Learning Strategy - Building Vocab

[gixxuexihanyu]

When you guys study words, especially two-char words, do you guys also study its composition? Take 同意 for example, do you study both 同 and 意 as well?

I have never done it and I noticed that sometimes those two-char words can appear in just one-char form. I've been wondering if its effective to study each character in the composition.

Your comments are highlly appreciated. TIA

 

[roddy]

It can be useful, especially when you see characters come up repeatedly, and it'll help you figure out meanings of new words. 同意，同等，同学...

[Insectosaurus]

Nowadays I only study characters and chengyu. I'm really satisifed with it and it will be the way forward for me.

[amytheorangutan]

I personally find this useful, it might be the reason why I like Remembering The Hanzi. Knowing single character meaning helps me in memorising new vocabularies and guessing the meaning of new words. Might work differently for different people though. 

[markhavemann]

I also find it useful, and to take what Roddy said a little further, I would intentionally go and find words made up of each of the characters and study those too. I find it really helps me to get a sense of each of the characters and better understand and remember the word I'm trying to learn.

 

And as you say, you sometimes you encounter the characters alone, and having a good sense of the character as it appears in different words, you can easily guess what it means in that context. 

 

So for 同意 I might also learn 主意, 意义, 意识, 意见, 不同, 同性恋, 同时, 同样 etc. While I was working through HSK I would find other HSK words (even at higher levels) to learn along with it and I found the reward to be quite big as I moved through the HSK levels and had already accumulated vocabulary at higher levels without much extra effort. 

 

 

[gixxuexihanyu]

Thank you everybody for your inputs.  I see that you come from different levels of proficiency, which is good to show different perspective. I myself could be at the level of HSK3, even though I have never taken the test before. I currently use HSK 3 and 4 materials, some children story books and Intl Business Chinese Pre-Intermediate level.

At first I was tempted to selectively learn each and individual char. I also tried to selectively learn other words with similar head/tail like what markhavemann have said.  However at my level, I find it quite daunting and it adds up to more time to review as well. I feel that cannot progress and not to mention that I will forget most of them if they are not in the range of my study materials. 

So now I will still look at them during my vocab study and try to understand their meaning and usage but I won't review them. If I bump into them again and if I think that they will come more frequent I will include them in my vocab study.  I find this is more efficient for me.  I think this is somehow similar to what Roddy has mentioned.

 

A question to Mark, can you share how do you maintain those vocabulary, especially those at the higher level?

 

Cheers

[markhavemann]

3 minutes ago, gixxuexihanyu said:

A question to Mark, can you share how do you maintain those vocabulary, especially those at the higher level?

Reading and listening to books, articles, whatever interests me at the time, watching TV shows etc. For the last year or so Anki has had a smaller and smaller role in my study routine and I've pretty much put it aside completely in the last few months since I find that the time sink isn't really worth what I'm getting out of it. Sometimes I'll do a "burst" of Anki for a bit if I'm doing something specific with lots of vocab that I'm unfamiliar with.

 

Mostly the important words repeat themselves frequently enough to make Anki much less useful, and the rest of the time words can be guessed, or if not, then one dictionary lookup is enough to remember until I encounter it again, and if I don't encounter it in a reasonable time then I can't justify the time spent in Anki anyway. 

 

That said, Anki played a huge role in my studies early on, and I pretty much powered through the HSK 3 - 5 and a lot of 6 vocab mostly by using Anki, using a similar method that I mentioned by learning related words. Some people definitely find the brute force approach a little dry but I found it enjoyable and it helped me move on to more interesting stuff earlier I think. Even if I didn't "master" the vocabulary, I was familiar enough to be able to look stuff up and have a basis for the words to really stick when I encountered them in the real world. 

 

I would definitely advise you to read Imron's posts about not being afraid to delete Anki decks if you are using Anki as part of your studies. It's so easy to have a feeling of comfort when you have x amount of words in Anki or a huge pile of paper flashcards, when where you really want the words is in your head, not on flashcards. 

 

-- I should add that I do have quite a lot of time to study Chinese right now, but I think even if I had only an hour, my time would be better spend reading for an hour rather than 10-20 minutes on Anki and 40 minutes reading.  --

 

10 minutes ago, gixxuexihanyu said:

So now I will still look at them during my vocab study and try to understand their meaning and usage but I won't review them.

I think that's a good approach, often looking at something once is enough to get it to stick, or at least make a spot for it to stick more easily later on. 

[gixxuexihanyu]

Thanks for sharing your experience Mark, it is a very valuable input for me.