Tips and Tricks for Learning Chinese

[alantin]

On 2/19/2022 at 3:25 PM, Moshen said:

Hah!  "Spam" as in spam email is named after the meat!  It is actually a very popular food in Hawaii, but looked down on most everywhere else in the US.

 

Yeah, but we don't have that here so I didn't know about it. ?

Food packaging is interesting. There are big differences between countries in the brands on the shelf, packaging, names, colors used, etc. It is by no means something that you should expect to just understand if you know the language.

A good example was some article that said that people from some Asian country found meat packages in US disgusting, because of the color of the meat or because they couldn't see the animal or something. At the same time it seems many Americans found it disturbing to buy a live chicken at a market place and have it killed and sliced up for them right there. But the locals wanted to see that the animal was healthy and they knew that the meat they took home was fresh.

[phoneticsem]

技巧一：沉浸式: Jìqiǎo yī: Chénjìn shì : TIP1 : Immersion

 

How we define immersion? 

 

Thinking in that language, responding in that language, listening that language, learning the new things of the language, …

[dakonglong]

Hi All. It has been quite awhile since the last one, but I have finally finished a new article! I will link it below. I'm curious to hear what you think.

 

https://www.selfstudymandarin.com/do-you-need-chinese-in-your-day-to-day-life-your-answer-should-impact-how-you-study/

 

Do you need Chinese in your day-to-day life? Your answer should impact how you study

 

There are four main skills required for fluency in any language: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Chinese is unique from western alphabetic languages in that the aural components of listening and speaking and the visual components of reading and writing are not well integrated with each other. For example, it’s possible to know the sound of the character 车(che1/car) but not know how to recognize or write it on paper. Similarly, I can know how to recognize it, but not know how it sounds. Sometimes you can correctly guess the sound from the construction of the character, but not always.

 

This means that for Chinese more so than for other languages, you really need to decide which of these four skills you want to focus on, because they don’t all directly reinforce each other like they do in other languages. For example, if I see an unfamiliar word in Spanish, I can “sound it out” into its spoken form, so my reading practice reinforces my speaking and listening skills too. This doesn’t work as well with Chinese for the reasons explained above.

 

Given these unique qualities of the language, the next relevant questions are: should you focus on one skill more than the others? If so, which one? Or should you try to keep them all in balance?

 

I chose to focus more heavily on reading at first, based on two principles:

 

• Input skills (reading and listening) provide more broad benefit than output skills (writing and speaking). This is because input skills: (1) expose you to new Chinese content like vocabulary and grammar, and (2) polish and refine the content you already know. Output skills only do the latter. Both are valuable forms of practice, but especially early on, input skills will deliver more benefit per hour invested.
• Based on the way that most people study, reading will teach both character recognition and pronunciation. This is because when you see an unfamiliar word in a book or article, you will most likely look it up in a dictionary. The dictionary will show you both the meaning and the pronunciation. It is less common to use a dictionary when listening, unless you are also using a transcript. Typically, when I hear an unfamiliar word spoken, I will (1) ask the speaker to explain it, or (2) try to figure it out from context. Both of these methods only give me the meaning of the word and leave me unable to write or recognize it. I think this quirk is probably why there are so many heritage learners (students who speak Chinese at home with family, but want to improve their skills further) out there who can speak and listen but cannot read or write, but fewer students who can read and write but cannot speak or listen.

 

To summarize the above two principles for each learning type:

 

• Reading benefits reading, listening, writing, and speaking
• Listening benefits listening and speaking
• Writing benefits writing
• Speaking benefits speaking

 

So, I chose to focus on reading, and to some extent listening first and then catch up the other skills at a slower pace. For me, this approach was faster and easier than developing all four skills equally. I believe this also led to less “re-work,” where I would first study basic Chinese and then relearn more complex Chinese to replace the basic Chinese I had used previously. This made my overall learning journey shorter than it would have otherwise been.

 

One other benefit to this method is that you are less likely to reinforce mistakes. If you start to speak from day 1, you will necessarily say a lot of things incorrectly due to lack of exposure to the language. However, if you start to speak after you have read a few graded readers or listened to a few Chinese TV shows for children, you will have a better feel for the language and make fewer mistakes. These mistakes will also be less likely to become habitual.

 

Now, back to the title of the article. If you live in China or otherwise need Chinese in your day-to-day life, you are probably better off developing these skills equally. However, for those of us that do not need Chinese every day, it will probably be faster and more efficient to focus more on reading at the outset. You can then catch up the other skills a bit more slowly, as desired. It may make your learning experience a smoother one.

[dakonglong]

After a bit of a hiatus due to a new role at work. I have finally written another article. Please let me know what you think!

 

https://www.selfstudymandarin.com/chinese-vocabulary-acquisition-tips-part-i-background/

 

Chinese vocabulary acquisition tips: part I, background

 

When I started to learn Chinese, I made a series of assumptions about my journey at the outset. Some of these assumptions proved to be correct, and others proved to be inaccurate. The assumption that proved to be the most inaccurate was that a mastery of the 5,000-word Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) level 6 exam curriculum (the highest level offered at the time) represented a mastery of the Chinese language. I further assumed that because 5,000 words was mastery, I could achieve my desired level (conversational fluency) around the HSK 3 or 4 level, or between 600 and 1,200 words. For me, this meant being able to comfortably hold general conversations on non-specialized topics, understand some television (TV dramas) and read simple books like Harry Potter translated into Chinese.

 

Needless to say, I was nowhere near capable of these tasks after I passed the HSK 4. In reality, I was only minimally able to do these things at a 2,500-word vocabulary, which corresponds with HSK 5. I would say that only now, at around an 8,000-word vocabulary am I comfortable with them. Furthermore, I am aware that my comfort level will only increase as that vocabulary increases further. In short, even at 8,000 words I do not feel like I have reached a plateau in terms of the value of additional vocabulary.

 

This journey was important, because it led me to two key realizations:

 

1. The HSK test structure can trick you into thinking that learning Chinese is far quicker and easier than it actually is. This can actually be a good thing. If I had realized how difficult Chinese would be at the outset, I may never have started learning it. By the time I realized how much work it would really take to achieve my goals, I was already in too deep in to turn back.
2. Vocabulary is absolutely critical. If you want to learn intermediate-to-advanced-level Chinese, you’re going to need a lot of it (5,000 to 20,000 words depending on your desired level). This means that the process that you use to learn vocabulary is extremely important.

 

Given the importance of vocabulary in learning the Chinese language. I have decided to post a few articles with my best tips for vocabulary acquisition!

[dakonglong]

Hi All,

 

Here is the first of my vocabulary learning tips. Hope it is helpful!

 

https://www.selfstudymandarin.com/chinese-vocabulary-acquisition-tips-part-ii-the-difficulty-curve/

 

Chinese vocabulary acquisition tips: part II, the difficulty curve

 

One of the things that I found most interesting about Chinese vocabulary acquisition is that the difficulty fluctuates over time as your vocabulary increases. Curiously, it doesn’t seem to get easier or harder in a linear fashion. Instead, it’s more like a bell curve with part of the left-hand side removed (see diagram). In my experience, vocabulary acquisition starts off at a medium-high difficulty, increases to a high difficulty and then reduces to a low difficulty. I will describe those three phases in more detail below.

 

 

Low-Tier Vocabulary (1 - 300 words): Medium-High Difficulty.

 

The first 300 words that you learn should probably be the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) level 1 and level 2 words.  These are practical, every-day words that have a good amount of utility. They are relatively straightforward to understand, and to use. The downside is that these 300 words contain 347 new unique characters, which amounts to 1.16 new characters per word. This is a higher density of new characters than you will experience at any other point in your Chinese learning journey, and this density of new characters is the main reason why these first 300 words are difficult to learn. A character is the basic unit of information in Chinese, so it is often difficult (though not impossible) to guess the meaning of a character from its component parts. As a result, the only way to learn most of these first few words is via rote memorization. There is no shortcut. The good news is that if you develop a study habit, you can acquire all of these low-tier words about a month (at a rate of 10 per day).

 

Mid-Tier Vocabulary (301 – 2,500 words): High Difficulty.

 

For me, these words include the HSK3-HSK5 vocabulary lists. They are similar to the first 300 low-tier with a couple of key differences:

 

These words are substantially lower in new character density than the words at the previous level, at 0.61 new characters per word, that means you will see characters you already know from the previous levels in these words that do not need to be re-learned. In other words, in the average new word you see, you will probably only need to learn half of the characters (vs 100% in the previous level).

 

The number of unique characters you learn will increase by a lot in absolute terms. Consequently, the more characters you know, the more they start to look like each other and the more difficult they are to tell apart. This was the main source of difficulty for me in learning these words. The subtle differences can be really difficult to notice, especially without adequate context.

 

These words tend describe less tangible things than the previous 300, so it can be difficult to completely  grasp their meaning (ex: 甚至 which means “to some extent” vs 狗 for dog).

 

High-Tier Vocabulary (2,501+): Low Difficulty.

 

You have finally hit the dip in the roller-coaster! It’s hard to define exactly how this part of your journey will go, because this is when I dropped the HSK lists and starting learning words from books, but at this point new character density drops like a rock. At around a 5,000 word vocabulary, I would estimate that you only see a new character in one out of every five words or so. This means that learning new words involves guessing what a combinations of characters you already know means. For example, kangaroo = 袋鼠 or “pocket mouse”. If you already know 袋 and 鼠 it’s much easier to remember that pocket + mouse = kangaroo that having to memorize two completely new characters you have never seen before and then remember that the combination of them means kangaroo. At this point, learning vocabulary became extremely fun for me!

 

In conclusion, if you’re struggling with learning vocabulary in the low and mid tiers, just know that it becomes much, much easier as you go on, even fun! Just stick with it and I’m sure you’ll be glad you did.

 

[Moshen]

Quote

The first 300 words that you learn should probably be the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) level 1 and level 2 words.  These are practical, every-day words that have a good amount of utility. They are relatively straightforward to understand, and to use. The downside is that these 300 words contain 347 new unique characters, which amounts to 1.16 new characters per word. This is a higher density of new characters than you will experience at any other point in your Chinese learning journey, and this density of new characters is the main reason why these first 300 words are difficult to learn.

 

Here you are assuming that every Chinese learner begins learning the language by learning characters plus pronunciation plus meaning.  That is most definitely not the case!  In the Pimsleur method you learn purely by listening.  I learned my first several hundred words in pinyin and by sound only.  So your whole theory about difficulty collapses with alternate learning methods.  And isn't your post actually a great argument also for not trying to learn the characters right at the beginning?  I'm sure I learned more than 10 words a day - and through getting familiar with dialogues and practicing with a tutor, without memorization.

 

Because I wasn't paying attention at all to reading, only to speaking and listening, my beginning Chinese was extremely easy for me.  After just three months I was able to handle a taxi ride, haircut or shopping by myself.  As I've advanced in the language (currently halfway to HSK 5), I've also seen that for me, memory comes primarily from using or seeing words repeatedly, not from memorization.

 

In addition, I'm not convinced of your point that after 5,000 words, learning gets easier.  If these are words I more rarely encounter in reading and listening then they will be much, much harder for me to remember.

[dakonglong]

On 8/22/2022 at 1:20 AM, Moshen said:

Here you are assuming that every Chinese learner begins learning the language by learning characters plus pronunciation plus meaning.

 

That is a fair point, though I do think that learners who want to achieve an intermediate to advanced level will ultimately have to learn characters. Also, I personally found it easier to attach pronunciations to characters than to learn the pronunciations on their own, but I'm sure this differs case-by-case.

 

On 8/22/2022 at 1:20 AM, Moshen said:

In addition, I'm not convinced of your point that after 5,000 words, learning gets easier.  If these are words I more rarely encounter in reading and listening then they will be much, much harder for me to remember.

 

This has been my experience so far, perhaps because most of the words I encountered after that point were close synonyms of words I already knew that shared characters. Either way, the time it takes me to learn 15 new words per day has declined dramatically with time. It takes me at most a couple of minutes per day now.

 

To be more accurate, maybe I should have put a preface in the article that states that these conclusions are specific to my learning method, which just happened to be the one that worked best for me specifically.

 

[abcdefg]

On 1/13/2022 at 11:40 AM, dakonglong said:

Basically, I found that if I wanted to learn a word, I had to encounter it in context and then flashcard it, otherwise I wouldn't retain it.

Agree! I found the same thing. After those two steps, I would go actively searching for the word or phrase in more native context. Material that might give more ways it could be used or material that might round out subtle shadings of use. 

[phoneticsem]

On 8/22/2022 at 4:20 PM, Moshen said:

I'm sure I learned more than 10 words a day - and through getting familiar with dialogues and practicing with a tutor, without memorization.

 

practicing with tutor is to grasp/remember/memorise and use in the conversations. my mother tongue teacher explains beautifully the poems. good poems he will tell that he will ask next day. Even I did not memorise the poem, if first 5 people tell, by that time I used to memorise in the class itself and used tell my teacher without mistakes. my mother tongue teacher is asthavadhani.

 

Can you elaborate practicing with tutor without memorisation? there is no such thing as per me.

 

On 8/22/2022 at 4:20 PM, Moshen said:

Because I wasn't paying attention at all to reading, only to speaking and listening,

 

I think this is not the case of most Chinese forum members, but everyone (100%) learns their mother tongue first as a baby with listening to and speaking.

 

Ashtavadhanam

Ashtavadhanam is one form of Avadhanam, a traditional formal exhibition of the superior mastery of one’s cognitive capabilities. In an avadhana performance, a pandit showcases, through entertainment, multiple modes of his intelligence such as observation, memory, multitasking, task-switching, retrieval, reasoning and creativity in different fields of learning – literature, poetry, music, mathematical calculations, puzzle solving etc. The performer of the Avadhanam is called an Avadhani, while the experts who test the avadhani are called pricchakas.

 

 

[Moshen]

Quote

Can you elaborate practicing with tutor without memorisation? there is no such thing as per me.

 

We all learn lots of practical things in daily life without deliberate memorization - where various streets are, the name of someone interesting met through friends, how best to keep mosquitoes from biting, the rules of soccer, where different genres of books are shelved in a favorite bookstore.  It's a process called familiarization.  Words and phrases can be learned - or maybe absorbed is a better word - in the same way.

 

I took Spanish in high school several decades ago and I still remember a line from one of the dialogues - "Albondigas! No te dije. Menos mal que hay arroz."  ("Meatballs!  What did I tell you.  At least there's rice.")  It stuck in my mind from the sheer pleasure of its rhythm and melodious combination of sounds.  I never memorized it.

 

And think of all the people in the world who don't speak Chinese yet know that "Ni hao" means "hello" in Chinese.  Did they memorize it?  In most cases, no.

Edited August 27, 2022 at 01:45 PM by Moshen

[phoneticsem]

On 8/27/2022 at 8:52 PM, Moshen said:

  It stuck in my mind from the sheer pleasure of its rhythm and melodious combination of sounds.  I never memorized it.

 

it stuck in your mind from decades ago means it is equal to recollect/remember/learning/connect with that rhyme. these are similar words. you had come across multiple rhymes, but you connected with that instantly and remembered it. Others you can not remember them. 

 

Some poems from my childhood from decades from my native language, I still remember them. Some poems can not.

 

if you connected to a poem or rhyme , you can remember.

On 8/27/2022 at 8:52 PM, Moshen said:

that "Ni hao" means "hello" in Chinese.  Did they memorize it? 

 

yes of course your mind store/memorise it to speak. Memorise means not only reading the vocabulary from notes and remembering, it also means listening to store it and using it. 

 

Might be you listens to few words, few words you might remember instantly and use it. Few words you guess them and your mind take multiple attempts to store it.  few words you have to listen to repeatedly and store it and then only you can use it. 

 

Your memorisation technique is different, but you are memorising it.

[Moshen]

Quote

Your memorisation technique is different, but you are memorising it.

 

No.  You want to say that if I remember it, I have memorized it.  I strongly disagree.  There is a significant difference between memorization, which involves deliberate and intentional effort at remembering, and non-memorizing remembering.

 

I am saying that there is a way of remembering words without any deliberate attempt to remember.  You find this unbelievable.  You do not believe this exists.  I know that it exists, because I know what my experience is.

 

Look at it this way.  If I want to learn Chinese history, I can sit down and memorize the various dynasties and their order.  That involves deliberate effort.  On the other hand, simply from learning Chinese I have learned - I now know - many of the most important dynasties (Qin, Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing) without ever memorizing them.  That is, I never put any effort into learning these names of dynasties and when roughly they took place.  I am explaining to you that learning words can happen that way also.

[phoneticsem]

On 8/28/2022 at 12:56 AM, Moshen said:

I now know - many of the most important dynasties (Qin, Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing) without ever memorizing them. 

how did you know the dynasties in order?  are you able to explain the time taken and technique of memorisation?

 

I memorised periodic table 25 years back, then i forgot, then tried 15 days back and memorised. Due to some necessity 

[Moshen]

Quote

how did you know the dynasties in order?  are you able to explain the time taken and technique of memorisation?

 

You are totally missing my point.  I am saying that in some cases there is no memorization, no time taken and no technique of memorization.  Just repetition and context, which promote vague familiarity and then familiarity grows into knowledge.  This is a natural, normal process that goes on all the time.

 

It's a matter of absorption of little facts from daily life.  Language learning can be like that, too.

[phoneticsem]

On 8/28/2022 at 2:12 AM, Moshen said:

I am saying that in some cases there is no memorization, no time taken and no technique of memorization.  Just repetition and context,

 

hello, even if someone write it down after reading passage, some word you will connect and you can remember that without efforts. Some words needs more repetitions and need to apply some techniques. If you use some memory techniques like mnemonic techniques or some other techniques you can remember them with less efforts. applying these techniques vary with various people at various phases of learning a language. @dakonglong is saying same thing, but that graph varies with each individual some modifications. 

 

we need to keep learning, that we should not stop. Jim’s points on memory techniques.

 

https://youtu.be/L0RQgJCbECA

 

the question here is how you remember some words instantly and some words why you need multiple repetitions?

[phoneticsem]

On 8/22/2022 at 11:56 AM, dakonglong said:

learning new words involves guessing what a combinations of characters you already know means. For example, kangaroo = 袋鼠 or “pocket mouse”. If you already know 袋 and 鼠 it’s much easier to remember that pocket + mouse = kangaroo that having to memorize two completely new characters you have never seen before and then remember that the combination of them means kangaroo.

 

the above point is good, but most people knows. how learners apply the advanced memory techniques, that matters most. you share your experiences 

[dakonglong]

On 8/27/2022 at 11:12 AM, Moshen said:

I am saying that in some cases there is no memorization, no time taken and no technique of memorization.  Just repetition and context, which promote vague familiarity and then familiarity grows into knowledge.  This is a natural, normal process that goes on all the time.

 

I absolutely agree with this in theory. After all, this is how most of us learned our primary language. However, I found that it did not work for me when learning Chinese. The frequency of exposure was not high enough.

 

What I mean by this is that I would encounter a new word, learn it from context and then forget it again before encountering it a second time. At that point, I either had to re-learn that word from the new context or look it up in the dictionary. This was constantly happening with all but the most frequently used words, and I wasted a ton of bandwidth just re-learning the same words over and over.

 

On the other hand, flash-carding the word for a couple of weeks and then deleting it from my deck gave the word enough "staying power" so that I could retain it long enough to have three to four more organic encounters which is what made it stick permanently.

 

Interestingly, it was the same for me with English words. I have encountered many of the GRE (a standardized test for masters programs in the US) words in books, but I never learned them until I used flashcards because I just didn't encounter them often enough.

[dakonglong]

Hi all, I know it's been a while, but I finally have a new article!

 

How important is vocabulary when learning Chinese? A follow-up

 

In a previous article I discussed the connection between vocabulary acquisition and the growth of my overall Chinese ability. There, I stated that vocabulary acquisition was perhaps the most fundamental building block of my Chinese ability; and I described how a lack of vocabulary limited the development of my other skills. I still believe that is true… up to a point.

 

Now that my vocabulary has improved further – I have around 10,000 Pleco flashcards, plus an unknown number of additional words that I have passively acquired – I seem to be well over the hump when it comes to vocabulary, and vocabulary acquisition has become secondary part of my study.

What do I mean by over the hump? Two things.

 

First, it has become very easy to guess words from (1) their component characters, and (2) their context. For example, I recently came across the word 方向盘. At first, I had no idea what it meant. I did know that 方向 is direction and 盘is plate, but that on its own was still not that helpful. Then as I read on, I learned that the 方向盘 was being used to steer a car and it clicked; a 方向盘 is a steering wheel. Based on this process, I find that the more I read, the more new words I can simply infer without study. This made active study of vocabulary less critical.

 

Second, I have realized that there are a lot of words I simply do not need to know. For example, in English I have heard the term catalytic converter many times. What do I know about catalytic converters? I know they’re part of a car, I (think) they’re connected to the muffler and I know they are commonly stolen. Do I have any idea what one looks like or what it does? Could I explain what a one is to someone else? No way. However, based on my own assessment, I know all that I need to know about catalytic converters. Lately, I find that more and more words fall into this category, they are “nice to know” but not “need to know”.

 

So, when did this shift start to occur? Though it will probably differ from person-to-person, for me it was around 4,000 words. That was the point where I felt like I could catch the general meaning of a novel without the need to look up too many words, and I could read for pleasure and immerse myself in the story, as with an English novel.

 

That said there were big gaps in my comprehension. In the case of 撒哈拉的故事 (The Story of the Sahara) I remember reading that 三毛 (Sanmao) was out in the desert, and that her husband had became stuck (in quicksand? In mud? I still don’t actually know because I didn’t look it up) and at that point she thew something out to save him. It turns out it was the seat cushion from her car. I did learn that word via a Pleco flashcard and I don’t think I have ever seen it since.

 

So, at that point in my studies, I just absorbed what I could from the text as I read and filled in the rest with my imagination. It requires some degree of discipline to just go with the flow and not look up every unknown word, but it makes reading 100% more enjoyable.

 

In conclusion, I still believe that vocabulary acquisition is absolutely critical up to around 4,000 – 6,000 words, but once you reach that point you can take it easy and new vocabulary acquisition should take a backseat to other aspects of your study.

[Jan Finster]

On 1/27/2023 at 8:50 AM, dakonglong said:

In conclusion, I still believe that vocabulary acquisition is absolutely critical up to around 4,000 – 6,000 words, but once you reach that point you can take it easy and new vocabulary acquisition should take a backseat to other aspects of your study.

 

IMO vocabulary acquisition is a core component of language learning even after 6000 words. I totally agree however that SRSing Anki is not necessary for that prupose. It would have been nice to know if you would have made progress at the same speed if you had just read and read rather than SRSed Anki. Everone is different, but there are plenty of people, who never SRS anything and progress just fine. It is a matter of taste....

 

[sanchuan]

The difference between understanding "方向盘" given enough context & known components (as described above) versus recognising "方向盘" given enough SRS drilling is truly minimal. You'll understand it just fine both ways. Past a certain stage of vocab and hanzi familiarity, drilling flashcards for passive recognition is a nice enough thing to do, but it's unnecessary.

 

On the other hand, to sit in a car and come up with a word like 方向盘, unprompted, does necessitate some form of SRS drilling (or extensive car-related reading/talking). 

 

I see little benefit in discussing SRS and vocabulary acquisition without addressing the difference between passive recognition and active recall. Active recall is a different beast. Even if you're committed to acquiring a language by living and breathing it 24/7 for the best part of your life - indeed, even if you're native - learning to use a wider and wider vocabulary is a tough nut to crack, and possibly the biggest key to fluency. Now that's where SRS may help.