Any interaction you can get with a native speaker beyond “Welcome to 7-11, NT$12 is your change” is all good. That can be hard, though.
I definitely have an academic level discussion with a highly educated native speaker almost every day, which I’ve kind of taken for granted at this point… I suppose that’s a consequence of always being surrounded by Chinese people with multiple masters or who have PhDs. Today I debated the reasons for recent Chinese Nobel awards, before that the Chinese eminent domain system as compared with Kelo v. new London, before that the implications of the Crimean invasion for Taiwanese independence, and the day before that the future implications of Deng Xiaopong’s economic theory for future Chinese social policy. Lots of humanities and social science type stuff, but really no science, which I perceive as kind of a hole. This is something that indicated to me that the CI route may be realistic for me, since for the average learner good Chinese practice is like finding water in a desert, in my situation it’s like being a dinosaur in a tar pit; I keep getting sucked back in. A Buddhist monk brought me on as a disciple in the USA (the strangest experience I’ve had with China) I was elected to be vp of a Chinese ethnic association, a fairly large and influential one, after being nominated to the post without ever having official joined. That level of contact is as I understand, extremely unusual.
I really feel oversaturated on speaking practice. I imagine that real progress comes from input, and that’s going to trickle down to speaking, right? I kind of feel like the limiting factor is input. Even with uniquely American phenomena, I can infer the proper expression based on Chinese’s structure. So I guess the best strategy is to seek out challenging materials as a background for conversation?
That’s nothing. I’m learning Vietnamese right now, but I also make sure to engage daily in intellectually in-depth discourse in Mandarin–just now I wrapped up a three-hour discussion of pre-Shang Chinese philology, and just to keep my conversation partner on his toes, conducted my remarks entirely in pre-Shang era Chinese.
I have 7 Chinese dialects at my complete disposal–18 if we are to include a stretch of the Yangtze where I regularly conduct ethnography interviews of the peoples who inhabit it. I do so, of course, in their own local dialects, each of which would prove utterly incomprehensible to you.
Later this evening I am meeting with the CEO of Alibaba, where I will help prepare the documents for the company’s IPO offering this year. He’s from Hangzhou, and while his Mandarin is serviceable (thanks to some tutoring I provide him), he’s found it hard to erase that backwater accent. Therefore, I normally polish his Chinese-language speeches and press releases.
It sounds like you’re at a low-intermediate level of Mandarin, but keep plugging away.
[quote=“Aijin”]I definitely have an academic level discussion with a highly educated native speaker almost every day, which I’ve kind of taken for granted at this point… I suppose that’s a consequence of always being surrounded by Chinese people with multiple masters or who have PhDs. Today I debated the reasons for recent Chinese Nobel awards, before that the Chinese eminent domain system as compared with Kelo v. new London, before that the implications of the Crimean invasion for Taiwanese independence, and the day before that the future implications of Deng Xiaopong’s economic theory for future Chinese social policy. Lots of humanities and social science type stuff, but really no science, which I perceive as kind of a hole. This is something that indicated to me that the CI route may be realistic for me, since for the average learner good Chinese practice is like finding water in a desert, in my situation it’s like being a dinosaur in a tar pit; I keep getting sucked back in. A Buddhist monk brought me on as a disciple in the USA (the strangest experience I’ve had with China) I was elected to be vp of a Chinese ethnic association, a fairly large and influential one, after being nominated to the post without ever having official joined. That level of contact is as I understand, extremely unusual.
I really feel oversaturated on speaking practice. I imagine that real progress comes from input, and that’s going to trickle down to speaking, right? I kind of feel like the limiting factor is input. Even with uniquely American phenomena, I can infer the proper expression based on Chinese’s structure. So I guess the best strategy is to seek out challenging materials as a background for conversation?[/quote]
[quote=“Aijin”]I definitely have an academic level discussion with a highly educated native speaker almost every day, which I’ve kind of taken for granted at this point… I suppose that’s a consequence of always being surrounded by Chinese people with multiple masters or who have PhDs. Today I debated the reasons for recent Chinese Nobel awards, before that the Chinese eminent domain system as compared with Kelo v. new London, before that the implications of the Crimean invasion for Taiwanese independence, and the day before that the future implications of Deng Xiaopong’s economic theory for future Chinese social policy. Lots of humanities and social science type stuff, but really no science, which I perceive as kind of a hole. This is something that indicated to me that the CI route may be realistic for me, since for the average learner good Chinese practice is like finding water in a desert, in my situation it’s like being a dinosaur in a tar pit; I keep getting sucked back in. A Buddhist monk brought me on as a disciple in the USA (the strangest experience I’ve had with China) I was elected to be vp of a Chinese ethnic association, a fairly large and influential one, after being nominated to the post without ever having official joined. That level of contact is as I understand, extremely unusual.
I really feel oversaturated on speaking practice. I imagine that real progress comes from input, and that’s going to trickle down to speaking, right? I kind of feel like the limiting factor is input. Even with uniquely American phenomena, I can infer the proper expression based on Chinese’s structure. So I guess the best strategy is to seek out challenging materials as a background for conversation?[/quote]
You are obviously intellectually brilliant, academically talented, etc.,
What’s holding you back is 你想太多啦！