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.