Another blogger setting out to learn Chinese in 3 months

[imron]

12 minutes ago, 889 said:

Because that's what they're going to end up sounding like without a native tutor.

According to his other posts, he does at least weekly sessions with a native tutor, and also attends regular meetups with Chinese speakers.

 

I guess I'm a little bemused at the negative responses here.  Sure his speech isn't perfect, and he has a foreign accent, but he's understandable and he's having an unscripted conversation over a sustained length of time, in front of an audience asking him questions.  That's not a bad result for 3-years part-time study.

[realmayo]

1 hour ago, imron said:

I think that his current level is in line with what I'd expect of someone who had done mostly part-time self study out of country

 

But is that a good enough result for someone who thinks he's found secret knowledge about how to learn better than other people, which he's charging money for?

 

Plus: we're taking him at his word that he hasn't spent much time studying... but his entire career and I guess income is based upon people believing that he knows how to study better than other people. Isn't he hugely motivated towards playing down his time spent studying and playing up the results? Even if he's an honest guy who really believes he has uncovered super learning methods, isn't a touch of informed scepticism healthy here?

 

Why don't these people get to fluency first, and then charge money for guidance on how to do the same??

[889]

Three years of weekly lessons with a native speaker, and he sounds like that? His voice just moves in strange ways. Like he's got a native speaker teaching him alright, but a native speaker from Kazakhstan.

 

And maybe that explains what's going on. Is he learning other languages at the same time he's learning Chinese? That's a sure way to find yourself speaking with a polyglotted mess of an accent.

[imron]

1 hour ago, 889 said:

Is he learning other languages at the same time he's learning Chinese?

A bunch of them.

 

1 hour ago, 889 said:

That's a sure way to find yourself speaking with a polyglotted mess of an accent.

That might be part of it, but I think the problem is more just not paying attention during free-form speech and his tones starting to wander.

 

2 hours ago, realmayo said:

Why don't these people get to fluency first, and then charge money for guidance on how to do the same??

I think if he was selling a course on becoming fluent in a language in a set period of time this criticism would be valid, but that's never what Scott has been about.

 

And I know you're probably thinking "but he's selling a course on how to learn more effectively at everything, so surely it still applies" but if you go back and look at his original post on learning Chinese (link in the first post in this thread) he says:

 

Quote

Although I sell a course with dozens of tactics, 95% of them don’t work for whatever particular learning goal I’m working towards. That doesn’t mean they’re useless—just that different tactics work for different tasks and figuring out which work for which is a process of experimentation. Plans which start as dozens of tactics get reduced to the few essentials.

 

 

Anyway, I don't want to get in to the details of his methods - I haven't read his book and nor do I intend to, I just think he's done reasonably ok for 3 years part-time study, and definitely better than some others *cough* benny lewis *cough*

[艾墨本]

19 hours ago, imron said:

20 hours ago, realmayo said:

because he's not charging for the advice he gives

Hah, maybe I should write a book!

I'd read it. Doesn't need to be a full-length book, but rather a condensed form of all the language advice and tools you recommend. Hell, make the book free and recommend buying your tools, because CTA and Hanzi grids are just too useful.

[陳德聰]

19 hours ago, imron said:

According to his other posts, he does at least weekly sessions with a native tutor, and also attends regular meetups with Chinese speakers.

 

I've chatted with him several times at the Mandarin meetup in our area, and I wasn't aware that he is still meeting with tutors. From what I recall, Chinese is kind of just one of his ongoing side projects now.

 

Also his Chinese is actually really good, pronunciation notwithstanding, so I don't really get the accent elitism going on here either. He's also not a language-learning expert, just a blogger, and I don't think he ever painted himself as anything different.

 

He's also super humble, just as an aside.

 

edit: Okay "really good" is not specific enough, but what I mean is that he converses freely, fluidly, and without noticeable misunderstandings for hours at a time with native speakers and me on a regular basis.

[imron]

1 hour ago, 艾墨本 said:

I'd read it. Doesn't need to be a full-length book, but rather a condensed form of all the language advice and tools you recommend.

I'm actually already in the process of writing a bunch of articles to put up on a website somewhere at some point.  Currently I have about 20 in various stages of completeness.

 

38 minutes ago, 陳德聰 said:

but what I mean is that he converses freely, fluidly, and without noticeable misunderstandings for hours at a time with native speakers and me on a regular basis.

Glad to hear your real world experience backs up what I thought was the case based on that video (and one or two other recent ones floating around) accent and pronunciation aside.

[realmayo]

2 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

He's also not a language-learning expert, just a blogger

 

Okay I think this is partly a generational thing, for me, blogs were where people wrote about stuff they were interested in. Later they maybe they picked up some cash via adverts or amazon links, or perhaps linked to a business they became involved in.

 

But these new blogs all seem to be fronts to persuade people to cough up cash in order to receive hidden information, just another part of the massive self-help or life-coach industry. And the only way these people have to 'prove' that their secret information is better quality than the secret information being sold by their rivals, is to do some challenge, like learning Chinese, and document its progress.

 

If a Miss Rosetta Stone had a series of blogs about using new software to study Chinese, and later posted a video of herself speaking Chinese after using this software, are you sure you wouldn't be just a bit critical if her pronunciation sounded rather off?

 

Perhaps what really riles me is the 'advertising' language these kind of sites use: 99.9% of what textbooks teach you is wrong (so spend money on me, not on textbooks); 10 tips teachers won't tell you (so spend money on me, not on tutors). Plus all the rigmarole about signing up to this or that, being put waiting lists, prices hidden until the last minute and so on.

 

And this might be a geographic thing. I don't know about Canada but in the US at least, the adverts I've seen there are very full-on so maybe if you've been exposed to that all the time, you'd think these bloggers' self-puffery is a perfectly normal way of selling their wares. So probably I'm too sensitive to that, as well as being out-of-date on what bloggers do these days....

 

 

I'm not saying people might not benefit from the information being sold, just pointing out that people aren't just critiquing his accent, but a product that is up for sale. Which may in fact be rather unfair on the guy if the focus of his method was just on the first few months of learning.

[imron]

11 minutes ago, realmayo said:

Perhaps what really riles me is the 'advertising' language these kind of sites use: 99.9% of what textbooks teach you is wrong (so spend money on me, not on textbooks); 10 tips teachers won't tell you (so spend money on me, not on tutors). Plus all the rigmarole about signing up to this or that, being put waiting lists, prices hidden until the last minute and so on.

Yeah, I hate all of that stuff too.  Other bugbears include popups that hide the content and exhort you to sign up for things, expiring one-off 'deals',  $9.99 pricing instead of $10 and so on.

 

I guess part of what I wanted to point out, was that unlike certain other bloggers, at least this guy kept at it for several years (this is the hardest part about learning Chinese), and now he's doing ok with it.

[889]

So he speaks Chinese well, except for poor pronunciation? That's like a pilot who flies well, except for landings. Or a surgeon who scalpels well, but can't tie a knot.

 

Speaking so you can be readily understood is integral to learning Chinese. We all know that. There's hardly anything "elitist" about  it.

 

And if studying like Scott Young means ending up speaking Chinese like Scott Young, then I think we're offering a valuable health warning here: Stay Clear!

[陳德聰]

Very bizarre comparisons. I think it's more like a pilot who completes all necessary tasks in a safe manner but happens to have body odour. Or a surgeon who saves people's lives but is an asshole. We already know from the great case study that is life, that foreign-accented English is not the same thing as non-proficient English. I have very little trouble adjusting to understand Scott's accent, so let's give credit where credit is due instead of being ridiculous. What he achieved in a non-classroom environment in 3 years is already better than half the people who graduated a four-year degree program in Chinese language and culture at our local "world-class university", so he certainly did SOMETHING right.

 

Edit: Full disclosure I graduated from that program and I have impeccably "Standard" Chinese but I was one of very very very very very few.

[imron]

To be honest, I wouldn't rate his pronunciation as poor.  It's not 'excellent', but it's far above poor.

 

Yes, there are a couple of sounds he tends to mispronounce, and his tones tend to wander a bit, but it's clear he has a grasp of most sounds and also the tones, and I'm sure if you gave him a sentence to read and he was focusing on saying it correctly he'd do a much better job.

 

In free flowing conversation, especially of the kind where you are speaking at length and are more focused on what you are saying rather than how you are saying it, it's easy for tones to go a little off.  I've noticed the same thing sometimes in my own speech - especially if over a period of time I've been doing a lot of reading and not much speaking.

 

That's actually a very easy problem to fix though, some shadowing and some recording, and then just being mindful while you are speaking.  Based on what I've seen and heard, I don't think it would take him long to address those problems.  I definitely don't think it's indicative of any systemic problem.

[Lu]

I certainly didn't speak Chinese as well as that guy after three years. Or after four. I agree that it's pretty good. I'm not inclined to spend any money on miracle methods though, and I'm pretty sure you don't need them to achieve this guy's level. Get a textbook, get a tutor, dive in while also browsing through these forums and the rest of the net.

[werewitt]

Three years with a strong foreign accent vs advertised three months to fluency - just minor details, what's important is that proceeds from sales of the books continue to come in, innit?  

[imron]

Not sure where Scott ever advertised or claimed fluency in 3 months.  Perhaps you have him confused with someone else?

[艾墨本]

1 minute ago, imron said:

Not sure were Scott ever advertised or claimed fluency in 3 months.  Perhaps you have him confused with someone else?

Perhaps he just misread the title of the thread?

 

Setting out to learn Chinese in three months. 

 

But this benefit of the doubt assumes he didn't read other sections of the thread.

[imron]

To be fair, that was someone else who wrote that title.

 

If you read any of the stuff Scott has written on the matter it's clear he wasn't claiming any such thing.  Here's a quote straight from the horses mouth:

 

On 2014/2/18 at 0:30 AM, ScottHYoung said:

I definitely won't be fluent by most reasonable definitions. But I'd like to be at the point where travelling and making friends in Chinese is possible.

 

[werewitt]

And yet. I'm sure that "I'm going to learn to speak with a massive accent after 3 years" wouldn't sell the below as well.

 

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/books-courses/

 

PS I'm surprised how he was able to "hold multi hour conversations" when registering to do only HSK4 at the time. It does not compute. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2014/04/15/chinese-vs-spanish/

[Lu]

Werewitt, have you read the rest of the thread? No extraordinary claims were made. Personally, I think that if Scott's methods allows him to speak like that after three years of studying, it's a sound method. And if people are willing to spend money on a book explaining how he achieved that, he has every right to sell such books.

[werewitt]

1 minute ago, Lu said:

have you read the rest of the thread?

14 pages of relatively random thoughts? Nope, this is Internet