Improving sentence structure

[TheWayfarer]

The FSI course has been recommended, and I heartily second this. It's a good course for improving production if you already have a foundation in the language. Focus on the audio, in particular the drill tapes (modules 1-6) and the review tapes (all modules). Drill and revise, and then drill and revise some more. Also, it's free, so that's good.

 

Although the  FSI course will improve your skill, it may not further your knowledge. For that, I'd recommend Essential Mandarin Chinese Grammar by Vivian Ling and Peng Wang, published by Tuttle. The book is in two parts: the first part is a grammar much like any other, detailing how the language works; the second part, though, is a collection Chinese sentence constructions (254 expressions grouped into 20 chapters). The Tuttle website has free downloadable recordings for the entire book (example sentences and exercises). Use the first part of the book to check you understand -- and can use -- various structures, and use the second part to expand your expressive capabilities. Practise the example sentences (book only, audio only, and both together) until you can repeat the sentences effortlessly. Revise often, and use the book's sentences as models to create your own sentences.

[TheBigZaboon]

Essential Chinese Mandarin Grammar, by the great Vivian Ling,  proved harder to get than I anticipated, even in Japan, the home of Tuttle Publishing. Not only is it unavailable from Amazon.jp, but even Tuttle in Tokyo doesn't seem to have any. I had to pay almost as much for the shipping as I paid for the book to get a copy from Amazon.us.

 

But I'm easy, all you have to do to convince me to buy something is to stress the completeness or full extent of the audio.

 

There seems to only be less than a half dozen still available in the US through Amazon.us, so forewarned is fore armed (or is it "four armed"....)???...

 

TBZ 

[Zeppa]

This is a wonderful thread!

[suMMit]

I thought I'd update my progress as Inspired by @matteos thread. I've been working hard on a two-pronged approach to "improve sentence structure".

 

1. As recommended by @TheBigZaboon I've been doing the Kubler Intermediate Speaking book and audio drills Practice book. This has been absolutely fantastic. So much repetition on patterns that you could not keep them from coming out in your own speech if you wanted to! This has been going much slower than I had planned, partially because it's time consuming (i.e. the sub-unit I'm on now is 24 min of substitution drills and 6 min of Transformation drills, plus role plays) and partially because I am not rushing it. I've been doing the same drills and role plays for days until it's smooth before moving on to the next. Although it's "boring", it's feels like doing sit ups, a really great workout and I enjoy it. So I'm only through 3 units of 14 so far. It is also worth mentioning that the book is not review, there is a lot of new material to me in it. The textbook(apart from the drills) is quite interesting, loaded with language and cultural info. 

 

2. I asked an Italki teacher who Ive studied with on and off for 2 years: "What would you say are my two biggest strengths and my two biggest weaknesses?". For the weak points, she said "word choice"(ie using 电视剧 rather than 节目， or not remembering how to express "body weight" etc.). But she said the absolute biggest is VERBS - using the wrong verb 带 vs 拿, or wrong form 帮助 vs 帮忙， using verb compliments, verb and 地/得 了/着/过，etc. She actually mentioned Grammar patterns as a strength of mine, but need to focus on verbs and words. So with that in mind I found a book to focus on Vocab: Vocabulary Master Hsk 1-4 词汇宝典.

 

 

I like it because I know the meaning all of the words in the book, there's virtually no new vocab to me other than a few incidentals in example sentences. The example sentences seem to go out of their way to use words from earlier pages and almost all are hsk 1-4 with a few hsk 5 or non hsk words. Some nice 补充 information, collocations, synonyms / antonyms, no pinyin other than the keyword, example sentences all use basic hsk 1-4 grammar points. English versions of sentences often have a Chin-glish feel to them, making it more intuitive to translate, not sure if this was done by design or not.

 

My methodology, mainly following the book's instructions:

1. read the word

2. read the English sentence, and try translating it into Chinese (which @sanchuan also mentioned in this thread as potentially useful)

3. read the Chinese sentence

4. decide if my translation was the same, flawed, or different but also correct

5. "memorize" the book's sentence until I can say it smoothly out loud without reading it

6. if suitable, substitute words to slightly change the meaning

7. on to the next word

 

I have found this to be hard work and again "boring". But then, I wonder, is it boring or HARD? An hour of it and I'm definitely exhausted. But I'm finding my translations getting better and better. I'm seeing words creep into my output that I wasn't using much before. So I think it's worthwhile. I'm giving extra focus to every verb. I think it's a well put together book and 410 pages long.

 

It's hard to evaluate your own progress. But after 2.5 months (so far) of this two-pronged attack, I am definitely seeing improvement in my sentence structures / grammar patterns / word usage both in real world and with my teacher. Apart from this Im also doing a fair bit of reading and listening to other materials to keep moving forward in other areas.

[cncorrect]

I have the same problem you have now when I study English. I think the best solution maybe having your Chinese work checked by a native speaker. You will get the feedback and know what is right. Grammatically correct sentences are not always possible in real life usage. I would like to help anyone who wants to learn this way. You are welcome to send me a message.  

[Flickserve]

Nice how this thread has picked up. I started up on italki again and picked a community teacher with experience in Cantonese figuring perhaps they could work on my grammar output better. I feel I get things wrong with mandarin output but don’t really know why. I don’t know much about the teachers background except she’s from south east China , has a couple of other dialects including Cantonese and in Australia as a student.

 

Her method is to give me the English sentence and then I have to translate. She has a slide that she displays for the student but I have hardly looked at it preferring my own spontaneous output. I do this deliberately to try and compare my ‘error’ output to the native version. In a subsequent lesson, she asks me the same sentence SRS style and I have to get the output right, or better than before. After a number of lessons, I have started to get the output out of my mouth pretty smoothly. I noticed today for the first time, she pointed out where in a sentence I need to stress certain words better to make the whole sentence sound better. I have a tendency to misuse 的 saying 了 after a verb and have trouble thinking of using 不得不 structure. 
 

For self study, I have put the sentences into anki with the voice and set the front card to show English and the back card shows the chinese with voice. The voice repeats about five times and I try to repeat and shadow. In fact, it just occurred to me whether the back card really needs the written chinese. Would having just the voice suffice or be even better? 

 

So far, I do feel these lessons have been more enjoyable because I am asked a question and asked to give an answer (and I don’t use prompts). I think other teachers (with books) try to teach a grammar point then get you to do the exercises. If you understand the grammar point, then objective has been achieved without testing if you can use it in real life.

 

 I definitely agree with the point that a proper grammar sentence may not be used in real life speech. However, this can be easily worked upon once you know the what and why of the proper grammar almost instantaneously and then work out where 地道中文 expresses it differently. 

[Flickserve]

On 11/5/2023 at 1:17 PM, suMMit said:

2. I asked an Italki teacher who Ive studied with on and off for 2 years: "What would you say are my two biggest strengths and my two biggest weaknesses?". For the weak points, she said "word choice"(ie using 电视剧 rather than 节目， or not remembering how to express "body weight" etc.). But she said the absolute biggest is VERBS - using the wrong verb 带 vs 拿, or wrong form 帮助 vs 帮忙， using verb compliments, verb and 地/得 了/着/过，etc. She actually mentioned Grammar patterns as a strength of mine, but need to focus on verbs and words. So with that in mind I found a book to focus on Vocab: Vocabulary Master Hsk 1-4 词汇宝典.

 

 

I like it because I know the meaning all of the words in the book, there's virtually no new vocab to me other than a few incidentals in example sentences. The example sentences seem to go out of their way to use words from earlier pages and almost all are hsk 1-4 with a few hsk 5 or non hsk words. Some nice 补充 information, collocations, synonyms / antonyms, no pinyin other than the keyword, example sentences all use basic hsk 1-4 grammar points. English versions of sentences often have a Chin-glish feel to them, making it more intuitive to translate, not sure if this was done by design or not.

 

My methodology, mainly following the book's instructions:

1. read the word

2. read the English sentence, and try translating it into Chinese (which @sanchuan also mentioned in this thread as potentially useful)

3. read the Chinese sentence

4. decide if my translation was the same, flawed, or different but also correct

5. "memorize" the book's sentence until I can say it smoothly out loud without reading it

6. if suitable, substitute words to slightly change the meaning

7. on to the next word

 

I have found this to be hard work and again "boring". But then, I wonder, is it boring or HARD? An hour of it and I'm definitely exhausted. But I'm finding my translations getting better and better. I'm seeing words creep into my output that I wasn't using much before. So I think it's worthwhile. I'm giving extra focus to every verb. I think it's a well put together book and 410 pages long.

Does this book also have audio? In practice,  it’s not a big deal because one could always ask a native speaker to do a recording. 
 

Point 3 of your methodology - you’re reading the Chinese . Would it be more effective to have just a voice recording without the visual input assuming that your reading of Chinese is already pretty strong?

[suMMit]

On 11/5/2023 at 8:02 PM, Flickserve said:

 I definitely agree with the point that a proper grammar sentence may not be used in real life speech

It's not so much about 'proper grammar' , it's more about minimizing the influence of English on Chinese output. And it's about hearing sentences spoken and understanding, but then never using those patterns yourself. Or wanting to express things you can understand, but fumbling to get it out yourself.

 

On 11/5/2023 at 8:10 PM, Flickserve said:

Does this book also have audio?

No audio. But I feel like I get enough audio input from most of the other material I study or use, so having one without audio should not be the end of the world. 

 

On 11/5/2023 at 8:10 PM, Flickserve said:

Point 3 of your methodology - you’re reading the Chinese . Would it be more effective to have just a voice recording without the visual input assuming that your reading of Chinese is already pretty strong?

I have actually found for me, I remember sentence patterns that I read much better that ones I just listen to. I don't know why, it just seems to be that way for me. I do have a fair amount of other hsk dialogs that I have the transcript for, have read, and re-listen to regularly. 

[Flickserve]

On 8/17/2023 at 8:30 AM, suMMit said:

Last week bought a book on Taobao from Sinolingua that sounds similar to the one he mentions. Going to put it to work.

 

 

I picked up a book like this a while back. It has exactly the same English title. I took a closer look at my version and the title is different and Taiwan written.

 

Did you use your version at all?

 

Could you type out the Chinese title of your book and author.

[TheBigZaboon]

I don't know if we're all on the same page, or not (Kek, kek, kek...), but I haven't found either audio, or a Taiwanese edition of "Common Chinese Patterns 330." However, there's another book in exactly the same genre that is floating around in multiple editions, and has both audio, and simplified and Taiwanese editions. Are we getting these books mixed up?

 

The second book is entitled "Popular Chinese Expressions" in English, and "流行口语" in Chinese. I've attached a photo of two editions in simplified, and one in Taiwanese 繁体字. It's been around for years, and I've had these for quite a while, so there certainly may be newer versions out there.

 

To add incest to insult to injury, the two simplified versions I own have the same title, the same author, and are both published by Sinolingua in 2007. But one is characterized and ordered by categories like 'Face', and so on, while the other is alphabetical. Both are far more colloquially oriented, and while there are usable 'patterns' involved, 'colloquial phrases' might be a better fit. The two simplified versions might better be considered as separate books, in spite of common titles and authors. The Taiwanese version is a copy of the categories-ordered book, published in 2009 by a Taiwanese publisher.

 

In any case, if there is a version of the 330 patterns book with any type of audio, I'd love to know...

 

TBZ 

[suMMit]

On 11/12/2023 at 12:01 PM, Flickserve said:

Did you use your version at all?

 

Could you type out the Chinese title of your book and author.

I did not end up using it actually, because Intermediate Spoken Practice book by Kubler turned out exactly what I wanted to work on at the moment  - heavy repetition pattern drills with audio .

 

I'm sure I will use the 330 Grammar Patterns at some point, just not right now. And, no, it does not have any audio with it. The Chinese name on my book is： 汉语常用格式330例, Sinolinguo 2012.

 

Furthermore, I realized that in terms of the HSK material I've studied, it's vocabulary usage that's needs most work. Words like 印象，负责，出现，当时，影响，重新， to name a few. I know what they mean I have no problem understanding them in sentences when I hear/read them. However, I'm still not that great at using them in my own sentences, if that makes any sense. That's where I feel like the book I mentioned in a post above, HSK Vocabulary Master, is serving me well.

 

I have also been doing another book in conjunction with Vocabulary Master(cuz its the same vocab and structures). It's a book I bought accidentally ages ago, and never used. It's basically 7 listening practice tests with audio, tape-script and an explanation of each question and answer. Sounds very dry, and I guess it is - but when I finally picked it up, I couldn't put it down. I'm already more than halfway through it and finding it a very good exercise . Doing the listening, reading the analysis in Chinese, shadowing the audio and finally listening again and again while while out walking/doing the dishes has been really cementing the grammar and vocabulary. There is zero English or pinyin in this book.

 

 

 

 

I have come across some other books on Taobao that I might get when some of the above is finished. Hard to guess the level on this stuff?:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheBigZaboon]

The book with the large number 3 on it is part of the same large scale set I recommended earlier, but then changed my mind on, because there's no pinyin, and limited support in English except for a small vocabulary list at the beginning of each chapter. But if you finish intermediate Kubler first, the series should be no problem. Just try what you have before buying any more. "The Code" series has plenty of English support, and about five volumes based on various parts of speech. It's very helpful, and should do you a world of good. It's essentially a drill book at the phrasal level for the indicated part-of-speech. Not much explanation, but for a drill junkie at your level, piece of cake. After Kubler, it will be practice to make perfect. But again, try ONE first before buying any more of the series.

 

TBZ 

[realmayo]

I'm surprised Glossika hasn't come up in this discussion so far. In theory it should be perfect. But I haven't seen many reports of people who stuck at it long enough to say whether in practice is is worthwhile.

[Flickserve]

Glossika feels rather unstructured and too random. Theoretically you listen, shadow and absorb the sentence. For many learners, I think another small step is required such as making a smaller subset of sentence patterns that come up and the user having an idea of what sentence patterns they are going pretest. The algorithm will do that for you but quite a lot of people would like to have some idea of patterns that might be tested before they start. It’s divided up into A1 A2 levels etc. but it still feels quite random and wide ranging. As a result, you feel you might not have achieved anything.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 16, 2023 at 06:09 AM by Flickserve

[suMMit]

On 11/16/2023 at 11:00 AM, Flickserve said:

Glossika feels rather unstructured and too random. Theoretically you listen, shadow and absorb the sentence. For many learners, I think another small step is required such as making a smaller subset of sentence patterns that come up and the user having an idea of what sentence patterns they are going pretest. The algorithm will do that for you but quite a lot of people would like to have some idea of patterns that might be tested before they start. It’s divided up into A1 A2 levels etc. but it still feels quite random and wide ranging. As a result, you feel you might not have achieved anything.

I was thinking exactly the same. I've looked at Glossier, but have never tried it.

[Flickserve]

On 11/14/2023 at 5:29 PM, suMMit said:

Furthermore, I realized that in terms of the HSK material I've studied, it's vocabulary usage that's needs most work. Words like 印象，负责，出现，当时，影响，重新， to name a few. I know what they mean I have no problem understanding them in sentences when I hear/read them. However, I'm still not that great at using them in my own sentences, if that makes any sense.

Interesting you mention these words. Could it be also a product of your own personal use of English? I notice that my own personal style of English fairly frequently uses “impression” , “responsible”,  “that time” , “affected by” and therefore, I tend to use these in my Chinese. 
 

An alternative hypothesis is that these are words I hear fairly frequently in topical conversations in Cantonese and therefore have been there’s been some imprinting in listening pattern area of the brain. After all, if the the people around you frequently use 當時 instead of 那時候, then you will use it more easily. 
 

 

Or, perhaps both reasons are valid for the same person. 
 

On 11/16/2023 at 9:36 PM, suMMit said:

I was thinking exactly the same. I've looked at Glossier, but have never tried it.

 

I tried the online version and didn't like it. The original set was to listen to the English Chinese MP3 and it's set to repeat in SRS style. Eventually, you listen to another MP3 with just the Chinese version

 

I converted the original Mandarin version to Anki cards. Translate from English written sentences to Chinese with the spoken Chinese also on the back card. I feel that works quite well, especially as the backcard can be set to play audio as many times as you want.

[Flickserve]

On 11/12/2023 at 4:35 PM, TheBigZaboon said:

I don't know if we're all on the same page, or not (Kek, kek, kek...), but I haven't found either audio, or a Taiwanese edition of "Common Chinese Patterns 330." However, there's another book in exactly the same genre that is floating around in multiple editions, and has both audio, and simplified and Taiwanese editions. Are we getting these books mixed up?

Hi,

 

Here’s a photo of the cover. The publisher is Bookman Books with an address in Taipei. Copyright 2012

 

There was no audio for it. I bought it in HK. 

 

 

On 8/18/2023 at 11:46 PM, TheBigZaboon said:

I haven't looked, or listened to my Kubler stuff in a while, so I was dumbfounded that the downloaded files for the text in their compressed state amount to more than SIX Gigabytes. Originally, I used the discs included in the textbook, so the size of the files was never an issue. But my Wi-Fi has a sudden case of indigestion.

 

Kubler audio and pdf are downloadable from the tuttle website

 

Scroll down and look for the following titles:

 

Intermediate Mandarin Chinese Speaking and Listening Practice Book

Intermediate Spoken Chinese

Intermediate Spoken Chinese Practice Essentials

 

[Flickserve]

...

[suMMit]

On 11/17/2023 at 3:55 PM, Flickserve said:

Here’s a photo of the cover. The publisher is Bookman Books with an address in Taipei. Copyright 2012

 

There was no audio for it. I bought it in HK. 

 

 

So it looks like both books are the same, with same content except yours is 繁体字：

 

[suMMit]

On 11/17/2023 at 3:16 PM, Flickserve said:

Interesting you mention these words. Could it be also a product of your own personal use of English? I notice that my own personal style of English fairly frequently uses “impression” , “responsible”,  “that time” , “affected by” and therefore, I tend to use these in my Chinese. 
 

An alternative hypothesis is that these are words I hear fairly frequently in topical conversations in Cantonese and therefore have been there’s been some imprinting in listening pattern area of the brain. After all, if the the people around you frequently use 當時 instead of 那時候, then you will use it more easily. 
 

 

Or, perhaps both reasons are valid for the same person. 

Actually, I use/try to use  “impression” , “responsible”, “affected by” in my Chinese, but I seem to often use them clumsily or wrongly， unless it's the simplest of sentences. Ie: 他影响了我。 Though I'm making progress getting these things sorted. For example, I've only recently realized that what has been giving me trouble with 印象 was more about prepositions 给/对. As for “that time” it's a different type of problem: always falling back on the same old way of saying things, I ALWAYS use 那时候 and never mix things up with something like 当时。As you say, there are also many common words in Chinese that(at least the way they are translated) I don't often use in English, so I sometimes that's a cause for not using them much in Chinese. Off the top of my head I can think of "sleepy",  "attach importance to" , "to not dare", and others. However, there are plenty that I rarely use in English like "severe", "prepare" etc., but use all the time in Chinese.

 

Anyway, I don't mean to derail this thread.