Job Discussion Forums

[jevon]

Could somebody a bit more adept at this whole search doo-hickey please help me find the post recommending good materials for learning Chinese. I've been utterly eluded.

[kimo]

Jevon, I am too lazy to help you with your search but try this link.

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm

If you are a beginning or low beginner level, you might not even need real materials, assuming you were in China. (But maybe you're in Texas.) What might be needed is a good partner - not a lover cause it never works - who will take a sincere interest in your learning. Mind you such a person is not easy to find and will take some effort to do so. If you can wade through the article at the link below it might be helpful. If I had it to do all over I would try this. I was too visual in my own initial learning and not willing to make mistakes. Learn the language through the language. Isn't that what I tell my students. I am my own worst student.

http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/nonbegnr.htm

It's a long article but well worth the read. The following is what he discusses.

[arioch36]

Are you in China or in your home country. Finding materials in China will be much harder.

Of course, you should learn from your students (outside the classroom) local shop owners, etc. Taking a semester of Chinese at your local college is also good.

Materials: One of my favourites has been "Integrated Chinese" (Simplified characters) printed by the "Cheng & Tsui Company" They also have lots of other materials.

You can talk most Chinese schools into adding 2 or 3 hours of Chinese classes into your contract

[MyTurnNow]

Your best "material" is going to be a real live teacher. If possible start with a Chinese-speaking foreigner and then graduate to the native speaker. Listening and speaking in Chinese is insanely difficult, and it's a hard language to explain to us, and you aren't going to get these well anywhere except from a teacher.

Do you want a good formal basis in Chinese, or just some survival Chinese? If the latter, and you are already here, look for a book called "Living in China" in the Foreign Language Bookstores. Kinda flawed as a serious textbook and it has some errors and shortcomings; this is where your teacher can help. But the content is really, really handy.

Arioch, not sure I agree on the books...most of the crap I saw sold in the States didn't seem too much better than the crap sold here.

But I'm intrigued with your Integrated Chinese...I want to learn some reading and writing. The books I can find here in China for this are unspeakably awful. My main books (Princeton University classroom series) are great at this...they teach bursts of 5 new characters that tie in with the vocabulary of the lessons. They clearly show you the order and starting point of each stroke. Unfortunately they're the old traditional characters and not the Simplifieds. Is this book of your as good in showing you how to make the characters?

MT

[jevon]

I'm in Texas right now. Heading to China in late August if I can ever decide what contract to accept. I basically wanted to start cramming as much Chinese as possible so I wouldn't be completely out of my element on arrival. (Yeah, that's right, I can speak three languages and am going to a country where only English will be worth a &^#&)

I think I would like to get some Survival Chinese beyond the erudite provisions of Lonely Planet, but really no more than necessary to say my "thank you"s, "please"s, "excuse me"s and "bugger off"s - reading street signs would be a good help too. Beyond that, I'd probably prefer to plunge into basic grammar so I can absorb vocabulary and usage. I've been pretty good with languages in the past, but I expect Chinese to be a long, tedious, humbling process.

I just bought a book off Amazon titled Beginner's Chinese by Chong Ho. It got some pretty high rankings, so maybe it will be good.

Kimo - the long article was great...but very long.

[Minhang Oz]

Street signs and railway station names have the Pin Yin version underneath, so needing to read these characters is not necessary [disclaimer: there MAY be some exceptions]. Bus and train station information boards are all in Hanzi , so learning some place names is handy. Basic pocket sized phrase books are a useful beginning......when someone replies "Ni shuo shenme?", you can show them the "bugger off" translation. The best one I've got is a Beijing Foreign Languages press job - a fraction of the cost of a Western one. Buy it here!

[MyTurnNow]

Reading pinyin is one thing. Saying them to another person is quite another. Learning to say and hear pinyin (complete with tones) very clearly is a great place to start.

China is loaded with signs that include pinyin, but they never include any tones. Exactly who these are supposed to benefit is a complete mystery to me.

MT

[kimo]

Of course, I am only the village idiot here on Dave's but now I'm going to flame you anyway. Did you follow the first link I left above? I doubt it. It has a lot of useful stuff to learn Chinese free. Listening, Speaking, Reading, the whole shabam.

As well, this link has the exact lessons you describe you want in your second post.

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/content.htm

15 simple lessons to get you started speaking and listening to Chinese. I suggest you listen over and over and over. Start building those little nodes and connections in your brain.

Again, I will tell you to read the article by Greg Tomson at the link I left. Make it a priority to find someone who will make your learning a priority. It is possible to learn decent Putonghua in one year if you go after it every day. Start as he says with massive amounts of comprehensible input. The 15 lessons will give you a base, as will some of the other lessons in the site I gave yesterday.

------

It's hot today. I'm dehydrated. I feel like a good fight. Fists preferably.

[arioch36]

MTN,

Part of the integrated Chinese package I mentioned has an excellent workbook just for learning to write characters. Sure, you are paying for something that is basically just empty pages, but it really helped me writing my characters. And you can get all these books in Simplified or traditional. Each level has three books and a cassette. One book for each level is simply a workbook to help you practice writing the characters you are learning.

Oh, I agree, books are not my primary emphasis in learning the language. However it definitely helps with writing. Learning to write characters from a Chinese person can be very difficult

Traditional characters might be more important then you think, if you are serious about the language. Many people, especially stores, use them for different things. To me, once I got a basic level, they started making sense to me sometimes.

Kimo, I agree almost totally about learning from another person...but

From a good book, you know you are learning correct Chinese (Lots of people speak bad Chinese). You can review what you have practiced with a book, and you don't always have to have someone around. Finding good, patient teachers who want to TEACH Chinese to you can be difficult.

Computer stuff is good, but you can't take it on the train with you

[Roger]

Over there in Texas, I suggest you buy a phrasebook (LONELY PLANET publishes one). They are more than enough for your survival. Add a dictionary with romanised CHinese so you can add words of your own choice.
One drag I have found with Chinese dictionaries - they are always English-Chinese or CHinese-English, never both.
Within China, you will see a plethora of pocket dictionaries and chunky ones as well. Textbooks for learners can be difficult to locate as bookstores stock rather arbitrarily. If there is no foreign student in town they have no reason to sell Mandarin learning materials.
If you pass through Hong Kong, go to Swindon and see if they have anything you did not find in your native America. Also the SCMP bookstore in the Star Ferry Central has some good Chinese learners' materials.
Inside the mainland it epends a lot on luckl!

[travesty21]

Roger I don't know where you are living, but I have a English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary. It is pretty small with a red cover really easy to use and carry with you. Every english student that studies chinese, that I know, has one. I got it in the US, but my girlfriend bought one here, actually the updated version, at the Xinhua bookstore. Dunno if you have one where you are?
I have enough study material to sink a ship, although I am a poor self study student so it rarely gets used. I would strongly suggest if you are just beginning to study chinese that you take a course. Not a 2 or 3 times a week deal, but a submersive one, 5 days a week 4 hours a day. I have seen people with no chinese skills excel quickly in these courses. The best is to take some time off teaching and become a student for awhile if you are serious about it. If you just want to get by it is still a good idea to take a 3-4 month intensive course. This language is far to difficult to pickup alittle here and alittle there and expect to be conversational and be able to understand anything. Yes after a year or two you can get by, but you really can't carry on conversation. I took an intensive course here and worked at the sametime. It was tiring until my job found that it was a conflict of interest apparently, I won't get into that. Anyways good luck.

[jevon]

I read it Kimo, but I spend at least 5 hours a day in front of a computer at work, so I avoid these things like the plague in my leisure. (And while I don't mind getting on forums at work, I'd rather try to learn Chinese in my leisure.)

Thanks for all the info. Y'all rock!

[aaronschwartz]

Too bad rocks can't swim!

[Seth]

Learning Chinese while in China is almost like shooting yourself in the foot. Then you'll understand all of the insults that are slung at you every day, but you'll also have some good experiences with everyday Chinese who can't speak English. It's a bit of a trade off. In Luoyang I was almost famous for being the (poorly) Chinese speaking laowai, but Luoyang is a really small and backwards city. All the bus drivers and shopkeepers around the train station knew me.

I have the Beijing Foreign Language press book, it's ok. It's a bit dated and they insist that you call all Chinese 'tongzhi', comrad. Nowadays if you call a Chinese tongzhi they'll most likely be offended as now it's taken to mean homosexual. It comes with a character writing practise book and a workbook. I bought mine at a university in the US, I don't know where you could get one elsewhere. It's called simply 'Practical Chinese Reader'. I also took Chinese for one term before I graduated uni and that's helped tremendously.