Still Sandman, your English is coming along quite nicely these days.
HG
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Still Sandman, your English is coming along quite nicely these days.
HG[/quote]
Heh? Heh? Ferragh awrrabhoys! Haw! Seeyouse faaaarrrrghin slovely, eh? EH?
I think there’s something else that wasn’t considered in the whole “you need a Taiwanese SO to learn Chinese” and that’s what is the % of foreigners who don’t have a local gf/bf. I would say it’s probably 10-20% so that would make it that much harder to find someone who speaks chinese but doesn’t have a local SO.
edited: (Hope I got it right! 
)
Anyway, today I learned that “Wen1shi4xiao4ying shi4 mei3 yi2 ge4 ren2 de wen4ti” = “Global warming is everybody’s problem.” The act of writing it down helps somewhat to reinforce that valuable lesson. I also learned that “tou3xie2” doesn’t mean “negotiate” as I thought it did but rather “compromise” which was actually the word I was looking for. As it turns out then I knew the spelling and pronunciation of the word but not it’s exact meaning but instead a word with a similar, or if you prefer, related meaning. Foriegn language learning in the geriatric community is an neglected feild of resarch I feel. In any event “xie2tiao2” means negotiate and chong3huai4 means “spoiled” as in “she acts like a spoiled bitch” and while it may appear that there is little or no relationship btwn these words they are however the ones I wanted to learn today. I will paste them above my bed and, using my expetional talents with regard to rendering pinyin into sound, record them willy nilly upon my tape recorder. Some day I will listen to the tape and then later, perhaps much later, I will die and the lessons will be forgotten.oi
Well, today was one of those days. Those days where I really wonder what the fuck I am hoping to achieve by trying to learn this. 45hrs fulltime work a week, then chinese on top.
Time I could better spend at the gym, or playing guitar, or riding my bike in summer sunsets.
Little b bob, what in heaven’s name are you babbling about? 
[quote=“joesax”]Exposure alone is definitely not sufficient. The input has to be sufficiently comprehensible (context can play a big part in this), and it also has to be involving and interesting.
Stephen Krashen cited some interesting research that showed that, in some situations at least, integrative motivation (i.e. feeling something in common with those who speak the target language) can be a more powerful determiner of second language success than instrumental motivation (learning primarily because you need to).
The research is cited in the second chapter of “Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning”. The whole book is available here:
sdkrashen.com/main.php3[/quote]Nobody wants to pick up on the integrative/instrumental motivation thing? I think this is a really interesting issue. I brought it up before in “Teaching English” but nobody wanted to discuss it with me. 
[quote]Well, today was one of those days. Those days where I really wonder what the fuck I am hoping to achieve by trying to learn this. 45hrs fulltime work a week, then Chinese on top.
Time I could better spend at the gym, or playing guitar, or riding my bike in summer sunsets.[/quote]
I clicked on “trying” but nothing happened.
Truant, it sounds to me like perhaps you just aren’t co-operating with your minds ability to learn what it wants to learn. I imagine that living here there are things that you would like to be able to say. Learn those things and put them somewhere you will see them everyday. I have a felt marker that I use to write sentences on the bathroom wall for example. Wipes right off later, sometimes months later. There is another list of words (probably a couple of thousand) and sentences (hundreds) up around my bed. I can review it and add to it whenever I want, and when I do I imagine actually using the words in situations with people that I actually know. Different sentences each time. Then later when it comes to using that vocab there is a lot better chance that it will be floating somehwere near the surface so to speak. I tape record all kinds of things as well. Much but by no means all is in the form of English sandwhiches which basically is the chinese you want to learn, it’s translation into English, and the Chinese again. I’ve got dozens of tapes I made myself and whenever I feel like it I give one a spin. They are roughly labelled but everytime I dig one out there is always a suprise, some vocabulary or somebody I’d forgotten perhaps. There are tapes and VCD’s etc you can use as well I understand but to be honest I never did. I tried the Shi Da program and think it is quite good even but as it has no resonance in terms of having recordings of people I know or the answers to questions I asked, usually “How do you say…in Chinese”, I just couldn’t stay focused on it. The tapes I could listen to for an hour a day and together with the stuff you hear on the street etc. it adds up to a pretty good listening environment. If you keep hearing the same thing over and over but don’t understand what it means ask somebody. Next time you hear it you’ll understand it and after a bit you will “really” know it and start using it yourself. It’s a great feeling.
this was gardner’s premise years ago already. presently doing research on “required” motivation, which may more aptly sum up what drives taiwanese students to acquire english.
thesis is due in a month though, so maybe then more discussion …
That’s interesting! I didn’t see the other thread. Well, having an SO who speaks the language could certainly be a powerful motivating factor. Especially if you don’t have another language in common!
[quote=“xtrain”]this was gardner’s premise years ago already. presently doing research on “required” motivation, which may more aptly sum up what drives Taiwanese students to acquire English.
thesis is due in a month though, so maybe then more discussion …[/quote]I guess you will be very familiar with these titles from Krashen’s bibliography then:[quote]Gardner, R. and W. Lambert (1959) “Motivational variables in second language acquisition.” Canadian Journal of Psychology 13: 266-272.
Gardner, R. and W. Lambert (1965) “Language aptitude, intelligence, and second-language achievement.” Journal of Education Psychology 56: 191-199. Reprinted in Gardner and Lambert (1972).
Gardner, R. and W. Lambert (1972) Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning. Rowley, Ma.: Newbury House.
Gardner, R., P. Smythe, R. Clement, and L. Gliksman (1976) “Second-Language learning: a social-psychological perspective.” Canadian Modern Language Review 32: 198-213. [/quote]
The interesting thing for me about the integrative/instrumental distinction is that it suggests another level beyond the simple extrinsic/intrinsic thing. It suggests that no matter how strong even one’s intrinsic motivation is, it may be “trumped” by the feeling of integration or not with those who speak the target language.
I think this may explain in part why people find it so irritating to hear the “ohh you’re chinese is so good” routine. It’s like a constant reminder that you will never be fully integrated and I think is sometimes intended to be interpreted exactly that way.
[quote=“bob”]I think this may explain in part why people find it so irritating to hear the “ohh you’re Chinese is so good” routine. It’s like a constant reminder that you will never be fully integrated and I think is sometimes intended to be interpreted exactly that way.[/quote]Well, my good Taiwanese friends don’t say that. Or they will say it sarcastically and I will have to think of an equally mean way to get them back.
I do feel a lot more “integrated”, as it were, with people who don’t feel the need to be overly polite. But it’s the same for Taiwanese people too. Somebody mentioned to me once that he felt that in general Taiwanese people feel more comfortable around Americans than English people because the English tend to be too polite. On this score I’m definitely an Englishman. It’s funny because the English style of politeness is somewhat different than the Taiwanese politeness so there is the potential for total confusion all around.
But I’m going off-topic from my own off-topic tangent here!
You mean to say that the early Jesuits to Asia got good at Chinese, because they had a local gf?
lol.
spend enough time with anyone, day in and day out, regardless whether you do each other, you should learn something of the other’s language. why the emphasis on SOs?
I’ve learned much more from taxi drivers than my dates.
Maybe bf…? 
Well, my good Taiwanese friends don’t say that. [/quote]
Precisely.
The ability to acquire a language is predicated on the need to use the language. For those who live in the bigger cities, Taipei…KaoHsiung…TaiChung…can get by without learning the language. For those of us who lived in smaller towns, Lu Kang for me, the need to learn the language was the only way to survive, good luck finding anyone who can help you out. I was so sick of playing the “point at the picture” game at the McDonalds in Lu Kang that I had my boss teach me some simple sentence patterns in order to order food. Sentences such as “What’s that” or “How do I say this” then I memorized the new vocabulary, after that I learned patterns such as “I want…” or “I don’t want”. It worked in three weeks I was learning new vocabulary, applying what I had learned and making real progress.
Survival is a great motivator to learn the language. When I started dating my gf, we would communicate in Chinese, and when I could make love and talk dirty 100% in Chinese I knew that my language skills had gotten to a point where I was pretty darn good.
Reading took some time and I can read sentences and some phrases, writing is not an issue however because I have dysgraphia which is a writing disability and limits my ability to write the language.
my two cents…