native level

[Chief123]

Regarding the immersion question, I am guilty of this. My study has been hit and miss and I still do most reading in English and fall back to spoken English when I get stuck. Even though I'm married to a Chinese woman, have stepchildren, have lived in Taiwan 9 months, use it everyday to live and buy things, etc. this lack of true immersion is probably the reason for some of my posts about my lack of progress.

So my question is, how do you immerse yourself in Chinese when you can't read except for Zhuyin and only recognize a few very simple characters?

How do you replace all your English books, websites, etc?

Mark

[jbradfor]

I think that's a really good question. If I were to move to China (or some other non-English speaking country), I can't see myself ever reading the local newspaper as my primary source of news, or books not in English. I spent so many years learning to read English (explicitly in school for about 15 years, and implicitly for well over 30), I can imagine spending anywhere near that much time to learn to read in a second language just to be where I am today in English.

[roddy]

how do you immerse yourself in Chinese when you can't read except for Zhuyin and only recognize a few very simple characters?

You learn to read Chinese, or you accept that your inability to read Chinese is going to be a constant drag on your learning.

[Chief123]

You learn to read Chinese, or you accept that your inability to read Chinese is going to be a constant drag on your learning.

I absolutely don't mean this in a smart aleck way, but living in country it's going to take me 2+ years to "immerse" myself?

Mark

[anonymoose]

I think talking about "immersion" really obscures the crux of the issue. What it essentially boils down to is the more time and effort you put in, the faster you will learn Chinese.

Yes, you can immerse yourself by having the Chinese radio or TV on in the background, or stacking your bookshelf up with Chinese books. But unfortunately, Chinese is not easy to learn by passive immersion. Immersion just provides you with an environment conducive to learning. In the end, you will only make progress if you make a conscious effort to improve your grammar, expand your vocabulary, and make use of opportunities to put the skills to practice.

[roddy]

If reading is an essential part of your immersion, then . . . yep. Or you could just cut out reading from your life, I guess. Stop reading newspapers, start listening to the radio. Stop reading books, start watching Taiwanese soap operas (ha, got you worried now!).

But while reading looks like a huge hassle, I think it's fair to say it's a huge but manageable hassle.

[mfgillia]

You learn to read Chinese, or you accept that your inability to read Chinese is going to be a constant drag on your learning.

Not necessarily. I think it really depends on one's goals. There are certainly plenty of fluent Mandarin speakers that didn't reach that level through reading. On the other hand, I know a number of people that can read at an intermediate to high level but can't communicate nearly as effectively especially in spontaneous environments.

[renzhe]

There are certainly plenty of fluent Mandarin speakers that didn't reach that level through reading

Well-educated native level? Hardly.

I've never met a person fluent in Chinese who couldn't read (I mean learners, obviously). I'm sure that there are a few out there, but I agree with roddy. Not learning to read makes learning Chinese considerably more difficult in the long run.

[Chief123]

I'm specifically referring to this:

A large part of the answer may simply be, well, is, the fact that many people who seem “100% immersed” aren’t really immersed. Period. They illustrate the simple truth that just because you’re near the water, that doesn’t mean you’re taking a bath— one must actually enter the tub. You will find that these people continue to mostly/only read books, watch movies, work with and talk to people in their primary/native language. There are many Western men married to Japanese women, with Japanese-speaking Eurasian children, who know no Japanese beyond the basics. Many first-generation Chinese immigrants in the US may have lived there for decades, yet can barely speak English. There are Western men who have lived in Korea and Arabia for 10+ years who can neither speak nor read these phonetic scripts. What happened to the kanji excuse? They have all physically walled themselves in.

And more specifically the part about reading books but I'm not asking if reading is important or whatever - just discussing the living in country but not immersed part.

Look I understand most of the immersion discussed here is attitude. For example you don't know how to say "flush the toilet" or "information" and instead of learning it you keep using the English. You don't study in a conscientious way and aren't even trying to make progress. Or you stay in your house all day for fear of talking to people or...

But when it comes to reading that's a different story. There's no way you can replace the Wall Street Journal that you read every day any time soon with the Chinese version. There's no way from the get go to use a Chinese-Chinese dictionary. There's no way to replace all English with Chinese - for example this forum isn't in Chinese.

If you need 2000 characters to read basic newspapers, etc. (let's don't argue the number needed for fluency) at "1earning" 10 characters a day you'd take 6+ months to even recognize them all and I'd argue you still haven't really learned them after 6 months enough to read the news.

Using Zhuyin to read online or offline would be better and can be done in Taiwan and with that (at least the online part and a Zhuyin font) you could replace most reading by going to more Chinese websites. Is Pinyin "everything" available in the Mainland?

In my case I'm going to use more Chinese sites and the Zhuyin to help me become more immersed. This is a big part of what I'm lacking I think. Thanks for the wakeup call. However I know that using Zhuyin isn't magic because you still have to look up the words you don't know.

But using the Zhuyin as a crutch, even if that's not the "best" method as has been discussed here before, is better than reading the English websites if I want to take advantage of every opportunity to immerse myself in improving my Chinese, right?

Mark

[renzhe]

If you need 2000 characters to read basic newspapers, etc. (let's don't argue the number needed for fluency) at "1earning" 10 characters a day you'd take 6+ months to even recognize them all and I'd argue you still haven't really learned them after 6 months enough to read the news.

Sure, 2 years for reading newspaper articles is more realistic, assuming you study really hard.

But you can read comics long before that. And children's books after that. And simpler literature after that. And anything you get your hands on. One of the main reasons why immersion works is the information overload, it kicks your brain into a higher gear. It's uncomfortable, but you really learn.

Katzumoto got one thing right -- if you really want to learn a language, you have to be arrogant and reach for the stars, and not give up.

The worst part of learning characters and reading can be done in about two years -- after that it's much easier. It's a part of learning, and we all had to go through it. Bite the bullet and do it, you'll thanks yourself for it.

[mfgillia]

Well-educated native level? Hardly.

I've never met a person fluent in Chinese who couldn't read (I mean learners, obviously). I'm sure that there are a few out there, but I agree with roddy. Not learning to read makes learning Chinese considerably more difficult in the long run.

That's too bad. I've met several. Find it hard to believe though that one hasn't run into foreigners that are fluent in Mandarin while living for a few years in Taiwan or China and then later found out they didn't get there through a traditional reading based approach and can hardly read any characters.

Actually, I would say about half of the foreigners that I know well that have obtained a high level of fluency didn't get there through reading - not to imply some of them didn't go back and learn how to read afterwards.

[renzhe]

I can believe that. I've never lived in China or Taiwan for long enough to meet such people, but immersion can do wonders.

I've met many people though, who claimed to be fluent, but clearly weren't. To get back to the original topic of this thread, you will not achieve well-educated native level without reading, period. Nobody can achieve that, in any language, native or not.

[jbradfor]

Bite the bullet and do it, you'll thank yourself for it.

Learning to read may be a bit of a slog, but it can also be at times exhilarating. Like when you just learn a character, and then 30 minutes later you see it somewhere. Or when the sign you've driven past 50 times suddenly makes sense. Or when, for the first time, you can "just read" something in Chinese, rather than having the work at it and process it.

If you're serious about learning Chinese and/or staying in Taiwan, now is the prefect time to learn to read.

This is when immersion comes in. Being in Taiwan, surrounded by written Chinese, will serve as both a reinforcement to what you study, and will also provide you many more opportunities for that "exhilaration" to give you motivation.

[mfgillia]

I've met many people though, who claimed to be fluent, but clearly weren't. To get back to the original topic of this thread, you will not achieve well-educated native level without reading, period. Nobody can achieve that, in any language, native or not.

We will likely have to agree to disagree. I've certainly seen people reach a very high level without reading. Now would you consider them fluent? I'm guessing not. Do the native Chinese consider them fluent? Absolutely. Whether they are giving a lecture to graduate students or discussing complex business problems, they are for all practical purposes fluent and able to communicate both naturally and effectively in Mandarin.

However, none of this means I'm advocating skipping reading for the average student. If you are a beginner and have +5 years to dedicate to Mandarin then a complete balanced approach right from the beginning will likely be the optimal approach long term. On the other hand, if your goal is to become truly conversational in two to three years with average language learning ability then perhaps not...

[gato]

Whether they are giving a lecture to graduate students or discussing complex business problems, they are for all practical purposes fluent and able to communicate both naturally and effectively in Mandarin.

So how did they learn the vocabulary needed for an academic or business lecture/discussion?

[mfgillia]

Or phrased differently, if your a basic to intermediate student spending two hours a day in a disciplined conversational setting with a native language tutor will likely increase your language communication ability much greater than spending the same time doing a session with flashcards especially the lower one's level is.

[mfgillia]

So how did they learn the vocabulary needed for an academic or business lecture/discussion?

The same way they learned most of their vocabulary - by being immersed in the environment in different ways. In truth, I don't think there was really one uniformed approach. One guy would harass his assistant endlessly. Later they married so I guess it proved to be mutually beneficial in the long run..

I also believe they each have above average language learning ability for different reasons. The guy above already spoke multiple languages including Japanese. Now if you ask me do I believe I could ever reach their level without studying my butt off memorizing vocabulary - no way...

[renzhe]

In the first month, yes, probably also in the first 6 months.

In two years, the student who spends 30 minutes on flashcards and 90 minutes with a tutor will probably have 3x the language level of the student who spends 120 minutes per day on language tutor alone.

A fluent person will need a vocabulary of 3000 words as an absolute, total minimum, just to cover normal everyday conversations. Managing, remembering and reviewing 3000 words using pinyin + tone marks is pure masochism. Other things you mention (lecturing graduate students, discussing business problems) will need well a good handle of over 10,000 vocabulary items. Learning 10,000 words by listening alone, without a reasonable way of writing any of them down is insane and far more difficult than cramming a couple of thousand characters.

Learning Chinese without being able to read or write, is like learning English or German without knowing how to read or write. There is a good reason why nobody tries that.

The problem I have with these discussions is that in 99% of the cases, the refusal to learn characters is motivated by laziness, and lazy people can not learn Chinese. In my experience, learning characters is maybe about 20% of the workload needed to learn Chinese. 30 minutes of flashcards per day, for three years is what I did. Reading, vocabulary building, listening, conversation, grammar, cultural exposure, tones (!!!), pronunciation, etc. make up the rest, and are often more difficult than the characters, which are not as difficult as some people think. And they all demand equal dedication as learning characters.

[mfgillia]

In two years, the student who spends 30 minutes on flashcards and 90 minutes with a tutor will probably have 3x the language level of the student who spends 120 minutes per day on language tutor alone.

I like your ratio. Its the people that spend the majority of their time on flashcards before being conversational that in my humble opinion likely aren't making real progress.

Learning 10,000 words by listening alone, without a reasonable way of writing any of them down is insane and far more difficult than cramming a couple of thousand characters.

My brain clearly is not capable of learning Chinese primarily through listening though others appear to have done so.

Many modern professors today advocate a listening and speaking first approach (with pinyin) over the old school traditional reading, writing, speaking and listening methods taught at places like Shida in Taipei. However, I believe most of these institutes still teach some characters - just a smaller subset of their overall vocabulary.

[renzhe]

I like your ratio. Its the people that spend the majority of their time on flashcards before being conversational that in my humble opinion likely aren't making real progress.

Actually, I did exactly this, and exactly this helped me progress. I would also argue that reading several Chinese classics is better progress than discussing the weather fluently every day for a year

I spent 6 years trying to learn through casual conversation, result = 0. I only started making progress after I started learning to read properly and using flashcards for vocabulary study. I think I crammed the first 2200 characters and 5000 words in in less than one year, from then on it was slower, with lots of reviewing using flashcards. What's important -- I had the basic vocabulary down, and it's easy to build on that.

Still, flashcards were a small part of my study routine. Most of it was reading, watching TV-shows (for listening comprehension), grammar, some pronunciation drills and occasionally conversation. Reading helped my grammar and vocabulary immensely, and reading also helped my listening comprehension, since I could read Chinese subtitles and look up new words easily. In general, reading helped everything. I think that by not learning how to read, you save a bit of time in the first year or two, but are making everything else considerably more difficult.

Refusing to study characters and a very lax, disorganised approach to studying has cost me 6 years of study time. This forum is full of people who have made similar experiences. I hope that other people do not make the same mistake, especially people who do not live in immersive environment, in which case, they can cut some corners and get away with inferior methods of learning.