A New Approach to Chinese
I’ve been in Taiwan for three and a half years, so I’m running out of excuses why my Chinese is still poor. So over the past month, I’ve been looking at top language learners and teachers, reading about language learning and generally looking at ways to improve my Chinese.
I feel that this spurt of Chinese learning has been productive and that the techniques I’m using this time are proving to be more successful.
I’m mainly concentrating on speaking and listening, though I have an interest in reading Chinese too.
So the changes I’ve made have been.
Listening more
Sounds obvious, but by this I mean comprehensive learning (listen to stuff you can understand – using a text for example) and listening to this stuff many times over.
I’m currently listening to ChineseLearnOnline podcasts. They use a lot of dialogues (semi-authentic), so I listen whilst reading the dialogue 5x and then listen without the dialogue 10x. I also review the lesson the next day and test myself by writing out the dialogue.
One online English Teacher said that learning to speak English, your studies should be 80% comprehensive listening.
Results;
I definitely think my listening has improved. In one-on-one conversations I have better comprehension and can now provide better answers. I’ve gotten involved in many more conversations recently because my confidence has improved and I feel I’m getting more out of them.
Group conversations, I’m getting the gist much more now but it’s still hard for me to participate in these conversations.
TV listening is slightly better though this is still too fast for me. I can occasionally get the gist of what they are talking about, though this is also through the fact that I can read some characters.
Review more
With the listening exercises, I make a point to listen to them at least a few times the following day and if I like the lesson, then I’ll listen to them more.
Result
Reviewing has deepened my understanding of the language and I feel that my ‘language’ has grown much quicker as a result.
Learn phrases, don’t learn words
I’ve found that listening to dialogue repeatedly, has made it a lot easier to recall the dialogue. One of the exercises I do, is to recall the dialogue and then check how accurately I recall this. I then work on the more difficult bits. I’ve found this to be useful as it feeds back into listening as well. I also feel that I’m working out the grammar of Chinese without actually studying ‘grammar’.
Results
I feel that it’s much easier to recall phrases and sentences than to recall single words. Also when accompanied with a sentence, you get a much better understanding of how the word can be used.
Getting involved in more conservations
To really learn a language you need to use it. I’ve read about conversations connectors, these are phrases that help a conversation follow and can also buy you time to think about your replies. Conversations connectors are things such as, thanks for asking me, by the way, me too! So, I my plan is to get a list of common connectors translated into their Chinese equivalences.
Results
I’ve gotten involved in many more conversations recently and this has definitely helped my Chinese. Though I’ve probably gotten involved and have been able to continue them because my comprehension has improved.
Pronunciation
I was having trouble with certain sounds in Chinese. So I got some help with these sounds. One of my friends was able to tell me about tongue position in the mouth for certain sounds and since then I feel that my pronunciation of these sounds has improved.
Result
As well as my confidence, I’m also better able to hear the difference between sounds. A lot of sounds in Chinese are similar and being able to hear these differences has definitely been a help.
Summary
I really do think I’ve made progress, especially in speaking and listening. So I’ll continue to do listening exercises everyday. I feel I could do more listening, once I’ve got my mp3 player working, I’ll be able to use ‘deadtime’ (sitting on a bus) to listen to Chinese.
I will also continue to review stuff through listening, rewriting the text and rehearsing the dialogue in my mind and then checking it.
I don’t plan to learn grammar, characters and writing characters for the foreseeable future. The stuff I’m learning at the moment, I can understand why the words are being used and I don’t want to get bogged down in learning grammar, as my main goal at the moment is to speak.
Also learning characters is time consuming, especially writing. When my speaking is better I’ll have a blitz on reading as I feel this would be useful, especially for extensive reading. Also, I don’t think it’s that difficult to learn characters in Taiwan, as you’re surrounded by them all the time and also I’m fascinated by them.
