1-Year Timeline Learning Mandarin (Video) (Part 2)

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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).

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 4^th tone with the occasional end-sentence intonation change. The 2^nd 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 4^th+2^nd 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 3^rd tone (the way it is usually said) and the 4^th 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 30^th 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 2^nd 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.

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?