Minimum effort required?

There are many activities in life where a certain level of effort is required and without that effort the final objective will never be achieved not matter what the time scale. I can decide to run for fitness, but if I wish to run a marathon in a respectable time then I have to invest the effort in training. Simply running for half an hour once a week may make me a little fitter but even after ten years of this I will not be ready for that marathon.

I believe that to learn a language you have to be prepared to work hard, either at a certain level all the time or occasionally in concerted bursts. If most people (there may be exceptional minds to which this does not apply) don't do this then they will only ever achieve a superficial grasp of the language, no matter what the timescale.

My understanding of the mechanics and chemistry of human memory is somewhat superficial (I haven't made that concerted effort to master this kind of knowledge). However there does seem to be an element of "use it or lose it". This use it or lose it principle would suggest that if you only learn in a casual manner then you will reach a point where you are just "treading water", a lot of your effort will be reviewing things you originally learned long ago or the new things you learn will be offset by the old things you are forgetting.

Seconds out, round one..

As I intimated in the last post, as news goes this is a little stale being two months old. But it is far too significant to leave out.

Language learning can be like a sport, even like an extreme sport. There is the training and preparation and eventually the adrenaline rush and thrill of the event.

A couple of months ago I found out that the manager of our Beijing office was coming over for a few days. In the past I avoided talking to him, I couldn't see the point if I was only going to exchanging the odd phrase or two (there are other places to practice that). This time however I sent him an email. I explained that I had been learning Chinese for a little over a year and would like a chat if possible.

Now here was the problem, almost every other time I have talked Chinese face to face I have had some control over the circumstances and some context to start conversation from. Now I am in an open plan office, some of my workmates already make fun of my Chinese learning they know that at some unknown time this guy will be around and they can't wait to see me struggle (its a guy thing, I am just as cruel to them when I get the chance ;)). As the day draws on my mouth feels a little dry, there is a tingling in my arms and my stomach is lurching a little.

Suddenly when I am least expecting it a smiling Chinese guy appears and shakes my hand. My heartbeat is thudding in my ears, I can hear knives sharping in the background. Dry mouthed I stumble through the worst Chinese greeting I have ever uttered. Kindly in English he asks me if I know about the tones yet. Damn this won't do at all....

World shrinks, open plan office vanishes, people vanish, there is just me and a smiling Chinese guy. I tell him I know about tones and apologize we start to talk after brief introduction, we talk about language learning, about Westerners learning Chinese about families ...... I talk in a slow measured way, that belies the huge amount of mental processing going on for each sentence I have to construct (this was the hardest part).

At some point early on he looks at me slightly incredulously and says "you can understand me, I can understand you". It was a surreal experience.

Eventually we had to finish, I discovered to my surprise that we had be talking for almost 30 minutes, and also realized that there was almost no English used. Obviously he was used to speaking to foreigners that may not have a good grasp of Mandarin but even so this experience felt like a huge milestone had been surpassed.

I asked a workmate if he was entertained to which he replied "once you have listened to a couple of guys speaking Chinese for 15 minutes it starts to get a little boring". Since then no one has made fun of my Chinese learning efforts.

That evening I was exhausted mentally but very happy. The feelings I had, the nerves that vanished, the total focus etc. were just like those I have had in past when putting on gloves and a gum shield and sparring with the expectation that I could get a little hurt.

Since that time I have actually tailed off a little, actually speaking to people. I have the confidence to know that I can quietly spend a little time building up more vocabulary and comprehension, then get back into playing the sport...

Blown away (overload)

I have big problem, I want to blog, but can't. I feel like one of those NASA probes that lands on a comet and they get so much data back it takes years to process.

The overload mentioned in the title isn't an overload in language learning, just an overload in insights, new discoveries etc. Language learning has already started to change my life and mind in so many wonderful ways.

This blog isn't really a diary, it is not a record of everything I do and I don't even care about keeping things in the right time line. It is nice to comeback and track some of my thoughts overtime though and sometimes is it good to put a little back by attempting to make suggestions that might help people in similar circumtances to myself.

So much to say ..... where to start ..... OH I know, hang on I will be back.

Video pt.1

Been very busy recently, language learning has not taken a back-seat (still remains a high priority) but blogging certainly has.

Increasingly I am looking to video materials for learning resources. Partly because it is a change of pace, and partly because as my Chinese improves I can actually watch things to relax (and learn at the time, you can't get better than that :)).

Looking at video from a strictly learning point of view, apart from the above, what can video offer over listening or reading? I knew there was another element but it was difficult to explain. Recently I got hold of the Disney film Mulan, very useful as it has Cantonese and Mandarin soundtracks. I skipped through it quickly and played a couple of bits just to see how accessible the Mandarin was. One place I stopped on was a scene that has been played out in lots of films. The invading army captures a couple of enemy scouts. The scouts are mocked and scared a little and then released to deliver a message to their leader. At this point you are thinking "Hmmm usually it is considered good practice to just send one enemy scout back" At this point the leader of the Huns scratches his beard and says "送信需要多少人？" a rather evil looking henchman replies "一个" with a murderous look and draws back his huge bow.

OK so what is my point? well the Hun says "Hmmm how many people does it take to deliver a letter", his henchman replies "one person". Simple language and with the right visual information you can enjoy lots of comprehensible input. Perhaps you are thinking that it is somewhat relative whether the language is simple or not, however consider the same story written down, I can guarantee that I am going to stumble over the language and have to resort to a dictionary at the moment ("drawing a bow" etc. etc.) I wouldn't have a clue". The same scene couldn't have been rendered as just sound either without considerably more information.

Video gives me more learning modes and more options and sometimes I can hit a sweet spot where I am still learning but in a fairly relaxed way (if audio content becomes so easy that I don't have to concentrate much, is also usually stops teaching me anything). The video acts a little prompt to help me absorb new patterns of speech.

I want to speak more about video soon, but for now: you probably know about watching Mandarin video on youtube, however there is much more available on Chinese sites. This page has a load of links.

Turning Chinese?

Apologies, a bit of a random post this one, things move so fast and my work has been extremely busy recently. Chinese learning is changing but I have climbed over a few foothills and am now surveying the mountains I have to climb to finish the journey.

Skype has lost favour as a method of learning. Although I learned so much from Skype, there are many disadvantages. The sound quality is often not so good in one or both directions and the lack of face to face communication with body language etc. makes a huge difference. I must get back on Skype to keep up with a couple of friends though.

I want to post more on here about what I am doing and how I am doing it. My approach is unorthodox but seems to pay off, maybe others will find some use. I also need to get back to posting in Chinese on my other blog :). Writing in Chinese is useful but I have mostly been doing it in emails recently. My knowledge of Chinese characters is coming on now, with the need for scratching away or spending a lot of time with flashcards. My plan of learning to read what you can already understand and learning to write what you can already read seems to be paying off. I still can't see how anybody could think it would be good idea for a Westerner learning Chinese for the first time to start learning the hanzi straight away?. Of course I suppose anyone who has learnt that way has no option but to think it is best. Maybe I too am stuck with what I did but so many things seem to make sense. For example the feeling of learning to read hanzi and going straight to Chinese in my head, never having associated an English meaning to the character (except via translation from the Chinese).

I have started learning Cantonese (in my own way). I think I will have fun with that. I have experimented a little in the past but waited until a couple of things occurred. Firstly my feel for Mandarin tones is good enough now that I can feel out the Cantonese tones without damaging what I already have. Secondly, I will pace Cantonese well behind my Mandarin studies, I find I am translating Cantonese to Mandarin to understand it, rather than English. That feel right and seems to indicate it is safe to learn them both now. I think I will have fun with Cantonese, it will also give me some completely different opportunities to practice speaking. As usual it is mostly a listening and absorbing excercise for a while, but my recent Chinese friend (who sadly is returning to China after such a short time) can also speak Cantonese so I got a little initial Cantonese pronunciation practice.

I will probably be a little busy finding out a new language partner for face to face practice. A complicated business but I hope it won't take too long. Actually I discovered I have three huge advantages now. Firstly many Chinese people seem to find it hard to learn English in an English speaking country (probably because most of residents are not learning Chinese so naturally don't feel like spending a longtime discussing the finer points of language learning). Secondly I can speak very standard English, which makes it easier for them to understand and they feel more confident that they are not picking up a weird regional accent. Thirdly I have advanced far enough with my Mandarin that they know I am serious about their language and culture and not just messing about, trying to look cool etc.

I am using Chinese as an excuse to break old habits and patterns in my life style (brewing oolong and jasmine tea at work instead of having coffee etc. etc.). Also using it as an excuse to re-appraise all the worn out thoughts and philosophies churning around in my mind.

Anyhow back to some serious study.....

Tones

The tones in Mandarin are considered one of the main problems for Westerners, who come to learn the language, and they have certainly caused me some problems. I think it is hard for someone who has grown up with a tonal language to understand the difficulties of those who have not.

I can say that I have made considerable progress. I try to do little things all the time to improve my feeling for the tones. Initially I was in the same boat as most beginners seem to be, I could hear the tonal difference of syllables but instantly forgot them (I am too used to this sort of audio information being used to carry emotional content in sentences, not changing the meaning of sounds). I also know for a fact that I am still a long way away from the natural ability of a native speaker.

Now I can usually discern tones in clearly spoken Chinese and can often reproduce tones myself. There are difficulties in sentences with some sounds and I have to spend a little time getting used to a new word (in isolation the word it usually easy but in a sentence it is often not so easy). I also have a few blind spots with common words, for example I can say ying1wen2 in isolation but often pronounce it ying2wen2 in the middle of a sentence.

Rather than going crazy over tones I tend to work on them a little all the time. I am constantly attentive to them, and try to do little things to improve. For example if using an online dictionary to check a word I think I have heard, I commit to adding the tone marks when I add enter pinyin (getting these wrong and wasting more time, tends to focus the mind). I sometime concentrate really hard on identifying the tones in Chinese I listen to, even if the words are obvious.

One day, I think I will achieve something close to the natural ability with tones that a native speaker has, I just don't know when. I don't think there is a magic bullet for most of us, just a gradual development. Initially you don't know enough words to get them mixed up anyway (it was quite a revelation when I first mistook lian4xi2 for lian2xi4 when the context was confusing, of course I was also focused on trying to understand the other words).

Some people equate musical ability with tonal language ability, I am not so sure, I can easily tune a guitar by ear, but only to itself, I don't have perfect pitch. I think a general continual attentiveness and time is all that is required. I think even a skilled musician will have problems the first time they encounter a tonal language. We are all different though, I would be interested to hear of other peoples experiences.

I was trying to think of something that may cause Chinese speakers a similar problem when they learn English. Maybe some of the more subtle sentence inflections, for example the hidden 'but'. When a statement is made in English with a slight inflection that tells a native speaker that the word 'but' should be added. "I like what you have done (but)." maybe the sentence that follows takes a non-native speaker by surprise in some cases if they take the first statement at face value?

iMandarin podcast

I discovered a new podcast recently. The people behind the iMandarin podcast seem to be releasing two a week. I think the podcast is intended to promote their residential training and possibly online training, however the podcast and part transcript with examples is free to download and use.

Many of the podcasts discuss an aspect of Chinese life or culture and there is much discussion after the dialogue about aspects of the language used. Almost all the podcast content is in Chinese.

I like them very much, I can understand most of the content first time through (with some concentration), and most of what I do not understand I can get on repeated listenings. I am just going to use these for a bit as a "busman's holiday" (a slight variation on what you normally do as an alternative to a rest) before I start a serious assault on the Chinesepod advanced lessons.

There are a few improvements that could be made to the podcasts, there is only only presenter, I think the background music could be dropped and they could probably drop most of the little English (sometimes the choice of words to repeat in English is somewhat strange). However this is just looking a "gift horse in the mouth" (being overly critical about something that is free). I think many people who were comfortable with the Intermediate cpod podcasts could gain a lot from listening to these also. And if below that level or wanting some reading practice you can always work with the transcripts.

All Change

Ok so now I have two other blogs connected to this one I thought is was time to move to one of the newer templates etc. Still a few things missing (like the other learner blogs), but I will restore these and appropriate feeds etc. I am even toying with the idea of adding a photo 真吓人!

Actually I am undergoing a little bit of a strategy change, my previous English blog post have been little more than disordered brain dumps (not so much written as regurtitated). I have to see how I can get it to work with the Chinese blog as that develops, but I am kind of hoping that eventually there maybe material that could be useful to a Chinese person studying English (including audio). I think with this internet game it really can be the case that the more you give out, the more you get back :). Special thanks to all the people (both Chinese and English and many behind the scenes) who have helped me on my journey so far......

Do I need to go to China?

I really, really, really want to go to China. That is a fact, indisputable and undeniable. Another unfortunate fact is that it is not likely to quite some time (zhen zao gao!). Okay so assuming I can be all grown up about it, rather than crying like a baby (Whaaaaaaaaa!) there is another problem. A number of people seem to be firmly of the opinion that I will not be able to learn Chinese unless I go to China or a Chinese speaking country. What if they are right? Personally I think/hope they are wrong and here is why I think/hope this.

I have encountered a number of non-native English speakers who have learned pretty good or even excellent English whilst only living in a non-English speaking country. If they can do this, why can I not do the same with Chinese. Granted that they may have a considerably larger exposure to English in their home country than I have had to Chinese, however there is plenty of material out there on the Internet now, so I can make my own exposure.

Whilst there are plenty of examples of Westerners who have learned very good Chinese whilst living in a Chinese speaking country, there are also many that learn nothing or next to nothing, so being in China does not mean learning Chinese.

The Internet also provides many opportunities to connect with and talk with Chinese people that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. In addition the few Mandarin speakers I have met in the UK regard it as a novelty if a Westerner attempts to speak Mandarin so they are very helpful (this may change if learning the language becomes more popular and they get fed up with the attention).

I concede that I will miss out on some cultural issues and standard day-to-day interactions until I go there, but there again even a trip to an American city where they speak English would result in some measure of culture shock until I adapted. So is there really any reason nowadays why a Westerner cannot learn Mandarin from their own country?

Mandarin progress report 4

Well this my fourth progress report after just over one year of study. I can honestly say it is working, but still a long long way to go. I still don't have any time for books or grammar. Obviously some of the questions I may ask are grammar related but I do not spend any time studying grammar for grammar's sake.

I finally learnt enough spoken Chinese to warrant a more intensive (although anything is more intensive than none at all) study of the characters. I did learn to write about 150 of them as part of this excercise but now have decided for me at least that writing doesn't help me learn to read and this year I want to learn to read Chinese. I have no idea how many characters I can read confidently it could be anywhere from 250 - 400. When I am confident it is at least 500 I will probably take one of those online tests to make sure I am not fooling myself.

My speaking is improving rapidly but still has a long. long way to go. Listening skills are way ahead of everything else at the moment. I listen to Chinesepod intermediate and upper intermediate amongst other things, I generally don't bother with the texts and can understand most of the chat and dialogue after a few runs through. Each lesson at that level is still chock full of things to learn though so I think I will be browsing and revisting these for sometime to come. I have also used some of the transcripts prepared by Goulnik and two prepared my Lantian as a boost up and reading practice. I also listen to the podcasts at Chineselearn online these are different to Chinesepod as they are structured. The first course of 60 lessons has been pretty easy for me as it starts at beginner level, but I learnt a couple of things and it was a nice review. I feel the course is well thought out. Occaisionally I listen to Serge's podcasts as he gives pretty comprehensive lessons on many helpful subject areas.

I use Skype frequently and have recently made a very special friend. Genuine connection with people is a huge boost to learning Chinese as then you are driven to learn more so that you can share more communication with them.

I am reading much more Chinese recently, I use text to speech, followed by annotation followed by dictionary lookup (in that order) to get over my limited character recognition skills. I can often read a lot of some student texts or simple chatty blogposts or simple dialog subtitles but obviously main stream Chinese is still a huge, huge challenge. I don't tend to read stuff that takes a lot of dictionary work too often. I am cruel to myself and am only really satisfied with fast scan recognition anything I have to stare at for a while I count as partial failure. I strong believe a sense of immediacy is important. Sometimes I chat in text in Chinese, or a mix of Chinese and English, this is good practice but I don't like the MS IME very much so I do not feel that I am fast enough (frustating those few times when I instantly know exactly what I want to say. As I hoped my reading ability is racing ahead to catch up with my listening ability. So for me at least I was right, and for those that thought this idea was bonkers :P (sorry I am dealing with being almost 40 by being a little childish at times :) ). At this point I truly believe I have lost nothing by delaying study of Hanzi and probably gained a lot.

Writing is very very new to me, I have started with e-mails and blog comments and am quickly moving on to a Chinese only blog. My next theory is that my writing will race ahead to meet my reading ability. I try to write fast and limit myself to few dictionary lookups. As a result I think my writing is relatively childish and contains many grammatical errors. I am happy with this I think if I can get enough correctional feedback my writing will improve. Most of the feedback from Chinese people would seem to show that my writing is easy to understand (if often incorrect) so I guess my expectations of childlike writing are met :))

When I can I watch and listen to Chinese radio and TV and films etc. Now I understand a lot, lot more so I actively seek out content I can understand more of and leave content that is impenetrable (therefore more chat shows and less news reports). My extensive listening seems to mean that now I am un-worried by fast speaking or a number of accents. What usually stops me understanding now is just not knowing the words (sounds daft I know, but I know what I mean :)). Often in various circumstances I have found myself understanding a stretch of Chinese without thinking about it and I think "oh how nice they put some English commentary in there (John Pasden stylee)", then I do a double take and realise it was all Chinese. Of course then for a little while I think a miracle has happened and now I can speak Chinese, until a stretch comes along that I have no hope of understanding and brings me down to Earth with a bump.

I think this is pretty honest appraisal of my progress so far, obviously pride will have made me over-estimate some things and modesty underestimate others (they rarely maintain a true balance). I now really believe that in 2008 I will be able to say wo3 hui4 shou1 zhong1wen2 without a single yi dian3dian3 and only a tiny prick of conscience. Hey that means I will be able to watch the next Olympics in Chinese :).