Ok, here’s the deal. I am loving Chinese class. I studied for 8 months at Shi-Da and hated it. Had a private tutor for awhile to review the Shi-Da book one and help with grammar, extra vocab, etc. A year later I am studying book 2 elsewhere and the class work is fine. I enjoy going. But the problem is when I exit the classroom. When I talk to people i find i understand the initial getting to know you stuff and the basics, but after that i am lost. And I’m not talking lockup. I’m talking I just do not know a good percentage of the vocabulary.
It is making me crabby about studying chinese. And I know I am expecting too much. But has anyone else gone through this phase and broken out of crabby and into “I love this!!!”
Is it just a question of time?
Are there resources for learning spoken chinese, other than the dictionary or foreign boyfriend (not possible!) for someone without a lot of free time?
Nail on the head. I reckon you’re at the point where you know enough to know you don’t know enough. I noticed that even at university at home - at first, you’re all “Yay! I know some Chinese!” and keen to try it out and everything, but then after a while, as you learn more, you start to notice the stuff you don’t know more than the stuff you do. As stupid as it sounds, this is a good sign. It means you’re making progress, even though it feels like the opposite. Soldier on, you’ll get through it.
I also found soap operas very helpful to pick up vocabulary, it is very repetative. Unlike Movies, where vocabulary and dialogue are gear to story telling within 1.5 hours.
I was lucky to make a friend who wasn’t interested in speaking English – she could, but she didn’t tell me for the first 4 months that I knew her. So we were hanging out 2 or 3 times a week, only speaking Chinese. I’d be mostly listening but still talking some, total about 10 - 12 hours a week in just pure conversation. This built up my basic conversation skills as I was able to hear and copy the things she said often. Then one day, she said a sentence in English, and my response was…
ac_dropout, good idea about the soap operas. I actually like to watch a Korean sitcom which is dubbed into Chinese. It’s called 順風婦產科 “Shun Feng Fu Chan Ke” and it’s on the GTV comedy channel (that’s #31 down where I’m at). Not bad…good for picking up new words. And the old guy on the show looks like a professor I know.
I agree with the other two posters who told you to keep at it. Keep plugging away. Pick up 10 or 20 new words each day from conversations you have with people. Write them down in a small notebook you can flip through when you’re waiting in line.
The pieces of the puzzle fill in pretty quickly when you apply just a little bit of persistence to the problem.
If you apply tremendous persistence to the problem, you’ll learn that much faster.
A combo of structured learning, like you’re pursuing right now, and unstructured, natural learning is best.
Create vocab lists that contain the stuff you can realistically imagine yourself using in your life as it is now. Make hundereds of sentences and phrases, find someone to translate them and use a tape recorder to record the translations. Listen to the tapes a lot. Also fill as much of your living space with vocab phrase and sentence lists. I have a couple of thousand up on my walls and I can tell you that at least for me it works. If you can find someone who speaks Chinese and English to hang with, then go out to reastaurants and stuff and listen like crazy to the conversations going on around you. Repeat the stuff you think you have heard before and get your friend to translate it for you. This will also provide you with excellent material for your tapes and vocab lists. Listening practice, vocabulary study and attempts at genuine communication are the keys to language study. Recently I have been using a pinyin english dictionary and every time I learn a new word I circle it. Frequently I can hear somebody say something, find what they said in the dic and mark it off. This means that I am doing focused listening and learning vocab at the same time. If I can’t make out anything I am listening to I just review what I learned before. I would recommend carrying your pinyin dic at all times (practically). If you do these things you’ll make it. The jury is still out on me though. I didn’t really start to study seriously until I was a bit over forty and I never studied mandarin in school so…
[quote=“yangdemei”]Ok, here’s the deal. I am loving Chinese class. I studied for 8 months at Shi-Da and hated it. Had a private tutor for awhile to review the Shi-Da book one and help with grammar, extra vocab, etc. A year later I am studying book 2 elsewhere and the class work is fine. I enjoy going. But the problem is when I exit the classroom. When I talk to people I find I understand the initial getting to know you stuff and the basics, but after that I am lost. And I’m not talking lockup. I’m talking I just do not know a good percentage of the vocabulary.
Thanks in advance…[/quote]
Reading this inital post…I have to ask myself why anyone is posting in Chinese on this thread. Is it normal for someone who has only studied for 8 months to be expected to read Chinese characters? Also yangdemei was talking about conversation so why ‘highjack’ this thread with irrelevant post that don’t address the problem???
Shengmar, yearhappy and anyone else, please have the courtesy to post in English or at least supply a translation when the thread is obviously by a beginner who is asking specific questions for help. I wouldn’t post the answer to one of your questions about Chaucer in Middle English, now, would I? Not very helpful, really!
I don’t have a problem with postings in Chinese but I think they should be tempered with considerable common sense and courtesy. Please take a moment to consider whether your posting has to be in Chinese characters or whether you are posting in Chinese merely to prove some point which has nothing to do with the point of the thread.
as silly as it may sound, tape record a natural conversation you have with an Engliosh speaking friend (maybe via on-line chat). Transcribe it, have your tutor help you translate it, then practice speaking it
Other than that, ( as the Scorpions used to sing)…“Time. Only Time, can bring up your Chiiiineeeese.” Well, close to that anyay.