As more and more people begin studying Chinese, plucky entrepreneurs rush to meet the demand. Just do a search for “learn Chinese” on Google and you’ll see what I’m talking about. “Rapidly learn Chinese,” one ad says. “Master Chinese, and fast,” proclaims another. “Learn in 10 days,” they promise.
The truth about learning Chinese should not come as a big shock. It can’t be learned in 10 days, or mastered in even 10 months. If you really want to learn Chinese, you have to accept that you’re committing to a long process. It can certainly be fun, interesting, and rewarding, but if there’s one thing it’s not going to be, it’s quick. If your plan is to “master Chinese fast,” then you’re just setting yourself up for failure. The decision to learn Chinese is a long-term decision.
As with any long-term undertaking, it helps to have some clear objectives. It’s best if you know why you’re learning Chinese, and to have a series of “landmarks” on your way to that goal. You also need to make sure that you’re having some fun on the way, or you may not make it.
Let me use my own experiences as an example. (Note: before you get confused, it’s John writing this, not Ken.) I started learning Chinese my third year of university out of curiosity. I really liked it, and before long, my post-graduation goal was to move to China to teach English and become proficient in Chinese. In 2000, I moved to China and started teaching at a university in Hangzhou.
After about two years, I had pretty decent Chinese and was enjoying China. I had accomplished my initial goal, but I wasn’t ready to leave. I proceeded to spend the next year rather unfruitfully, without learning much, and without a goal. I then made two decisions. I would take the HSK in order to at least have official documentation of my Chinese ability (I didn’t major or even minor in Chinese), and I would move to Shanghai to find a job where I could use my Chinese.
Flash forward to 2005. I had gotten an acceptable score on the HSK, and had found a job in Shanghai. The job was OK, but I didn’t want to do it forever. I knew it was time for a new goal, so I set my sights on graduate school for applied linguistics in China.
About 8 years after beginning my journey into Mandarin Chinese, I am still not satisfied with my level of fluency. I realize that while graduate school has helped, it’s not going to take me as far as I want to go. For that reason, I am considering tackling the Advanced HSK after I finish my masters thesis.
Now clearly, my goals are vastly different from those of most students of Chinese. Linguistics is my chosen career, and Mandarin Chinese is my main focus. But after learning Chinese all this time, I’ve learned a few things:
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You have to really want to learn Chinese. What attracts you about Chinese? For me it was initially the challenge and the characters. I found that the more I learned about it, the more I liked it, and the more I liked it, the more I wanted to learn.
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You have to appeal to your inner child. Indulge yourself a bit. If you enjoy movies, then watch some Chinese movies rather than spending all your time memorizing those word lists. Yeah, maybe learning the words to a Chinese pop song isn’t going to help you negotiate the price of wool in an Yiwu market, but if you really enjoy it, incorporate it into your studies. Nurturing your motivation is an important part of success in the long run.
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Don’t be afraid to take breaks when necessary. You may think that “not studying Chinese” in China doesn’t really count as a break when you’re in China, but you’d be surprised how much you can not learn as an expat in China if you don’t try. You do need breaks, though, so you don’t burn out. Even if taking that year-long break in Hanghzou seems a bit long to me now, I know I never would have powered all the way through to the HSK without that break. Most people I know with good Chinese have taken similar long breaks. The key is to make the break long enough to revitalize your interest, but to have the self-discipline to get back in the saddle when the time comes.
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Have concrete goals. It should come as no surprise that this basic motivational advice applies to Chinese, but it often gets neglected. “Speak good Chinese” is not specific enough. Neither is “become fluent in Chinese.” Even if you’re making progress, you’ll never know for sure when you’ve reached either of those goals.
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Find a way to use Chinese in your life. Not everyone can move to China or find a job using Chinese, but this measure will help you stay on track. Even if it’s just a short trip to China, it will make all the difference.
At ChinesePod, we want to be more than just your study material. We want to be part of your study motivation, and we want to help with your journey. Please let us know how we can help, as well as any other thoughts you may have.
Wow, John, well written and very helpful. It’s hard not to get discouraged when my 5-year old and I started studying Mandarin at the same time and he can already hold a conversation, whereas I well, am still working on the tones. Thanks for giving the big picture…
Thanks John. This is just the type of motivational blog we need to inspire us to succeed.
You noted that after two years of teaching in China that your Chinese was “pretty decent”. Was this due to being immersed in the culture and language every day and perhaps learning from your students ?
The reason I ask…there is one fellow I met in a Beginners Chinese Class recently that spent two years teaching English in China. When he returned to Canada, he did not know one word of Chinese ! And this was obvious as he struggled with the language in the class.
How is this possible ?
Hi John, I have been reading your blog Sinosplice for a while now, and I am looking to move to China to study Chinese. I feel you have a good handle on the language and culture. I trust you might know what the best school to study. My husband is Chinese, but its hard for him to teach me and I need some structure to learn. We are open to live anywhere in China. Thanks for all you do to help us struggling to learn Mandarin!
Paul,
As for your question of “how is this possible?” I think the answer is all about focus. If you want to not learn Chinese while living in China it’s more than possible. A lot of Chinese learn at least some English, and (particularly if you live in a major city) a *lot* of the service industries whose services you use offer rudimentary or better service in English.
Plus, as a teacher, you’re teaching people who can speak English at some level, and so many of your contacts with Chinese are done with people that you don’t have to speak Chinese with.
I’ve met people who have been here a decade and can barely put two sentences together. It’s mighty sad, but reasonably common.
Paul,
I was in sort of a special situation when I first arrived. The conditions were optimal because: (1) I didn’t have any other foreign friends (not even other English teachers), and (2) for the first year I had a great Chinese roommate who didn’t speak very good English and was happy to help me.
On the other hand, I also had very little formal education in Chinese. After my first three semesters of Chinese class in university, I didn’t have any in China until right before I took the HSK, when I took some classes to prepare for the test. I know that many people who can devote a year to a Chinese program in China can make a lot of progress in a short time.
Hi John,
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I completely agree on the need for goals and milestones for any long term commitment, and am intrigued by your use of the HSK — twice — as a tool to organize and motivate your own learning. There was a recent discussion on this blog about HSK that I thought took a largely negative tone. It started at about the exact same time I began thinking of setting some milestones for my own learning, for which I thought the HSK would be just right.
I would add one more item to your list, which is this: identify some aspects of the process that give you encouragement. I grew up in a moderately bilingual household. My mother’s first language is French, but I was a *terrible* student of language, and all I got out of hearing a lot of French growing up was an excuse to be an even lazier student when I had to take it.
The reason I started learning Chinese is because of a friend of mine — a Westerner like me — who learned both Chinese and Japanese as an adult. I asked him how his learning experience differed, and he said that while Japanese grammar is hard but the sounds are easy, Mandarin is exactly the opposite. I had NEVER BEFORE heard anyone say that anything about Mandarin was easy. Similarly, you’ve pointed out that Mandarin has, unlike, say, English, an *EXACT* guide to pronounciation, which is precisely what most people find the hardest. A few positive vibes go a long way.
Have concrete goals. It should come as no surprise that this basic motivational advice applies to Chinese, but it often gets neglected. “Speak good Chinese” is not specific enough. Neither is “become fluent in Chinese.” Even if you’re making progress, you’ll never know for sure when you’ve reached either of those goals.
Man, does that ever sound familiar. I think it’s not bad advice, though in my own experience, I never had any specific goals when starting Chinese - which, indeed, I took up mostly because I was bored in high school Spanish - other than maybe a vague notion of eventually reading the original text of the 道德经. I did eventually get there, but by the time I’d reached that level, I was no longer particularly interested in that goal.
On the other hand, my Chinese has really plateaued in the last couple of years, with a couple of exceptions, and I’m wondering how much of that is due to not actually having anything in mind beyond “get good Chinese.” It’s not a bad goal, I think — it’s always good to be dissatisfied with oneself to a certain extent — but it’s not really a quantifiable goal either.
Then again, I do remember meeting people studying Chinese back in the States who did have concrete goals — “get hired by the CIA” was one of them — without actually having much interest in the language, and most of them never made it beyond the first semester.
John,
As a student of Mandarin here in the States, I can’t help but sense a mad blind rush to learn the language (relative to other languages of course). I completely agree with your post and think that most people studying Chinese at the moment don’t realize just how difficult it is and how much of a commitment is necessary, and are setting themselves up for failure. That being said, I was wondering if you would share some of your thoughts on China and the Chinese language in today’s day and age. I get the feeling that many, if not most of the people learning Chinese nowadays see themselves benefiting from the language in a business context. After having lived in China for 6+ years, what are your thoughts on this? Putting the idea of studying for enjoyment aside for a moment, do you see the Chinese language being as useful as some people expect it to be in the years ahead, or do you see it as an investment that might not be worth the sizable effort? Where do you see the Chinese language in a world context in 10 or 15 years?
It also seems that we are bombarded daily with stories in the paper about the up and coming Chinese economy (much like happened with Japan years ago). Do you feel the same way? What is the general consensus of the Chinese people when it comes to this topic?
A bit about me: I’ll admit that I started learning Chinese because it seemed like it would be a worthwhile investment, but now I continue studying simply because I enjoy it. If I still pictured the language as solely a tool to be learned, I probably would have given up long ago. It’s been a great mental exercise, and I think I’m addicted.
I spent a year studying Mandarin at Beida. Most of that time was spent grappling with the characters even though I was hearing good spoken Chinese at least 5 hours a day. I thought I had made poor progress until I subsequently found Chinesepod which I am using as a consolidating reinforcement of what I learned in China. It is amazing. CP is not only bringing everything back but making it so relevant and “edgy”. I now realise that I had much more in the subconscious than I thought. I have a lot of second language interference (speaking Hong Kong Cantonese) but CP helps to remove that and motivates me intensely.
GOALS - and taking breaks. About half a year ago I started muttering to myself about an exit strategy, of course I did this here on Cpod somewhere in the blog or comments. Nobody really picked up on it.
These days I’m goal-less, but it’s not what you think. I actually accomplished my earlier goals! I didn’t give up and I’m sure I’ll still keep growing in my Chinese. I’m not a fan of HSK, nor most tests, so that route won’t work for me.
I’m looking for ideas, so here’s the goals I’ve passed, and those I know I haven’t. Any others out here for me to try?
ACCOMPLISHED
-I recognize most of what’s on the menu (of a standard menu, not high-end fancy-smanz restaurants with weird names for everythign)
-I recognize the signs around me, I can say them outloud. You know important signs like the ‘pi e ka da’ Pierre Cardin furniture store. j/k (I’m in China. I was Lost in Translation when I first arrived.)
-When I feel like it, I can go 3-4 rounds in a bargaining session (those sellers that get to round 5+ still out-gun me)
-I can read 90% of Doraemon comics. I’m working on more ‘grown up comics now. You know, those for junior-high kids.
-I will cry watching a good Chinese drama, or Korean/Japanese drama dubbed and with sub-titles (cry only when they kill off the beautiful female lead or make her life miserable).
-I can understand and engage in conversations with Chinese friends (these are friends who can read ‘in-between’ the lines and figure out what I’m saying, not some random stranger). Some converstations I’m glad I can’t understand.
-I can text pretty much most messages in my mobile phone, in Chinese. Enough to meet up with people, etc. I can’t read the spam yet. Blessing?
-I can handwrite in Chinese, it’s not super fluid, but at least it doesn’t look like kid block printing, and I know where to swerve and re-jig the order of the strokes to make it ‘handwriteable.
-When people aren’t paying attention, they take about 4-6 minutes before they start wondering about my ‘weird Chinese. This is versus the first 1-3 seconds when I first started.
CAN’T DO
- I can’t yell loud enough, ‘xia che’, in the bus to get the busdriver to stop. I don’t really enunciate loud enough (yell) in Chinese. People say I speak like a sweet girl…ugg. GRR.
- I can’t confidently YELL fuwuyuan, or maidan, in the restaurant without feeling that my pronunciation goes to shot. When are we having the Learn to Yell in Chinese podcast that we can safely ‘practice’ in the car?
- I can’t read a newspaper (I can read some articles and the paparazzi photo captions)
- I don’t really enjoy trying to phone in a take-out order.
- I can’t really say the abstract or sarcastic things that I want to, in Chinese. Plus/minus?
- When I handwrite characters, yah I resort to pinyin and getting a picklist off of my mobile.
What other ‘markers’ or milestones do others have? I’d really like to hear from some long-time learners. Those that are 3-5 years plus in China.
I really thought what John said was important, motivation is key and that it’s a long-term process. I also want to say that we should distinguish between long-term and “hard”.
I don’t think Chinese is particularly hard to learn, but like any language, there’s just a lot to learn. In a grown-up busy life, this means it competes with lots of other stuff for my attention.
Having fun, attainable, concrete goals invents segments of time that make the years slip away. I’m in year 2 and it just feels like I started!
Hi John,
I remember the very first show you were in (the one on buying plane tickets). My wife came into the room, listened for a while, and then stated: “I think it was a good idea to switch to all-native-casts for those Intermediate shows. I always said they should do this.”
And after a while she added respectfully: “And this new guy is not bad with his English either!”.
Oh, I envy you for your Chinese abilities…
Lantian mentioned something really interesting: reading comics in chinese. I once taught a (now ex) girlfriend a lot of French using comic books, and I remember from my own experiences learning German that reading comics was a huge help.
So, any good beginner or intermediate chinese comics anyone can recommend?
Christian,
I once bought Chinese versions of 2 of Hergé’s TinTin comics (the two where they fly to the moon from that fictional East European country). I can highly recommend those - easy Chinese, good stories, and I just love the stories
Wow, see how a little curiosity can take you. In John’s case, it has blossomed into a dedicated passion, work and discovering and enjoying a new world constituted by Chinese, which to me is the most gratifying part of studying languages.
While I can’t speak for learning Chinese as a second language, my experience with English might shed some light on the subject. And what I found strikingly useful is speaking to yourself. It’s almost as if you have split personalities and they all speak the language you are studying in your head. Very often, I’d speak out loud, but keep the voice within the level of sanity. I don’t know if any poddies share my borderline pathological approach, but it really works, especially when your surroundings give you only limited exposure to the language. I guess for me, it came as a natural progression from talking to myself ever since childhood. Being an only child with a super strict mum who frowned upon kids running around in our snail-size apartment, I had to create my own company of ‘friends’. Thus, the talking. I figured that since I’d been doing it in my mother tongue for all those years, why not do it in a new language to have company and learn at the same time?
Heh. I often speak along with ChinesePod while listening on the bus to work. People give me a lot of space
Writing to yourself is also good. I keep a diary in Hanzi, in a notebook for primary school students. It covers an extremely impoverished range of topics.
I’m so lucky. I’m the only one here who doesn’t have high ambitions that commit me to hard work. I only do what’s fun to do, and when it stops being fun I do something else. No deadlines, no sensible sounding goals, no reason to hurry, no need to know any particular amount of Mandarin. My single goal is to enjoy doing it, and the end product is incidental.
I feel constant social pressure to be more serious, threats of being lazy, wasting time and not achieving anything, never managing to learn enough to hold a conversation, etc etc, but I just laugh it off and go back to what I enjoy. It’s hard not to be swayed, but I need to remain firm on why I’m here. Once I became a language masochist, yeah I’d start learning enough to have something to show for my efforts, but I’d never again have this chance for 100% fun with the language. And then I’d have to motivate myself, think up some sensible reason for doing it and convince myself it’s true.
Jenny —
One thing I found very helpful while I was back in exile in the States a couple of years ago was mentally translating whatever was going on into Chinese, both in my head and in my notebooks. Not only did it help keep my Chinese alive back in the wilds of Philadelphia, but it served as entertainment during otherwise intensely boring classes. (That said, I had to give up on this during my classical Greek class: I was having enough of a problem understanding the grammar in English without making myself scrabble for ways to say, e.g., “perfective aorist” in Chinese!) I also made myself record a five-minute summary of my day in Chinese every night, so keeping up a running commentary on things in Chinese during the day made that a bit easier.
Greg — those primary school notebooks with the character grids printed in ‘em are lifesavers. I go through about three of them a month.
AuntySue -
More power to you! You may well be lucky. As for me, I’m a bit compulsive, and right now mandarin is where I get my fix. My wife says “as obsessive hobbies go, it’s better that Sudoku”.
I think the issue is expectations. Being fluent in Mandarin, particularly in writing, simply isn’t an option for most adult beginners, and certainly not for this one. I never entertained that kind of expectation. (This is probably becaue I was in my 30s when I first encountered the language.)
But I do love to learn Mandarin. For me, it’s about being able to converse, to feel like I can connect, get things done, and learn interesting stuff. I guess it’s just a cultural experience, rather than some olympian challenge I need to fulfill.
Ken Carroll
Jenny-
I do talk to myself in Chinese. Most times it’s in the coffee shop while taking a CPOD lesson. That doesn’t really stand out, but I’ve been ‘caught’ a few times walking down what I thought was an empty street. Very embarrassing, but I can’t stop doing it
I was fortunate to have grown up bi-lingual. I believe that has helped me in taking Chinese at a later stage in life. I will often work on just sounds (ie. Chinese ‘z’ softer than English version). Not just tones, but the sounds of what I call the ‘Chinese’ voice. And not being afraid to make those sounds when speaking.
I have a hard time when people ask why. I don’t have a concrete one and will just say I really like it. It can baffle people.
It’s a huge challenge that I’ll never master, but one nice thing is virtually all Chinese I’ve met typically have no expectations and often seem to enjoy it as much as I do.
ron
For myself, part of the “fun” part of this journey involves challenging oneself to integrate the learning into one’s everyday life.
I actively seek out real life conversational opportunities as part of my learning. For example, there was a Chinese person who came into our office looking a bit lost and so I immediately initiated a few basic greetings in Chinese, which led to further social outings and mutual language exchanges.
This may not be “fun” for everyone, since it can be a bit intimidating when the language partner starts speaking natural speed. But it definitely is a strategy that re-inforces the Chinesepod lessons. Thanks to Chinesepod, I found that it was easy to pull lexical chunks from different lessons when I needed them. And because these chunks don’t come from a textbook, you really do sound more fluent than you actually are.
I just want to do the basic normal things an average Chinese person can do in Chinese. Watch TV, listen to radio, read a book, have a chat etc.
Don’t care if I sound like a native (as long as they don’t have to strain to hear me).
Just that, when I get there I might set some more goals.
I guess if you don’t want that Aunty Sue then you are lucky too, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am not enjoying the process, and I am sure I will feel both wonderful and lucky when I acheive the above.
I wanted to extend my brain a last, final push before the neurons start dying and that has already happened which is nice
Jenny and Brendan,
I actually wrote on that very topic once before on this blog: Talking to Oneself Productively.
I appreciate this blog thread. Its interesting to read other people’s motivations and experiences.
When I first started studying Chinese, after getting up enough courage to mention it to a Chinese friend, she sent me an email saying “虎头蛇尾”. Every so often since, I have told her, “你不告诉我那个虎头这么大.”
It was an odd confluence of events that set my motivation, but my goal is to understand Chinese as well as I understand English. Since I started when I was 44 and I live in the US, it is likely that I will never achieve my goal, but I continue to spend several hours a week trying. 学习中文我感觉起来是自己填补的义务. I spent most of my life basically, comfortably mono-lingual, but decided I would be a better person if I understood things from another point of view.
Chinese is a puzzle to me and the fascination has not ended.
I had to learn 5 different languages in my life time,I strongly believe that one has to be totally immersed in the subject. Almost to the level of obsession, and with every different language I learn, I add a new technique.
Now that I am learning Chinese, I picked “Chinese Pod” as my “new technique” which allows me to further my obsession to new levels.
I listen to episodes in bed and a lot of the times I fall asleep with it, call me nuts! I wake up remembering a lot of vocab.
My favorite episode so far is “Mysterious Visitor” So far of course!
Brent’s post matches my own experiences exactly.
All the successful language learners I have known have been obsessive types. I know I certainly am. I am deliberately trying to take a slower and more relaxed approach in my study of Chinese because I don’t want it to take over my life.
Computers and the internet now allow the language learner to immerse themselves in the language without leaving the country. No matter where you are in the world, you can listen to Chinese radio, carry Mandarin on your Mp3 player, watch movies with Mandarin dialogue, and even exchange conversation via the internet.
Since sleep is the time when we consolidate memories, it makes sense to study just before sleeping. But you can also waken to the sound of the target language on your alarm.
I have also experimented with new techniques for each language I have studied. With Mandarin, I decided to do a lot of listening to material that was above my level but that I would be studying in the future. For instance, in my second month of study, I was already listening to the book II intermediate recordings of “Learn to Speak Chinese” of Fudan University, even though I only had the vaguest idea of what they were saying. As I progressed, I kept coming back to these recordings and was gratified to note how my understanding was progressing. I feel that this preliminary listening sped up my progress. I also used the 8 Cds (all Mandarin) of the Assimil “Le Chinois sans Peine” series. These contain 100 short dialogues followed by illustrative sentences. The books contain all the recorded material in characters, pinyin, French translation, and word for word French translation. So they would be very accessible to someone whose French was minimal or non-existent They are wonderfully well done, and written and recorded in such a way that you can listen to and learn material above your level without frustration. They do this by mixing new material with familiar material, giving lots of context, and by always leaving space for the listener to mentally process and/or repeat out loud. These recordings have held my interest longer than any other language recordings I’ve used, and believe me, I’ve used many.
I also used the Pimsleur Method, and found it very helpful, especially for learning in the car. My reservations about this method are: 1. Too much use of English and translation.
2. Based on a false premise that every new word must immediately be activated. 3. Giving the false impression that you can learn a language in half an hour per day. However, when friends ask me how to start a language, I always suggest they buy the entire Pimsleur series.
I discovered Chinesepod when I was already at an intermediate level and I am sure that I would have progressed much quicker if I had had access to this material from the beginning. I like the fact that there are LOTS of lessons, and that new ones keep coming. I also like the wide range of topics. I think that the smartest thing you are doing is to cultivate user feedback with your ratings etc. If you keep pumping out new lessons, experimenting with different formats etc, you are bound to find a good formula. You are right in not promoting as the only source of Mandarin input a learner needs.
I’m kind of hoping that someone at Chinesepod will check out the the Assimil recordings, particularly for the intermediate lessons. They quite different than any other language recordings I’ve known and might give you some good ideas.
I am new to Chinesepod, but not to studying Mandarin. My passion for learning has been reignited, after a recent trip to Beijing. I gave up my study after university because the only jobs were with the CIA. I went on to a career in art.
I am enjoying this thread. I know you are all kindred in this pursuit. A friend, wondering what kept me interested, asked if I found the language beautiful, as she does the Spanish she studies. My response was that I find it infinitely interesting. There is no end to the challenges of learning this language, whether the goal is competence in daily life, reading and writing, calligraphy, listening, bargaining, or simultaneous translation.
I feel a little old when I listen to the chinesepod lessons,
so thanks for keeping me young.
(A five year old on a bus in Beijing called me nainai)
Siyi