Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

mission impossible: 300-400 characters a month?


Mekkalomp

Recommended Posts

How fast you can learn characters or words isn't going to be a simple number. It's going to be easier to learn more frequent characters and words because you will be exposed to them much more. Learning the top 1500-2000 characters is not as challenging as the next 500 which are more likely to be obscure, easily confused with more frequent characters, or bound forms which don't have much memorable meaning by themselves. Words are also more difficult to learn as they become more rare. Strael's 2808 new cards means nearly through the HSK 1-5 lists and not yet started on level 6, which has a very different frequency profile from all the others. I hope Strael keeps us updated on his progress.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 a day, so, 100 a week, so, you learned 3000 in 30 weeks? Or did you keep going for a whole year and get to 5000

I got up to 2500 on the "3000 most common characters" list then decided it would be better to focus on other things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I just checked at all the words in the new hk list and it seems I know 98% of the words from level 1 too 4 and about 80% of level 5. Last level about 30% or more.

Yeah, a lot of the words on the level 6 HSK are not very common or useful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I usually consider a "word" to be made up of one or more characters.

I never looked at the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi material before because I don't have any intention to ever take it, but, out of curiousity for this thread I did look up its entry at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Shuiping_Kaoshi

They've a link to a study aid at NCIKU.

http://blog.nciku.com/blog/en/2011/03/09/hsk-character-list-and-stroke-order-animations/

I clicked on a few entries and couldn't believe that this is all there is to the test material.

For instance, under the character "xue" (study, learn) they've only got "xue xiao" (school), "tong xue" (classmate), and "xue xi" (study, learn) for "words" that have the character "xue" within them.

34oetef.jpg

What about "xiao xue" (elementary or primary school), "zhong xue" (middle or high school), "da xue" (college or university), "xue yuan" (academy), "guo xue" (studies of Chinese culture), etc.?

All of those characters are within level 1 of HSK.

I even checked to see if the missing word entries might not be under the accompanying character, the one paired with it to form the "word".

mpix1.jpg

No "academy" either.

Is this a shortcoming of HSK or of NCIKU?

For instance, under "ba" (eight), they don't include any "words" that contain the character "ba" other than itself.

2l8dwev.jpg

It says "No other HSK words containing "八".

So no "ba yue" (the eighth lunar month or August)?

Under "ri" (sun; Japan), no "ri ben" (Japan).

2lstjtd.jpg

Ditto for "ben" (root; origin). No "ri ben" (Japan) either.

jjbq7n.jpg

So is this a shortcoming of HSK that they only test a small subset of words or did NCIKU just not include everything from HSK?

As a side note is there a program that takes a bunch of characters and outputs all possible word combinations that are formed from the list of characters?

Kobo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah, I think it gets (relatively) downhill at some point.

Not if "downhill" means that you will progress without putting in any effort (that's the picture I get whet you say downhill anyway). Yes, it becomes easier, but whatever level we reach, it will decline (the stone will roll back) if we stop pushing. If we integrate Chinese into our lives in various ways, we can probably keep on advancing without "studying", but we're still applying force to that stone. If we don't, it will roll back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a side note is there a program that takes a bunch of characters and outputs all possible word combinations that are formed from the list of characters?

This may be what you are after. If it is, and you think of a good way to use it within an SRS program please let me know.

Words.doc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So is this a shortcoming of HSK that they only test a small subset of words or did NCIKU just not include everything from HSK?

You cant just take a look at one part oft hsk list. You should consider list 1 too 6 as 1 list and then you will see that those words you mentioned are in the list.

And the example you mentioned is pretty straight forwarded and should be known or easy to comprehend when studying Chinese.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If we don't, it will roll back.

I don't know. If you refrain from using your mother tongue for say 10 years, how much of it will you forget?

Once Chinese gets ingrained to the same degree, I think you're set.

Edited to add: Whatever you lose should come back with a lot less effort than it took the first time round.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know. If you refrain from using your mother tongue for say 10 years, how much of it will you forget?

This might be true in certain areas, but remember that native speakers forget how to write characters quite often, especially if they don't use much handwritten Chinese in their daily lives. In general, I think everyone forgets, including native speakers. Of course they don't lose everyday language, but only those bits they haven't fully internalised completely. I still think it's always uphill, albeit not very steep.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I let my Mandarin lie dormant for about 20 years, after studying for three and living in Taiwan for four years. Much of the 20 years I was in Hong Kong, so exposed to characters and occasionally reading a bit, and in fact making two trips back to Taiwan where I used it fairly intensively, but I also spent 7 years in the UK not using it at all. Then I needed to relearn it, and apart from switching to simplified characters and pinyin, it's been a LOT easier. I've lost a lot, sure, but occasionally I'll come across a character and think, 'oh, that's that word I would use a lot but never learned how to write'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know. If you refrain from using your mother tongue for say 10 years, how much of it will you forget?

It's hard to quantify how much, but from my own experience language loss, also from your native language, sets in much faster then you'ld expect. I noticed myself that after only 8 months of (virtually) not using my native language but still hearing it on a fairly regular basis I had a noticeable loss. That is, I noticed that I made literal translations of english expressions to my mothertongue and it took more effort to find the right words. For more then a year afterwards I noticed that I unwillingly tossed in English expression while speaking in my mothertongue. Maybe a lot of what I noticed was not really loss, but mixing of languages but still, it's a degradation of the native language.

Once Chinese gets ingrained to the same degree, I think you're set.

Define set. If you really learned the language a lot of it will retain unconsciously sure. Nevertheless, your level will degrade. Not only when you don't use it for a long while, also if you use it only very limited. If you get 'fluent' using it intensively in China and then you go home and use Chinese only for a couple of hours a week in a limited setting it's very likely your Chinese will degrade (significantly). I've seen it with my mothertongue, and even more with English that at some point felt more comfortable then my mothertongue. It's pretty much use it or loose it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is no doubt that you will lose your mastery in Chinese or any other language if you don't use it often.

Scientific researches are stating these facts. And I dont know if you guys are familiar with polyglots but these people have mastered several languages on native level and have to use there language every week to maintain their skill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I mean by set is that whatever you lose can be relearned orders of magnitude more easily than learning it for the first time. That may or may not apply to the mother tongue because I dont know if anyone finds learning that difficult. It should take a lot less time though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Can I ask, what people recommend in terms of? (I remember seeing a thread debating this point if anyone can link me too?)

-You learn by writing the characters over and over again on paper with a pen/pencil

-Or you learn the characters via some sort of flashcard system]

Opinions pleasE?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...