Timeline or success stories?

[klortho]

Oh, sorry, then, mandarinstudent -- I guess I shouldn't have told you my story, as I'm just a FAKE person. I should have read your first post more clearly.

[mandarinstudent]

Jesus, why dont you be a bit MORE dramatic? Do you want some praise for your post or something? In my last post I wasnt even referring to anything you said. I wasn't even saying that the other posts were "bad". I was simply saying that while all those charts, reports, and such were interesting to read, they didnt answer my request. Im not intrested in theory, im interested in what actually happens. Did you have a chart or report in your post? Ok then....calm down

[klortho]

Yes, I'm getting my dander up (how do you like that expression?). In your last post (you might reread it) you do come across (IMHO) as a bit insensitive. You imply that you didn't get any success stories, and also that all of the posters to date have been beginners. I wrote about a couple of success stories (albeit minor successes), and also, after six years, ahem, I don't think of myself as a beginner anymore.

Furthermore, keep in mind, that although you started this thread, you're not the only one reading it. I found the statistics references very interesting.

[mandarinstudent]

Ok...Maybe I should clarify myself a bit. Imron's post was exactly what I was looking for in a "timeline" (thanks, Imron). Im hoping others will post something similar to the format in which he wrote his. Im hoping to gather enough cases to be able to observe what "normal" progress is. By "success stories", I was looking for something along the lines of "After studying in (such and such a manner) for X (amount of time), I was able to pass the HSK Advanced," or, "After working with Chinese people for X (amount of time), I was able to totally function in the office." I wasn't looking for a long winded essay basically saying, "After 6 years I am making little headway." I will say it again...Im looking for people that have already mastered Chinese (mastered=can do the things in the list I provided in my first post) and their stories relating to how they got there and how long it took. Thank you to the people that posted so far that have answered this question and thanks in advance to anyone else that can contribute to this PARTICULAR query. Not to be rude, but If you wish to praise yourself for being able to understand snippets of basic Chinese, please start another thread.

[L-F-J]

Mandarinstudent-

If you are looking for people who have mastered Chinese by doing the things you said, being able to read and understand a newspaper without a dictionary, and being able to totally follow the news, I think you can pretty much forget about it.

I first started learning Chinese 5 years ago. But the first two years weren't serious and I only learned a few things and wasn't studying it even on my own. I could ask for chopsticks and say thanks and little things like that. So I don't count those first two years. I usually say about 3 years since I started really trying to learn and study Chinese. And even those years were off and on until this last year or so, I study it a lot more and practice. I'm still self-learning though.

So far I'm able to talk to Chinese people about simple things. I can't have too much of an in depth conversation with them especially if their accent is new to me. But for daily conversation I can get along alright, which is alright with me.

I've recently been watching a TV show in Mandarin. Some of the actors and actresses were Taiwanese and I find their accent very easy to understand compared with say, a Beijing accent. I watched 23 episodes of this TV show. That's all there was. I understood the whole show. Sure there were parts that I didn't follow completely and there were always words I didn't know. But I could understand from context of the rest of their sentences. So, it may have been a little broken, but I could pretty much follow it and understand everything that was going on. I recently got the movie of the same TV show, their accent seems more Beijing or something. Not like I'd really know, I haven't been there. But anyway, it's much more difficult to understand but I can pick things up and still be able to somewhat follow the story. A big difference besides the accent problem is that the movie doesn't have Chinese subtitles like the TV show did. But even not watching the subtitles and just trying to focus on the speaking, the TV show was easy to understand. Even if they spoke fast. It's just a good accent for me I guess.

Well, I was interested a while ago to find out my real level of Chinese proficiency. I took an online test. I don't know how official it was but I just wanted to see. It wasn't the HSK, by the way. Anyway, I scored in the high 80's I think, like 87 or something. It said I was at "high intermediate" level. Whatever that means. But I don't know if I agree with it because high intermediate seems to be on the edge of being advanced which I'd laugh if someone told me my Chinese was advanced. It's good for the ego anyway.

I like the signature of one of the posters here. It says something like "studying Chinese is to instant gratification, as banging one's head on the wall is to a medical breakthrough". That's so true. You have to be dedicated. Look at the people who have studied so long and are only now being able to handle themselves. But if you can learn it well there's no one who can say you aren't an intelligent person.

[wushijiao]

By "success stories", I was looking for something along the lines of "After studying in (such and such a manner) for X (amount of time), I was able to pass the HSK Advanced," or, "After working with Chinese people for X (amount of time), I was able to totally function in the office." I wasn't looking for a long winded essay basically saying, "After 6 years I am making little headway."

I think that's being a bit harsh. What good does it do to only look at success stories? I think klortho had some good insight in his post that could help a person learn Chinese more efficiently.

In any case:

1. Watch Chinese news and be able to totally follow it.

3 years until now. Depends on the news.

2. Read an entire Chinese article without having to use a dictionary

3-4 years. As imron said, it depends on the nature of the news. International is much easier than other types. Reading the local paper might take two years, while reading Nanfang Zhoumo might take 5+.

3. Have a normal conversation in Chinese beyond the standard, "What is your name? What do you study? Where do you live? What do you do for fun?"..etc..

That depends on how you define "normal" conversation. But this can be anywhere from 6 months to 2 years, I suppose.

4. Watch and understand a Chinese movie from beginning to end.

For me, about two or three years.

In sum, a lot of these questions depend on the given definition of proficiency. People perhaps feel a bit embarrassed to respond as “success stories” because there are always noticeable flaws and weak points in every person’s Mandarin comprehension and usage.

[dougm24]

I've been studying Chinese fulltime for just over a year and a half now, spending a year in the UK and 7 months in China. Don't know if I can qualify as a success story, but at least my spoken chinese seems to be at a reasonable level at the moment.

1. Watch Chinese news and be able to totally follow it.

Last time I tried this was in China in december, so after just over a year. I could follow what most stories were about but details were still pretty hard to figure out.

2. Read an entire Chinese article without having to use a dictionary

My written language hasn't really kept up with my spoken, but I can read a chinese article now and understand what it's about and pick out important things, but if I don't use a dictionary there's still a lot of words I don't recognise. This seems to be the difficult thing about chinese, that if you don't recognise a character it's very difficult to even work out the pronunciation (only sometimes with radicals you can work it out), but if you were doing a european language you'd recognise a written word only if you'd seen it written down a couple of times.

3. Have a normal conversation in Chinese beyond the standard, "What is your name? What do you study? Where do you live? What do you do for fun?"..etc..

I can do this pretty comfortably, and have been able to since maybe september/october last year, so after a year of studying. I think I can talk about most topics (translated a government letter to some chinese people in the UK last week) but again a lot of more specialised vocabulary is missing. I think of the four things you mention, this is the easiest because there's always a way to use the most basic vocabulary to speak about something more advanced, whereas if you're listening you really have to know the word or understand it from the context.

4. Watch and understand a Chinese movie from beginning to end.

I haven't tried without subtitles for a while, but in China last december I couldn't understand it, although I could make out most of it. I've found a lot of movies have very difficult accents, I've watched movies like Seventeen Years and The Missing Gun where I don't understand very much (I think they both have shaanxi accents but might be wrong), whereas movies like Beijing Bicycle or Crouching Tiger seem to be have more standard accents and can understand most of that.

[kudra]

@wushijiao, dougm24, (and others below the fold, not to ignore anyone, God forbid....)

I think it must depend on whether you are studying while living in China or not.

@mandarinstudent, I don't see why you can't get close to an answer by looking at goals on course syllabi at departments like Columbia for example. The expectations and time tables expressed in that kind of course progression are based on lots of data. I wouldn't discount it because it's not a real life story. Personally I'd trust the implied average in those course goals over a handful of self selected individual stories here at chinese-forums, but that's just me. You can even make personal adjustments based on how you think you compare with the avg student at the college whose course sequence you are looking at, like make adjustments based on comparing your SAT and the school's average.

the reason I cited the DLI data was that I imagine it would not have what I'll call "advertising bias", that might exist in such material at college departments that want to attract Chinese majors. Also, DLI really spells out its goals and requirements for level 2.

[amandagmu]

Well, I think it's based on a few factors. I definitely agree it is highly dependent on time either spent in China, or in some other form of immersion program. In terms of spoken language (listening and speaking) I got more out of 2 months in Beijing last summer than I did in two semesters at a US university. That should be an obvious factor. Additionally, I noticed a lot of my fellow classmates have slacked. You can't slack in this language. At all. In your spare time you should be listening to dialogs, the news, music, whatever, and try and pick up any words you can. Bottom line: if you don't spend time working on learning the language you won't see results. Just attending class is never enough.

Ok, on the written/characters stuff. If you're good at memorization, this is a good language for you. Know those radicals, know similar words and expressions, some basic grammar, and you're good to go. I could do this after only a year + summer in Beijing, at an intermediate level. I made a lot of flash cards, and I still do it for quick review at the end of a class and before exams. I'm good at memorizing random stuff. Don't ask me how to calculate binary codes for a computer or balance chemistry redox equations, but trust me I could do it for those exams as as undergraduate.

There's one thing no one can control though, and I think it's worth pointing out. People don't learn languages the same way. In fact, quite frankly, some people cannot easily learn any language ever. I'm not saying it's simple for me (Chinese is difficult for anyone I presume) but I learned my first foreign language when I was 8. That makes things a helluva lot easier for me today. I've been told I have a good putonghua accent (even though I still feel like I'm cobbling together sentences). What kills me when I listen is different accents: I have few problems with Beijing accent, no problems with those in cities like Shanghai who speak putonghua, and most teachers who speak putonghua. Give me someone from Guangzhou and I have no clue what the hell they're saying. It's like if you're a foreigner trying to understand inner-city southerners in the U.S. I don't even understand what they're saying half the time.

Finally, as an interesting and somewhat encouraging point of reference: my dad told me that the US foreign service (state department) intensively trains people in Spanish, French, German (et al) for approximately 6 months before they are sent to a post. This means people might spend several hours per day and/or week in a classroom. For China, they're trained intensively in Chinese for 2 years.

[Lu]

1. Watch Chinese news and be able to totally follow it.

In my third year I tried and so completely did not understand it at all (and wasn't very interested either) that I never really watched the news after that.

2. Read an entire Chinese article without having to use a dictionary

Took a reading class in my fourth year, and could read articles but had to look up words here and there. Last week (I'm in my sixth year of studying now) I read an entire article without really needing to look up any words, but that's an exception.

I read my first real book (Qiwang) in my fifth year.

3. Have a normal conversation in Chinese beyond the standard, "What is your name? What do you study? Where do you live? What do you do for fun?"..etc..

I think somewhere in my third year. I first studied in Holland for two years, then went to Beijing for a year, I learned a lot there, including how to have a real conversation.

4. Watch and understand a Chinese movie from beginning to end.

If it has (Chinese) subtitles: in my third year. Without subtitles I still have problems understanding the plot.

[goldy]

Edit: Wrong location