Listening > speaking?

[Tsunku]

I've found that I've reached a rather frustrating point in my Chinese language acquisition. Its that odd in-between stage where I can understand probably 70-75% of what is spoken, but I have no idea how to formulate a response.

I know its natural for listening skills to develop first, but I find it incredibly annoying to be able to understand conversations, but not participate! Is anyone else at this stage? Or, if you've passed it, do you have any hints for how to get over this particular hump?

[Guest mirela_violeta]

I think you should try to speak as much as possible, even if you make mistakes or you don't speak as a chinese would. I'm in my 3.rd year now and I had big problems speaking up until this year when something changed ever since I started talking a lot with my chinese teacher. Now that I know more words, I understand more and I speak 10 times better than a year ago when I could barely speak though I knew 2000 words and I could write very well. It all changes if you start paying more attention to the tones, if you try to carry on a conversation. ANd it takes a lot of work but you know that. It's difficult for me to learn chinese here cause I have no contact with the language outside the university. But I hope I can improve my conversational skills when I go to China in September.

[wix]

I know its natural for listening skills to develop first, but I find it incredibly annoying to be able to understand conversations, but not participate! Is anyone else at this stage? Or, if you've passed it, do you have any hints for how to get over this particular hump?

I am a fairly shy person and I don't necessarily speak a lot regardless of the language. But if you want to improve your speaking you must not be afraid to speak!!! The more you speak the easier it gets. It is good if you can put yourself in situations where you can only speak Chinese and not fall back on English.

I was very lucky to meet a wonderful teacher in Taiwan. She was actually an EFL teacher, so she taught the class using modern EFL techniques. I was the worst student in the class, but she took a lot of time to encourage me to speak. This is not necessarily an easy task, but she was successful.

Also in that class we were never allowed to speak English. This forced you to start thinking in Chinese. Although my Chinese is far from perfect I would consider my fluency level to be very high. This is because I think in Chinese so whatever I want to say or when I respond to a question it all comes out very quickly. A reason you might find it difficult to respond to people is because you translate what you hear into English, then think of the answer in English and then try to translate it back into Chinese.

[roddy]

It really does come down to putting yourself in situations where you have to speak Chinese. If you are in China, and confident enough, go and start chatting to old people in the park. If you're not confident enough, find the nicest, most patient Chinese person you know and start chatting to them when nobody is looking.

If you're not in China, see if you can find a Chinese Student association or something.

Roddy

[channamasala]

To give you confidence, OP, I am going to tell you some of the things I said, and wrote down due to hilarity factor, when I first started "speaking" (ahem) Chinese. Actually, the last two came out last night when I was really tired.

"Ni neng da dianhua computer fix man ma?"

"Ting! You re cha, and if you tui me, I'm gonna spill the cha on you."

"Oh, Huang Min! Ni you hen hao de pi!" (I meant "pi fu", she was complaining about her complexion).

"Wo zai Nan Yindu daxue shang ke guo, xuexi henduo guanyu Yindu zhangfu!" - this one is wrong for SO MANY REASONS, the most subtle of which being that I misspoke and said "Indian husbands" rather than "Indian government".

"Meiyou zugou de cha! Yao xinshui!" (as opposed to the correct "kaishui")

and last night...

"Ni weishenme zheng zai gan zhe ge?" (guy was spraying that ineffectual anti-SARS crap all over my classroom). "Hu Jintao gaosu wo meiyou fei dian!"

"They are so totally not huan gei-ing their yi zi's!"

The point of all that is, you have to learn how to just start TALKING, even if you can't finish well or you know you're gonna sound like an idiot. I got over it really quickly, then again I live in a town where I look like a freak of nature just by being white. There isn't much I could do to stand out any more than I already do. I think I'd get stared at more if my Chinese were perfect! Just remember, if you are in fact not Chinese, that no one will ever think that it's your native language, so don't worry about mistakes. You probably aren't fooling anyone anyway. The absolute best way, as Roddy said, is to force yourself to do it, to put yourself into situations where you must speak Chinese. I am also fortunate that no one in my town speaks English. I have to speak Chinese every day just to get by. There is no fallback. I don't know where you are right now, but if possible, you should try to get yourself into an environment that is intensive as possible. Whether this is a small town in rural China or just getting a tutor who whips you whenever you hesitate or fall into English, you need to do what you can.

Shyness is usually the first and worst obstacle of any foreign-language learner. I see it in my students (I don't have the luxury of it, also I'm just not shy by nature) - so I can sympathize with you there. My students, knowing that I speak enough Chinese to understand (they'll drag me into my coworker's class to "fanyi! fanyi!" when they have a question).

I guess I had a bit of it with French. I spoke the best French of all my friends in college, that is, until two of them went and spent a year in France while I was in India forgetting everything I'd learned. I grew a sudden fear of speaking French around them that I didn't have before, as I knew that they now spoke more fluently than I did. The arrogance of one of them over this fact unfortunately helped that "shyness" grow into a refusal to speak French with them at all. I would talk to the boyfriend of one - a Moroccan, native French speaker - without fear, however. He was always supportive and never made me feel dumb or as though I'd lost my abilities. So it's also all about who you choose to talk to. Steer clear of classmates who might be snotty about speaking it better and imperious teachers, if you can. Hopefully you're in an area where you can find some native speakers who will be happy that you speak any Chinese at all, and praise what you can do, rather than someone who might look down on what you can't do.

I also found that people here in China are very encouraging when foreigners test out their Chinese at any level. My first conversations, months ago, generally went like this:

me: "Ni hao!"

them: "Ni ting de dong wo de hua/shuo ma?"

me: "Uh...yi dian dian?"

them: "OH! blah blah blah blah"

me: "Ting bu dong."

them: "Ni Zhongguohua shuo de hen hao!"

me, slipping into English: "Dude, I JUST SAID that I 'Ting BU dong!' How is that hen hao?!'"

So...accept that you may look dumb at first, and work from there. And you probably speak better Chinese than I do, anyhow.

[Tsunku]

Thanks for the replies!

I agree that I probably need to just get over it and go speak more. My boyfriend is a local Chinese and he is constantly on me to practice more Chinese with him. He's an English major though, and has really wonderful English, so I feel intimidated about busting out with my Chinese when his English is so obviously superior. Before I met him I used to get a lot of practice just going out to bars where the local students hang out and chatting it up with kids who know no English whatsoever, but since we've met I've come to rely on him more and more for translation, which isn't good for the language acquisition. My reluctance to speak lead him to grossly underestimate my listening comprehension though, and I've caught him more than once saying things he thought I couldn't understand, so playing dumb has its advantages!

On the other hand, I have a friend who, after studying Chinese for only a year and a half (7 months of which were spent in China), was completely fluent. He accomplished this, he said, just by going out there and talking to people as often as possible. Random shopkeepers, people on the street, anyone and everyone. It was amazingly impressive to see him in action (he's back in the US now), and even more impressive was his nerve! I'm a bit lacking in the nerve department, but trying to improve.