How to achieve fluency in a non-Chinese speaking country?

[dakonglong]

It has taken a long time, but I am finally (mostly) happy with my Chinese level. For example, I can: (1) read most of the Chinese books I want to without too much difficulty, (2) understand most of the Chinese tv shows I watch (albeit with Chinese subtitles as a crutch) and most spoken conversation, and (3) convey my thoughts pretty effectively in writing, via text messaging, essays, etc... however, my speaking abilities definitely leave some room for improvement.

 

I have a one-hour lesson each week with my Chinese teacher, and in those sessions I can mostly get my point across on a decent variety of topics, but I find myself doing a lot of pausing, rephrasing, circumlocution, and there are many of instances where I can't recall a word I want to use in time to use it. In theory, I have a vocabulary of almost 15,000 words (that's how many flashcards Pleco says I have "learned") but it feels like I can only recall only a few thousand of them on-the-fly at most (for what it's worth I have the same issue when I'm writing, but in that case I have the option to look up the words I can't recall in the dictionary. As soon as I see the specific word I was thinking of I have a kind of a "lightbulb" moment and recognize the word immediately).

 

I live in the US, so immersion isn't really an option.

 

Has anyone solved this issue and improved the fluency of their speech without a consistent language parter? The best advice I have come across so far is to give 5-minute speeches on a specific topic in Chinese. Does anyone know if this really helps?

 

Any suggestions are welcome! Thank you!

[Raymond GU]

only a few thousand of frequently-used Chinese characters  is ok.   for a better use of chinese,  you may try a Chinese teacher living in China. www.eblcu.com 

the web is run by Beijing language and culture university.

[jannesan]

In my opinion it is not possible to reach a level of fluency where you effortlessly speak very eloquently without speaking about non trivial topics daily. 

 

Some things you could do:

- make Chinese friends and only speak Chinese with them from day 1 

- join a Chinese book/debate club

- have a language partner

- increase the amount of lessons you take

- do more writing (and get it corrected)

- go for holidays in China, Taiwan or some other Mandarin-speaking place

[Tomsima]

This is a great achievement with just one one-hour lesson a week. If you want to improve speaking, I would be surprised if you were doing anything less than a lesson every other day. One day for practice, one for prep. Preparing speeches is great advice on this front.

[dakonglong]

On 6/14/2024 at 9:24 AM, Tomsima said:

This is a great achievement with just one one-hour lesson a week.

 

Well, in addition to the one hour lesson per week I have also been self-studying for 10 - 15 hrs per week for 8+ years, which is probably why my speaking is falling behind.

 

Also, I suspect you're right about the frequency of my lessons, I probably need to add more. They are a great source of value, but expensive (I have a local teacher). Maybe I should experiment with Hellotalk or iTalki to supplement the lessons I do with my current teacher.

[Jan Finster]

How about having dialogues with Chatgpt? I started this in May after 4 years of reading and listening and it helps immensely with outputting. Sure, it is not exactly lik speaking, but it helps a lot with "activating your vocabulary" and learning to talk about all sorts of topics. 

[jannesan]

On 6/14/2024 at 6:44 PM, dakonglong said:

Maybe I should experiment with Hellotalk or iTalki to supplement the lessons I do with my current teacher.

 

I absolutely recommend you trying this. For one, community teachers are really inexpensive for Chinese and that is all you need for talking practice. And another big point is to get exposure to different accents and different ways of talking in general. To be honest, only sticking with the same one teacher will hold you back one way or another. 

[becky82]

I suggest figuring out a way to talk to yourself.  If you have to pay (or barter) for every single hour you speak Chinese, it becomes a huge cost when you factor in the hundreds of hours you need to become fluent.  There's many benefits of talking to yourself: (a) not having people interrupt you gives you the opportunity to form complete sentences, and you can stop and consult a dictionary or make notes, (b) you can talk about whatever you want, as many times as you want, which can be quite a struggle with another person, (c) you don't have to worry about other people's schedules (you can talk with yourself right now, but your next iTalki class is next Monday).  It's analogous to rehearsing for a play, or practicing kung fu with a wooden dummy.

 

I challenged myself to 500 hours speaking Chinese on YouTube (a kind of "imaginary audience"), which made quite a different in my oral fluency.  But if you don't want to do that, maybe chat with ChatGPT, or read a novel aloud to your cat, or something like this.

[Luxi]

@dakonglong  This blog article addresses the question, some of these suggestions may help - some already suggested above

https://www.cultureyard.net/blog/tips-to-improve-chinese-speaking-alone

 

I am in a similar situation, or worse as I'm probably much older than you, not planning to go to China, and live in a very rural place where sheep outnumber humans 100:1 at least, but there are universities with friendly and helpful 中国留 学生 within reach, several of them helped me (and became good friends) years ago when I really needed the practice for exams and the Internet had not been invented。 These days, Ximalaya FM is my go-to teacher on tap. Do you want to practice pronunciation? Here's an example:  

 要学好普通话 (anchor Chen Zhigang)
https://www.ximalaya.com/album/3002025  

(First part is pronunciation exercises, reading aloud texts start near the end of Page 3. These podcasts include transcripts that you could easily use for shadowing.

There are links to similar series here:
https://www.ximalaya.com/zhubo/34112860  

 

There are many other podcasts either good for pronunciation and/or 朗读 drills. or just for listening (in good 普通话 and various 方 topolects) more than enough to immerse yourself in Chinese 24/7. 

 

XimalayaFM is available for PC browser, also as a separate app for Windows  (download from the main Ximalaya website to get the latest version) and for iOS and Android (not available in some countries, but the website and Windows all are) Many of the podcasts are free. 

 

 

 

[suMMit]

The golden question that probably 75% of people on here would also like to know. 

 

I personally have spent 6 years learning, all in country, and I'm still only intermediate, still want to be way more fluent. I speak with my wife nearly all in Chinese, have some Chinese friends, transact almost everything outside in Chinese, and still only Intermediate. I do think if I had a job that required Chinese it would be a huge boost, but that's not my situation. I don't know how much more difficult it is out of country, but some(not all) of the people I've met who learned having never been "in country" have very bad pron/tones.

 

I love @becky82's suggestions! I have employed some of them, sometimes, but I get lazy. I need to start to do more of it, this thread is a good reminder. The thing I like about what Becky suggests "talking to yourself" you really do work on fluency. Teachers are great, I am currently on two 1 hr classes a week, but often there are corrections, which inhibits fluency. Or you don't want to say a certain thing to a teacher, which inhibits fluency. And as Becky said, you talk to yourself, or your phone video camera practically anytime/anywhere. You can talk to yourself about the show your watching or the book your reading or the question an interviewer asks on a podcast, and practice saying it different ways. Can say speeches to out loud to yourself, create conversations, describe where you are walking etc.

 

I suppose a mix of speaking to yourself, speaking with a friend who won't correct, strangers who may or may not correct, and a teacher who will correct is a good combination.

 

I've never tried chat gpt, but it also sounds useful, going to look into that.

[Jan Finster]

On 6/15/2024 at 6:54 PM, suMMit said:

 

I personally have spent 6 years learning, all in country, and I'm still only intermediate, still want to be way more fluent. I speak with my wife nearly all in Chinese, have some Chinese friends, transact almost everything outside in Chinese, and still only Intermediate

 

How is that possible? Or rather, are you maybe being too harsh on yourself? Where do you draw the line between intermediate and advanced? 

[suMMit]

On 6/16/2024 at 3:34 AM, Jan Finster said:

Where do you draw the line between intermediate and advanced? 

I would say I'm realistically CEFR B2 or between B1-B2. I'd call that Intermediate/upper-intermediate. I've had many Italki teachers say "Oh, this or that book is too easy for you" but I don't really agree. I think many people are too quick to say you're better than you are in Chinese.

 

I'd call C-1 and C-2 "advanced". 

 

[Jan Finster]

On 6/16/2024 at 12:09 PM, suMMit said:

I would say I'm realistically CEFR B2 or between B1-B2. I'd call that Intermediate/upper-intermediate. I've had many Italki teachers say "Oh, this or that book is too easy for you" but I don't really agree. I think many people are too quick to say you're better than you are in Chinese.

 

I'd call C-1 and C-2 "advanced". 

 

By that metric you are definitely "fluent". I guess C1 requires exposure to more different contexts (outside of daily life).

 

C2 is "above that of an average native speaker" and pretty much reserved for people, who use it in white collar positions or academia. I would fit that category in English (even though I am far from native) but I have been "fluent" in English way before that. 

[suMMit]

As a follow up to @becky82 suggestion of speaking aloud with Chatgpt, I tried this yesterday. Asked it ask me questions about the story of Aladdin. I then answered the questions aloud. Then asked for its answers to compare content, grammar and vocabulary to my own answers. Did an hour of discussion for free with no interruptions or corrections, just fluency practice. 

 

It could probably be very easy with chatgpt to forget to speak aloud and just quietly read and type all the time. I think one just has to remind themselves to speak aloud with it if spoken fluency is the aim. 

[suMMit]

I have been playing around with ChatGpt more and added the "VoiceWave: voice control for ChatGpt" extension for text to speech. It's not perfect, the voice sounds kind of artificial (I also can't find a male one) and does not have the flow of a real conversation. However, this still gets me talking rather than typing, for when I want to practice spoken fluency.