I have been in Taiwan for 4 months now and I am trying to learn Mandarin whilst working as an English teacher. I am placing a strong focus on studying the language but it isn’t my number one priority here – I would just like to pick it up as I go along (if at all possible).
Based on other peoples experiences I would consider myself very lucky in that I have managed to establish myself in an environment where very little English is spoken. Outside of my full-time work as an English teacher I am constantly been spoken to in Mandarin and I am surrounded by Mandarin speech, writing and day-to-day life. My weekends are usually spent travelling to various parts of Taiwan with Taiwanese friends. Furthermore even at work the school cook insists on trying to squeeze out a little bit of Mandarin from me every time I go in to collect my lunch.
I have also amassed a huge library of study materials. I have got over 20 books on everything from reading, writing and pronunciation to Chinese history. I have also started using Rosetta Stone and I have bought numerous podcasts and audio cd’s which are just sat here waiting to be played.
I also attend a small class for 4 hours a week which I fully enjoy and find very useful.
All-in-all I guess that you would say great, get stuck in, you will be fluent in a year. However as much as I try it just isn’t working. That’s not to say that I haven’t picked up a smattering of vocab here and there which I can use to express myself but progress is painfully slow and I lack motivation.
I know that every situation is different and I can’t possibly expect a 10 point action plan from strangers on the Internet from the limited information that I have provided but does anyone have any insights as to how I can learn more. I just want to be able to participate in society around me.
I had a tension headache for the first year I learned.
The part where you said it wasn’t your top priority is the key.
If it becomes your top priority, and you study your ass off for a year to 18 months, you’ll be fluent enough. If you want true mastery, you’ll need another several years.
All of those books and study materials are just trappings, but I think you know that.
I wish I had better news. You’ve got to decide now if it’s worth it to you and you want to shift your priorities. For many, it isn’t worth it and I totally understand that, but if you really do get fluent, you want to say in greater China, and you’re smart and ambitious, your fluency in Mandarin will make a massive difference in your life.
My views on this subject will likely not be completely unknown to the regulars.
This is precisely why I like to call immersion “linguistic waterboarding.” Your brain needs certain things to acquire a language, particularly a language that shares little with your native language in the way of cognates, vocabulary and structure. Not to mention a rather inconvenient writing system that stands in the way of independent reading as a means to expand vocabulary. Most importantly, it needs to know what things mean in Chinese to acquire them. It rarely gets what it needs in the much-touted “full immersion” environment.
Acquire the language to what I’m now calling (master theoretician that I am! ) “initial fluency”. What I mean by that is, you have acquired (not memorized, not guessed through complex mime on one occasion, whatever) all the structures of the language, or at least the majority of them, the most frequent and important ones. You will have acquired a small amount of vocabulary in this effort. Then your task is simply to expand your vocabulary. It’s much easier to expand your vocabulary “on the ground” (achieve “working fluency” = grammar + a reasonable amount of vocabulary for your needs) when you have already mastered the structure of the language (aka “grammar” though we do not teach it separately in CI-based approaches). If you are struggling to figure out the grammar (the relationship between separate words), the pronunciation, the words themselves, a regional accent that differs from what is presented in most classes, recordings and textbooks, and a couple of systems of representing that language in writing – much of which doesn’t parallel the spoken language anyway – yes, you probably will not be successful.
In all of these scenarios, I’m talking about acquisition – automatic, unthinking mastery for production and reception over all the structures. I’m not talking about applying rules, stopping in the middle of a sentence to think whether you need to repeat the verb, or not being able to recall a word that you “know” because you only “know” it because it was on the quiz for Chapter 4 and you’ve never used it since, nor will ever likely need to. I’m talking about language keepers. Stuff that will never abandon you.
This is the case for about 96% of people. There is a small minority of people who can acquire languages given a discarded textbook from 1956 and a few hours locked in a phone booth with a rabid mink. Most of those become language teachers. They are the people who enjoy grammar, thinking about “why” language works a certain way, and memorizing things. Most people do not fall into that category. (I do, but I realize that most people don’t, and I’m teaching most people, not myself. If I were teaching a “language geek” I would use more analytical stuff amid the CI.)
“you will be fluent in a year.”
If Chinese was like Spanish, probably so. In 10 years(depending on what is meant by fluent)? Maybe – if you are very smart and study every day for a couple hours. In one of the advanced readers (The Independent Reader), the preface mentions that one essay is noteworthy (for just one reason) – it was written by a white woman who had studied Chinese for only 10 years!
If you like Chinese methods of doing business, you’ll likely be able to support yourself and live here for that period and have a chance at making your goal.
If not, you might quit while you’re ahead – before you’ve set yourself back a decade or two’s worth of time, money, and forgone opportunities.
There’s no reason you can’t be fluent (initially fluent: limited vocabulary but total ease in using it) in a year. There is not really much structure to Chinese, compared to the amount of structure you have to acquire for, say, French. You can acquire those structures easily in a year if you get a lot of high-quality input.
The problem is, the classes and experiences the OP is having are not providing that sort of input. They are providing low-quality input – input that he cannot completely understand, and input that does not provide high levels of repetition. As he points out, he’s gained some, but not much.
There is no reason you could not be fluent in spoken Chinese in two years, with a reasonably-sized vocabulary (which would continue to increase as time went on). Writing is a completely separate issue and for Chinese really most of the challenges have nothing to do with language acquisition. It’s memorization, the way it’s typically done. Recognizing that writing by hand is not useful anymore for the most part, and that computer input is the way to go, would greatly reduce the amount of time needed for someone to become competent enough to write an essay. Although for most people, writing an essay probably would not be the goal of choice.
I think it’s important to be patient, persistent, and set reasonable goals. Chinese people are generally very forgiving of Englinese. Keeping learning, and you’ll be praised for fluency as soon as you reach a “passable level”. However, the key to true fluency is to continue learning after reaching the passable level. To keep your spirit up, it helps to remember that most people who claim to be fluent are only passable (or not even that). One who is anywhere near fluency realizes that s/he is not there yet.
There’s a big difference between ‘fluent’ and ‘native/near-native’
This is just what the words mean to me, but:
fluent = can speak clearly, quickly, with next-to-no time needed to think about grammar, vocab etc. (at same speed or slightly slower than native speakers), meaning is clear and native speakers have no trouble understanding; may produce some ‘wrong’ grammar or misuse vocabulary. May or may not have a discernible accent.
(I actually prefer ironlady’s definition of ‘fluency’ as the ability to ‘fluently use what you have acquired/learnt’, but I think people with a very limited vocabulary who are only able to demonstrate fluency in a minimal number of situations probably wouldn’t count themselves or be counted as ‘fluent speakers’ on the whole)
near-native = much lower incidence of incorrect grammar or vocab use, no accent or very slight accent, speaks at same speed as native speakers.
native-level = indiscernible from a native speaker
I think there’s probably a great deal of people with fluency in Chinese, native-level and near-native level language ability is most likely a lot less, however.
If someone becomes fluent in the “initial fluency” sense, he’s acquired the structure of the language. For a language like Spanish, that usually comes with a pretty good set of vocabulary (for an English speaker, that is) because first it takes longer to input all those grammatical forms, and second, you’re starting with 40 percent cognates to begin with. For Chinese, the student wouldn’t get as wide a set of vocabulary on input by the time the structure was accounted for, just because there’s less structure to account for.
So for my mind, the most sensible way to proceed is: acquire the structure with a limited subset of vocabulary (the most frequent and/or the most relevant to your situation). Then you’re “initially fluent” in Chinese. Then expand vocabulary. With a broad vocabulary and automatic control of structure, the near-nativeness of your language would depend mostly on just how much vocabulary you have. Plenty of native speakers need to “cram” before a specific interaction if it’s not in an area that’s familiar to them, but since they have acquired all the structure of their language, it’s not a terribly difficult task (though it may not stick long-term since it is cramming, not acquisition, given the lack of repetition in their worlds.)
Anyway, what good does this do the OP? I suppose he could look into how he could improve the quality of the input he’s getting, to model good comprehensible input to himself by various means. I’d love to say “pick that cram school that teaches using CI methodology” but I can’t do that yet since there isn’t one in Taiwan. My personal preference would be to train a tutor to use CI, but it’s hard to train a tutor and learn the language yourself at the same time unless you’re really familiar with CI methodology and teacher training. It’s hard enough to get a traditional teacher to go that route if you just sort of spring it on them and they (honestly) cannot understand why you would want to do things that way.
I have been in Taiwan for 4 months now and I am trying to learn Mandarin whilst working as an English teacher. I am placing a strong focus on studying the language but it isn’t my number one priority here – I would just like to pick it up as I go along (if at all possible).
Based on other peoples experiences I would consider myself very lucky in that I have managed to establish myself in an environment where very little English is spoken. Outside of my full-time work as an English teacher I am constantly been spoken to in Mandarin and I am surrounded by Mandarin speech, writing and day-to-day life. My weekends are usually spent travelling to various parts of Taiwan with Taiwanese friends. Furthermore even at work the school cook insists on trying to squeeze out a little bit of Mandarin from me every time I go in to collect my lunch.
I have also amassed a huge library of study materials. I have got over 20 books on everything from reading, writing and pronunciation to Chinese history. I have also started using Rosetta Stone and I have bought numerous podcasts and audio cd’s which are just sat here waiting to be played.
I also attend a small class for 4 hours a week which I fully enjoy and find very useful.
All-in-all I guess that you would say great, get stuck in, you will be fluent in a year. However as much as I try it just isn’t working. That’s not to say that I haven’t picked up a smattering of vocab here and there which I can use to express myself but progress is painfully slow and I lack motivation.
I know that every situation is different and I can’t possibly expect a 10 point action plan from strangers on the Internet from the limited information that I have provided but does anyone have any insights as to how I can learn more. I just want to be able to participate in society around me.
All the best
Milky[/quote]
I think one year of classes to get the basic grammar and vocabulary is needed and after that you just put yourself in situations in which you can add to what you already know by immersing yourself in Comprehensible Input.
In my opinion a traditional Taiwanese teacher can help you learn the basic grammar structures in a year and you will acquire them by using Mandarin outside of the classroom. Of course I realize that not everyone is as fearless as I am to speak Mandarin with strangers in Taiwan. Then it is up to you to do the rest. Furthermore hiring a tutor to discuss certain topics of interest once a week will help to expand your vocabulary. Furthermore you can practice any common daily interaction you need to communicate in Chinese with your tutor.
Yes, IF they would focus on providing the structure and a very limited vocabulary – but that would be more like helping the student to acquire (rather than “comprehend and memorize”) the grammar patterns. I guess I don’t see the point of having the teacher simply introduce the grammar and count on exposure outside for acquisition, since a) acquisition is hastened the most by repetition on a smaller set of vocabulary, and b) you can get the same information from a grammar book, so why pay for a teacher
I’m hardly an expert I have only been here studying with a tutor for the past 7 months. My Chinese is no where near a fluent level but I know a lot of Waiguoren in similar situations and I have found my speaking ability pass theirs quickly. So I guess although my knowledge of Chinese is poor I could share some self study tips that have worked for me.
Don’t be afraid to speak Chinese with anyone. I know this sounds stupid but it really is true. When ever you get some new vocab actively look for situations in which you can use it. I can assure you lots of Taiwanese have thought I was pretty strange for my unprompted sharing of information about myself or asking of really obvious questions. It’s all just a chance to use the language in real life. Besides the ‘I want to go there,’ ‘how much is it’ etc language there aren’t a huge amount of opportunities to use the language beyond that level. So really tell people things they didn’t ask about and ask stupid questions anything to practice that vocab. I know it might feel a bit strange but I figure cab drivers and restaurant owners have little interaction with me outside of those scenarios I don’t care if they think I’m strange or if I give them a bad imression of foreigners as morons. Hell sometimes I’ll ask flat out ridiculous things just to get practice. What’s your favourite shape? I like circles but I don’t trust triangles etc. Although sometimes this backfires as people will think they don’t understand your question as they can’t see why anyone would ask such things. I think a sentence used in a real conversation is worth ten drilled alone without anyone to say it to.
If you are alone you can still practice your speaking. I think lots of people wait till they are outside to practice speaking and just write and read by themselves. Whenever I get new vocab I will try to make a new sentence using it in a way I can express a personal opinion or feeling of my own or a sentence to deal with a situation I have encountered in real life. Personalisation of vocab helps and you are more likely to be able to use it. Even better try to combine your new vocab in sentences with just recently learnt vocab and you can practice new vocab as well as review old. After that I’ll use flashcards There are a few around on the internet to go with the PAVC textbook series. You can then try to memorise the pronunciation of the characters for reading, but after each one try to say a sentence using that word. It might be your original personal sentence or it might be a new one if you are feeling particularly creative. Think of an example question you could ask to try and elicit that vocab in a sentence from yourself. I will often talk to myself in my apartment or often be walking down the street thinking of example sentences. If you have a friend who is supportive of your efforts as soon as you see them ask ‘can I say this…’ to make sure you aren’t drilling incorrect sentences into your head. Even people I’m not particularly close with don’t mind telling me if a sentence is okay to say as long as I don’t bug them all the time with it.
After you have already read the dialogues in your book and listened to the cds to the point where you are comfortable with them but not completely memorised you can go to the translation and try converting it off the top of your head without writing it down.
My problem is exposing myself to enough input. I like the PAVC textbook series but I don’t feel there is enough repetition. Everytime there is a new vocab item it should be repeated in a lot more situations so I can read and listen to it a lot more. Anyone know where is a good place to look for graded and topical sentences/ dialogues to read and listen to so as to up ones input?