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How Do You Make Learning Chinese Both Fun and Efficient?


Yadang

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I've read in many places on these forums that to really be able to continue learning Chinese for a long period, one has to find a way to make studying Chinese fun. I used to think this was perhaps something that a person might do who didn't have enough motivation in the first place, but not something that people would have to do if they were dedicated enough to learning Chinese that the dedication and the thrill one gets at slowly achieving one's goal in learning Chinese would be enough motivation to keep going.

 

However, I've been finding that for me at least, that doesn't seem to be true. I remember spending hours searching the forums for the easiest native book to read - as I didn't find the Chinese Breeze books very fun to read - only to realize that I knew less than a third of the characters in even the easiest of books, and that the time I was spending researching such books was just taking away from my study time. Then I decided to ditch that attempt and dedicate myself to the good ol' DeFrancis readers. I would use all of them and then, after a few easy children's books or other graded readers, I'd start taking on the real stuff, I thought. This seems like a much more realistic plan than going straight to the real stuff when I only know a few hundred characters. This has been working well, but whereas my motivation was quite good when I started (as I was excited about my new plan of action), it seems to be lessening more and more, because the stuff in DeFrancis' books aren't exactly the most entertaining, and while I'm learning a lot, I'm not exactly having "fun".

 

Yes indeed, learning Chinese is fascinating, and I definitely enjoy and have fun using it to interact with other people and learning about it, but right now learning Chinese itself is not something that I can truthfully say I find fun or enjoyable. And while I grant that there must be some aspects of Chinese that are just a pain and could only be thought of as fun to a masochist, it seems to me that there must be some aspects of learning Chinese that people have been able to do, that are efficient and actually work (I'm not talking about the fun yet totally or very nearly useless busywork that is usually assigned in classes), and yet are genuinely fun - not only because one is making progress - but because the studying in itself is genuinely fun.

 

I've been thinking about this a bit... It seems like one of the hardest aspects of Chinese, at least in the beginning, is how hard it is to reach any kind of native material. So many people complain about characters, but I feel like it's not only that the characters are hard to learn, but the consequences of that - namely that it takes so much effort just to read even a children's book in Chinese.

 

Anyways, I've realized I think I need to make some (not all) of learning Chinese more fun, so it's more motivational and so I do it more. For example I'd like to use DeFrancis for my more painful learning - it's extremely well thought out and it will really help my Chinese reading and writing, but it's not fun. And then supplement DeFrancis with different, more fun studying, that is still efficient and worthwhile.

 

However, that's just an example. I'd like to hear from everyone not just on reading or with regards to my particular situation, but just in general. My question then, is how people go about making parts of their studying fun, especially when the learner is beginning or intermediate, because I feel like that's where I am now. The motivation that I used to get just from the awesomeness of Chinese is starting to wear off, and yet the road ahead to when I'd be able to use it to do something I find fun seems so far off, that I don't know where to get my motivation from in this middle ground.

 

 

So... my actual questions are:

 

1. What do you do to make parts of studying fun, yet still useful and efficient?

 

2. How would a beginner/low intermediate student work this into their study routine?

 

3. How do you balance out your fun studying from the studying you do that you don't like?

 

4. How do you also balance out your fun studying into your different areas that need practice (there must be different ways to have fun while practicing different things - how do you make reading fun? What about Listening? Speaking? Writing? What are the different ways to have fun while practicing each of these?).

 

 

The two most important criteria for me are that it's fun, and also that it's actually useful/efficient.

 

I look forward to hearing your incites and ideas - thanks!

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I'm not sure I have any advice for you, but I want to say I feel this way too. I think it is completely normal.

I think you do need to accept that learning Chinese will be a grind sometimes or even most of the time. It is probably a bit like running a marathon or climbing a mountain, people who do those things don't find it "comfortable" but they still do it for fun. I think it gets a bit more fun as you get to the intermediate stage, as you move away from artificial materials into real native content. Even when you get to this level there is still a lot of grunt work like learning words and improving pronunciation.

Take a long view and see yourself 2, 5 or 10 years down the track. The words you are learning today be the foundation of your fluency tomorrow. As Steve Kaufmann says, do what you like to do. This is not necessarily easy to do in the beginning because the world of Chinese books and TV is still quite impenetrable, but try to find the books you want to read and TV shows you want to watch and start chipping away at them. Hopefully you will find the pleasures outweighs the sorrows and frustrations.

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Nice to see someone else here using DeFrancis. I wonder if there's enough people to make a group reading topic worthwhile.

If you look at this topic, after going through most of Beginning Chinese Reader Part I, there start to be a series of stories in the DeFrancis series, which should provide a break from the more formal Readers and textbooks. These stories are old and out of print, but still in libraries and/or available used. Earlier this year I managed to get a complete collection without too much effort/money.

As you can also see from that topic, there are a number of other graded readers you can try.

As far as I know, there is no equivalent of The Transitive Vampire or the follow-on books for Chinese students, making grammar, etc. more fun to learn.

I became interested in learning Chinese because I watched a lot of foreign films, mostly from HK (a lot of early HK films were in Mandarin, and almost all VCDs/DVDs from HK have a Mandarin dub available). Most of my fun in learning Chinese comes from watching Chinese/HK films and TV shows. They can be an acquired taste, but in your situation I suggest trying a few with English subs. See if you enjoy the material and find it enjoyable to be able to pick out words/phrases from the dialogue.

It's also worth trying to find a class/study group/tutor/language exchange which you like.

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How do you feel about comic books? You could read either native ones(连环画), or translated manga. For instance there are 连环画 of the great Chinese novels, and some of the manga I read when I was studying Japanese were really suspenseful--not silly kid stuff at all.

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My position is a bit easier because I study in chinese, so studying is good start for me even though I hate studying. I've tried to read short stories and novels but I get so bored with them. For me, movies are golden, it's a bit of passive learning. I have a youku account that gets steady use, I've found that I rather enjoy 武侠 movies. Watching movies, improves my listening and the subtitles help for new words.  The second thing I've done is become more socially involved with my native classmates, I go to their parties, play sports with them and generally keep a line of communication open. I guess it's basically a mix of passive learning and immersion.

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I too often feel the way you do, and I think if we asked for a show of hands you wouldn't be able to count them all.

 

The only truly way to make it fun is to get a lover who only speaks Chinese. Otherwise, there will always be a bit of work involved that feels like work. So, think about how to make the grindy bits less of a grind. Have a wide range of different activities, reading, listening, flashcarding, writing practice, watching movies/television, and maybe some language exchange or work with a tutor, and do all of them for short periods of time every day, so they don't get too boring. Find the times when they work best for you. Some things you need full concentration for, others you can do while you're chilling out. Some things you can do while you're doing other things (listening to an MP3 while walking the dog), other things you need a desk and peace and quiet.

 

Also look for things that 'gamify' it, Computer flashcard programs like Anki and Pleco give you scores, numbers learned, percentage retained, whatever. These are things that motivate many people, just as points in a computer game, or numbers of benchpresses or whatever that weightlifters do. Compete against other people, compete against yourself. Find something you want to read, put it into Imron's Chinese Text Analyser, see how many words you need to learn, and start learning them. That's a number that you can take down every day, until you've learned them all, Find a longer, harder text and repeat.

 

Sometimes I just surf around the internet, looking for things in Chinese that I can almost understand, that I find interesting. Read enough (using Perapera) to figure out what it's about and whether it's worth the effort, move on, following links or googling terms. Follow your nose. As a break from all the more goal-oriented, measurable stuff.

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The "fun" part is actually very simple. Whatever you enjoy doing, do it, but do it in Chinese. If you like crime novels, read them in Chinese, if you like action movies, watch them in Chinese, if you like talking to beautiful ladies, talk to them in Chinese. I'm an avid reader of the National Geographic Magazine in Portuguese, and I will often check BBC news in Chinese.

I think that your problem is that you're stuck in a "no man's land" where you're not yet ready for native materials, or where reading such materials is a chore and definitely not fun. So you should concentrate on advancing past the beginner and lower intermediate stages to the point where simple comics (Doraemon!) and beginner podcasts become feasible. Even if you struggle through such materials, they are still more fun than a textbook.

I'd try to lower the daily load because you might be suffering from burn-out. Do study in smaller chunks, but more regularly. At the same time, give yourself a new project: a comic book or a simple TV series. For example, in the Chinese TV subforum there are transcripts for the first few episodes of Jia You Ernv (sorry can't type Chinese here). It will be hard going at first, but it's authentic material and will be much more interesting than textbook drills.

It helps to set yourself measurable goals. With 1000 most common characters and a dictionary, Doraemon becomes doable. With the most common 2000 characters and a dictionary, you can tackle simpler novels. TV shows are always rough in the beginning, but if you download them and pause often and refer to the subtitles, 2000 characters should get you through the lower intermediate ones without too much trouble. Once you're done with the first two full-length series, you'll see that watching actually becomes a fun part of your routine, as does reading. So measurable goals in terms of vocabulary will help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Vocab is only a small part of a language, but it is a crucial one.

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I have to agree that if there is love and passion then it is not hard work or boring.

 

Variety is my way of dealing with getting stuck in a rut or hitting that inevitable plateau that happens every so often.

 

And sometimes actually taking a break from learning Chinese for a short while (couple of days at the most for me) then get back to it with renewed interest.

 

If a simple answer was found to the OP's question, it would be worth bottling and offering it for sale :)

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I don't mean to be discouraging, but there is always going to be a period of grind if you want to get your Chinese to a higher level.  Sometimes that grind might take months or years even depending on the level you are at, the level you are hoping for and the material you are wanting to use.

 

As an example, when I first started reading novels, I already had reasonable Chinese (could read newspapers and the like without much trouble) but it took reading about 4-5 novels to finally get in to the groove and feel that it was a comfortable and enjoyable experience.  That took about 4 months, reading 30min to an hour a day, and initially it was really difficult to keep focus and interest - but I forced myself to keep going.  Once I hit that groove it was great, but before then it was hard going.

 

Even if you are reading an enjoyable book on a topic you like and you have a decent vocab, it's still going to be painful initially.  There's not really anything you can do except stick at it until you breakthrough.  Part of that is accumulating enough vocab and character knowledge, which means if you're at a lower level it's only going to be more painful because there's more you need to do and there's also a real lack of decent and interesting material aimed at the intermediate level.  The best advice I have is not to try to bite off more than you can chew - don't be in such a hurry to get to using advanced material that you neglect giving yourself a good foundation.

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What I've found helpful is to try to make the connection between language and culture.  I give myself a "break" from pure language study and try to keep learning about the culture (in English).  There are many good Chinese podcasts that also offer episodes on Chinese culture (in English) that make the language study much more relevant and interesting.  For example the "Sinica" podcast from Popup Chinese is fantastic.  As is "Important Chinese Things with Jenny Zhu" by ChinesePod.

 

A variety of interesting topics such as internet slang, baijiu culture, living with disability, etc. can be found.  

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I'm with renzhe and imron here. Fun is more or less whatever you like, but there definitely is a grind at various points.

 

My recommendation would be to stop looking for fun and start making whatever you need to do enjoyable. One of the greatest things I've learned the last few months is that we all have a huge amount of choice when it comes to what is and isn't enjoyable. Think about it, it's virtually impossible to come up with something that's so unpleasant, disgusting, painful, boring or otherwise icky that there isn't at least one or two people out there that enjoy it in some fashion. Often times there's a good reason for it being unpleasant, you're not supposed to be doing it, but in the case of the frustration and boredom that can come with language study, it's more important to do the work and enjoy it than it is to concern yourself about the validity of the enjoyment.

 

https://www.udemy.com/the-neuroscience-of-reframing-and-how-to-do-it/?dtcode=AYYzvur1buIP I'd take a look at that, there's also a pay course, which is well worth it, but the free course should help you figure out how to get started. I've found myself genuinely enjoying things like doing the laundry and cleaning up my room whereas in the past I pretty much despised it. I'm not working on repeating the process with all the other things that I genuinely need to get done, but don't want to do.

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I have been studying Chinese off and on for 16 years. I am reasonably fluent and can read modern novels with ease, but it is such a rich language that I find that I am always still learning. I live in the US now and in order to maintain and improve my Chinese I downloaded CBox (CCTV's app) on my iPhone and iPad. I like to watch CCTV-12, the Society and Law channel. I learn lots of new vocabulary and I learn about police work and social issues in China through these programs. They are really intriguing. The best one I ever saw was about a family who harvested valuable sea cucumbers for their livelihood, and the sea cucumbers were stolen. The police suspected it was an inside job and the family began to suspect some trusted workers, but they had rock solid alibis. Finally, they taped the area with a hidden camera and found out that mice were eating the sea cucumbers!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey everyone - thanks for the contributions!

 

I know that much of my studying will continue to be a grind, especially in the stage that I'm in now - a "no man's land" as Renzhe so rightly put it. I really like the advice that a few of you said that until I can get out of this no man's land and on to more exciting materials, I should spice things up a bit with variety. I'll try it!

 

Oh, and hedwards - you've learned to enjoy doing laundry?? I have to check that out!

 

@MPhillips, :D

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