Three months until China: what to study until then?

[realmayo]

I will be finding a university in China to enroll for one semester, probably two, for a Chinese language course, starting February. This leaves me with three months in the UK where, as it happens, I have plenty of time on my hands.

Right now I am memorising stuff. Given that I can do this relatively dull, repetitive, time-consuming task almost just as well here as in China, why not get as much out of the way now? So I'm trying to memorise 1000 new characters between now and February, bringing me to well over 2000 in total. I'm also trying to memorise reading/writing a similar number of two-character "words" composed of those characters.

However I wondered if I'm missing anything here ... so I thought I'd ask for advice. Has, for example, anyone started a language course at a Chinese university and wished they'd spend time beforehand doing this, that or the other? What will I regret not doing now once I start on the course? (I lived in China for a couple of years from 2000, and used to be able to chatter away moderately well, not now though.)

Thanks!

[trevelyan]

Don't expect any Chinese university to provide you with a good education. The advantage of being in China is the social environment, not the quality of institutional instruction. Even when you are in China, you will have to be responsible for your own education.

This may be different from the advice of others here (I know flashcards are key for a lot of people), but in my experience the best approach is to find materials that you enjoy and get motivated to explore the Chinese language naturally by enjoying them. The amount of time you spend exposed to the language is a first-order factor affecting your speed of acquisition. The efficiency of pick-up is a second-order factor. One of the first things I found myself really enjoying in Chinese was reading Tintin and Philip K. Dick. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, skip it and do something out.

I'd recommend checking out our Chinese lessons, and especially the more entertainment oriented shows. It all really depends on your priorities. Memorizing and writing characters may not be the best use of your time if you'll use a pinyin-input system in the real-world. And once you know proper stroke order, how many characters do you really need to write?

[anonymoose]

I think learning characters and vocabulary is a good idea whilst you are still in the UK. It is much more difficult to learn speaking and listening when you don't have the environment, and of course once you are in China, you won't want to be wasting time memorizing characters then.

Don't expect any Chinese university to provide you with a good education.

I don't think I entirely agree with this. I've started studying at Jiaotong University in Shanghai this semester, and I've found the course fairly satisfactory so far. When learning anything, the most critical factor is one's own attitude. Thus, I think there's only so much that any language course can do for the students - the rest is down to the student him/herself. But at least regarding the course I am on, I think the university fulfills its end of the deal pretty well.

the best approach is to find materials that you enjoy and get motivated to explore the Chinese language naturally by enjoying them

I agree with this. Don't bother just trying to memorize vocabulary from a list as this is very dull, and since words don't have a context attached to them, you'll probably end up using them incorrectly in the real world. Find something you're interested in reading, and draw your vocabulary from there.

[Scoobyqueen]

I agree with anonymouse's comments that you dont want to be wasting time learning characters iwhilst in China. Learning as many as possible before you leave will also mean you are able to take notes in characters more efficiently without having to worry about what a character means (since you have probably already learnt it). Being able to handwrite them makes it easier to copy from the blackboard.

[renzhe]

While I agree that getting a solid foundation in characters is a good idea (you'll likely have less time/inclination to do that in China, and you can do that just as well in the UK), I'd also recommend working on your listening -- the more you can understand at the beginning, the more useful the immersion in the language will be for you.

If you can profit from simple conversations from the very first day, it will be more helpful than if you're struggling for the first three months.

[realmayo]

Ah okay, thanks, I'm glad you two think it makes sense to work through the characters. Listening stuff seems sensible too, get the ear retuned to Chinese a bit. I'll try to watch a fair bit of Chinese TV over the next few weeks. There are worse chores.....