently studied a little Japanese.  As a native English speaker, I definitely found Japanese to be easier to speak than Chinese.  However, Chinese grammar is far simpler (and much more English-like) than Japanese.  One of my Japanese friends, who is learning Chinese, told me knowing English grammar helps him learn Chinese (English & Chinese word order is often similar).  

 

5 hours ago, Jellyfish said:

I read good things about Pimsleur

As many who've read my posts know, I'm a huge fan of Pimsleur.  It teaches whole sentences from the beginning so that your cadence & rhythm is much more natural.  This is in contrast to the old way of learning languages when you memorize words & grammar rules - and then try to speak. 

 

The latter is like teaching someone to sing a song by having them memorize - individually(!) - how to sing each word - you test them on how they sing each word individually - and then much much later have them sing the whole song.  If we taught singing this way, people would sing terribly (in a disjointed/disfluent manner)  and no one would want to learn to sing because it's such a boring learning process.  As a result, lots of people give up on languages.  I was shocked that the teaching in my son's high school & college still teach this way.  My son who got straight A+s in 5 years high school & college German couldn't even manage a simple conversation (but he could fill notebooks with random German words & verb conjugations and he could read text in German).  With Pimsleur, I was able to manage simple conversations after 6 months.  (previously, I had tried many other approaches with different languages).

 

Learning whole sentences also gets you to think in the other language as opposed to necessarily translating from ones language.  Pimsleur surprised me because someone would ask me questions in English and sometimes, I would think the answer in Chinese.  I thought:  This is really cool that just CDs got me to think in Chinese.... (now, Pimsleur is in an app that is better than the CDs)

 

Another problem with memorizing just words is that you don't know how to use them.  Just because one word translates to another doesn't mean the other language always uses the word the same way.  E.g., You could memorize 1000s of flash cards and know Chinese grammar rules perfectly, but not say "the store is closed" correctly because the Chinese use different words to express this.  

 

While I can critique Pimsleur's content (some of the words it teaches are too formal), it's teach method is the best I've found.  This said, I can't just sit in a room listening to Pimsleur.  I prefer to listen while driving or doing other things.  People usually assume my language ability is far above what it actually is because Pimsleur has given me good pronunciation, cadence & rhythm.  I recently started interacting with a guy who got his MS in Chinese studies.  His level of knowledge is far above mine (i.e., his comprehension, writing and knowing how to say things).  Yet, a mutual Chinese friend told me that my Chinese is far better than his.  It really surprised me (because I've never taken a class) & I attribute this to Pimsleur.  

 

I think you'd find Pimsleur is a good adjunct to your tutor.    

 

 

 

[gintama]

Wow .. I have never been more exited to try a product lol. It is a bit expensive but I guess I can look around.

I will give it a shot. Thank you!

 

Up to what level did you use? when I checked there  are 5 levels.

[Lu]

1 hour ago, gintama said:

It is a bit expensive but I guess I can look around.

I've heard that you can borrow it from the library, if you're lucky and your library has it.

[Dawei3]

5 hours ago, gintama said:

Up to what level did you use? when I checked there  are 5 levels.

I'm using Level 5 now.  I'm mostly finished with it.  However, with it and Levels 2-4, I still re-review them occasionally because I don't live in China and I forgot phrases I don't use.  Level 1 will give you the basics, but I wish it taught some more useful content.   

 

Pimsleur doesn't have a set order for what you are learning.  It constantly jumps from topic to topic and then back.  i.e., They don't want you to just memorize 3 sentences in-a-row.  They want you to be able to think of them spontaneously.  So one moment you're talking about the weather, the next about going to the bank and the next whether Yunnan has micro-climates.  Because the approach is unpredictable,  I don't find it boring to re-listen to old lessons.  Also, you constantly need to speak back to the lessons and this keeps my mind from wandering.  

 

I found that Level 5 gives me lots of vocabulary that comes up in discussions with friends.  Also, the app has some mini-quizzes that help me retain the materials.  

 

There used to be 2 youtubes in which a woman compared Pimsleur Spanish with Rosetta stone spanish, but I can't find them anymore.  I agreed with her comments, despite that she was reviewing a totally different language.  I've used Pimsleur to a lesser extent for a few other languages and also found it to be effective.  A Filipino friend said "When you speak Tagalog, you don't have an American accent."  As comparison, before Pimsleur I tried to learn French for work purposes using Living Language, Berlitz & another approach.  I learned almost nothing.  My French speaking was (and still is) terrible and I can hardly say anything.  

 

Sometimes libraries have Pimsleur CDs.  The CDs have nothing in writing, but this is actually a good way to begin.  If you learn from spoken-only, you're much less likely to say things wrong than if you try to learn from speaking Pinyin.  Your native language will naturally influence how you try to pronounce pinyin.  If you learn how to say a word 1st and later its pinyin, your pronunciation is likely to be better.      

 

 

 

 

[Jan Finster]

On 4/21/2020 at 12:07 AM, gintama said:

• For vocabulary & Hanzi => Anki: this is the same method I used with Japanese and worked quite well. I tend to have two card per note, one to test recognition -guess the meaning and reading- and the other for production -write down the characters/words on a paper-. learn 15~20 words a day
• For textbook and grammar=> HSK standard course(textbooks and workbooks) + Chinese zero to hero: I think the textbooks alone are nice but the course would be better to enforce listening and explaining. One of my problems while learning Japanese is almost all of my language resources where written even the grammar ones, so I didn't get much "formal" listening. 2 lessons per week
• For writing practice => langcorrect + hello talk: I am using them both with Japanese at the moment. Honestly the native speakers feedbacks were not as important as the courage to write and look up words. Also, the more I wrote the less mistakes I made. at least once a week
• For speaking practice=> italki for one hour a week: this should have been number one.. I have regretted NOTHING more than the fact that I didn't practice speaking from day 1 with Japanese. I think it would be worse with Chinese with all of their tones and similar sounds. one hour a week

 

There are many ways to do this. If you are a bookworm, my best tip would be to make use of this and invest in TheChairMansBao and Lingq. TheChairMansBao has short news articles that are fun and enjoyable to read. They have difficulty ratings from HSK 1-HSK6+. You can review your vocabulary and grammar with their APP and learn them as you go along. The TheChairMansBao also has an audio recording for every article, which you can download and replay on WorkAudioBook. Lingq.com is another favorite of mine. You can import Youtube and Netflix videos and their subtitles to it and also any book or text you like. Lingq is the database of all you have read.

An alternative to TheChairMansBao would be Chinesepod, which also has tons of sentences, grammar examples and audio recordings. Pimsleur and Glossika would be useful for listening on the go, but you can do the same with TheChairMansBao and Chinesepod. I would not bother with ChineseZerotoHero unless you absolutely want to study for an HSK level or HSK exam. If you just want to learn Chinese, there are other resources, which are not as confined to the HSK curriculum. Italki for speaking sounds great. 

[roddy]

ChaiRman, unless they've got a sideline in spiced tea....