I’ve stopped learning Chinese.
Or, more accurately, I have stopped learning any NEW Chinese. I’m spending a month or so on the Karate Kid method of language learning. I’m going to focus on the few things that I know, and I’m going to drill down on them until I know them with a nearly native fluency. I can’t say that I know how this is going to work, or if it rides contrary to all the scholarly thought on the matter, but I’m going to stick to my guns a bit and see what happens.
I’d love to hear from more advanced students on this matter. Did any of you just take a step back and review for a good long while? Inquiring minds want to know!
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I review… but I find it’s hard to resist tackling new material. But I think you’ve got a good idea here. I had a great skype tutor last summer.. After hearing my level of Chinese during the first lesson (4 years of quite diligent study but still extremely weak conversationally), she thought it was very important for me to first concentrate on the most common 1000 words or so that I already knew and be able to use them really naturally in conversation with her. That’s essentially what we did and I felt my conversational ability progress quickly, but I had to stop taking lessons after about 6-7 weeks unfortunately.
This has it benefits. Sometimes in frustration, I just think I should start all over again from the beginning. Then I hit an old lesson and think, “Why did I struggle so much with this before?”
I find it hard to practicing being fluent with a bunch of new vocab. So, after I go back to an previously studied lesson, where the vocab and sentence patterns have had time to settle, it is much easier focus on fluency.
I also find it hard to “practicing being fluent” in English as well.
My sense is that this works against you because it focuses on words and expressions in isolation and you run the risk of having a solid vocabulary but become tongue-tied when you actually try to use it. An exception to this would be to drill with something like Pimsleur, which uses a limited vocabulary, but provides a reasonably wide range of varied context in which to use it.
I would tend to side with Fu Da-Wei on this one, but to express it in a different way, the near native fluecy aspect with basic stuff comes with constant exposure in different ways, or rather I don’t feel a need to review the basics because they keep coming up (sometimes with surprising twists).
Pimsleur do manage to milk the most mileage they can out of a limited vocab, which is probably why many people feel it is a good springboard, but you would be hard put to re-create that yourself without encountering new content all the time.
Actually and surprisingly the Karate kid method doesn’t seem to work for teaching people effective fighting and self-defence fast either (I discovered this through various, karate, Judo, Kung Fu and finally MMA training. Generally speaking the most effective way to learn something is time spent on task (or a close approximation).
Ya know … I’ve been thinkin’.
“Mandarin Mutterings” really shoulda been: “Mandarin Meanderin’”
Maybe he just stopped learning Chinese.
Sometimes CPod seems to over-emphasize the cult of personality. Perhaps there ordinary people out who don’t smell of rainbows but who could have stayed more focused on achieving Chinese fluency?
Taking a break can be a way to get focus. Changing routine can be just as powerful. I get skiddish doing the same thing too long. Ever develop any favorites from the CDs you bought in SH?