My Progress after 4 Months of Intensive Study - Suggestions, Advice?

I came to China this summer with the ultimate goal of working here. Before I came, I had received an opportunity to work at an American company in Beijing but with the stipulation that I had to become proficient in Mandarin.

When I met with the managing director of the Beijing office (he's an American but speaks fluent Chinese) we had a good thirty minute conversation where I mostly talked about my work experiences in the entertainment industry (where I worked before in the US), my education background, my expectations for working in China, and about the company he was working at.

We were speaking entirely in English, as my Chinese was just limited to stock phrases at that time. At the end of our meeting he told me that when we can have the same conversation we just had, but have it in Chinese, that is when I can start working in the office. This is more or less the barometer I'm using what at least the minimal language skills I need to have to start working.

Well...it's been 4 months now, and I'm not sure what to make of my progress. Yes, for the most part I've been studying hard. I spent 2 months in Beijing which I thought was a more difficult place to study in. I studied at TLI Wangfujing there (see TLI review) and did 3 hours a day 5 days a week. Now I've been in Dalian for 2 months and have been studying at TLI Dalian for a little over a month now after a few weeks break.

My studying routine now consists of starting the morning everyday with a supermemo session, then listening to Chinese audio from the textbooks from TLI. From there I usually review grammar/sentence structures from the text, and/or start either reading passages from my graded Chinese readers or add new words into supermemo.

For three days a week I have classes for 3 hours in the afternoon. On the days I don't have class I usually prepare for TLI lessons and review the previous ones, and spend a considerable amount of time listening to Chinese audio. In the evenings if I still have any mental energy left, switch up and browse other Chinese texts and listen to some more random audio that I feel comfortable with. I usually end the day with a supermemo review of the weeks items that I've already added.

All of this being said, I'm not really sure what to think of about my Chinese abilities so far. Yes, I'm definitely miles from where I started when I came to China, but I still feel like I should be farther than where I'm at. At the four month point, I still have problems with grammar when I'm talking to people on the streets. Most of the simple stuff I get right, but the more complicated stuff is more of a problem.

Another problem is the vocabulary obviously which is related to listening comprehension and vice versa. I probably know around 2500-3000 words. Even with the pace I'm learning new words everyday, I know it's going to take awhile for me to reach that 10,000 word mark so I'll just let time take its course. But my big problem is getting the words I know and recalling them from my active memory rather than passive memory where I see the character or pinyin and then 1 second later I can recall the meaning. When I'm speaking Chinese to people, I have a hard time recalling words I have learned when I need to speak them.

Listening comprehension - don't know the majority of stuff that people say when in conversation with them, unless the topic is predictable (where are you from, family members, why you come to china? etc)

Anyway, there's a snapshot of my current learning progress. My question are -

1.) What's the best way to get vocabulary in active memory?

2.) If I devoted 5-7 hours a day to learning Chinese outside of class, in your opinions what would be the best ways to optimize the time between different activities?

3.) For those of you who have studied Chinese intensively in the past, what was your language level after about 4 months of intensive study?

4.) At what point into my studies or length of time should I be able to understand most of what is being said in "everyday" conversation?

5.) Do you think 1 year is enough to get me to the point where I can proficiently communicate most of the things I need to in Chinese?

Some of these questions are of the "loaded" category but answer as you wish. Thanks for any replies, suggestions, or motivations. It feels like a hard climb upwards to the path of Chinese proficiency...

Chinese is the one of the toughest languages to learn for someone from a European language background, so just to keep at it. It seems that you've made a lot of progress already.

The U.S. Defense Language Institute estimates that it takes about 1300 hours of intensive class room over a year's time to get to the level of proficiency you are describing, but that's studying in the U.S. In China, you might be able to beat that by a few months.

See these threads here:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=69713#post69713

Timeline or success stories

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/6549-the-story-of-my-learning-chinese

THE STORY OF MY LEARNING CHINESE

When you say Chinese audio, what are you actually listening to? You say it's stuff that you 'feel comfortable with' - which is fine some of the time, but realistically a lot of what you actually need to deal with is going to be beyond your ability. If you aren't already I'd think about adding in 'real' stuff such as TV shows and the radio (I used to just walk around with the FM radio on my phone on, flicking between stations when I got bored or lost) to get some training not in understanding everything, but in understanding as much as you can and getting by.

To get stuff into active vocabulary you really need to use it actively. For example, when you're running through Supermemo vocab don't just say 打车 . . ok, that means take a cab, dǎchē, I know that, next. Force yourself to make up and speak a sentence using the item. Chain the times together (ie if 打车 is followed by 展览, you come up with something about taking a taxi to go to the exhibition). Or make sentences using that weeks target grammar structure.

It sounds like you have a good study routine, but how much are you speaking? In my experience, the connection between what one has studied and is able to recoginze in a book/test, and what one is able to say in a conversation isn't as strong as people might think. What I mean is that the only way to really improve one's speaking skills is to speak a lot. It goes without saying that study time is important, but so is getting out and running your mouth as much as possible. It's kind of like the connection between recognizing a character when reading it, and being able to write it from memory. Being able to do one doesn't always mean you can do the other . . .

What kind of work is it that you hope to be doing?

You guys have made some very good points. I realized that for a foreigner it might be too hard to expect to understand 100% of what is being said in Chinese conversations or in television/radio after one or even two years of study (much less 4 months )so I need to compensate for that by listening for the general idea and guessing what they might be saying. I probably need to study from a book less (aside from learning vocabulary) and just blast my ears with constant Chinese.

I need to step up in my efforts to speak Chinese more. I think I wasted a good opportunity to live with Chinese people when I arrived in Dalian, but it was hard to find a place where (a.) they would allow me to stay only 4 months since I'm going back to the US for a few months before Christmas and (b.) find a Chinese flatmate where they could afford part of the rent for the places I was looking at. When I come back to China I'll redouble my efforts to live with a Chinese flatmate.

lilongyue - The job is also in the entertainment industry. I was working at a big talent agency back in Hollywood and we represented a lot of actors, directors, and actors finding them projects to do, negotiating deals, and finding money to do independent projects. In China I'll be working at my former company's competitor but in their Beijing office. They pretty much do the same thing, but with Chinese clients who work in both China's domestic industry and Hollywood.

1.) What's the best way to get vocabulary in active memory?

What Roddy says, use it. Make a sentence with it, describe it, write a story with it, whatever.

3.) For those of you who have studied Chinese intensively in the past, what was your language level after about 4 months of intensive study?

Very basic. Would not have died in China, and would have been able to have a simple conversation if the other person was patient.

5.) Do you think 1 year is enough to get me to the point where I can proficiently communicate most of the things I need to in Chinese?

Depending on what you need, I think no.

As to talking, flatmates are nice, but everybody else is fine too. Talk to the taxi driver, the hairdresser, the guard downstairs, the lady selling groceries, the person next to you on the bus, and make sure you use that day's vocab.

Good luck!

5.) Do you think 1 year is enough to get me to the point where I can proficiently communicate most of the things I need to in Chinese?

You can become basically conversational in one year meaning that for all your basic things you can handle them even if you don't know the specific word for something. But even this, you have to work really really hard.

I was conversational (not necessarily proficient) by my first year mark but I worked my butt off. I intensely studied but it wasn't just about the study, I rarely used English, I purposely thought in Chinese, I watched, read, sang, danced, screamed, (fill in verb) anything I could get my hands on. I constantly had a dictionary and would be looking up words constantly when I wasn't with people and then when I was with people I babbled and then I talked some more. I didn't talk to jerk-wads on the street who were more interesting in saying hello than anything but I talked with anyone I could have a decent conversation with. My first three months I studied 8 hours a day and then after that about 6 hours were spent on studying (in class and at home) and the rest of my time was spent actively using what I had learned- either with friends, or doing the above mentioned running of at the mouth or watching tv, reading subtitles on movies, listening to downloaded news casts, etc.

So it's possible, but are you willing to kill yourself to get there?

Chinese is the one of the toughest languages to learn for someone from a European language background.

I wonder if the converse is true that all European languages are among the toughest for the Chinese...

Not to sound discouraging, but 4 months is far from enough time to pick up an unrelated language, imho. I would give myself 2-3 years time. Even with 3 years, make sure you listen and speak a lot.

I wonder if the converse is true that all European languages are among the toughest for the Chinese...

Not to sound discouraging, but 4 months is far from enough time to pick up an unrelated language, imho. I would give myself 2-3 years time. Even with 3 years, make sure you listen and speak a lot.

You wonder? I don't- it's true!

I don't know why we think that our romanization system is so much easier to learn. It's only because we grew up with it.

As a whole I agree with you. You need time to REALLY learn the language. You can be functional over a short period of time but to learn it well you need many years in country and even more if you are not in country. Languages are learned not in a day but in a lifetime.

Coping with language you can't completely understand is an extremely valuable skill, and it's one that often doesn't really get taught in classrooms. Why learn those 10,000 words when you can learn to cope with not knowing them

Talk to yourself too. I use my son's dinosaurs like puppets and have them "talk" to each other. He loves it and it helps me. I repeat that day's lesson from the book I'm using and try to make my own sentences. Sounds silly but it helps move vocabulary from passive/listening ability to active/being able to speak it.

You have invested a large amount of time, money, and energy in learning Chinese, with an expectation of mastering the language as quickly as possible so as to satisfy the requirement for the position in that American company in Beijing. But you are ungratified with the progress you’ve made after a four-month intensive study. You come to find that the input and the output are not a good match, which is something really discouraging you. You are not certain what will look like if you step forward for another four-month (or even longer) intensive study. So you are at a loss as to how to do next with it, or begin to doubt whether it is worthwhile to do so.

I can read from your article that you have been suffering more or less from learning this language both physically and mentally. I know Chinese language leaves you an unfavorable impression. If not for the job, you would not have thrown yourself into the language study at all. At your heart, I surmise, you don’t like it, something like a piece of tough meat. You are desirous of defeating it some day and achieve your ultimate goal.

Learning a language, especially learning Chinese, is quite distinguished from learning other things, like learning how to drive, how to cook, or how to use a computer. Chinese language is more like a synthesis featuring China’s history, culture, traditions and the way of thinking of native speakers. I am sure that you will get many more by learning it other than merely an employment in Beijing. But you have to need patience and perseverance. When you are learning it, please use your heart to feel it. In process of doing so, you will have an in-depth understanding of this language and cultivate your interest. When you fall in love with Chinese, half is done! Attitude is upmost!

Below are my suggestions to you on learning Chinese:

A. To allocate more time for practicing spoken-Chinese.

a. to start your morning and end your night with reading some material as loud as possible, as clearly as possible, and as slowly as possible.

b. to seek a reliable language partner who speaks perfect Mandarin and is good at English.

c. to speak Chinese whenever possible.

B. To collect beautiful sentences and useful expressions

a. to write down good sentences and expressions you read and you hear in your notebook, and try to recite them and try to use them when you talk with local Chinese.

b. try to find out all the sentences or phrases that express the same meaning. For example, “take a taxi”. It means “打出租车”, we Chinese usually say “打车” for short. But I also like to say “打的” (here “的” pronounce “di”, first tone), this because “taxi” has another translation: “的士” (“di shi”).

c. to keep a diary everyday, try to use the sentences and expressions.

C. To furnish yourself with language study tools.

a. to make a good choice of language software, to learn Chinese in an interactive way.

b. to use internet to study Chinese

(1) to install an e-dictionary in your computer so as to make your reading way smooth when you browse some Chinese websites.

(2) some free-access websites for Chinese language study:

http://www.journeytochinese.com/read-202.html

http://www.masterchinese.com/

http://www.hellomandarin.net/character.html

http://www.linese.com/model/english/pub/index.jsp

http://www.zhongwen.com/

c. when you are out and have nothing to do, for example, you are on a bus, in a taxi, or in a subway, with your radio or MP3 on. Just keep you occupied by Chinese as most as possible. It really doesn’t matter if you can’t understand what it is about. Extensive listening will do you some good with developing your feeling of language.

D. How to learn Chinese characters efficiently

In my eyes, Chinese is the toughest languages to learn in this world, which is, to a large degree, attributed to Chinese characters. To many westerners, Chinese characters look like simple pictures, rather than written symbols. This makes it fundamentally distinct from western languages. Characters are completely new to you, and you’ve found it so difficult to build your language recognition ability.

But we can work out some possible method to learn characters easily and quickly. The method can be based upon a careful analysis of the connections between the rules of creating characters and the rules of creating English words. Typically, an English word consists of a prefix, a root, and a suffix. For example, persistence (this is what you need now), here, “per” is a prefix, “ence” is a suffix, and “sist” is a root, which means to stand. By learning “sist”, we can memorize and understand many other English words consisting of “sist”, such as assist, consist, insist, and so on.

It is the similar case in Chinese characters. “贝”, for example, basically means seashell. In ancient time, seashells used to serve as money, therefore, any character comprising “贝” has a basic meaning relating to money, such as “贫”, ”贱”, “贵”, “财” and so on. Another example is “钅”, which means something related to metal. So it is easier for you to learn many characters with a radical of “钅”. Even though you haven’t learned the character, you can guess its meaning by figuring out “钅”.

Another case is that two words make up a new word, for example, “classroom”, “classmate”, “spaceship”,……while two or three characters form a new character. example, “林”, “明”, “唱”, “您”, “森”, “淼”, “粪”, ……

When you are to learn a new character, I suggest you look at them in piecemeal, take into consideration the individual radicals it possesses and try to figure out whether certain radicals or other characters used to create the character. This requires you to work hard so as to get familiar with these radicals or simple characters, which will be something basically contributing to pave the way to your Chinese proficiency.

Last, I suggest you move away from blindly enlarging your vocabulary, and focus on how to use a character. It is of no significance to only know how to pronounce or how to write a character. Most of characters, unlike English words, are dependable, which means lots of characters can’t function independently in a sentence, for they have to be combined with another one, two or three characters to form a phrase or a Chinese idiom. I appreciate you to spend two or three hours studying a useful character.

The questions raised in your message indicate that you are sort of helpless and impatient, and you trend to go for a magic formula so as to conclude the tough experience of learning Chinese as soon as possible. But there is no such a magic formula. What you do need are enthusiasm, creativeness, patience and perseverance. I hope you will learn Chinese in a happy and easy way. Just enjoy the learning process.

Han-Tiger,

Thanks for you response. Yes, learning Chinese isn't a one shot deal where you either know it or you don't. How did you know I was so anxious to learn Chinese? I'm pretty much guilty of being anxious, impatient...maybe not totally helpless.

I think it mostly has to deal with the job that's waiting for me at the end of whatever time period I will have to learn Chinese. If I was a college sophomore, I'd definitely feel more at ease, less pressure, etc. At times I feel really happy after I have a Chinese conversation with someone that I probably couldn't have had a month ago, but these victories are pretty short-lived, as in 4 days I'll probably feel like I'm learning at a snail's pace again.

Anyway, thanks for the tips!

I admit it is an arbitrary interpretation to say that you are anxious, impatient or something like that.

But I have written this lengthy article with an only purpose of both encouraging you and giving you some specific suggestions. Nothing else.

The U.S. Defense Language Institute estimates that it takes about 1300 hours of intensive class room over a year's time to get to the level of proficiency you are describing

Damn, that's 25 hrs/week...or 5 hrs/weekday.

Try that with a full-time job!

Worse: try that amount of study while maintaining all of your military duties, on top of a family... Some people have it a lot harder, but it's still a tough road for most everyone at DLI.

I wish you a lot of luck, myann23!

If I can offer only one bit of advice it is this: don't get complacent. Push yourself just a little bit beyond your comfort zone, so that your thirst to learn and your desire for new input aren't stifled.