Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Why I Love Baidu Translate
Sunday, December 13, 2015
How to Get Stroke Animation in Anki (Kinda)
A forum member (pross) over on Chinese-Forums pointed out this neat little trick for getting stroke animation in Anki flashcards. It's a simple hyperlink to the Pleco dictionary's stroke order diagrams. So, it's not teeechnically IN Anki but it's pretty darn close. Essentially it's a great alternative to Skritter but way more customizable, and free. (You do have to pay for the Pleco Stroke Animation Add-on which was $5USD when I last checked.)
Link: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/49...
The result:
Link: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/49...
The result:
Saturday, November 21, 2015
1-Year Timeline Learning Mandarin (Video) (Part 2)
---
Hey All!
Ever since I began my
Chinese learning journey almost two and half years ago, I always
remember the difficulty of finding any accurate timelines of Chinese
mastery. Hopefully this post will help to fill in that gap.
So
far I have lived in China for 1 full year. I’m living in Xiamen and
studying at XMU on the CSC scholarship. I’ve just begun my second full
year here.
Prior to arriving in China, I barely had any exposure to Chinese. I read quite a bit about learning the language, tried a bit of Pimsleur’s, took a semester of Chinese language at college in America (which amounts to about three weeks of study here), and had traveled to Taiwan for a study abroad program (no language learning).
Prior to arriving in China, I barely had any exposure to Chinese. I read quite a bit about learning the language, tried a bit of Pimsleur’s, took a semester of Chinese language at college in America (which amounts to about three weeks of study here), and had traveled to Taiwan for a study abroad program (no language learning).
I feel like I’m an
ideal candidate for a timeline. When I arrived in China a year ago, my
Chinese was absolutely level zero and I chose to start at the very
lowest class available at university. I’m also not studying extremely
hard or too little. I’m working, traveling, and spreading my time among
several different areas of interest. I’m not the student trying to do a
Master’s in Chinese after one year (a few of my friends are) nor am I
failing classes ;) I would say I’m pretty slightly-above average
compared to all the other full-time students.
Another
reason for providing a timeline is that, even studying full-time while
living in China, it can get discouraging and feel like progress isn’t
being made. Hopefully this post will cure some of those feelings of
doubt and hopelessness that sporadically crop up. I’m also a little
curious to see if there are general trends for when people reach certain
“aha!” moments and/or general levels of Mandarin language mastery.
The
plan is to get my pronunciation up to native-level after 2 years of
full-time study. I’m, of course, also learning all the usual stuff
(grammar, listening, writing, etc.) as well.
All
this started as a personal learning log but seeing all the wonderful
progress this last year has inspired me to share what I now know with my
former, younger self. Since that is impossible, I am instead posting
here hoping that all my mistakes and successes will benefit someone
else.
I originally planned to
do just one post with the video attached. Somehow it ballooned into a
four part series that is taking close to two months to complete. I
quickly realized that my preparation before coming to China was pretty
extensive and that turned into a post (coming soon). As I was fleshing
out this timeline (leaving out quite a bit from my personal log) it
quickly grew cluttered with a bunch of realizations that occurred during
the writing process. I removed those from the timeline and wrote Part 3. And then I realized I probably should also talk a bit about how I actually study everyday, and that became Part 4. This is part two. Enjoy!
Day -1 (coming soon)
Day 0 (9-13-2014)
– Arrived in China. Even though I speak zero Chinese, my understanding
of HOW to learn the language is pretty solid. I feel confident that two
years isn’t too impossible.
Day 14
- Two weeks in and my Pinyin skills have greatly improved. We are
studying multiple hours a day and when we’re not studying, we’re still
studying. The tone explanations in the textbook are much better (see
part 4 for textbook name).
Month 1
– It’s important to not go to extremes but to follow the middle way!
Don’t completely give up on learning tones and think they will come
later. And don’t try to perfect them before doing anything else in your
learning path. Just consistently practice them and over time eventually
those ‘Aha!’ moments will come.
Month 1 Day 7
– Classes just started requiring characters. The first five weeks were
pinyin-only tests and homework. This means going back and learning
characters for all the previous chapters. I quickly realized the
futility of rote practice and came across Anki, diving fully into
functional components to help with memory. The building blocks of
language are very clear-cut in learning Chinese. There is stroke and
stroke direction, stroke order, functional components, overall character
balance, words, tones, tone changes, word emphasis (saying a word
longer, shorter or with more force), and finally sentence cadence
(prosody) and grammar. For the beginner, it’s a tall, tall, sheer
mountain face that must be scaled.
I’ve
spent quite a few long days in the library with a fellow student,
cramming amazing amounts of characters and the most common
radicals/components into my head. I realize that learning radicals helps
learning characters and learning characters helps to remember the
radicals.
Month 1 Day 14
– I can say my (Chinese) name! It’s incredible how long it takes to do
the simplest of things correctly. All the tones still sound crazy
similar at this point.
Month 2
– Impatience continues to boil to the surface. I wonder constantly if
I’m studying hard enough and if I really will reach fluency after two
years. I am switching to tone pair practice. English seems to have all
of its words be 4th tone with the occasional end-sentence intonation change. The 2nd
tone is the hardest to vocalize. As a singer, I’ve noticed that
practicing Chinese really wears on the vocal chords. My singing practice
has gone to crap since my voice is constantly recovering. The 4th+2nd combination is the hardest to pull off.
Month 2 Week 2
– Learning by rote (practicing over and over again) with the help of
SRS is quite effective. Stroke order tells a nice visual story that
isn’t soon forgotten. Many times if I can just start the character, the
rest comes even if I can’t “see” the character in my head.
Not all characters are one syllable. 方便 fāngbiàn the second character ‘bian’ is a two syllable word.
Tone pairs with different phonemes are unique in their own ways. 和茶 héchá (and tea) and its two rising tones took me (what felt like) several hundred tries to get right and still feels funny.
Month 2 Week 3 – I am beginning to hear the difference between the short 3rd tone (the way it is usually said) and the 4th tone. I am beginning to see how similar characters completely ruin what you have already learned. Learning 带 dài I now have to go back and re-learn characters like 葡萄 pútáo.
It’s not enough to just remember that there is a stitch-like shape at
the top of a character. I also need to remember how many vertical lines
there are or what the functional component means. This sort of
mental-differentiation also applies to words with the same phonemes,
tones, and characters and makes learning more challenging.
For
the first time, I caught myself in the act of mentally beating myself
up over forgetting characters. A much healthier approach to learning is
knowing that you will fail/forget and that these failures and forgetting
actually help you to remember better. Such an important realization.
Learning characters, strokes, words, or grammar is all about learning,
the forgetting, seeing it again, and maybe getting it right on the
fourth or fifth time. And! As time goes on I have found that I get
better at this cycle and get to the success stage much faster.
Month 2 Week 4
– I realized that I have been unnecessarily worried from the get-go
about forming bad pronunciation habits. Because study is mostly
self-motivated and classes are large, there isn’t much opportunity for
correction unless I take the responsibility on myself. It’s well known
that pronunciation is one of the trickiest parts of learning Mandarin.
I’ve
found that worrying about forming bad habits doesn’t do much. Not
speaking at all isn’t a solution and speaking incorrectly isn’t
instantly going to cement poor grammar and speaking ability. The key is
being consciously aware of a word, grammar point, or whatever until you
are absolutely certain that is it correct before relegating it to
subconscious recall.
For example, if every time you speak 好吃hǎochī,
you aren’t sure of the second character’s tone, make sure to
consciously mentally note this unknown every time you speak it. Get to a
dictionary soon, after the first or third time saying it incorrectly
and find out what is right. The danger, even for the careful person,
lies in lazily speaking it over and over and continuing to push off
looking the word up. After the 30th time or so, you will have
spoken it so many times that the brain will stop putting effort into
flagging it as an unknown word and will just start subconsciously
pronouncing it in whatever way you’ve repeatedly done so.
Month 3 – The changing third tone seems impossible to differentiate from the 2nd tone in pinyin exercises we do in class.
Month 3 Day 3
– A big breakthrough in speaking words. I can finally talk with good
pronunciation without spending 100% of my mental ability focusing just
on speaking tones half-decently.
Month 3 Week 1
– Another nice sense of accomplishment of listening to my language
partner speak in Chinese. She is from Harbin, so it sounds just like the
textbook vs. the southern accent that most people use in Xiamen.
**For
those worried about learning Chinese in the South, if anything the
thick accent makes you a much better listener. Sure, it might be tough
to understand things when you first arrive but over time, the ear gets
trained to not only understand Harbin/textbook Chinese but also
variations on the standard, which China is full of.
Month 3 Week 4
– Another big breakthrough in my speaking ability. I am able to string
words together! Sure, the grammar is usually terrible but people
understand not only my words/tones but also the meaning of my
“sentences”.
We took a sample HSK 3 test in class. Most people passed with flying colors. HSK 4 was a lot more challenging. I was able to read and understand a bit but listening was pretty hopeless.
We took a sample HSK 3 test in class. Most people passed with flying colors. HSK 4 was a lot more challenging. I was able to read and understand a bit but listening was pretty hopeless.
Month 4 Week 2
- Just realizing over the last week or so that speaking and practicing
speaking Mandarin doesn't wear out my voice as much. I was actually
practicing and singing alternately with no problems. Really hope this
means the end of my vocal fatigue problem. I’ve seen no one else talk
about this problem so I am posting it here in case there are others
wondering the same thing.
I also am pretty excited about the way the speaking exam went. I am finally at a point where I can speak quite a few things because I know enough vocab. The grammar and word order is usually off but it's quite motivating to see the other person actually listening and nodding their head.
Acquiring
vocab for the first time since I’ve started has become easier and
faster. I have also noticed that words and phrases that I have seen from
the beginning of the semester like 很有意思
are seen as a chunk in my brain. It’s like a bigger “word”. This type
of chunking is really interesting and another step of the language
learning process has been revealed!
Month 5
– [In Thailand] (no Chinese studying) Some students who are attempting
Chinese-taught degrees next year have to pass HSK 5 after this year and
studied through break. I, on the other hand, did a month-long meditation
retreat to improve focus and (hopefully) learning ability.
Month 6
– Semester two has started and I return two weeks late. In all the
classes, the teachers only use Chinese to instruct. A month without a
single day of Anki review and my current review pile is 1000 cards. 0_0
(It ends up taking about a month of extra daily review to return this
number to 0. I would not recommend skipping Anki for long periods of
time.)
Month 6 Week 4
– I can finally start eavesdropping on conversations when I’m out and
about. And by ‘eavesdropping’ I mean I can hear a few words. The
abominable tone sandhi on 一 and 不
are becoming easier. Would’ve never imagined at the beginning, half a
year ago, that it would take this long to master the tone changes.
Month 7
– My vocabulary acquisition takes another leap forward. Words are
coming even quicker with many words having one or two characters I
already know.
A few experiences
recently have me feeling pretty good about my listening ability. Though I
can understand about 10%* of everything that is said around me, it’s an
exponential jump from where I first began.
Though
I haven’t mentioned it, occasionally since I’ve starting studying
Chinese full-time I return to websites like HackingChinese.com to make
sure I’m using all the most efficient learning techniques and not
falling into any traps. Trying to integrate all the advice of every
book/resource from day 1 is impossible. But an occasional review of
these literature is bound to add something good to your daily study
habits. Occasionally reviewing functional component lists also helps
with character acquisition.
**
The 10% figure isn’t static and changes depending on the topic. Because
you learn in Chapters that groups similar words, sometimes listening
comprehension is 0%, sometimes 50%, and sometimes 90%. It can get really
discouraging or motivating depending on what topic you happen to be
using Chinese for.
Month 7 Week 4 – Chinese phrases have officially been added to my mental chatter! Small phrases that I hear form people on the street like “过来吧!” (Usually simple sentences from parents screaming at their children is what I can understand. )
Month 8 – I spoke a Chinese phrase (ironically enough it was 一下子) which I realized I was saying before I could even “recall” it like usual. My first subconscious recall!
Looking
at a wall of Chinese text is no longer “painful”. I haven't found a
concise way of saying it yet, but webpages, books, or paragraphs all in
Chinese don't feel challenging or overwhelming. Even though, right now,
I probably only know 40% of the characters (in a typical text) there is
nothing “strange” about them and they are as easy on the eyes as roman
alphabet letters. I’ve also noticed this was true when I visited the
Japanese version of the Sony website. Not sure what to make of this...
Month 8 Week 1 – Noticed a big jump in pronunciation and listening ability. I was sitting in class and heard “该打扫” (gāidǎsǎo) but I thought I heard “改打扫” (gǎidǎsǎo).
A few seconds passed and then suddenly my brain clicked and I realized
my error in listening. Always wonder what the brain is actually doing
during one of these moments.
Vocal
fatigue continues to be less of a problem and my pronunciation for the
first time feels authentic like I can ”sink” into both the tones and
phonemes. Caught myself handing over money for a purchase without even
realizing I had heard the price in Chinese, understood it, sifted
through my wallet and paid.
Month 8 Week 4 - There were a handful of characters giving me trouble like 择 zé vs. 坚 jiān,懒 lǎn vs. 须 xū ,既 jì vs. 良 liáng vs. 退
tuì. So, I put them in a note in Google keep so I could get back to
them. Turns out just having them in plain view multiple times was enough
to sink their differences in.
Switched my phone over into Chinese language for a few days with very little problems. Very cool!
Month 9
– My pronunciation has finally reached an acceptable level. I would say
I can pronounce Chinese and Spanish (which I studied in high school and
mostly forgot) at about the same level. My tone accuracy still needs a
lot of work.
Month 10
– I’m back in the United States for summer holiday. It’s really hard to
feel like you’ve made progress living in China. Everyone around you
speaks it more fluently, even the three year old throwing a temper
tantrum at McDonald’s. But being in an English speaking country, I
realize for the first time how much progress I’ve made in ten months
(actually nine since February I was in Thailand). People’s faces light
up when you speak your terrible Chinese and show them that you can write
some characters.
Month 10 Week 1
– My intuitive feeling for sentence order and structure (aka grammar)
has suddenly improved. I can feel when a sentence is spoken correctly or
incorrectly. Still want to know what changes in the brain are bringing
about these “shifts”.
Month 11
– I can suddenly recognize more characters than not. At some point in
the last month I crossed the 50% character recognition threshold? Very
motivating. My pronunciation has made another jump and I feel brave
enough for the first time to make a video saying a few things.
Month 12
– Listening ability has jumped once again and I feel like learning
Chinese is finally getting past the bend where it suddenly becomes
easier rather than harder. Between Baidu Translate, Pleco, and a little
bit of time I can understand just about any Wechat message and reply.
Somehow I managed to go apartment searching, post my old apartment
online, sign a lease, and negotiate breaking my old lease…all in
Chinese. My grammar feels atrocious but actually doing things feels
pretty incredible.
Month 12 Week 4 – I am starting to think in terms of characters and not pinyin.
My
tones are definitely still a work in progress. The tones seems to
change if the word is the last in a sentence or if a word is being
emphasized.
A year later and I
still catch crazy thoughts going through my head like “Is it really
possible for me to learn these tone things?!” despite all the progress
I’ve made and the fact that 1.3 billion people speak the language.
Mindfully noting these thoughts and letting them go...
My
vocab and grammar acquisition is faster than it has ever been. After a
whole year of learning characters, I have so many memories of components
and characters and phrases and words that adding new information to the
web is now easier than ever.
SRS
is by no means a perfect system with perfect memory recall but it
throws enough things at the wall that 90% of them stick and the
remaining 10% eventually do once another word comes along that uses the
same character or functional component. I always try to stay aware of
'first-language bias' as well. When words slip my mind in my mother
tongue, I think of it as just "normal" but when I can't remember a word
in Chinese, it's "I need to study harder".
Month 13 (10-2015)
– Many of my Anki cards are now being spaced out at 2+ year intervals.
I’m pretty sure at this point that those cards can be safely discarded.
The cards of some of the first I've ever created. Their appearance is so
frequent in other cards at this point, that I'm always a bit surprised
that I even had to study a card like 来 lái . Sometimes it's so easy
getting caught up in all that lies ahead, that you forget to look back
and fully understand just how far you've come.
Questions about pronunciation:
1. When there are three third tones in a row, what happens exactly?
2. Is the third tone that switches to a second tone, really shorter than the “real” second tone?
Friday, November 13, 2015
Timo's All-in-One Chinese Anki Deck
Another small update:
I recently came across a wonderful Anki Deck, and best part is...it's free!
The Anki deck is Timo's HSK 2012. Unfortunately when I went to go find a link for it, it seems to have been removed from the website. Maybe it was deleted in favor of the even more comprehensive deck Timo's All-in-One Chinese .
Here's a screen shot of a card. There's the Hanzi, character breakdown, native pronunciation, sentence pronunciation, sample sentence, pinyin, picture...pretty much everything any learner would ever need to cram a bunch of characters before getting serious about reading some Chinese (i.e. me).
Edit: Well, I am now mirroring the old Timo's HSK 2012 Anki Deck
Study well!
I recently came across a wonderful Anki Deck, and best part is...it's free!
The Anki deck is Timo's HSK 2012. Unfortunately when I went to go find a link for it, it seems to have been removed from the website. Maybe it was deleted in favor of the even more comprehensive deck Timo's All-in-One Chinese .
Here's a screen shot of a card. There's the Hanzi, character breakdown, native pronunciation, sentence pronunciation, sample sentence, pinyin, picture...pretty much everything any learner would ever need to cram a bunch of characters before getting serious about reading some Chinese (i.e. me).
Edit: Well, I am now mirroring the old Timo's HSK 2012 Anki Deck
Study well!
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Year One Reflections (Part 3)
As you might already know, I’ve been living and studying Chinese full-time in China at Xiamen University for the last year (I’m currently starting a second year). This is Part 3 of a series of posts discussing all things related to my quest to reach native-level pronunciation after 2 years. I am posting in reverse order and Part 4 can be found here.
This post is just a list of what I felt like were the most important
realizations after studying abroad full-time for a whole year. I started out as
an absolute beginner and so my intention is always for that student who is currently
doing their research and deciding if studying Chinese is something they would
like to spend a large part of their life pursuing (i.e. me, a year and a half
ago! :)
).
Disclaimer: The word “difficult” is often thrown around when Chinese comes up and there
is no denying it but when did difficulty ever become a bad thing? If this last
year has shown me anything, difficulty is the single greatest motive for some
all of life’s best epiphanies. If you don’t already believe this, hopefully
studying some Chinese will soon enlighten you! :)
1. It is a long, long road to good pronunciation. I remember first
starting character writing and being completely overwhelmed by what felt like
an impossible number of details to remember. A simple dash here, a shorter or
longer line there, or a few sloppy lines and it felt like the character I wanted
to write looked like something else. 日 (rì) vs. 曰 (yuē) is a good example of this. But despite this
seemingly unconquerable problem, after a few weeks of writing characters and
watching teachers scribble unintelligibly on the board, you soon realize the “tolerance”
for error and how much you can deviate from the perfectly written character
while still being understood.
Getting to this point for pronunciation is a much longer story. It’s
been around 1 year and a month now and I’m still hearing new nuances,
practicing differentiating the tones, and making certain that I am speaking
with that same level of “tolerance” so that I can be understood.
2. Technology is increasingly making learning a faster, better, and
cheaper process. Textbooks with native-level pronunciation, digital flashcards,
spaced repetition software, digital character writing apps, stroke animations, etc.
It is really incredible how much easier learning Chinese is today versus a few
decades ago, especially for the self-taught learner. It will be very interesting
to see what learning Chinese will be like (if it is still around!) in a few
decades. Greatest piece of new material I am looking forward to: Outlier
Linguistics dictionary.
3. Living in China for the absolute beginner isn’t helpful for the
reason most people would think it is. Sure, reading signs and hearing the
language helps but not as much as it helps an intermediate student. What is
great about living in China is being confronted daily with your ignorance. This
constant reminder gives ample motivation to put in the large amount of effort for
the initial climb ( I really like wushijiao’s roller
coaster analogy). When you start out, Chinese will seem impossible, but as
you keep studying, it gets exponentially easier. At some point along the path,
learning Chinese becomes easier
than learning new English words.
Character frequency lists are a great example of this. Somewhere
between a semester and a year, every new word has a least one familiar character.
Once you reach the magical 3000 character mark, almost every new word is just a
matter of putting known characters together, like using an alphabet. The best part though is that the
pronunciation is standard (unlike Phonics in English where French, German,
Latin, Spanish and all sorts of foreign pronunciations are tossed into the mix).
For this reason, I think at some point my Chinese will probably surpass my
English in the pronunciation department.
4. Living in China as an absolute beginner student can get pretty
difficult. I felt guilty for a long time because I spent 100% of my time in my
room studying. All the glorious interactions I was supposed to be having with Chinese
culture, people, and media was largely off limits (and still mostly is after a
whole year). I gave up on my language partner, going to student clubs, and
generally communicating with Chinese people because it
didn’t really help all that much to improve my Chinese. This is normal! It
isn’t until after a semester or two where you can haltingly speak that China
opens up to you. I think a much better use of time is really burning the midnight
oil early on so that you can get out and start interacting with the massive
world of Chinese much sooner.
It is also a chicken and egg problem. You can’t study at home full-time
due to school/job commitments and then if you win a scholarship to study in
China, you spend most of your time in your room studying.
That being said, moving to China will undoubtedly be a life-changing
experience (if Asia is an unexplored frontier for you). So even if 90% goes
over your head, living and studying in China is bound to be unlike anything
else you’ve experienced before.
5. I will say, though, that if I had a choice I would still rather start
learning Chinese in China. The way tones are explained here were much more
thorough than the semester I took back home in Ohio, even using the excellent
Integrated Chinese series of textbooks. Chinese is also crazy overwhelming at
the beginning. So doing a large initial push (even if only one semester abroad)
will do wonders for your ability to keep studying. Even after a whole year
abroad I still doubt how much
progress I have made, so I can only imagine how difficult it would be to take
it slowly over many years. **The next part in this series is a timeline of
major milestones just for that reason** It can also be really hard to gauge progress
and determine what is actually a “normal” pace.
6. Tones, tone pairs, sentence cadence, and tone sandhi practice are
required by the beginner student and advanced student alike. Another way
Chinese overwhelms the beginner is in the existence of the pinyin chart ;). For
the prodigious student who wants to master pronunciation right away, he/she
might think that it will take a lifetime to master all the possible
combinations. Even though there are 400 or so pinyin combinations plus four
tones for most of them, patience is key. Add in tone pair combinations and it
can seem impossible, but, somehow, you do get through all of them. Every
chapter is a new set of words and even if classes seem to not stress
pronunciation later on as much as in the beginning, that journey continues well
on into the second year. There really isn’t any shortcut to getting good.
Practice, repetition, and more practice. Chinese is difficult because almost
nothing from English translates over. It’s like learning your first language
all over again which
is really cool.
7. Listening is all about repetition. Sure, if you are planning to take
the HSK test you will want to have some test-taking listening strategies, but
the way we learn to listen well is by hearing any given word, phrase, and/or sentence
a gabazillion times. We do this so well that we can often piece together
sentences when we’ve only heard a few words, and can even read lips when there
is no sound at all. I suddenly feel a lot less guilty about not understanding
textbook recordings on the first, second, or even third listen. It’s the
failing for the fourth time that makes your listening better not some
superhuman ability to parse unknown words and grammar on the fly. I just think
about how I use my mother tongue on a daily basis and compare my Chinese
learning to that as much as possible.
8. The reason kids have such great pronunciation comes down
largely to one fact: No one has qualms about telling a child that they are
wrong. Just remember learning your native tongue. It was years and years of people
willfully (and sometimes joyously ;) ) telling you that you were absolutely not
correct. And as a kid, whether you liked it or not, you learned a lot very
quickly (but still not
as quickly as adults). And it turns out, kids end up being the best
pronunciation teachers because they have no reservations about telling you your
Chinese sucks, laughing hysterically, and correcting you for the 49th
time.
9. And speaking of kids, tutoring English has been an eye-opening experience
on many accounts. Put simply, there is a much deeper appreciation for the
teacher-student dynamic when you are suddenly on the other side. A lot to be
said here, but I will leave it at that.
10. After a full year abroad, the analogy I return to most to visualize
the Chinese learning journey, is throwing mud at a wall. Though this phrase is
usually in reference to shot-gunning random ideas and seeing what works, here I’m
referring to a different phenomenon. Imagine a hose full of muddy water being
sprayed towards a wall. At first, most of the muddy water will run right off,
but a few specks will remain. If the hose is pointed at the wall for long
enough, and maybe taking breaks allowing the wall to dry, more and more mud
will accumulate on the wall. And the more the mud accumulates on the wall, the
easier it is for even more mud to stick and accumulate.
Maybe the analogy doesn’t need much explanation. When I first started
learning Chinese, those few small specks felt mightily underwhelming compared
to the large blank wall that was unlearned Chinese. But as the months passed, the
more random specks I got to stick on that wall, especially when the specks were
close together, the easier it got to add more and more understanding or mud (proximity
being how closely related two pieces of info about Chinese are, i.e. characters
with similar functional components). All the mud that didn’t stick is the
countless times I’ve forgotten characters, vocab, grammar etc. But even when
mud doesn’t stick I’ve realize that there is usually some imperceptible dirt
left behind and maybe on the fourth or fifth try, that spot will finally get a
piece of mud that sticks permanently. As the process continues, the hose gets discarded
and it’s possible to just toss handfuls of wet mud at the wall and get them to
stick on the first try. (The depth of mud corresponding to the levels and
framework that build up strokes->characters->words->grammar->sentences->experiences)
The more mud, the better everything stays in place (it’s much more difficult to
lose the language you’ve acquired). I would like to think that I am starting to
toss pretty small chunks up on the wall at this point, which is quite
motivating. Hopefully this will gave a ray or two of hope to the beginner who
is putting up the first few specks and can’t step back to see the larger
picture. Best piece of advice when learning Chinese: patiently enjoy the
journey.
11. A downside to practicing pronunciation well? “No way!”
you may counter. Hilariously enough, because most foreigners don’t make much of an effort with pronunciation
aren't aiming for native-level pronunciation, if you do, people will
immediately assume you can understand WAY more than you actually do. The case usually being me asking a
simple question and then the native rattling off a couple sentences at what
feels like supersonic speeds only to be confused by my very obvious lack of
understanding.
Study well!
This is a post on Chinese-forums.com:
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/50185-year-one-refl...
This is a post on Chinese-forums.com:
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/50185-year-one-refl...
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