The 2023 Aims and Objectives

[sanchuan]

On 1/26/2023 at 1:59 PM, Publius said:

On 12/20/2022 at 9:25 PM, Woodford said:

When I see a page of English text (as someone else on this forum once commented), my brain automatically processes it. It's such a passive and natural process that I can't help but to understand it automatically!

So, this is your goal ?

 

Although my brain can process the brief text in the picture in one look or two (btw, moving 5 characters out of 40 hardly counts as 全是都乱了, does it), I think that an initial split-second "oh I'm looking at Chinese now" kind of hesitation often remains, if only with long texts rather than single words. This point has been made before on these forums.

 

What I wonder though is if anyone else ever experiences something similar going back to letters.

[Woodford]

On 1/26/2023 at 6:59 AM, Publius said:

So, this is your goal ?

Wow, I was starting to wonder whether I was having a stroke or something! If I read it slowly and character-by-character, it doesn't make any sense. If I skim through it quickly, it does make sense. Ha!

[Woodford]

On 1/26/2023 at 2:04 AM, imron said:

Regular reading will have the same effect.  Reading a book a month will cover ~3 million characters over a year.

I've seen the heated debates on here about SRS, and I think about it a lot! Of course, I took the SRS route in my early years of study, but I have gathered the following observations in favor of the opposite persuasion:

1. Reviewing a word by reading (even if you're a slow reader at 50-75 WPM) is a lot faster than reviewing it by flashcard, where you have to pause, think about what the word might mean, reveal the answer, and then mark it correct/incorrect (it takes me around 20 minutes to review 100 words until I get them all right, so that's far slower).

2. Before I did SRS, I was frustrated that I was forgetting the same words over and over again and not really gaining any traction. SRS did help me solve that issue, but if I had gone on without SRS and just did a Pleco lookup of all those forgotten words, they probably would have stuck in my memory. Tedious? Yes. But so is reviewing SRS cards. So it will be tedious either way.

3. As many have noted, SRS cards with single words on them lack context. Some have said (I think truthfully) that that can be an advantage ("If you can recall the meaning of a word *without* context, it should be even easier to understand it *in* context!"). I think that's true, but I have found the inverse to be true, too: There are some words I keep getting wrong in my SRS tests, but I have no problem understanding them when I find them in a book. So I'm not sure how SRS helps in those cases, except for making more unnecessary work.

4. As Imron has noted, reviewing words through reading ensures that you encounter words according to their natural frequency/importance. There are maybe some words I've slaved over in SRS that are extremely rare in the real world. But SRS can't normally operate on the "rareness" of any given word.

 

On 1/26/2023 at 10:25 AM, sanchuan said:

Keeping old decks as searchable databases makes most sense if they contain original work that's valuable to you (personalised translations, morphological analyses, complex tagging or cross-referencing, etc). Otherwise, your future self is probably best served just using a good dictionary/corpus instead.

Yeah, my database just consists of the bulk of all modern Mandarin words that I gleaned from around 30 books, so it's really too generic to be useful. It really is the equivalent of a mini-dictionary within Pleco.

[Woodford]

Finally, after exactly four years of slaving away at it (since February 15, 2019, in fact), I have officially abandoned flashcards as a means of study. I had other tests that focused on writing, listening, and speaking, but my "core" tests were for reading (show the character(s), guess the meaning/tone/pronunciation). Between the 5,001 cards I had from the HSK list, along with 17,564 cards I had from books, articles, and online videos (so 22,565 total), I had just over 280,000 repetitions (averaging 200 repetitions a day). I estimate that I spent over 1,000 hours total on these reading tests alone. It's going to feel very strange to remove it from my daily routine.

 

For my continued practice with traditional characters, I have been reading all of these, one by one (though I am getting tired of reading about Xi's third term and "zero covid" over and over again): https://cn.nytimes.com/interactive/20230120/top2022/top-stories_zh-hant.html

For listening practice, I've been listening to a mixture of native-level podcasts (which are sometimes rather incomprehensible, and sometimes okay), as well as HSK 4/5/6 stuff on YouTube (it's nice to step away from the really advanced stuff and enjoy something closer to a 98-100% comprehension level). My favorite channel these days is this one: https://www.youtube.com/@DANLIAOFreeToLearnChinese She provides some really, really long lectures about different topics in really accessible language, and she only uses Chinese to explain Chinese. I like to turn on a 2-hour video in the background and go about my day. Meanwhile, I've found this channel interesting enough to follow, too: https://www.youtube.com/@ComprehensibleMandarin. It features a lot of random people talking about a lot of random things in order to produce "comprehensible input."

 

As for writing practice (now that I've nuked my writing test in Pleco), I'm thinking about spending 10 or 15 minutes a day copying some text by hand. Not sure what's best there, but I don't want to abandon basic writing ability.

[Tomsima]

On 2/15/2023 at 3:05 AM, Woodford said:

It's going to feel very strange to remove it from my daily routine.

It's going to feel great, trust me. Your comment on writing is the only thing I think might need really focusing on in terms of schedule. I don't revise characters anymore because I handwrite and type in cangjie most days due to work. During periods when I'm not required to write in my work, I will load up a writing deck in anki to keep things fresh, as I always seem to drop off when I get bored of setting myself little daily writing tasks. 

 

[Woodford]

On 2/15/2023 at 4:56 AM, Tomsima said:

Your comment on writing is the only thing I think might need really focusing on in terms of schedule.

 

I have only ever learned to write individual words/chengyu, and I've never practiced writing entire sentences or paragraphs. But I'm thinking that doing the latter will help me go beyond the 2,633 characters of HSK, as well as better internalize sentence patterns and vocabulary. That's the hope, anyway! And I guess there would be a big difference between practicing with different things: literary works, essays, TV dialog, Podcast transcripts, etc....It's unexplored territory for me.

[Jan Finster]

On 2/15/2023 at 4:05 AM, Woodford said:

Finally, after exactly four years of slaving away at it (since February 15, 2019, in fact), I have officially abandoned flashcards as a means of study

 

Have you only been studying Chinese for 4 years in total? Considering how many books you read, this is really impressive dedication and progress! ?

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

On 2/14/2023 at 9:05 PM, Woodford said:

For listening practice,

The Danliao channel is my go too as well. She has a good variety content and speaks very clear 普通话. Some of her older comprehensible input playlists unexpectedly disappeared a few months ago which was a huge loss, but she appears to be reuploading them slowly. I consider her my “Chinese mother” lol.

 

The second channel you posted is great for getting comprehensible input from a variety of native speakers who are not quite so polished.  
 

I’m sure you have come across 大鹏 channel but if you haven’t definitely check it out. His daily expression playlist is incredible. I’ve learned so much colloquial Chinese from this series that pops up everywhere in my immersions.

[Woodford]

On 2/15/2023 at 12:02 PM, Jan Finster said:

Have you only been studying Chinese for 4 years in total? Considering how many books you read, this is really impressive dedication and progress! ?

 

Thanks for the encouragement! I'd say my total time of studying Chinese has been 6 and a half years, though only 5 and half have been "serious." I took two semesters of university Chinese in 2016-2017 (I participated well enough, and I learned basic things like pronunciation, tone, stroke order, and the first 300 HSK words, but I didn't work very hard), then in 2017-2018, I took a dive into graded readers, all the way from the 300 word level to the 2500 word level (I used paper flashcards. Ha!). From 2019 to 2023, I've been mostly reading novels and using SRS flashcards, with some listening practice on the side. 

 

On 2/15/2023 at 12:39 PM, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

The second channel you posted is great for getting comprehensible input from a variety of native speakers who are not quite so polished.  

Yeah, some of the videos feel a bit strange to me, as though the speaker is really unhappy about being there, and maybe just working to earn some needed side income. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it feels like. I really appreciate the people who draw pictures on a whiteboard and point at them as they talk. I have subscribed to the Da Peng channel, and will check that out!

[Guest realmayo]

On 2/15/2023 at 3:24 PM, Woodford said:

and I've never practiced writing entire sentences or paragraphs

maybe it's time to learn to write cursive....

[sanchuan]

On 2/15/2023 at 4:05 AM, Woodford said:

As for writing practice (now that I've nuked my writing test in Pleco), I'm thinking about spending 10 or 15 minutes a day copying some text by hand

 

That sounds like good practice but I'm worried it might become an exercise in frustration (or tedium) before very long - unless your unassisted production of hanzi is already fluent enough (in which case forcing yourself to always write things out by pen, finger, or shape-based input method may be all you need to keep character amnesia at bay).

 

But if you already struggle to produce hanzi that lie outside the most frequently used 500-1000, then writing out random texts for 10 minutes on a daily basis won't help; you'll effectively be drilling 是就这 day in day out... but infrequent characters won't stick. You'll just be copying them out with no guarantee you'll be able to recall them next time you need them.

 

I'm on record here for not supporting the indefinite use of SRS for word recognition, but when it comes to retaining hanzi production skills I'll admit there's just no good substitute for SRS (outside of actually being a Sinophone writer or academic, whether native or otherwise). So if you've already invested in a hanzi production flashcard system, I would make an exception for it and de-nuke it, if possible. It would be a shame for a serious student to lose such an important aspect of literacy, especially considering the really negligible costs of maintaining a small (and finite!) deck after a few years of drilling already. 

 

Needless to say, if you don't fancy or never sought that form of literacy for yourself, feel free to disregard all of the above.

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

Value of a writing deck puzzles me slightly: if I'm writing frequently enough in everyday life, then the characters will stick; if I never really write by hand, then I wonder what the benefits are of maintaining a skill I never use. For me it's maybe a 'luxury' skill!

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

On 2/15/2023 at 8:57 PM, Woodford said:

Yeah, some of the videos feel a bit strange to me, as though the speaker is really unhappy about being there, and maybe just working to earn some needed side income. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it feels like.

Yup that’s the exact vibe lol. I believe there is a third party with the explicit goal of building a comprehensible input platform. They pay native speakers to make videos, post videos on multiple platforms, generate income via ad revenue and patreon donors, keep the difference. With this channel you get quantity over quality.

 

I think 大鹏 channel is going to really fit your content needs ?

[Tomsima]

On 2/16/2023 at 11:51 AM, realmayo said:

if I'm writing frequently enough in everyday life, then the characters will stick

From my experience, I tend to fall into ruts with writing characters that I can remember easily, meaning that characters that aren't 'fresh' will never get written as I'll just default to a more common one that I'm confident in. The result is less common characters do not stick, compounded by my brains laziness to stop and think. I have to write a lot most days for a variety of reasons, and if I don't have a low frequency character deck running in the background, I will tend to write more repetitively in order to avoid rare words that I'm not able to write without split second hesitation

[sanchuan]

On 2/16/2023 at 12:51 PM, realmayo said:

if I'm writing frequently enough in everyday life, then the characters will stick

You'd think. Even if you write regularly, some characters occur infrequently enough to stump the best PhD-holding native. Most people experience character amnesia of even relatively frequent hanzi if they don't keep up the skill deliberately, as the Chinese literati  have been telling us for millenia.

 

On 2/16/2023 at 12:51 PM, realmayo said:

if I never really write by hand, then I wonder what the benefits are of maintaining a skill I never use.

Aside from all the benefits of any other useless skill (ie, the art of it), there are certainly some more relevant to language learning, too:

1. Laser-focused recognition of characters (even outside of word contexts);

2. Improved facility dipping in and out of a script you can play around with in your head, and with your eyes closed;

3. Increased fluency reading/writing cursive. 

 

Ultimately, though, it's about taking advantage of the sheer cost-effectiveness of maintaining written literacy at an absolute fraction of the time and effort that used to be involved. SRS technology has made it possible for everyone to maintain written literacy at virtually no cost after the initial time investment spent learning it. If you've already made the initial investment, it makes a lot of sense to keep it around for just a few minutes a month and reap the long-term benefits as they mature - why throw it away?

 

On 2/16/2023 at 12:51 PM, realmayo said:

For me it's maybe a 'luxury' skill!

That's fair. Horses for courses, as always! If it's not something you want to be able to do, even one SRS minute a year is a price too high. 

 

To me, considering the proven neuro-cognitive link between verbal and manual dexterity, it just seems a bit of a shame to restrict written language production to pointing and scrolling... But that's just my personal opinion now and a much more general point.

[Tomsima]

On 2/16/2023 at 2:36 PM, sanchuan said:

That's fair. Horses for courses, as always!

 

My opinion on character writing ability is the same as tone ability in speech, they're often both seen as added 'extras' until you want to get to higher levels of expression in the language, especially to gain independence and not rely on other people (straining to hear you) or tech (can't write without a device). I can see why handwriting in particular is seen as an extra, but I found it became an invaluable skill for me much later in my journey, definitely not a luxury.

[Guest realmayo]

I set up my first writing characters SRS deck in I guess 2006, and did another one last year in order to drill traditional characters: SRS and writing characters are a very powerful mix, match made in heaven.

 

And my assumption is that if I was ever in a Chinese-using environment in the future and needed to write again, I could cram a new deck over a month or two and get back up to speed. But these days most of the reading I do is old Chinese, so the great majority of unknown characters I read are ones that there is probably little point learning how to write (e.g. 兕, this morning).

 

What I meant by luxury was, that at this moment writing characters is not something I do, so why would maintain a deck to maintain that skill - especially because I'm confident I could quickly regain it when needed (by using SRS again).

 

But another part of me would love to know that, unlike almost any Chinese people, I could write by hand 4,500+ characters on demand, even though I have no need to do so. This wish is what puzzles me!

 

Also what puzzles me is the idea that nuking a 'write characters' deck is qualitatively different from nuking a 'recognise words' deck.

 

On 2/16/2023 at 2:36 PM, sanchuan said:

the proven neuro-cognitive link between verbal and manual dexterity

 

I half-suspect that breaking that link might be beneficial from time to time, in order to better comprehend nuance/rythm/humour/metaphor/irony/creativity in Chinese.

[sanchuan]

I'm with you, Tomsima, on writing ability. But, as I'm sure you're well aware yourself, now that the Communication Approach has seeped into every nook and cranny of language study, writing ability has become not only unpopular, but positively suspicious. It's seen as an unproductive and useless burden, even by amateur language students, ironically enough.

 

I simply accept - like you, I gather - that most learners don't, in actual fact, need to appreciate the heights and independence of expression you allude to. In fact, a great deal of literate, or semi-literate, native speakers of Chinese don't seem to either.

 

And yet, with all due respect to De Francis's legacy, I do believe that the consensus built around characters being needlessly complex syllabaries is partly to blame. It has clouded a lot of people's judgement regarding how characters behave in recognition vs production, cognitively speaking. There's active resentment against production abilities even among old-school sinologists. And narratives do trickle down. (I fear they might actually be somehow self-fulfilling in these matters, which would make any argument for writing abilities obsolete if trends continue apace.)

[sanchuan]

@realmayo The following may or may not describe your specific case exactly, but if you've been dipping in and out of a writing deck for a couple decades (rounding up) and/or keeping one always at the ready in case a brush-up is in order for whatever reason, then you're still doing SRS. De facto, you're essentially failing, suspending, deleting, delaying or increasing the spaced interval of all those items that you only touch every couple of years and/or never again. That's true even if they were always different decks: previous SRS scheduling data may have been lost, so the scheduling is suddenly less efficient, but your brain doesn't know any of that. Your brain is still using (inefficiently-) spaced repetition when it next 'repeats'. 

 

But this argument about SRS only makes sense in the context of a hanzi deck, I feel, because unlike word recognition flashcards (to answer your other point) a hanzi deck is a finite set - and a diminishing one at that, as more and more characters are intervalled beyond your lifespan. In a closed system, you'll only ever be drilling items that are forever going to be meaningful for you to drill. Even if you're terribly inefficient about it, you'll always benefit from both reviewing and not reviewing (because when you don't review, cards mature and nicely lengthen their interval for when you next see them). It's much harder to pre-choose a set of words that are forever going to be meaningful for you to drill, so you can't invest as meaningfully in word recognition decks. Not in the very long term. 

 

On 2/16/2023 at 4:47 PM, realmayo said:

On 2/16/2023 at 3:36 PM, sanchuan said:

the proven neuro-cognitive link between verbal and manual dexterity

 

I half-suspect that breaking that link might be beneficial from time to time, in order to better comprehend nuance/rythm/humour/metaphor/irony/creativity in Chinese

Oh I agree with you there, but I meant the link between verbal intelligence (ie the cognitive faculty of using, retrieving and producing language accurately) and hand dexterity (ie the motor neurons used in the act of manipulating things with one's dominant hand). Neuroscience suggests that the same or similarly-located motor neurons activate in similar ways during both activities, which is why both language and most people's dominant hand are processed in the left hemisphere and why language is thought in some quarters to have evolved from gestures (think sign language.) So mine was a larger point about the benefits of handwriting generally - nothing to do with Chinese or the nature of its script (or indeed its script-independent expressiveness).

[Woodford]

On 2/16/2023 at 9:47 AM, realmayo said:

Also what puzzles me is the idea that nuking a 'write characters' deck is qualitatively different from nuking a 'recognise words' deck.

 

That's a good point, and I've thought about that a fair deal. SRS tests, in general, help a person retain a certain subset of words/characters: the ones that are not so common that they show up constantly (so you don't really need to drill them), and also not so rare that they are virtually irrelevant to a modern speaker. Otherwise, without a way to focus and drill on those moderately-rare words, you end up in the scenario that is similar to the one that Sanchuan helpfully described above: "you'll effectively be drilling 是就这 day in day out... but infrequent characters won't stick." I think the same thing is true for word recognition, as well as writing.
 

In my case, my character writing test has gotten down to 5-10 reviews per day--a maximum of just a couple minutes! This whole discussion thread has actually inspired me to keep that test (and only that test) going.

My word recognition test did seem to be outliving its usefulness, though. It will never get down a convenient 5-10 reviews a day, but is stuck at 100-120, mostly repeating the 5-10% of my word list that consists of the extremely stubborn and often not very important words that I keep endlessly forgetting. And even then, I can often understand them when I seem them in the context of the "real world," like in a book or an article. I feel like I've reached a critical mass where I can read a newspaper article without a dictionary, etc., so I thought, well, I guess it's time for something different.