Learning Chinese -- A roller coaster

[lanzhoumian]

oh, I guess I am just about to enter stage 2, so looking forward to it ;)

[taylor04]

It's true that in today's computer age you'll have few occasions to jot down anything on paper except for the occasional phone number and Advanced HSK exam , but I think learning how to write would also serve as a useful mnemonic for beginners that would help them a lot with their reading and remembering of characters in general?

When I first started I was very stubborn on this subject. Writing truly is not necessary. However now that I'm at an intermediate level, I'm finding that writing increases my retention rate and character recognition. I would even argue that if you only want to learn spoken Chinese and basic reading (not newspaper and novel level), don't bother with writing, but if you want to get to the advanced levels it almost seems necessary. Now I just wish I had taken up writing earlier.

I can read okay but can't write at all

If you are like me and can't sit down to force yourself to write, you might want to try Skritter. It's not as tedious this way and I went from writing 我 wrong to writing 400 characters in three weeks. The frightening thing is I've had fun doing it.

My path is a bit like yours abcdefg, although I took formal Chinese classes. I would force myself to remember characters for classes and nothing more. My speaking vocabulary is double my reading. I hate it when I have no clue how to read this character, only to look it up and have it be a word I've used for the last three years

[imron]

I agree that pronunciation is the number one thing to focus on when you are beginning. Radicals are also important for people looking to gain literacy and should be taught early on, but I think this should be done in the context of learning other characters.

@wushijiao that's a great stage 5 Many people get stuck in the fog though..

[wrbt]

It's not as tedious this way and I went from writing 我 wrong to writing 400 characters in three weeks. The frightening thing is I've had fun doing it.

That is indeed frightening.

I've also found that I can't read what Chinese people write by hand. If I really spend some time puzzling over it I can and then find it's something I could easily read if it was in a book or sign. Actually there is one really fat newspaper font that challenges me too, where I don't recognize stuff I should.

You know what's always fun, and I'm sure most Chinese learners have experienced this: you're with non-Chinese speaking friends and they ask you what some obscure character on restaurant wall art or some label is. You answer that you don't know what the character is or what it means but you can tell by looking at it that it probably sounds like "gen." Someone who has never studied Chinese will usually be baffled at how that random looking symbol that you don't recognize you can tell how it's (likely) pronounced.

Hah! I've no idea what that is but it's gonna sound like "shao" I bet! Wooohoo!

[taylor04]

You answer that you don't know what the character is or what it means but you can tell by looking at it that it probably sounds like "gen."

Haha, or in my experience I get crap for not knowing what it says.

[abcdefg]

You know what's always fun, and I'm sure most Chinese learners have experienced this: you're with non-Chinese speaking friends and they ask you what some obscure character on restaurant wall art or some label is.

I tell them without hesitation that it means "dew under moonlight" or "wind under full sun" then go back to ordering the meal.

[wrbt]

Yeah that too. Then you call the waitress over to ask and she doesn't know how to say it in English but mimes that it's some sort of obscure precious stone.

Those are "topaz" brand noodles you fool!

[imron]

I've also found that I can't read what Chinese people write by hand.

Learning to read handwriting is a separate skill altogether. See here for some ideas on where to start.

[taylor04]

I updated it with the short list under level one. Any changes recommended? Also, what does everything think about the usefulness of classical Chinese?

[chrix]

I'm obviously biased, but at some point (we can argue at what point), you should at least have a look at written Chinese (like the two books we were discussing on some other thread), because even if you learnt chengyu separately, which I also highly recommend for step 4 or 5, there will be literary expressions (or even wholesale quotes from Classical texts) that you would need to understand...

[Sarevok]

But there are characters that I comprehend from the context, but can't write and can't pronounce. Can write and can't pronounce. Can pronounce but can't write. Could make a guess at pronunciation. Sort of comprehend, can pronounce and write easily. Get the meaning of what seems to be a word, without having a clue about one of the characters. And whatever other permutations are left.

(written by somebody probably here on CHF a few years ago, I liked it, so I noted it down... EDIT: found the full post)

That about sums it up

Edited December 13, 2009 at 03:27 PM by Sarevok

[taylor04]

That definitely does happen. Just as I've met foreigners who spoke near fluent Chinese and not being about to read 你好 (seriously, my old roommate) and I even met a Korean with great reading while never having learned pinyin (so couldn't speak). I can just go through a text and guess words I don't know right 95% of the time, for me personally, it's not good enough. We all have different goals so there is no right way. Although I do agree there comes a point where you don't want to know every word but just guess from context; I'm not there yet

[chrix]

Also, on this thread, people are talking about learning around 2,000 characters first and then start concentrating on learning words.

Edited December 12, 2009 at 10:54 PM by chrix

[chrix]

a compromise for people who do not want to delve too deeply into Classical Chinese might be this textbook (and on top of that get this book as a reference).

[Sarevok]

a compromise for people who do not want to delve too deeply into Classical Chinese might be this textbook (and on top of that get this book as a reference).

I have both of them and I would say they are both outstanding (they really do stand out of my collection). I used the first one, when I was starting to study classical Chinese formally. Though I agree with chrix, that one should tackle classical Chinese in the more advanced stages of learning Chinese (as it really is useful for understanding and maybe producing formal and written Chinese), I never got further than halfway through the first volume... and even that knowledge is getting a little rusty as it was more than a year ago. I should be more disciplined in my study (I should make this my 2010 resolution ).

I acquired the second one some two months ago and only worked my way through the 前言, which provides some very interesting explanations about written Chinese. I wish I knew about the term "prosodic word" before submitting my thesis, could have added some interesting points in there and spice it up (though we had a special course on Chinese prosody, I never heard anything about prosodic words in there... or maybe I just forgot, as it has been a couple of years since I have taken the course). Everything that's left is adding all those disyllabic couplets and example sentences into my SRS and plow my way through them, yay

[chrix]

Sarevok, looks like you should consider joining our Classical Chinese study group Feel free to PM me about it...

[wushijiao]

I think people who started out not paying much attention to tones will have a hard time trying to correct that at some later stage. Maybe we should include a list of things you shouldn't fail to cover as a beginner in stage 1?

I used to think this. Of course, I think it's worth it to really try to get good at tones at the beginning, and do a lot of drills and whatnot. I know some people who have been very meticulous about tones from the start, and they ended up with really pretty good accents even at the beginning stages.

On the other hand, I think one can go overboard in giving this sort of advice. A friend of mine had a tutor that would correct every tone, and it was more frustrating than helpful. (I wonder how much tones and over-correction of tones frustrates and intimidates people, rather than helps them out).

In my experience, however, I've noticed a few things:

-most audio materials for beginners leave out sentence intonation-- a component almost as crucial as tones--

-as an intermediate, once your reading skills probably develop out of proportion compared to other skills (as chrix said), your tones will probably suffer

-a base of listening practice is the best (and perhaps only) way to guarantee that you will remember how to say a word correctly. So, listening to a lot of materials (through conversations, listening materials for learners and authentic) is the only guarantee to good pronunciation.

-my experience in learning Chinese very much mirrors my experience to learning Spanish. After a lot of native input of authentic materials, you simply can recall from memory how words are pronounced by native speakers (even if you can't reproduced it 100% in the same way). You can hear English speakers speaking in a terrible Gringo accent, or in Chinese, by botching the tones. At this point, it's much easier to correct your pronunciation.

So, at least in my case, I think I can say that it is possible to get much better at tones (in terms of listening and speaking) even if you botched it at the start. (And, as I've said, I'm slightly dubious whether it's even possible to speak tonally correct at an early stage (but I'd be glad to be corrected). But nonetheless, I do think it would be best to try to work on tones from the beginning.

[chrix]

So as of now, we have two positions, I suppose. Anyway of reconciling those?

I mean, wushijiao, you would agree, I think, that beginners shouldn't start out without any tones at all, as some self-learners have done or even some college courses (where the instructor doesn't have the time to correct each and every student's tones). Surely there must be a middle way?

[taylor04]

I found that getting a good foundation will definitely help with your tones later, but at the time using SRS programs is necessary. After I came back to the US in August, I noticed a sharp decrease in my speaking ability, along with forgetting some of the most basic tones; if I had them right to begin with. I've found to just pronounce it with the tone you truly believe it is(in intermediate levels) and if you use the wrong tone, they won't understand. For example, two days ago I said xiao3 instead of xiao4 for laugh, they didn't understand me at first and finally corrected me (one of those sly corrections with them repeating the word correctly). I don't think I will forget the tone for laugh ever again:D

I would almost be willing to argue that it isn't necessary to remember every characters tone, but rather what character tones you have to know. 丑臭 chou4 and chou3, both could be used in similar situations with completely different meanings. 买卖 When I first moved to China and went to buy a cell phone, he thought I wanted to sell him a cellphone! While speaking with perfect tones is great and all, a natural conversation doesn't have perfect tones in it but rather emphasis on words.

While I think it would be a huge mistake to jump into Chinese without learning tones, it's never too late to fix anything. It might be harder to fix your old habits and learn tones from scratch, but it's definitely doable.

[wushijiao]

Yes, I don't think I'm talking as much of a "middle way" as much as I'm talking about expectations, and where to put tones on the Stage list. As I said, I think it makes sense to teach tones from the start, and to do drills with them, and for teachers to help students pronounce them well. So, this is Stage 1 stuff.

On the other hand, I doubt it's possible to get it down completely in Stage 1. In fact, I think that, as I advocate doing at least 1-3 hours of audio per day over many years (combined with as much talking as you can do) is the basis for really good pronunciation. In this sense, refining the tones might be done at Stage 4 and 5 (so to speak), or in years 5+ learning Chinese. This is made all the more so because, since characters don't give the tonal component, and since one is bound to acquire a lot of vocabulary through reading, one is bound to have problems remembering tones in the middle stages. (In other words, if Chinese used a pinyin+tones writing system, imron's system, perhaps one would get better at tones as one acquired words through reading, but this of course is not the case in reality).

So, doing tone work at Stage 1 and in later Stages is not mutually exclusive.

But then again, I may be wrong about this, since I'm mainly extrapolating a theory from my own experience, much is probably not necessarily all that representative.