Motivation to study Chinese

Language Learning Chinese
1

I’ve been studying Chinese off and on since 2002. And for a large span of time, I gave up on it; however, in the past year and a half about, I’ve devoted a great deal of time, energy and money (private tutors) towards improving my Chinese, and recently I’ve been feeling burned out by it.

I study a lot but in the end Taiwanese people still end up speaking English to me and many of them acting like they don’t understand me when I speak Chinese to them (not all thank god) even though I devote substantial amounts of time towards improving my pronunciation along with making sure my tutors always check to make sure I say everything correctly, so it’s rather difficult to get in a place where I can receive total language immersion. Additionally, in terms of culture, I’ve lost a lot of interest in it–(long story short-perhaps somebody can tell me something fascinating about it)

Enough ranting–how does one stay motivated and energized to study Chinese? I guess my motivations are possibly to have something to add to my resume and make the most out of my time in Taiwan while the biggest motivation being that I am fed up with speaking bad English with Taiwanese when it could be more natural to speak with them in their native language. My Chinese I think is better than a lot of foreigners but still crap in that I can’t converse naturally with a native Chinese speaker even after putting forth tons of energy towards learning-I guess this mindset is decreasing my motivation, who knows.

2

You mentioned that you’re hoping to have something to add to your resume, but is that it? Putting myself in your shoes, I’m not sure that would be enough for me, especially since you’re not so taken by the culture. For me, I’ve made speaking Chinese an essential part of my career plan, so not keeping it up and striving to progress is simply something I can’t afford to do. So maybe try and find a way to tie it in with your career goals?

I feel you though. But perhaps take pride in the fact that there’s very few who stick with it long enough to reach fluency. Once you get there, it’s like being a 9th degree language black belt!

3

i used to be frustrated as well, then i realized, it’s not your chinese that is bad, it’s those people that want to practice their english with you…so…if they speak english to you, just keep on speaking chinese. they practice with you, you practice with them!
try changing your study routine, go out with your tutor and do some activities, two of you studying by the book can get boring. museum, shopping, anywhere…mix it up…variety is the spice of life!

4

Find someone or something you like, and make Chinese language a part of it.

Music? Movies? Books? How about reading the news in Chinese?

5

just find people who can’t speak english. that way they will have to pay more attention to what you say, and speak slowly for you. and with time everything 's gonna go quicker on both sides.

6

[quote=“baberenglish”]i used to be frustrated as well, then i realized, it’s not your Chinese that is bad, it’s those people that want to practice their english with you…so…if they speak english to you, just keep on speaking chinese. they practice with you, you practice with them!
try changing your study routine, go out with your tutor and do some activities, two of you studying by the book can get boring. museum, shopping, anywhere…mix it up…variety is the spice of life![/quote]

  A mo' better method for this annoyance-start speaking to them as if you were doing orals for a doctorate thesis. I call it my "Hannibal Lector" routine. 
 
Quid Pro Quo-you want to engage me I shall engage you--Clairessssssss. Make sure to throw in a lot of slight cultural and literary references while you're at it.They give up and switch to Chinese       because its such a pain in the ass to communicate in Engaleeshee.

Or do the “There are eels in my hovercraft” routine to them. …Hey see… there’s a good example.

I gave up seriously trying to study Chinese after years of hardwork, time and money when I discovered how haltingly boring most of the conversations I was having with local people were.
" Wow I just spent a quarter of my yearly salary to understand why Ju, Ge-Liang is getting divorced!"

Don’t even get me started in on Mainland China.

I seriously enjoy talking to my mechanic and his 6th-grade educated mother more than most of the locals here. They are patient, un-snobbish and often have side-plitting observations of life and interesting stories about Taiwan in the past. Hell,Mandarin is their second language too so they know how much it blows.
My downstairs neighbor doesn’t actually speak any language he just grunts. I know he understands Mandarin because I always address him in it and he always grunts and nods accordingly. We have very cool 1 minute “conversations” like this about dogs, the weather, his plants, how much loud-speaker trucks suck, the hysterical lady down the street with 3 big hysterical dogs. Door-step missionaries etc. I speak and he grunts. You might say I’m learning a sub-language.
I need better Chinese to read things like housing leases, parking lot contracts, speeding tickets, directions on how to install my web-cam, reading specs on used motorcycles / I need to know how to write dirty text messages. You know real high-brow stuff they never teach you in school. I need to speak better Chinese to talk to bikini models when I’m really inebriated.

My long term plans are I’m going to start learning Chinese calligraphy and play the er-hu so that when I finally leave Taiwan I can live in a cardboard box on the beach in Encinitas, Ca.
I’ll surf in the mornings and sell calligraphy and busk the er-hu on the streets in the afternoons. I’ll be a Bukowski-like beach bum only without any of his talent.

7

I pretty much only learnt Chinese well because I was pissed that my Chinese was so bad. I didn’t want to give up half way!

A good way to get lots of practice is to go to those talking bars. Find a smaller one where they’re less likely to speak English; even if they can speak English, you’re the customer, so tell them to speak Chinese! It’s ‘rent-a-friend’, so they HAVE to talk to you, and they HAVE to talk to you how you want to be spoken to. It’s like a more natural tutor plus beer.

The good thing about going to those places is that you’ll meet other customers and become actual friends with them, too, so your network of ‘non-English speakers’ will grow wider.

8

What is a talking bar?

9

Um… I can’t think of how to explain it properly, so I’ll just write what happens.

You walk in and sit down at the bar or a table.
A worker joins you (at the other side of the bar or table). They will chat to you all night/play games with you to get you drunk all night.
You buy beer in jugs/bottles and drink out of small cups. The workers will drink your beer.
If you want your drink all to yourself, you can drink cocktails; the workers get free beer anyway.
The workers usually rotate, so you have various company throughout the evening.

They’re everywhere in Tainan, apparently not so big in Taipei (they’re ‘a tainan thing’, but I’m sure there must be at least one up there). You can’t touch the workers/take them home under ANY conditions, so don’t try. You’re literally just renting their company with the beer you buy (which is normal-priced; there’s usually a minimum charge though).

I know a lot of people who work/ed in these places (I did once too, for a short time); it’s fun but you have to drink ALL the time and be awake all night @.@; Great fun as a customer though. And excellent for practicing Chinese/Taiwanese (a friend of mine is foreign and working in a very gangster one of these, her Taiwanese is better than mine now… Chinese is still bad though XD )

10

:astonished:

I would’ve guessed a “talking bar” was an oxymoron.

11

Your Chinese will improve dramatically after about an hour in a talking bar. You’ll unknowlingly be telling fantastic jokes in Chinese as everyone will laugh at everything you say. You’ll also become quite handsome and not only the girls but the guys in the talking bar will tell you so.

In only changes again to very clear English when it is time to pay, so no problems there either. Just be sure in have enough money and dont be too rude because you might get some bonus Taiwanese lessons in the back alley.

12

I found Chinese tutors not to be of much help – boring conversations and an inability to offer anything. I didn’t start speaking Chinese a lot until a met a Norwegian guy. We discussed politics for an hour or so every morning for about six months. No English. That was good fun. So conversation should come first and the language part is just a tool, opposed to the other way around, which is what I find with tutors.

It also helps if there is some topic that you are interested in. Instead of learning that topic in English read about it in Chinese. For me that topic is Chinese linguistics. It is nice when you discover things that haven’t been written in English.

I started reading a book translated into Chinese from Japanese written by a Japanese anthropologist in Taiwan during the early 20th century. He lived with the aboriginals and did some archaeology. The book is really old and the font is old-fashioned, which I like. I’m almost certain you can’t find that kind of stuff in English.

13

Archy, I would love to know what that book is. In Japanese, if you’ve got it, but Chinese is good too :smiley:

14

I struggled with this aswell. I lost some motivation having acquired okay Chinese, good enough to converse on most topics and talk with the in-laws when they feel like talking. They are hakka so it is not so smooth for them either and many hakka people are pretty quiet!

One motivation for me now is making money because I deal with some mainland customers, their English is often poor to non-existent. I still struggle with finding people to have a decent conversation with…very difficult , a lot of guys especially seem intimidated by foreign males. Then ones with a certain education constantly want to practice their English instead of thinking what they are going to say or taking me as a regular person, puts me ill at ease and I don’t feel like continuing the conversation. I laughed at the guy talking Chinese to the Norwegian but I can really see where that is coming from!

I used to go to a version of a talking bar in Taipei and it was really fun, good bunch of customers and workers there and you could switch between English/Chinese as the situation desired.

15

The one I’m reading now is 《台灣考古學民族學概觀》，鹿野忠雄著，宋文黨譯. It’s archaeology oriented. But, the Tai Da library also has a bunch of untranslated books written by early 20th century Japanese anthropologists. If you are not into archaeology, I would look into 鳥居龍藏:

tulips.ntu.edu.tw:1081/search~S5 … horigarg=X{213b55}{21632b}{21615b}

The area of the library that his book is located in is a treasure trove, so you might come home with more than you expected :slight_smile: And by the way, even if you are not a NTU student, you still might be able to check books out at NTU. I do it all the time. Check with your librarian.

16

This might be good:

山と雲と蕃人と : 台湾高山紀行 / 鹿野忠雄著
tulips.ntu.edu.tw:1081/search~S5*cht?/X{216253}{215d3b}{213e23}{215f42}&searchscope=5&SORT=D/X{216253}{215d3b}{213e23}{215f42}&searchscope=5&SORT=D&SUBKEY=%E9%B9%BF%E9%87%8E%E5%BF%A0%E9%9B%84/1%2C29%2C29%2CB/frameset&FF=X{216253}{215d3b}{213e23}{215f42}&searchscope=5&SORT=D&3%2C3%2C

OK – back on topic :slight_smile:

17

I learned a lot of Chinese from talking with that guy and we had some interesting conversations too! The point, though, is that once you have something to talk about, wanting to speak Chinese is a lot more fun.

18

One more – 《鹿野忠雄：臺灣に魅せられたナチュラリスト》

19

Yo these language bars sound awesome! They combine my lifelong interest in drinking, speaking Chinese, and hot asian girls. Just to confirm, it IS hot girls, right? :howyoudoin:

Anyone know the locations of any? Is it prohibitively expensive?

20

Usually hot girls. If it’s a talking bar it’s no prohibitively expensive, hostess bars are though!

What city are you in, Chauncey?’

And archy, thank you! I’ll see if I can get them at my uni :slight_smile: