September Update

Sorry for only updates at the moment. I do plan to do more.

Chinese has become my main activity outside work. It consists mainly of listening and some speaking.

Listening - This has improved since August. At the end of August my girlfriend and I went away with two other friends. I notice that when she was speaking to her other friends about something that we have done I was able to follow the conversation pretty well. I haven't really been able to do this before so I was very excited and happy about this breakthrough.

Listening at the moment is mainly - ChineseOnline -- a Chinese podcast, Youtude, Taiwanese TV including news (difficult), chat shows (difficult but fun), some Children TV (some of which is easy to understand), listening to when my girlfriend talks to her friends (previously I found this boring and hardwork but now I enjoy it) and about 4 hours per week with a friend. (She does most of the talking, though she is prone to translating, which is really annoying).

Speaking - not sure whether this has improved. I'm in a dilemma as I don't want to push myself to speak if I'm thinking too much about what I want to say. If it doesnt' 'pop' then I'm not ready to say this. This annoys my friend as she thinks I should speak more.

Photography - earnings are down this month, though I've started to upload more.

Getting Fit - after the summer heat I think it's time to get exercising again. I went for a jog and a swim last week.

Giving up work, I still haven't handed in my notice. The main thing holding me back is that I'm worried I'll end up doing nothing with my freetime. Though I've had ideas about earning extra income, I haven't really done much towards realising this.

Update

Update

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month researching ‘language learning’. There are definitely many camps out there but the one that’s got my attention is the ‘acquisition approach’. This approach requires a ‘silent’ period that can last for up to a 1,000 hours and massive input of the target language. It doesn’t require books, study or even thinking, as these practices will ultimately restrict your ability in your chosen language.

Advocates of this approach include;


Though I haven’t researched it thoroughly, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of products for this approach to language learning. The advocates would say that in this age of technology you can source many of the things yourself but this is time consuming and if you’re not familiar with your target language you might end up getting stuff in the wrong language i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese.

I want over the next few months to develop a proto product designed to meet the requirement of the ‘acquisition approach’. I will use it myself to learn Chinese and I’ll share with friends to see what they think.

Chinese – this is slowly improving. I can understand many more words now and sometimes I get the gist of what they’re talking about on TV. There hasn’t been any jumps in my comprehension though.

Photography – my income for July was down to $36 from $41 in June. Currently I’m likely to get around $30 for August. The summer months are suppose to be slower than most other months and I hope this turns out to be true. My aim is now to earn a $100 per month by the end of the year. To achieve this I really need to increase my uploads. I also need to upload people pictures as they’re more in demand than objects and scenery.

Writing – I haven’t done much on this for some time.

Videoing - despite getting a brand new video camera I haven’t done much with it. I have a plan to make a language video as well as to record different techniques that could be used to ‘acquire language’.

Overall, I don't think I'm making much progress towards being free from work. There are ideas bubbling but I really need to take the next step with them.

The past couple of weeks I've been reading about language learning and I've come across some interesting sites.

There are many ways to learn a language and over the past week I've read about people with radically different approaches. Some take a pro-active approach whilst others believe in acquisation that's accompanied by a period of silence. Saying this, most do not believe in learning grammar and memorizing vocab lists.

Interesting Links

Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning. Keith is using the TV method to learn Chinese, though he has temporarily stop this as he needs to find a new job in Japan. Besides writing about the TV method, he also has articles on

ALG Thai programme - video of the director of the programme talking about the Thai language programme. This programme is radically different from other learning teaching programmes in that they recommend you do not speak for the first 800 hours. Very interesting.

http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2009/07/alg-thai-interview-with-david-long.html

An interview with a Korean ployglot

http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2009/06/hyunwoo-sun.html

Benny the Irish ployglot is learning Czech in three months

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

This guy is actually an English Teacher, to many 1,000s of people. His 7 tips are worth signing up for but here he commenting about the ALG Thai programme.

http://effortlessacquisition.blogspot.com/2004/11/comprehension-is-king.html

I haven't read much of this site. It's a mix of language points and NLP. When I have more time I'll go into his site more.

http://stujay.blogspot.com/

This is one I've come across today. It's a free sample. How anyone read the whole book?

http://www.learnthatlanguagenow.com/Learn%20That%20Language%20Now%20SAMPLE.pdf

Other articles by the same guy

http://www.artipot.com/authors/31647/robertson-b-kunz/


I've read many other things as well and hope to put out an article reviewing the sites in more detail. If you are interested in learning languages, these links are definitely worth following.

Leave a comment if you know of other learning sites that you have found interesting or more importantly useful.

Learning Chinese, changes in approach

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.