Hello,
ive hit what i believe to be a very early brick wall with my self learning of Mandarin. I am reaching out here in hopes someone can give me some tips, tricks, and advice to help propel me in the right direction. I will try to specify my issues and elaborate. Please feel free to ask me more specific questions if you find im not being clear enough in my struggles listed below.
First of all, i will let you know that my Wife is Chinese, so i do have someone to help with pronunciation, as well as a proper speaking partner when it comes to attempts at practicing words and conversation. Ive spent the last 2 months putting 1-2 hours a day into learning tones, and understanding how to produce them myself. i can say i feel pretty comfortable with my ability to parrot the right sounds, and know what something should sound like when reading pinyin.
Problem 1: Im having trouble finding a proper path, or direction as to what and how i should actually be learning. Im told i need to practice listening, but despite the large quantities of listening materials out there, I dont actually know what i should be doing. I’m actively watching and following along with videos, trying to say the words as i go to stay engaged. What am i supposed to be doing while “practicing listening”? is the correct thing to do is just keep watching over and over, looking at new videos and rewatching those over and over? I’m doing that now and i don’t feel like ive achieved anything.
Problem 2: I feel like i need a structure or something to follow. Like, “you should be able to get though these specific things before moving on”. that way i can see a goal to move towards. I’m not someone who can just make a goal, and start moving towards it. i need to see an example of what “should” be done, so i can better picture myself doing it. Is there a step by step way to learn that isnt vague like, “learn to listen, then learn to speak. then watch these 10 videos”?
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Problem 3: Im getting increasingly Frustrated with the process and find myself getting mad before i even start studying. I know its most likely because i dont actually have a learning structure as i mentioned above. any suggestions to make the concept of learning mandarin not seem so bleak?
Thanks again, and i know i rambled a bit. Im just very tired of not knowing what i should do, and would love some help.
If you build some vocabulary every day, you’ll be able to read graded readers pretty soon. Once you can read basic graded readers, your motivation will skyrocket. Every week learning vocab becomes easier. Reading becomes faster. You recognize far more words in audio and shows. Just by building some vocab (and doing grammar reading when you come across something you don’t quite understand.
Anki for vocab, DuChinese for ultra-beginner reading, AllSetLearning Chinese grammar wiki, Pleco for your pop-up dictionary and reading graded readers inside of.
You can find premade anki decks of vocab. Using anki is a primer for the vocab. It gives you a translation to work off of. Once you read the word in context enough times, you’ll understand the true meaning more clearly.
Its a big snowball. The more you can read, the more motivated you’ll become. Makes it easier to do vocab. Which means you can read more. And that repeats.
A good teacher would help a lot with straightening out your issues.
From what I gathered from your post, your biggest question is what to learn after you got past the sounds. Which is a great investment of time, you did great on that one!
To make it really digestible, let’s split the whole language learning thing into:
– Learning vocabulary (so you’ll have enough words to express your thoughts and understand others)
– Learning grammar (so you can understand how one thing in a sentence relates to another one and produce your own clear messages)
– Getting enough exposure to the way natives use the language (listening to stuff, watching and reading, everything goes), so that it cements together everything you’ve learnt and you start producing more natural sounding stuff with less conscious efforts.
Different people will believe you’ll need those in different proportions, some of them will even say you mostly need the third one. I’d say that people are learning in a different way, so I’d suggest you try all three.
All the vocab and grammar you’re learning should be relevant for you and suitable for your current level: at first you’ll learn how to introduce yourself and, let’s say, what to call your family members and not the astrophysics terms and how to construct super long sentences.
For all of that you might try: apps (HelloChinese is great for starters), textbooks (HSK Standard Course, Boya Chinese or whatever else you have), video courses or maybe even something else. Depends on what works for you, in the end all of them will teach you at least some very basic Chinese.
At the same time it would be great to watch easier stuff (like modern tv dramas, cartoons) or listen to things like podcasts for learners (ChinesePod, TeaTime Chinese, Maomi Chinese)
If you really like structure, following along the the HSK books/courses might be helpful. They’re definitely not all the vocab you need to know, but they do provide a helpful structure up to HSK 4/5, at which point you can listen and read reasonably tolerably and branch out into more native content for immersion. If you don’t like the HSK system, then pick some other textbook or course that you think would suit you best!
For listening, there are two types: passive listening when you have it on in the background, not necessarily paying full attention, just trying to get a vibe for what’s going on and get used to the sound of mandarin. Second, you can actively listen, where you’d make sure the stuff you’re listening is absolutely at your level (start from things like comprehensible input videos on youtube) and progress to podcasts for learners, then later onto native content. Those comprehensible input videos are super helpful at the beginning cause they speak very slowly and often have images to help explain what’s going on. Personally I can’t normally manage more than 10 or 20 minutes of this type of intensive listening, so I might watch one video, then perhaps watch it again later (or pick a different one).
You often won’t see immediate progress, so it’s helpful to sometimes revisit something later and see how much easier it has become!
Lastly, to do with frustration, sorting out your study routine and structure might help a lot here, so that you know your small goals more clearly. It also might help to find some friends (online or otherwise) who are also learning. A huge part of my motivation and fun in learning the language is helped by the community and friends in the 看剧学汉语 discord server. Having this group of people helps with finding better resources and learning strategies from more experienced learners, as well as great media recommendations, people to sympathise with the struggles and everything in between!
Early on some kind of structure might be helpful. I joined a night school class initially to at least grasp the basics of the grammar, pronunciation etc. That at least provided a very basic foundation to build from and an understanding of how some things worked.
Once you get past the initial hump I think it becomes easier.
Do you have a reason why you want to learn? Or is it just “I wanna learn”. If you don’t have a real concrete goal you don’t have a direction so the question of what to listen or what direction to go in has no answer. My goal was to listen to my students and respond so I knew the kind of material to search to make that goal happen. What’s your goal?
You would probably benefit from a proper class, at least to start. Tutors can be useful, but they are there *to help you learn*, not to teach. It can be a subtle difference but it’s important to understand where and how structured learning works.
I will also say that relying on your wife for practice and corrections is not really a great idea, unless you just like being infantilized. Most people aren’t good teachers, and it can be exhausting for the person who needs you to just be a loving partner.
Let me preface this by saying that 99% of textbooks are not great in my opinion. They throw a bunch of new vocab and grammer at you, give you two examples and maybe a short “email” or a tiny recorded conversation to help you “practice”. This is not nearly enough repetition if you want to internalize a language.
But now to the 1% of textbooks that do get it right, because the structure and steady build up at the core of textbooks is perfect for someone who likes learning in a structured manner. In Chinese the Beginning chinese series by John de Francis is better than anything I have seen to date. It’s old. It was published in the 1960s so you’ll learn words link ink instead of blogpost BUT it contains 48hours of audio just for books one!! (Of the repeat after me kind to) A whole separate book for characters; I think something like 200,000 characters of running text? Teaching you not just random characters but when a new character gets introduced you immediately get about 5-10 combinations with it (which allows you to learn to actually read!).
It’s a lot of work, the books are thick, but I give these books full credit for halving my time spent learning Chinese compared to alll the classmates I had when I finally did join formal classes
Hire a tutor for first 3-6 months
Listen to the ChillChat/Chilling Chinese podcast. It’s excellent. Hosts have great chemistry (they got married). Topic-based and a good mix of both English and Chinese speaking. Re-listen to the same show a couple of times and it will start to sink in.
As part of my learning plan, it’s been indispensable. I have faced and continue to face similar frustrations to yours.
Good luck!
Maybe a dumb question but have you tried an app like HelloChinese? I too like being GIVEN a structure that I can follow, and HelloChinese has a great course (free at first, then pay for the more advanced levels, but quite a reasonable price IMO) and has a variety of activities and focuses on pretty practical topics. Even as a heritage learner who started out at toddler level and has advanced to a weirdly intelligent* elementary school student level, I find it quite useful.
**”Weirdly intelligent” because obviously I am much smarter than an actual elementary school student, in the breadth of my knowledge and the complexity of my thoughts, but my ability to speak about those things in Chinese is still very limited.* 😅
I’ll just throw this out there – if you really want to dedicate yourself and see MASSIVE gains in just a few weeks, start using Glossika and practice repeating after the native speakers, matching their tone and rhythm exactly. You can search the previous Glossika posts on this subreddit. There’s a good amount of them. Glossika builds up on itself so the sentences naturally get a bit more complex as you go on (They have over 6,000 of them)