Spoken/listening (and some reading) without writing

Language Learning Chinese
1

Hello everyone! I’m new to the forum. I plan to move to Taiwan in Feburary or March of 2016. Although that’s still months away, I want to start preparing for my life there.

One of the biggest reasons I’m moving to Taiwan is to study Chinese.

A bit about my Chinese:
1 - I lived in Chongqing, China for 1 year, and independently studied Chinese there the whole time
2 - I’ve been living in Shenzhen, China for the last 3 months (and will continue to do so until I move to Taiwan); I’m still studying independently

How I learn Chinese:
1 - I chat with friends
2 - I pick up new words everywhere I go (especially from chatting with friends), add them to my dictionary app, and then study them formally later
3 - I review vocabulary for upwards of an hour every day…although that might seem like a lot, I’ve found it to be the most helpful thing for me thus far
4 - I listen to audio lessons (like 慢速中文 podcast)
5 - I TRY to watch tv shows (like 家有儿女) but I find this tedious (because of the huge number of words I can’t understand) and boring (because of said inability to understand)
6 - Use grammar books and online resources to fill in the gaps
7 - If I can read a character, it’s by accident; I don’t formally study them, but I’ve managed to pick up a lot just because I message friends in Chinese every day on WeChat (CANNOT write by hand)
8 - Last but absolutely not least, I do a language exchange regularly

It’s worth noting that I’m pretty dedicated to my studies. On work days I study for 2-3 hours before work, and on the weekend I push this up to around 5-6 hours (including breaks).

All of these things have helped me to improve my Mandarin by leaps and bounds over the last year and a half. But I’m noticing some gaps:
1 - my listening is starting to far outpace my speaking…I want to stop this before it gets worse
2 - I’m finding it difficult to improve…I’m finding less chances to speak and also finding myself using the same patterns over and over (never the new ones)
3 - my freestyle learning has served me well up to this point, but I think throwing in some structure could really help me push forward

At the moment, even though I know the arguments against doing so (memory etc), I’m not willing to learn to write Chinese by hand. I spent many years studying Japanese (including living in Japan), devoting hours upon hours upon hours to learning how to write the Chinese characters in the Japanese language. After 2 years of not studying I had completely and utterly forgotten how to write all Japanese characters, but I didn’t forget how to speak or listen. I don’t want to do this again with Chinese. I missed so many opportunities to do things with local people because I was tucked away in some corner of the library or shut in my apartment studying characters…and it’s all gone now anyhow.

So, in Taiwan…I kind of planned to take a Chinese class at a university there, but I’m probably not going to be able to for the same reason that I have yet to take a Chinese class anywhere: writing. I’m not sure how I can get around it. It’s a shame that they don’t offer different sorts of classes. In Shenzhen they offer each class separately (reading, writing, speaking and listening), and you can get a discount by taking all of them, but you don’t have to. For reasons unmentioned, I’m not able to enroll at the moment.

Does anyone know of any schools in Taiwan that offer classes like this? Or does anyone have any general recommendations on how I can study Mandarin in Taiwan given my current goals?

Thanks in advance for all of your help!

2

Your listening SHOULD outpace your speaking. That’s normal.
IMO, there is no reason to learn to write Chinese by hand. People type for almost everything.
If I were you, I’d just hook up with a tutor (either literally “hook up” as in a girlfriend who will help with your Chinese, or simply finding a tutor somewhere). If you don’t need the visa, there’s nothing magic about language center classes, and much not to like if you know what you want, as you do.

3

[quote=“ironlady”]Your listening SHOULD outpace your speaking. That’s normal.
IMO, there is no reason to learn to write Chinese by hand. People type for almost everything.
If I were you, I’d just hook up with a tutor (either literally “hook up” as in a girlfriend who will help with your Chinese, or simply finding a tutor somewhere). If you don’t need the visa, there’s nothing magic about language center classes, and much not to like if you know what you want, as you do.[/quote]

I used to believe that writing was not necessary. It probably isn’t for most people. But, for me, a person who has dyslexia among other things, I found the practice of writing helpful though not without frustration. It helps you build muscle memory and for me, allows me to remember that each character I am writing is made up of smaller characters. It’s kind of a zen.

I’m studying in the night school in my village. I have no choice but to write the characters. Each person is different. This just works for me.

4

[quote=“ironlady”]
IMO, there is no reason to learn to write Chinese by hand. People type for almost everything.
If I were you, I’d just hook up with a tutor (either literally “hook up” as in a girlfriend who will help with your Chinese, or simply finding a tutor somewhere). If you don’t need the visa, there’s nothing magic about language center classes, and much not to like if you know what you want, as you do.[/quote]

I usually don’t agree with IL, but I do here. I cannot write Chinese but I can read really well. The writing is too much of a time investment with little benefit.

Tutoring is the way to go at your level.

5

Thank you for your replies! I agree that there’s nothing particularly special about the language classes at universities etc. I’m still planning my move to Taiwan and trying really hard to find ways to achieve my language goals. It just seems so convenient to sign up for a class and let them do all the work for figuring out what to study and when! Haha. But I just can’t help but feel it’s not the best choice for me given my goals. So, I’ll do as you suggested and look for a tutor, try to arrange some language exchange partners, find some new material by myself, etc. Still working hard to figure out how to actually use Chinese in my daily life in a natural, unstructured way…I can’t believe how difficult it has been to accomplish this seemingly simple goal!

6

I agree that a tutor would be the best way to help you fill in the gaps. You can find a tutor in Taiwan anywhere from 600 to 1200 per hour or you can do something with someone online. After one or two lessons, they will know your level, and will know where the gaps are, and how to help you fill them in.

That is actually what I am doing right now. I have had classes but now I’m doing one on one with a tutor to help me improve my conversation and fill in the gaps.

7

Knowing how to write by hand is not essential to learn Mandarin, especially nowadays that we do everything by computer/smartphone. Can you remember the last time you wrote anything by hand, even in English?

Regarding tutoring, it’s very easy to find a tutor, but not so easy to find a good one. I have been in Taiwan for a couple of years and learned Mandarin by language exchanges and tutors. However, even though I can communicate, my tones are not 100% correct. It’s usually not a big problem (since most people understand what I want to say due to the context of our conversation), but when it comes to names, address or even specific words, I face big issues. The worst part is that I got used to my bad pronunciation and it has been hard to find a good tutor to correct me (if anyone has a recommendation, please help).

So, when searching for a tutor, pay attention if they really know what they are doing or just someone trying to make some money. Trust me, it’s way harder to correct something wrong than to learn it right at the beginning…

8

Which kind of tone issues are you having?

  1. You aren’t sure which tone something is in the first place (memorization issue [for those taking most classes], or [better] you get new words through repeated oral input, but you haven’t yet gotten enough input/heard it enough times).
  2. You know what tone it’s supposed to be, but you accidentally said the wrong tone while speaking.
  3. You know what tone it’s supposed to be, but six times out of ten, if you try to pronounce a certain tone, people can’t tell which one you’re trying to pronounce.
  4. It actually has nothing at all to do with your tones; your basic syntax is so messed up that no one can make out what you’re saying. (Doesn’t sound like this one as the issue for you is only stuff out of context, like names and addresses based on your post). But most students who say they are having “tone problems” actually are having syntax and usage problems (or having them in addition to tone problems).

The solutions for these problems (singly or in combination) will be different, and the amount of time/effort it takes to overcome them will also be different. There’s not much to be done for #2 as a quick fix, because if you slow down and concentrate on tones, you’re sacrificing fluency, which may have a worse impact on communication and also on how you’re perceived as a person. For #1, adopt some sort of tonal spelling – I use TOP, but then again, I made it up in response to this kind of problem in my own Mandarin some years back. For #3 it’s drills with someone who understands how to explain the tones – and I don’t mean the “tones are like this” page in most textbooks, which is usually wrong on at least a couple of things. For #4, it depends on how long one has been studying Mandarin and how patient one is, because “fixing” crooked Chinese calls for massive input (ideal) or drilling (not ideal but more in line with what most teachers are equipped to offer) and going back over things that you think you already learned.

9

[quote=“ironlady”]Which kind of tone issues are you having?

  1. You aren’t sure which tone something is in the first place (memorization issue [for those taking most classes], or [better] you get new words through repeated oral input, but you haven’t yet gotten enough input/heard it enough times).
  2. You know what tone it’s supposed to be, but you accidentally said the wrong tone while speaking.
  3. You know what tone it’s supposed to be, but six times out of ten, if you try to pronounce a certain tone, people can’t tell which one you’re trying to pronounce.
  4. It actually has nothing at all to do with your tones; your basic syntax is so messed up that no one can make out what you’re saying. (Doesn’t sound like this one as the issue for you is only stuff out of context, like names and addresses based on your post). But most students who say they are having “tone problems” actually are having syntax and usage problems (or having them in addition to tone problems).

The solutions for these problems (singly or in combination) will be different, and the amount of time/effort it takes to overcome them will also be different. There’s not much to be done for #2 as a quick fix, because if you slow down and concentrate on tones, you’re sacrificing fluency, which may have a worse impact on communication and also on how you’re perceived as a person. For #1, adopt some sort of tonal spelling – I use TOP, but then again, I made it up in response to this kind of problem in my own Mandarin some years back. For #3 it’s drills with someone who understands how to explain the tones – and I don’t mean the “tones are like this” page in most textbooks, which is usually wrong on at least a couple of things. For #4, it depends on how long one has been studying Mandarin and how patient one is, because “fixing” crooked Chinese calls for massive input (ideal) or drilling (not ideal but more in line with what most teachers are equipped to offer) and going back over things that you think you already learned.[/quote]

Well, my problem is a combination of #1 and #2. I have no issue on syntax and my tone issues are divided between “not knowing what is the correct tone of a word” and “speaking it wrongly but not correcting it for the sake of fluency”. It happens mostly with the second and third tones, especially if they follow one another in a sentence (which would be 4 out of the 16 possible 2-by-2 combinations).

When trying to fix #2, I face exactly the problem that you mentioned, I have to decide if I want to speak correctly and sacrifice the fluency of the conversation or if I want to deliver the message, even in wrong pronunciation. I usually opt for keeping the rhythm of the conversation, but I don’t want to sound like a foreigner forever…

10

Here’s the thing. You can speak Chinese absolutely without tones, IF your grammar and word choice are all correct, and people will understand. I was doing an oral proficiency rating workshop one time and we had a recording of some student speaking utterly without tones – but with correct grammar and word choice. None of the native-speaking teachers thought it was necessary to mark him down on proficiency, because they said “There’s no problem understanding him.” (All of the non-native speaking teachers in the room thought he should be marked down severely.)

There are very, very few cases in which a word would be differentiated only by tone and would not be disambiguated by context. Look at a Pinyin-only dictionary sometime and you’ll see. “Buy” and “sell” is the big one, for most people. So actually cases where it is not related to syntax and word choice are pretty rare, if the issue is not being understood at all, or having a lot of trouble being understood. If it’s truly only tones and nothing else, the misunderstandings will usually be limited to single words or things out of context, like names.

11

I agree with what you said. In my case, people usually don’t have any problem understanding me, for the reasons you mentioned. But I think that speaking in the wrong tones is incorrect, regardless if people can understand you or not. It’s like saying “I can has cheezburger?” People will understand you, but that doesn’t make it fine.

I know that you don’t mean to diminish the importance of tones, but I can think in a couple of words that are not so rare but still may cause some confusion. Besides “buy vs sell” that you mentioned, there is “withdraw money vs small change” and the famous “dumpling vs sleep”. I remember the “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den” poem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

Adding that to the problem about names and address, and I really want to fix my pronunciation issues.

Let me share a related anecdote that happen to me this year (I know it involves wrong pronunciation besides tones, but still worth to share)…
During the CNY, I was watching a TV show presenting some things that one cannot do during this period. The next day, my wife suggested to go to YanMingShan. Then, I replied:

  • But, isn’t it against the traditions?
  • What?! Who said that?
  • We saw it yesterday in a TV show. Didn’t you watch it?
  • No, they didn’t say that. I would remember it.
  • Yes! They said that during the CNY one cannot “去觀光” (go sightseeing)
  • Really?! I never heard anything like that.
  • Or maybe it was that one cannot “去逛逛” (go shopping)…
  • Oh, I know! They said that you cannot “吃光光” (eat everything) during CNY! That’s because “年年有餘” sounds the same as “年年有魚”
  • … :astonished: :eh: :ponder:
12

Oh, I totally agree that we do want students to learn to handle tones correctly (speaking as a Chinese teacher). The problem is that the way Chinese is taught does not encourage this. Tones cannot be an afterthought (that’s why I started working with tonal spelling in the first place), but the easiest way to “get” them is to have them in your ear, not have to retrieve the information about what tone something is supposed to be and then apply it. My Cantonese tones are (I’m told) good, though I have no idea which tone is which – I learned each small stage of language by ear before reading the same language, and didn’t memorize lists of words before hearing the language put together. It makes a huge difference. My Mandarin tones were a struggle because I was taught traditionally and after ten years or so the cement has started to harden, mistakes and all. It’s tough to fix it later in the game.

One suggestion my grad school classmates in interpreting school made to me was not to exaggerate the tones as much as classroom teachers generally do. Sort of compress the range of pitch your voice uses for the entire set of tones (moving more toward, but not actually to, a monotone kind of delivery). They reported that sounded much better to them.

13

Yes, that’s the same difficulty I’m having!
You said that it’s tough to fix, but have you fixed it? If so, how? Only by not exaggerating the tones as your classmates suggested?

14

That was the quick(er) fix. That was a strategy to deal with the fact that when you do simultaneous interpretation, something goes when the cognitive load gets to be too great. It’s different in every individual; for me it’s tones. So at that point, I had a pretty good straightened-out tone knowledge, and tone performance was okay under normal circumstances, but when the output got stressed in simultaneous, the tones would be lost or go awry. In that case, narrowing the pitch band helped.

The longer-term fix I started before that. I spent a summer waiting to defend my dissertation, and spent every morning in the library doing interpreting practice on textbooks, working with a Chinese student who was going to be a TA and wanted to practice her English reading. That was when I really realized that my tone knowledge was often wrong. I developed a typeable tonal spelling system for myself (at that time, using only capitals and small letters) because at that time, it was very difficult to type pinyin on a computer. I found that using the tonal spelling, which required me to re-type or re-write the entire word if I got the tone wrong (rather than just crossing off one pinyin tone mark with another one, and then not knowing which one was correct the next day when I looked back at my notes) really helped me. I later added color-coding to the mix (I have online converters I use to color my flashcards and teaching documents) . I think it was the combination of using a more memorable writing system, doing intensive flashcard work (to make sure I knew what the tone should have been) and then outputting the tones under very controlled conditions (with a native speaker taking notes on the errors) that helped a lot. But fossilized errors from memorization are really tough to fix, and I still have the odd “OMG, you mean that’s really a fourth tone?” moments now and then.

15

[quote=“ironlady”]That was the quick(er) fix. That was a strategy to deal with the fact that when you do simultaneous interpretation, something goes when the cognitive load gets to be too great. It’s different in every individual; for me it’s tones. So at that point, I had a pretty good straightened-out tone knowledge, and tone performance was okay under normal circumstances, but when the output got stressed in simultaneous, the tones would be lost or go awry. In that case, narrowing the pitch band helped.

The longer-term fix I started before that. I spent a summer waiting to defend my dissertation, and spent every morning in the library doing interpreting practice on textbooks, working with a Chinese student who was going to be a TA and wanted to practice her English reading. That was when I really realized that my tone knowledge was often wrong. I developed a typeable tonal spelling system for myself (at that time, using only capitals and small letters) because at that time, it was very difficult to type pinyin on a computer. I found that using the tonal spelling, which required me to re-type or re-write the entire word if I got the tone wrong (rather than just crossing off one pinyin tone mark with another one, and then not knowing which one was correct the next day when I looked back at my notes) really helped me. I later added color-coding to the mix (I have online converters I use to color my flashcards and teaching documents) . I think it was the combination of using a more memorable writing system, doing intensive flashcard work (to make sure I knew what the tone should have been) and then outputting the tones under very controlled conditions (with a native speaker taking notes on the errors) that helped a lot. But fossilized errors from memorization are really tough to fix, and I still have the odd “OMG, you mean that’s really a fourth tone?” moments now and then.[/quote]

So, I guess the solution is tonal spelling, a friend/tutor willing to point out all errors, practice, practice and practice?

16

That’s been all I’ve been able to come up with, assuming it’s a case where the damage has already been done (as it was for me). It’s also useful to keep track of the errors to see if you can spot a pattern. If all your first tones are coming out as fourth tones, then that’s a specific thing you can maybe work on or be mindful of (though again being mindful of a low-level feature like that sacrifices fluency). The main thing is to try to figure out whether it’s knowledge, performance, or accident, and address the cause wherever possible (knowledge through making tones more memorable [tonal spelling, color-coding, scratch and sniff if I could figure out how to do it…], performance through drilling to get the muscle feel of the correct performance, and accident through – I don’t know, prayer? :wink: )

17

Thank you, ironlady! You tips have been quite useful!
Looks like my problem is very similar to what you had (the damage is already done). What I want to do now is to keep track of the errors, as you mentioned, and for that I need a good tutor who can point out these mistakes. Do you have any indication?

18

Well, you really just need a patient and a little bit picky native speaker. They don’t have to help you with tones, or plan lessons – just keep a list of words that didn’t sound right when you read something or speak (speaking is better, more natural for output). I used to sight-translate stuff from books in those sessions, but you could prepare a speech on some topic of interest, or something, I guess.

19

Again, thank you! :bow:
I guess it’s time to bother my friends to find who is suitable! :laughing: :wink: