Hitting a wall

[imron]

Imron i have been looking at online flashcards but the ones i seem to find are all Traditional characters.

I would recommend against using pre-made flashcard lists.  Make you own ones based on words that you encounter.  Use flascharding software such as Anki or Pleco to help schedule and review them.

 

I agree with Renzhe about a textbook series.

[AdamD]

Yes! It's doubly important that you make your own flashcards because they're more likely to be words you see/hear in context. Don't go grabbing a flat list of country names or music genres, for example, and run yourself ragged trying to remember every word. Stick with:

 

- words you might actually use in conversation, or just feel you really need to know right now (e.g. 'daughter', 'son', 'sister', 'brother')

- the word list for the current chapter of whatever book you're learning from

 

You'll achieve much more if you focus on what's immediately relevant to you.

[anonymoose]

Renzhe has given some good advice above. I also think you would benefit from a grammar book, although most grammar can be found on the internet, albeit disjointedly, so I'm not sure how much of this you have already learned. An excellent book to start with is Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip and Rimmington. This book is good because it essentially assumes you don't already know anything, so vocabulary builds up as you work through the book. There are also plenty of exercises with answers provided, which is essential for self-study. With the amount of time you are putting in, you could realistically complete the book in a month, and your Chinese will improve immeasurably.

[Lu]

I couldn't agree more with Renzhe's recommendations. It's amazing that you have kept going with so few scattered resources; if you try a structured approach, you'll make amazing progress.

[Melanie1989]

Yeah, i don't know how i've carried on either. Aside from reading characters, my Chinese is pretty good i think. i can certainly hold a conversation, provided the speaker isn't going so fast like a native naturally would. I asked my partner to have a look yesterday after i posted here because i got so frustrated at not being able to find anything. Somehow he has managed to download pretty much the complete collection of learning Chinese. It does mostly seem to focus on Traditional, as opposed to obviously simplified, but i think that will help a lot. I will also check out the Yip and Rimmington book, i really want to go full throttle with this. I think so far the only thing that has got me to the point i am at is purely just passion for Chinese.

 

I am also making my own flashcards now, i have roughly 100 right now, but i want to make as many as possible. I'm glad you think this is a good idea, i didn't know if i was being daft. Structure is certainly lacking, tonight i am going to go through what was downloaded and everything you have all said and put together some sort of plan.

 

For the record, if anyone is reading this thread cos they're in my situation, don't make my biggest mistake: LEARN THE HANZI FROM THE START, delaying it and depending on pinyin alone will do you no favours!!

 

Thanks again everyone, i love how helpful everybody is!

[roddy]

Yip and Rimmington write grammar books. Very good grammar books, but still grammar books. You need a comprehensive course, covering all the skills, grammar, and vocab. Look at, eg, New Practical Chinese Reader, ideally with workbook and CDs. 

[Melanie1989]

Yeah, that's what we downloaded. It covers grammar already, but it does tell you how to read and write characters, what others they are used with, vocabulary etc etc, so hopefully it should be fine on it's own. However i am still interested in books that other users recommend, if it helped them.

[Melanie1989]

**Meaning the complete course we got covers everything, not the Yip books

[renzhe]

I will agree with Roddy and still recommend a textbook to use together with Yip and Rimmington's (excellent) grammar book.

New Practical Chinese Reader can be bought on amazon.co.uk for £11 used or £12 new. There is no absolutely no reason not to get it.

Videos for most lessons are available on youtube, so no need to get the DVD.

[roddy]

Melanie, let us know how you're getting on....

[Melanie1989]

Hi, sorry i have been very busy!

 

After everybody's suggestions, i have been getting on well with a few things. I have made many flashcards that i have put into groups. Verbs, adjectives etc, then along with characters that can be joined together to form new words. I still am having a little difficulty memorizing some characters, but mostly they are helping. i think i am just a little slow! 

 

I am on chapter three (lesson 3) of Remembering the Hanzi, also Chinese HSK Grammar in 21 days (i did occasionally stumble on grammar. I know it's easy for the most part, but when forming my own sentences i have slipped up), a few books (all e-books, by the way) on Mandarin slang, along with many, many others. It was all part of a Complete Chinese Package, there are literally about 100 books for different stages and categories. Very helpful, if you find it!!!

 

As far as New Practical Chinese Reader is concerned, i am pretty sure it's along with the others in the package, but i haven't looked throughout because it is soooo large. If it's not already there, i will buy it! At the minute though, i am taking a test on the Reader through FluentU. I'm doing pretty good!

 

So thanks everyone, you have helped and i have listened! If you have any more questions/recommendations, anything, please let me know and i'll be back in touch soon. Again, thanks so much for the help!

[roddy]

Glad to hear it's going well - keep posting, we're interested, and this is a great place to ask if you hit any problems.

[trinifinn]

Find someone to practice with, there are Chinese people everywhere these days. Face-to-face interaction makes the language real. Be imaginative (a long time ago in Tokyo I rang the doorbell of the Malaysian Industrial Development office next door, and asked if they knew any bahasa language teachers. I ended up taking lessons from the ambassador's wife at their residence)

Sign up for HSK, a deadline and target is strangely motivating (again slightly off-topic in my second job as a reporter I was forced to read/decipher the Nikkei in Japanese on the way to work, or I couldn't do my market interviews - never had such a motivator since then)

[Melanie1989]

Thought i'd give a brief update as everyone was so helpful here.

 

Everything's improved with the help of these forums and also me going out and buying a tablet. If it's ok, i'd like to give a quick "day in the life of an idiot learning Mandarin" and then recommend some books and apps that helped me out, for anyone who is having the same struggles and not sure of a structure to help them. This is just what worked for me and what i recommend, it might not work for you but i hope it does.

 

In the morning, i review my Memrise tests for about an hour (reading a chinese menu, HSK1 and 2 practice, beginners phrases and introduction course) and this does help a lot, though after discussing Memrise on the forums, i highly recommend checking anything you're not sure of on a good dictionary like Pleco -this i can't recommend enough. It doesn't happen often (mistakes) but it is worth checking as sometimes they are a little general with their translations. But memrise i still say is a huge help and lots of fun.

 

For showering (this is going somewhere, i promise), i swapped listening to DWV and Cat Power and instead blast Chinese radio and also Chinese MTV (haha!). It might not help so much with specific listening skills but immersion is always good. If you want to check this out, the app is available on Android (not sure about others) and it's called simply China TV. It obviously works by streaming like Youtube but the quality and the amount of channels you are given is fantastic. Lots of movie channels, news, music etc. I think it's worth finding something you can listen to anytime and anywhere as if you are doing nothing, even for two minutes, you could be doing Chinese! If you find it hard to drift off at night, like me, pop your earphones in and listen to some Chinese, it doesn't matter what it is. Even if you can't understand much, immersion as i said, and also you will become more familiar with the sounds and pace of Chinese and likely pick up words or phrases which you can then look up in the dictionary.

 

Some point during the afternoon, i practice flashcards. I have gone, in the last month or so, from knowing around 150 words to now 1069. Still illiterate and not at all amazing, but so much better than what i was doing. On Pleco it gives you flashcards for all HSK levels 1-6 and lets you make your own. This is so helpful but also i would recommend writing each word out (several character words, not just singular) a few times until you can really get the feel of them. Mnemonics somehow don't work for my fragile little brain, so i find this really does help massively. 

 

I make time for an hour each day to practice reading some Chinese text and look up any words i don't know and make a note of them. Usually i watch a new Chinese film every night and make sure it only has Chinese subtitles as i find having English up too distracting and also usually it's not a very literal transl;ation so it can be confusing. Audiobooks in Chinese are an absolute Godsend, if you can find them (they are very hard to find, at least for me) but i recommend good old fashioned libraries for the most part. Otherwise, try googling it and you might find something i didn't.

 

The most important thing is definitely to just immerse yourself, as i keep saying. Any spare second, at least listen to the radio, it helps so much.

 

I think that's it for now but i'll edit if i remember something i forgot. 

 

Books i'd recommend:

 

 

*Fun with Chinese characters. This i think is a three part series but i am only just coming to the end of book 1 now, but it seems to be very very VERY good. It's not as childish as it might sound to some, it is just a very clear description on singular characters and how and when they can be paired up to make new words.

 

*An Intensive Reading Course for Advanced Chinese. Even if you wouldn't consider yourself advanced (i wouldn't), this is still very helpful.

 

*Learning Chinese Characters from Ms Zhang. Especially if you're a beginner.

 

Also, last thing, if you're watching English-speaking  tv, try to translate random things into Chinese. This helps so much! If you have a patient friend, Chinese or not, get them to ask you questions and answer them in Chinese, or just ask yourself questions and answer them yourself. Write down random phrases, even something as daft as 我喜欢猫。他喜欢狗。我有两只老虎。你说什么？？？Stupid little silly things can have a big a big effect on people -look at Beiber.

 

Hope this helps someone. Good luck and thanks everyone for their support on the forums.

[Melanie1989]

Silly little thing, an earlier post of mine said i had copied down nearly a thousand characters in one day -this was a typo! I meant nearly 100 but the list was i think 2000 so i got confused.... just in case you thought i was some crazy magician.

 

Also, funny thing happened last night on China TV: an old Chinese guy was on one of the entertainment channels wearing a fluorescent pink suit and performing Gangnam Style in Mandarin! Not my kind of music, but bloody hilarious!

[roddy]

Impressive stuff, and thanks for the follow-up.

 

What Chinese texts are you reading? Are you finding stuff writing specifically for learners, or using native material?

[Melanie1989]

Posting in sync!

 

Both, the stuff i listed above is for learners but i'll quickly check my tablet and ......

 

Native stuff: Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes, a whole big collection. Just cos it's easy to learn, i'm not into it.

                   Entire Harry Potter collection for Mainland Chinese (again, see above)

                   Ugh, bloody Twilight..... i'm a Buffy fan so there's no way in bugger i'm going to read it, but it's there in Chinese, again for natives.

                   Seikai no Senki 1 to 4. I have no idea what this is (it came in a bundle with Twilight and the rest), obviously Japanese but it has been translated for                          Chinese.

                   Also the Wizard of Oz for Natives speakers, which is frigging cool!

 

 

 

Oh, holy grail here too, check out 'Chinese characters: Learn and Remember 2178 Characters and Their Meanings' -this is basically Remembering the Hanzi but with pronunciation! Woop!