It seems Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn due to the sheer volume of things one must become familiar with.
I would be curious if you discovered anything you wish you knew before beginning
One of the main tips I come across is practicing speaking a lot more. Which makes sense.
I think speaking is probably one of the hardest parts when it comes to learning any language, but it seems like speaking can only come after you master listening and vocabulary–absolutely required to engage in conversation
One of the main tips I come across is practicing speaking a lot more. Which makes sense.
So I’ve seen the advice for this on both sides. There’s the speak from day 1 camp, and then there’s the mass input camp. Right now I’m solidly in the mass input camp, but TBH I could see it going either way. Perhaps it’s all just dependent on goals, whatever keeps you motivated, and aptitude.
seems like speaking can only come after you master listening and vocabulary
I’ve been thinking of something related to this. As an adult learner, at least in the beginning/intermediate stage, listening strength is incredibly dependent on vocab. I feel like I need to know a word explicitly (e.g. dictionary lookup) to be able to pronounce it or even pick it out in conversation. Consider the following thought experiment: If I said some non-sense words like “crumfinkle grepstarked alroughs”, with clear enunciation, you could probably repeat it back to me perfectly. However if a native Chinese speaker says some random 成语, you probably won’t be able to. This means that your brain isn’t actually processing the necessary bits of sound at the phonemic level for Chinese. However it’s hard to rule out that prior knowledge of vocab for the native language example isn’t doing a lot of heavy lifting. Maybe you’d be able to repeat the word “crumfinkle”, because your brain recognized the “crumb” and “finkle” (which is is just a rhyme of twinkle). Part of the problem for me is, it’s been a very long time since I’ve come across completely new words in English, so I have no idea what it’s like to be totally lost hearing a new combination of sounds.
Sidenote, I will say that after 200 hours of listening, things have gotten better. I can now listen to short phrases of unknown words and accurately recall the tones etc. This just means my brain is starting to passively analyze this information. I’m curious to know what it’s like for adult learners who have reached an advanced level.
I would be curious if you discovered anything you wish you knew before beginning
The thing I discovered, which I should do more of still, is try to have a good mixture of “freeflow” immersion where you don’t care at all about the grammar, the tones, etc., and “intensive” immersion where you do drill down on these.
I think I would have to join you on that one. It’s best to model after children since they’re the ones reaching native-level comprehension after all – Children just absorb everything and wait a good bit until they start speaking.
Though I guess one could argue that the babbling helps, which could be construed as “day one” speaking
That makes a lot of sense to me. Until one can properly assign the sounds to a meaning, even if you’re able to identify all of the phonetics and tones of what someone is saying, not knowing the definition makes it all for naught – I personally find this all the time when I overhear Spanish. Though I’m able to distinguish half of the words, the other half is composed of words I’ve yet to know – even if one could properly divide the sounds out, the phonetic information is useless without an internal mapping.
It’s definitely a combination of skills: the ability to pick out distinct sounds, and then map those distinct sounds. But I would agree that one often lags in the latter rather than the former. More often than not, the former is aided by the latter: knowing the words means you know what to listen for.
– Children just absorb everything and wait a good bit until they start speaking.