Job Discussion Forums

[real2104]

Hey everyone

My Chinese sweetheart (who speaks 3 languages fluently!) is trying to teach me Mandarin... the problem is I can't seem to retain any of it.

She can teach me 'good morning' and I'll rehearse it and perfect my pronunciation but then a few days later I've completely forgotten it.

any advise? I might be teaching in China sometime... so I figure it would be good to learn at least some of the language.

[7969]

You can't remember a simple greeting after learning and practicing it?

Learning the very basics of a language isn't that difficult. You may want to consider doing something else with your free time.

[real2104]

Is that what you say to your students when they have initial difficulties with a new language?

[7969]

No its not. I don't think I've ever come across anyone who learned and practiced "Hello" and couldn't remember it the following day.

[real2104]

Good to know.

As I've only just started maybe it will take sometime to sink in, some people are naturally good with language it seems and some aren't. Sadly I fall in the later... but I'll persevere and hopefully make progress.

Although if I do make any progress I'll definitely need to disregard any negative thoughts that arise like 'well, if I can't learn a simple greeting maybe I should do something else with my time' - What do you think?

[naturegirl321]

Haven't any of them, but I've heard peopel talk about Assimil, the Irish Polyglot Memrise, Michel Thomas, Rosetta Stone, and Pimsleur.

As for not remembering hello, that's ok. I've had students like that. After one semestre the guy still couldn't rememebr how to say "my name is" Everyone learns differently. Give up and you'll never learn. Keep at it and you shoudl learn something.

Learning from your girlfriend might be tough. It's a line that's hard to cross. I'd rather go to a school than have my hsuband teach me anything.

[morrisonhotel]

Anki is okay as a general revision program. It's a shame that Chinese is so difficult as language to learn to read as I've got all my social media/computer/mobile/etc set to Spanish. That's been a great help in learning to read and remember Spanish words.

[santi84]

I'm not "natural" at learning languages either, I really struggle I found my husband to be an awful teacher as well (he was very impatient).

I recommend arming yourself with a variety of dictionaries, textbooks, and any/all TV/music/movie programs that you might enjoy. It is helpful to immerse yourself in the language in order to get your brain to start thinking in the language.

I'm learning French as my second language but I did take Mandarin in university. My textbook was excellent, if you are interested:

Integrated Chinese Level 1 Part 1 Textbook by Yao (Published by Cheng And Tsui) - you can also get the partner workbook and character book.

[sparks]

If this is the first time that you've tried learning a new language, apart maybe from some high school Spanish or French, it will probably be more difficult. Don't give up, you just have train your ear and mind to listen and assimilate the new structures. I would recommend lots of listening at the beginning. Ask your wife just to speak to you in Chinese so that you can get the "sound" of the language.

[Guy Courchesne]

Try this guy's blog at http://www.fluentin3months.com/ He might have some tips for you on learning languages. There's a lot of other material there to sift through or amuse yourself with though.

[MotherF]

I have to admit, my first thought was--he's a language teacher and he can't remember the basics . Weren't you trained in this?

As for useful tips for you--how about downloading episodes of Ni Hao Kai-Lan? I mean, I've never attempted to learn Chinese and even I know how to say hello from mearly being in the room while this program is on.

It's also worth mentioning that depending on how your sweetie learnt her three languages, she may have no awareness when it comes to teaching languages. My MIL was a speaker of Mixteco--which is tonal like Chinese. She'd try to "teach" me by rattling off long phrases then asking me to repeat them--which of course got me no where.

[SahanRiddhi]

[santi84]

My short-tempered police officer husband tried to teach me his language (French), I think his lesson lasted 15 minutes before he tossed the textbook aside and called the local immigration language program for the next enrollment session

I don't think there is anything wrong with your sweetheart trying to teach you, as long as you keep in mind that you are actually just humoring them and have a good back-up plan.

[fluffyhamster]

It can actually be a bit difficult to simply pick up a language effortlessly if foundations are lacking. (I remember well one of those stupid "See how it feels to be a learner!" sessions during my CELTA, when a speaker of Greek or some other exotic language very few people would have any interest in learning swanned in, jabbered away with some basic phrases and then conducted drills for the alloted period, then swanned out again leaving not even a scrap of paper to serve as a record of the phrases and their phonetics, not that anybody felt particularly motivated to commit the language to memory!).

You will therefore need to get a decent introductory course with audio, and a dictionary or two. You don't need to spend a fortune on a fancy course, just something like Scurfield's Teach Yourself (Mandarin) Chinese/Complete Mandarin Chinese will more than suffice. (I'm recommending this rather than the superior T'ung & Pollard original version of Colloquial Chinese because the Scurfield is still very much in print, comes complete with audio CDs, and does a reasonable job of introducing characters from about halfway through, whereas the CC course may well be out of print, no longer have any original audio available, and requires a separate Character Text i.e. the main coursebook is Pinyin only). As for dictionaries, the one by Yuan & Church from Oxford University Press is excellent and fully Pinyinized, and comes in a variety of formats (from the very dinky, hardwearing and portable vinyl-covered Oxford Chinese Minidictionary to the larger and somewhat more generous appendices-wise Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary (the main contents of both dictionaries are the same though)). One drawback of the Yuan & Church however is that it only supplies simplified characters, so you may want to get something like the ABC ECCE (about the best all-around dictionary now available?) for when you are seriously embarking on learning the characters and/or visiting Taiwan or Hong Kong. (FWIW, one of the best traditional/Kangxi-based dictionaries is the Far East C-E, but if you do buy it, make sure you get it with Pinyin rather than bopomofo for the head and compound entries; note however that example sentences aren't alphabetized/Pinyinized). Another good dictionary for its plentiful stock of fully-Pinyinized sentences is the Collins Chinese Dictionary, Third edition, but although this provides traditional as well as simplified characters in the dictionary text/entries, there are quite a few "mapping" errors, and the index only allows look up of simplified (not supplying the traditional forms is a major omission). In any case, the CCD3 is available online in the form of the Reverso dictionary ( www.reverso.net ), though IIRC the Reverso doesn't provide full Pinyin.

Scurfield should provide you with more than enough pronunciation tips, new vocab, grammar explanation and practice etc, but if you feel that you need extra grammar resources then the books by Yip & Rimmington aren't bad (these range from the exerciseless Essential grammar, which is reasonably clear and comprehensive in itself, through the exercise-filled Basic and Intermediate Workbooks for those who like plenty of exercises to complement whatever explanations LOL, to the exerciseless Comprehensive grammar); then, Ross's Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar seems very functional and accessible (and has a Workbook, sold separately, though Ross's book of grammar exercises in the Schaum's Outlines series, i.e. Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar, is certainly better value than the MMCG workbook).

There are lots of free resources online - podcasts, dictionaries, sentence databases etc. Ask if you want some pointers. A bare minimum list (besides the aforementioned Reverso): nciku, mdbg, zhongwen.com .

The above is a lot shorter than this older post of mine:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=810277#810277
(Note that my comments regarding the ABC range supplying only Pinyin and no characters for example sentences is now out-of-date/no longer applies, as the recent ABC ECCE has both Pinyin and characters).

[cfli731]

Hello there new to the forum.
I saw this post and figured I might be able to help by throwing in my personal experience in here.

Chinese is my first language and I went on to learn to utilize English fluently.
The, more or less, traditional method of learning a new language never really worked for me. While I was able to pick up basic phrases I was not able to process them quickly enough in a conversation. As the result, I would be able to some what converse with the locals but never sound fluent.

That is until I when I begin associating each word and expression to an idea as opposed to associating them to their first language equivalent.

For example, if I were to teach you to say good morning in Chinese, your natural instinct would probably be to associate that to the English phrase "Good Morning," which is then already associated to the notion of a greeting used in the morning. This is probably a little easier on the brain and might work better with small children (Which is also probably the reason why we, too, are accustom to this method since we were young once), but you might be better off in the long run by bypassing the middle step. So instead, avoid ever thinking in English while attempting to learn to force yourself to associate the expressions or vocabularies directly to their notions.

Of course, repeated practice also helps a great deal
I hope this little method might help as it did for me.