Can speak chinese but looking to learn to read/write

Language Learning Chinese
1

Hi

I recently started a one year sabbatical and moved back to Taipei to spend time with my family and travel around Asia. I speak mandarin fluently ( everyday speech but not business language) and one of my first objectives is to learn to read -and write to some extent- mandarin. ( A bit of background here : I was born in Taiwan and moved abroad when I was 8, I am 28 now and have not been back for more than 2 weeks at a time for the past 20 years).

As my needs are a bit different from most caucasians looking to learn to speak chinese, I was thinking 1-on-1 private lessons might be the most time-efficicent way to go.
Most important criteria to me are :
-efficiency ( I am highly motivated and am willing to put in a lot of work. I am targeting 1 or 2 month of intensive lessons to learn the basics and get the textbooks and work on my own after that)
-flexibility ( I do not want to be enrolled in a 3-month or 1-year program as I will be traveling in between)

My research so far :
NTNU, NCCU, TLI seem to be all offering 1on1 class for about $700/hour , TLI is a little bit less expensive.
I think it might also be a good idea to hire a private tutor (anyone have recommendations?) , maybe a professor from one of these universities as it would be cheaper by cutting the middle man (= university)

Anyone here been in similar situations and would offer some advice ( private lesson vs class / which institution to choose/ private tutor recommendations)?

Your help is much appreciated!

2

What you need is simple readings at first. Are you a native speaker, or just fluent? (There’s a huge difference in terms of vocabulary.)
If you’re a true native speaker, just get a bunch of children’s books with bopomofo. Learn those symbols, then you can read based on illustrations and context, with the bopomofo to give you the reading for characters you don’t know.

If you’re not a true native speaker, it will be much more painful, because there are very few reading materials designed specifically for non-native speakers to learn to read Chinese. Most assume the same vocabulary as little Chinese children have, or stick specifically to the vocabulary from one particular lesson in a textbook (and are consequently boring as all get-out, in most cases.)

If you are motivated, even as a non-native speaker, you could simply get “guoyu ribao” newspaper and cover up the bopomofo, try to read, and then check.

I’m sure someone will pop over here and advise you to memorize the most frequent 1000 (2000, 4000, 5000, or whatever number) characters. I wouldn’t advise that. I think you will do far better to leverage your knowledge of the language by reading things in context, rather than doing it the hard mechanical way that is traditional for CFL teaching but hasn’t really been proven to be the “best” way because no one had ever tried anything else before.

To be able to read effectively independently, you want to aim for no more than 5% unknowns in the text. That means unknown characters as well as unknown words. Obviously, at first, your options are rather limited.

I have a really painfully basic reader coming out in about 2 weeks that has 9871 words but only 207 unique characters. It is NOT Shakespeare; it’s rather repetitious, but it would probably get you going on reading the most frequent characters, as you would have repeated practice on them in the context of a story that, even if it is not the most fascinating in the history of the world, at least makes sense (so you can use context, etc.) The vocabulary is controlled through the course of the reader, so that the first chapter contains only 23 characters, though it is about 500 characters long. Each chapter than adds more words (=characters). You would find the Chinese itself to be simplistic, but the reading component might be useful for you.

3

Hi,

Thanks for your response
Not sure I grasp entirely the subtlety between “true native speaker” and “fluent speaker”. I was born and raised in Taiwan and moved abroad when I was 8. After that I only spoke chinese to communicate with my family and I didn’t deepen my knowledge of the language any further. I consider myself a native speaker although my vocabulary is quite limited (say of a “mature” 3rd grader :laughing: )

So you don’t think that getting a private tutor / going to a class would add any value? I was thinking that being exposed to a good teaching method might speed up the learning method rather than treating it as a pure memory exercise.

I would be very interested in your basic reader , will I be able to find it on your website?

Thank you

4

What I mean by “true native speaker” is, do you know all the animal noises and other silly vocabulary that is found in children’s books? They’re easy if you were brought up using that language – that’s what people say to babies and toddlers – but not if you weren’t. I didn’t know if you’d retained that language, but looking back at your post, if you didn’t leave Taiwan until 8, probably you still have it. The point is only that if children’s books are full of words you don’t know even if someone read them to you out loud, they’re not the reading materials you want to use.

I have to tell you – I am not aware of anyone doing much in the line of thinking hard about a “teaching method” to get people literate in Chinese when they already speak it, especally for people who are adults and fluent, but not literate. The thing I’m working on at present is how to get beginners literate in the very small amount of Chinese they are fluent in (“micro-fluency”, where they absolutely know what they DO know, but they don’t know much yet) without falling back on the old “memorize these 30 characters, now we’ll stumble through a reading” thing. We’re finding that context and knowledge of the language are incredibly powerful in helping people to read – since reading SHOULD be just recognizing the language in written form (I’m talking about beginner level stuff here, not newspapers or Classical Chinese – just basic being-able-to-read-at-all.)

You are at an incredible advantage there, since you have the native knowledge of the spoken language. You have what I think of as the “power of duh!” – once you work out which characters are in front of you, there’s no challenge at all to know what they mean. That might sound like memorization would be the way to go, but straight memorization will not leverage that knowledge of the language you have.

So the good news is, there’s plenty of bopomofo marked texts in Taiwan for you. I’d get some of those, and actually put tape over the bopomofo (I’d cut thin little slices and stick them on) though your eyes won’t be as drawn to the bopomofo as Western (native English speaker) eyes are drawn to Pinyin on a page. Read out loud, read to your shoes, read to any obliging family members or friends, read the same texts repeatedly until you are fluent in the skill of looking at characters and having language pop into your head immediately.

The book I’m doing will be up at www.squidforbrains.com when it’s finished. Right now I’m on the Pinyin and glossary and make the simplified character version step, which takes forever. :cry: If you choose to go memorization, or partly memorization, you might consider some of the SquidForBrains Sunzi games. They’re designed to give practice in character recognition at the word level in a game format, which might make them somewhat less onerous than flash cards. (Plus, you can torment Taiwanese friends if you play the pinyin order variation, since they will have trouble spelling the words correctly!)

5

I would suggest that you hire a student from a Chinese department at one of the universities to tutor you and that you go through the elementary, junior high, and high school Chinese textbooks with your tutor. You should be able to hire a student for around NT$200 per hour. A professional teacher would be around NT$400-500 per hour. I can refer you to the latter and maybe to a tutor if you pm me. Supplement your study by reading the Mandarin Daily News, which has the phonetic symbols that you learned as a child here. Ironlady is right. You have an incredible advantage since you are a native speaker.

6

unrelated, but if you are a dude, have you given up your Taiwanese citizenship yet? cause if you are duo citizenship still, beware of the draft rules considering Taiwanese expats and watch for how long your are staying in the country, otherwise you might stay here a while longer and learn Chinese really well at boot camps.

7

Aren’t they phasing out compulsory conscription, though?

8

I wonder why this is really necessary. Of course, learning the basics how to write is maybe a little bit more difficult, but I could imagine that if you already know most of the language, learning to read would be easier: Just do it.

I am not sure if reading with Bopomofo annotated books is so good though: I guess you tend to look at the readings all the time, not learning the characters. Instead, I would take a text and create vocabulary lists with character and reading, and then just learn the reading. So for example,

我 wǒ
台灣 Táiwān
讀 dú

Because you don’t have to learn the meanings, I think you should progress quite fast. If you stumble across unknown words, you can maybe learn them too, thereby improving your vocabulary.

Of course, this is just how I would imagine it, not having done this before or having any idea how this should really be done. Writing would of course be more difficult, but the question is also, to which extent you really need it. If you are content with having to need to look up forgotten characters every time you write a text, i think it can be done relatively easy. The goal is then not to write everything by heart, but rather to minimize the time you have to look up characters. But I think achieving really complete written skills like a native is not worth the effort. Still, this can also be done by just doing it.

Also, for that, you wouldn’t need to be in Taiwan. You can do it at home, just get some books or use a webpage. I don’t think spending money for this is so useful.

9

[quote=“Hellstorm”]
I am not sure if reading with Bopomofo annotated books is so good though: I guess you tend to look at the readings all the time, not learning the characters. [/quote]
That’s why you cover up the bopomofo – until you need it to confirm a character reading. Reading without ever knowing the right “answer” won’t help as much or as quickly as reading and being able to know the correct reading for a character you don’t know – especially if you already know the word involved. It doesn’t have to be fancy – you can just use a piece of paper or card as a line marker, and slide it so that it covers the bopomofo but exposes the characters on that line of text.

[quote]Instead, I would take a text and create vocabulary lists with character and reading, and then just learn the reading. So for example,

我 wǒ
台灣 Táiwān
讀 dú

Because you don’t have to learn the meanings, I think you should progress quite fast. If you stumble across unknown words, you can maybe learn them too, thereby improving your vocabulary.[/quote]

And you would not be alone – this is “how Chinese reading is taught” to foreigners. But in terms of reading, I do not believe it is necessary, and the experiments we’re amassing little by little support that idea. The whole “memorize a bunch of characters first” thing is not only boring and demotivating to many, but also a waste of time IF indeed it is possible to simply read by reading, for those who know the oral language and who are motivated adults. The main challenge is to find even remotely interesting texts that are at a true beginning reader level. Once someone is fluent enough as a reader to read books, it’s much easier – as it is in languages that are written somewhat phonetically.

As the OP is a native speaker, it might also be worthwhile to look over the most common phonetic elements found in characters. They aren’t that useful for a non-native speaker, but the OP could actually say to himself, hmmm, a character that has to do with water and maybe sounds like XYZ… and get the answer correct, because the word is already in his oral lexicon.

10

[quote=“ironlady”]
And you would not be alone – this is “how Chinese reading is taught” to foreigners. But in terms of reading, I do not believe it is necessary, and the experiments we’re amassing little by little support that idea. The whole “memorize a bunch of characters first” thing is not only boring and demotivating to many, but also a waste of time IF indeed it is possible to simply read by reading, for those who know the oral language and who are motivated adults. The main challenge is to find even remotely interesting texts that are at a true beginning reader level. Once someone is fluent enough as a reader to read books, it’s much easier – as it is in languages that are written somewhat phonetically.
.[/quote]

Well, I was thinking about writing all the characters out of a text you are actually reading. I would just use a text of a subject you are interested in: photography, food or whatever. I think the most basic characters are found everywhere. But I think it is still necessary to learn the reading, so that you can easier read the characters. Also, it serves as some kind of lookup, which you can hold next to your book and glimpse into, if you forgot the reading.
At least this is how I do it if I learn the reading of characters, and it works relatively well. I think, learning to read aloud is not really that much of a problem, if you don’t have to learn the meaning. Most students make the mistake to write the reading above every character, though. In my experience, people who rely on this help have grave problems knowing the reading of a character.

11

[quote=“Hellstorm”][quote=“ironlady”]
And you would not be alone – this is “how Chinese reading is taught” to foreigners. But in terms of reading, I do not believe it is necessary, and the experiments we’re amassing little by little support that idea. The whole “memorize a bunch of characters first” thing is not only boring and demotivating to many, but also a waste of time IF indeed it is possible to simply read by reading, for those who know the oral language and who are motivated adults. The main challenge is to find even remotely interesting texts that are at a true beginning reader level. Once someone is fluent enough as a reader to read books, it’s much easier – as it is in languages that are written somewhat phonetically.
.[/quote]

Well, I was thinking about writing all the characters out of a text you are actually reading. I would just use a text of a subject you are interested in: photography, food or whatever. I think the most basic characters are found everywhere. [/quote]

You’re right, the basic characters are found just about everywhere. But what we’re finding is that it just isn’t necessary to first “learn” the characters before reading, if you are fluent in the language that you are reading (even if that means only a tiny subset of “all of Chinese”). And we have done tests to make sure that students who learn new characters this way (by reading them in context, over and over, rather than memorizing them separately) are in fact able to generalize that knowledge to texts they have never seen before. If the OP likes to make glossaries, there’s nothing wrong with that, but the only thing I’m saying is that in the research we’re doing into how to teach people to read ideographs, it’s not necessary to deal with the ideographs separately (and there’s no evidence that it does help performance in reading. None against it either, to be fair – but no evidence that it improves anything other than the feeling of working hard or having some control over a very large writing system. Which is worth something in and of itself…)

The OP knows what reading is; he knows about the direction of text, tracking with his eyes, all the things you have to teach a child who has never worked with text before. All he really needs is to build that correspondence between a written character and the language that’s already in his head – pure reading. You might argue that memorizing the top 50 or 100 characters would speed that up, but then again, the top 50 or 100 will appear so frequently in readings that there’s no need to memorize them separately. When you get up to characters that show up only infrequently, you might need to use flashcards or some other means of memorization, since it could be difficult to get enough repetitions of those characters in a contextual reading.

12

What a weird question. You are asking a guy to give up citizenship of a country he was born and raised in and has returned to live in? :thumbsdown:

My advice for the OP is to read comic books and take lessons at a university or to get a private tutor. I did that and it worked fine for me

13

Thank you for all your suggestions, I decided to first try to learn by myself as IronLady suggested, I am reading the Mandarin Daily News everyday. Some articles are harder than others (politics or econonomy -related) but they are definitely more interesting than kid stories about dogs or cats :laughing:

Additionally I am also using an app called skritter to try to learn to read / write single characters and words.

So far, so good, it is a lot of work but I am lucky to have a supportive family to help me and answer all my questions. If at some point I feel like I am stalling, I will consider hiring a private tutor I think.

As for the question re citizenship, I am a girl so luckily I do not have to worry about draft etc

14

I’m working on a new site here: www.readtypechinese.com - with progressive lessons that teach you how to read and type in Chinese. It’s all free at the moment, since it’s a work in progress, so feel free to send me any feedback you may have.

15

That is a awesome site. Now if by clicking on the words and characters it can also play a clip for pronounce, it’d be wonderful

16

That is a awesome site. Now if by clicking on the words and characters it can also play a clip for pronounce, it’d be wonderful[/quote]
Thanks - I have a different site with a focus on listening, so I’d rather keep the focus on this one on reading / typing. However if you click on new characters in red, you should see the stroke order.

17

There’s always the online version of the 國語日報: mdnkids.com/ My girlfriend recommended it to me when I was in the US, but I didn’t follow it until I was living in Taiwan. You can subscribe to receive it in your e-mail, but I think that you may still need a Taiwanese ID number to do it (My Taiwanese friend let me use his.).

One click deep, and I found this for learning the Bopomofo: mdnkids.com/BoPoMo/

18

Obviously it depends on the teacher, buy waaaaay back in 1990 I got a lot of mileage out of one-on-one lessons at TLI. I would say I learned more there than later on at ShiDa or TaiDa.

I was only able to learn by way of the brute force and ignorance approach: memorize and practice reading. I keep up a maintenance level by reading novels and short stories with a Chinese dictionary. The very act of looking up a word I can’t read is such a pain in the ass, I don’t forget it.

19

[quote=“jerry spence”]

What a weird question. You are asking a guy to give up citizenship of a country he was born and raised in and has returned to live in? :thumbsdown:

My advice for the OP is to read comic books and take lessons at a university or to get a private tutor. I did that and it worked fine for me[/quote]

Not weird at all, since it is common to giveup citizenship to avoid military duty. My college room mate had to, since when he returned to Taiwan as a teenager, he was forced to sign a document promising he would serve in the military, before they would left him return to the US. So when he returned to Taiwan to work, the only option left was to giveup his Taiwanese citizenship. Otherwise American or not, he would be dragged into military service.

The good news is OP is not a guy, and Taiwan is not Israel, so she doesn’t have to worry about it