How do you keep up your spoken Chinese outside China?

[yuet_sien]

Hi everybody,

After this semester in Beijing I will move to Vietnam. I like to keep up my Manderin by self studying. I can buy books, tapes and watch chinese dvd's, but I am a bit worried about the speaking part. How do you keep up your Manderin speaking when your not in China and there is no Chinese tutor?

Any suggestions?

Thanks! Yuet Sien

[HashiriKata]

How do you keep up your Manderin speaking when your not in China and there is no Chinese tutor?

It will be very difficult and you'll need a lot of motivation and determination. You can certainly do a lot of practice with talking to yourself but the difficulty I'm hinting at is to keep it steady and regular. Whereabouts in Vietnam will you be? There are Chinese communities as well as many Taiwanese companies in big cities in Vietnam. Crossing over China for short breaks is also a possiblity.

Good luck!

[Lu]

You can try finding a language partner or Chinese friend(s).

[RobAnt]

Messenger style applications have an audio (and video) element- provided you can get Internet access you can still chat with your friends.

[zh-laoshi]

You have the Internet. Find Chinese websites, read online newspapers, listen to online radio. Chat with someone in Chinese. It's easy keeping it up.

[johnmck]

You need to go to this site http://www.polyglot-learn-language.com/ to find a penpal in China and then get skype from www.skype.com.

In general I find people use skype for speaking but MSN messenger for typing. Skype has better audio and gets through firewalls better than MSN, but MSN supports chinese characters.

[dalaowai]

The best three ways to do it solo are the following:

1- When you think, only think in Chinese. When you buy things, count the amount in Chinese. Judge people on the street in your mind and describe everything about them in Chinese. Anything you're about to say in conversation, translate it to yourself in Chinese.

2 - Get a pet, preferably a dog or parrot and only talk to it in Chinese. Criticize it and share your daily experiences.

3 - Karaoke. Download MP3s of recent Jay Zhou songs and blow yourself away by singing along in front of your computer.

[yuet_sien]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I will have to wait till I get there to see which suggestion will be the most useful. I think the most important one is to get internet connection.

Dalaowai, I really like the suggestion taking a pet, and talk to it in Chinese.

Don't know how much it will help, but surely is much fun. Would love to have a dog again.

If there are more suggestions, you're welcome to post them.

Thanks!

[allenlikewo]

The best three ways to do it solo are the following:

1- When you think, only think in Chinese. When you buy things, count the amount in Chinese. Judge people on the street in your mind and describe everything about them in Chinese. Anything you're about to say in conversation, translate it to yourself in Chinese.

2 - Get a pet, preferably a dog or parrot and only talk to it in Chinese. Criticize it and share your daily experiences.

3 - Karaoke. Download MP3s of recent Jay Zhou songs and blow yourself away by singing along in front of your computer.

dude, i really like your style! I do all three constantly to aid me in my learning.

However, I think human interaction is crucially important and I utilize the chance to speak to a person in chinese whenever i can.

[Kong Junrui]

The best three ways to do it solo are the following:

1- When you think, only think in Chinese. When you buy things, count the amount in Chinese. Judge people on the street in your mind and describe everything about them in Chinese. Anything you're about to say in conversation, translate it to yourself in Chinese.

2 - Get a pet, preferably a dog or parrot and only talk to it in Chinese. Criticize it and share your daily experiences.

3 - Karaoke. Download MP3s of recent Jay Zhou songs and blow yourself away by singing along in front of your computer.

Wow, great ideas. I'm gonna have to start doing some of these.

[dalaowai]

haha, I'm glad you like those outlandish ideas.

On a more serious note, I recently bought a white board and have been doing Semantic Maps every day. For those of you who are unfamiliar with semantic maps, you start off with a subject (Like 家人）in the middle of the board. You circle the word, then put arm coming out of the main word, you then write words associated to that family (i.e. 爸爸，妈妈，姐姐，妹妹，哥哥，弟弟，母亲，父亲, etc）

I found this method to help me remember vocabulary. It can be done with any word, however it helps to find a root word such as, (food, transportation, animals, etc)

Any useful vocabulary builder is called "dichotic method". You need to record two audio files for every word that you're reviewing or learning for the first time. One audio file is the Mandarin word and the other is in your native language. You then simutaneously mix the two audio files. The Mandarin audio should be mixed into the right audio channel and the native language audio should be mixed into the left audio channel.

When learning a new language, it is said that your brain processes new words from the right ear. When listening to these audio files, you're to concentrate on the Mandarin word and you subconsciently hear the translation in your left ear, however you're encouraged to ignore it.

I've built my vocabulary very quickly using this method, however it's very time consuming to be making these audio files.

[stephanhodges]

I was wondering if you could post a picture of one of your maps. I've been using a free mind mapping tool called "freemind" http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

which lets you draw these kinds of things. But, I hadn't found a good way for vocabulary study.

Second, I'd like to hear your technique for sound mixing. I've been using a sound editor to make up vocabulary tapes, but had never heard of the "Dichotic" method (thanks for the name, now I can look up info on it). I've also been searching for an editor that supports cutlist editing (where you make up a text file of the sound segments, and then it will generate a new ttrack from the text file.) Obviously would be easy then to automate different "mixing" strategies.

Lastly, (perhaps as a reference here for others too), I've been using Dimsum (from http://www.mandarintools.com to do something similar. I choose a character, and then do a dictionary lookup, but only for words that "start" (or sometimes "end") in that character. Then I pick out associated vocabulary words that I think are fun to remember.

[笨笨德]

In general I find people use skype for speaking but MSN messenger for typing. Skype has better audio and gets through firewalls better than MSN, but MSN supports chinese characters.

skype supports chinese too.