opinions on reading a text before listening to it

[imron]

I've created a David and Helen in China deck, A China Scene deck, a Defrancis Beginning Chinese reader, and am currently working on Defrancis Intermediate chinese reader.

 

Decks you create from context as you encounter words are good.  I'm less enthused about pre-made decks.

 

but I feel that my vocabulary needs to improve a little more

Perhaps graded readers are going to be better in that regard.  Vocabulary is important, but also not as important as actually trying to read things - otherwise you won't know which vocabulary you need to be prioritising.

 

and within 3 pages I had encountered exactly 41 words I didn't know. I didn't have any issues with grammar, but obviously that just isnt very efficient.

It's not very efficient.  You can think of books like this though as long word lists, just written left-to-right, top to bottom, and without clear separation of words.

 

Choosing appropriate material is key though (see above about graded readers).

[imron]

I hope I'll make some real progress in the next year

If you are doing these things every day, you will make progress.  However you won't be able to see the progress very well from day to day.  Just imagine looking back in 18 months time though.  Are you going to be once again wishing you had just done a little bit each day, or are you going to be amazed at your progress.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Sounds great, and I appreciate all of the advice you've provided. I'm in the process of incorporating it into my new system. I've been on this website for several years now and learned quite a bit. I feel like I've finally put all the resources together and developed a solid plan of attack.

 

My plan is to be ready for articles and the newscasts with transcripts that you provided by the time I've mastered those texts. Technically, I've already worked through all of those except Defrancis intermdiate, but I'm thinking I could greatly benefit from a second round. A vocabulary of between 6-8000 words should be enough to to tackle the articles and news. What do you think?

[imron]

I think it's a good starting point for tackling the news, but there's no harm in dipping your toe in every now and then before you reach that level just to get a feel for the difficulty of things.  Also, regardless of when you start out (whether at 6,000 words, or 12,000 words), you'll still very much feel like you are tackling things, but the more you do it, the faster you will learn news-specific vocab and sentence patterns, which will then make things significantly simpler.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Hopefully by next december I will have achieved that level of ability. Again, thanks for all of the advice. I appreciate the lack of gimmicky crap. Many of my fellow students are under the impression that if they listen to enough music and watch enough movies that they CAN'T understand, they will eventually be fluent. Chinese is truly blood, sweat and tears, with a little joy mixed in. Getting away from this realization really hampers people's progress. I have a friend who thinks he will become fluent in chinese, korean, and japanese by simply going to class and cruising through. I can only shake my head at the hubris.

[hedwards]

@ablindwatchmaker, ideally what your friends ought to be doing is taking the subtitles and taking their vocab from there. It won't help much with the grammatical aspect, but it should make things at least somewhat comprehensible.

 

I don't get much use out of it, but I do kind of like http://www.learn-chinese-from-movies.com/ , having worksheets, vocab lists and such for the movie ahead of time makes a huge difference. I just wish their flashcards were better, they use images, which is great for portability, but pretty much prevents them from being imported into Pleco.

[ablindwatchmaker]

I tried using the movie watching method that you discussed, but I've found that at this stage in my development it's more efficient to use textbook material that is spkoen at native speed. I've found the Defrancis audio to be wonderful toward that end.

 

Most of my friends that watch movies, to my knowledge, don't actively watch and learn the unknown vocabulary--they just watch it the way they would watch any movie in their native language.

 

I do like the idea of having a transcript and vocabulary list to accompany the movie, but they are few and far between. The LCFM website is awesome, but way way way too expensive. $47.00 per movie is insane. I'll just have to wait until my vocab base is sufficient to efficently watch movies.

[hedwards]

I got lucky, when I bought my packages they were a lot less expensive. I'm guessing the reason for the price has to do with the fact that it costs money to create word for word subtitles and I'm not sure there's a very large market for such a product. But, when I got it, it was before he changed the pricing model, I think it was like $99 for 18 movies or something like that when I included the bonus titles.

 

One of the unfortunate realities is that subtitles aren't typically word for word, which means that they'll help you with the gist of what's being said, but not necessarily the entirety of how it's being said.

 

If one is enterprising, one could just use regular movies and then look up the vocab in Pleco or a dictionary. I suppose it would probably also be possible to take the sub files and run them through CTA or similar. Definitely more budget friendly.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Wow, you really did get lucky. 100 bucks for 18 of them is a solid deal.

 

I'm sure it's extremely time consuming. It takes me long enough just to make sentence pattern flashcards and vocab lists from my textbooks. I think I was actually the first person a little over a year ago to make a .txt document of all the defrancis beginning chinese reader and that probably took me over 30 hours to complete. I'm working on Defrancis intermediate, but thats gonna take some serious time....

 

I'm actually going to use the method that Imron suggested. That is a veritable treasure trove of learning material.

 

Btw, what Chinese level are you sitting at? I'm probably about a 5 on the HSK scale, all around.

[hedwards]

He was having a sale with bonus movies at the time, I think it was 18 or so, but at any rate back then the basic bundle was larger.

 

As far as my level goes, I have no idea. Apart from 3 weeks of classes I haven't had any formal classes and most of my time I've spent on various self study course. I tend to suffer a bit from confidence because of that, but when I was in China, I was doing all my business outside of school in Chinese and I work at it a bit just about every day.

 

I'm working on getting a job back in China so that I can continue my progress, but at some point I really ought to take an HSK exam to see where I am.

[imron]

It takes me long enough just to make sentence pattern flashcards and vocab lists from my textbooks

Not wanting to keep plugging my own products, but my Chinese Text Analyser software will do automatic sentence extraction (with or without cloze deletion) allowing you to quickly and easily generate sentences and word lists based on unknown words in any piece if Chinese text.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Dude, don't sweat that at all. If I had discovered the method that I am currently using to study Chinese in the beginning, with no classes after the first semester, I'd be able to read newspapers and watch the news by now. I found that the first four semesters were pretty useful and after that self-study would have been preferable. In fact, I know people whose Chinese has decreased from going to classes in the third year after coming back from China.

 

In an ideal world, I would have gone to China as an absolute beginner and taken intensive Chinese for one year,  Spring, summer and Fall (I did CET beijing, summer), and done exactly as I was told. After that, I would have stopped formal instruction, unless it's free or a part of your degree plan, and spent the majority of my time using my recently developed plan, in China, of course. I  would also hire a private tutor, one hour a day, 5 days a week to practice what I was learning on my own, and on the weekends I would go to a bar, get drunk, and speak Chinese with as many people as possible. This last part my sound silly, but it is more useful than you think....

 

As an example, when I was in Beijing intensive, I was moderately studious the first three weeks, got A's on most exams and assignments, and didnt get too crazy. After that I discovered the nightlife and it was all downhill from there. I ended up failing because i was drinking almost every day and going out to "meet" people. My writing ability didnt progress as much as others, but my listening and speaking had improved more than most of the people in my class, despite the heavy drinking and partying. I defnitely dont think this was the ideal way of going about things, far from it, but I'm saying this to illustrate the point that going out and listening and speaking to Chinese people, especially after one has spent sufficient time studying, is critical. Obviously, I failed to strike the balance, but people who spend all of their time studying will still be screwing around in ten years instead of actually speaking Chinese. Good grades only loosely corresponded to actual Chinese ability.

[ablindwatchmaker]

Imron, if you don't mind me asking, what's your life story, lol? Sounds like you need to put down the Chinese and start developing software full-time. If this thing is as useful as I think, you are a god damn genius.

[imron]

Hah, well I'm not sure I particularly wish to share my entire life story on a public forum, but I was a software developer before I got interested in Chinese, and after a multi-year diversion, I'm a software developer again (and have been for several years) and one of the things I do is make the software tools that I'd like to use.

[ablindwatchmaker]

I know, I was only kidding lol, but I was interested in how you got started.

 

 I honestly wish I had started college sooner and chosen a major like CS and then learned Chinese on my own in China. As a result of market conditions, the only hope I have of earning a solid income is to save up enough money by teaching English in China to start my own business, preferably a business in China. It's funny that I have more opportunitiy there than here, even with my work experience and a degree from a top university. I know an awful lot about political systems, political philosophy, history, and IR, but those kinds of things won't get you employed.

[Johnny20270]

haha sounds like I am similar to Imron.  I was a C++ / Java developer for years, and now just into learning Chinese

 

@ablindwatchmaker: we all can think: could have, would have, should have. That's life. Sometimes I think its better to do things at a whim, rather than follow a pre-made plan.. I was very academically focused in my 20's and 30's. degrees, masters, phd, professional exams etc but now I am just interested in what I want to do rather than how much brownie points I get in the eyes of others (such as career)

[ablindwatchmaker]

Of course, but at some point you have to earn income. Clearly, you took care of that before you picked up Chinese. Since I don't have any technical skills and am too old to be taken seriously by an employer if I tried to acquire them, I'm better off leveraging the experience I do have in business, and whatever Chinese level I attain, and starting a small business. Unfortunately, my chinese is quite far from that level. I'll need to be in China for a few years before I can pull that off. The sooner I get there, the better!

[imron]

and am too old to be taken seriously by an employer if I tried to acquire them

That's a fairly defeatist and also inaccurate assumption.

[ablindwatchmaker]

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying that the opportunity cost in terms of time, resources, income, and other alternatives makes it a pretty daunting task. Harder than learning Chinese, in fact lol.

[imron]

Significantly easier actually, especially for web and or mobile development which have quite low barriers to entry and are relatively well compensated if you know what you are doing.