Learning the spoken language before the written, focussing primarily on audio input

My point in learning the spoken language before learning the characters is that learning the characters requires memorization, where you have to learn and memorize the pronunciation along with the meaning. This ‘memorization’ of pronunciations without speaking the language reminded me of learning a language from a book or wordlists like in school, and I found myself resisting it when I started to do it at the beginning of my Chinese studies three months ago. Children don’t have to do this, as the word is already in their heads – they just have to associate it with a certain character. Consider this excerpt from page 2 of the introduction of Heisig’s ‘Remembering the Simplified Hanzi’ : 

“The Chinese themselves are not faced with (the) problem (of learning a character’s meaning, pronunciation, and writing at the same time). As children, they are exposed first to the spoken language, learning how to associate sounds with meanings. When the time comes to learn how to read, they already have at their disposal a solid basis of words whose sounds and meaning are familiar to them; all that remains is to associate those words with written forms. Doing so opens them to printed texts, which, in turn, helps them assimilate new words and characters. Those of us who come to the language as adults can gain a similar advantage by tying each character to a particular unit of pronunciation and meaning, a ‘key word’ in English, that we already know.” 

So you see, it IS possible to learn the meanings of the characters without learning their pronunciation, and that is exactly what Heisig’s book empowers you to do – I simply have not started doing this yet because I prefer to spend my time listening to the spoken language intensively in an effort to reach a level where I can understand authentic material as quickly as possible, and I am getting there fast after only three months.

Also confer this post entitled

Improving your Mandarin reading and listening without having to learn lots of characters

http://mandarinfromscratch.com/2009/12/02/improving-your-mandarin-reading-and-listening-without-having-to-learn-lots-of-characters/

This method is quite effective, but a bit time-consuming. I have since been learning primarily using podcasts from ChinesePOD, as they already come with a transliteration and translation below the phrases and include wordlists, as well as an extracted audio version of just the dialogues to listen to (all of which can be imported into LingQ), and there’s thousands of interesting dialogues.

In my next post I will be talking about my learning methods and schedule and how they’ve changed since I began.

Free Mandarin resources with pinyin, word-for-word translations and mp3s

***Friday, May 27th, 2011 edit – unfortunately, only zhonwenblue is still available, and as there’s no audio, it’s not very suitable for beginners. If you’re just getting started reading Mandarin after lots and lots of listening (refer to http://mandarinfromscratch.com/2009/12/02/learning-the-mandarin-characters-hanzi/), you could use this site to practice reading characters.

Though I prefer to use dialogues and not simply sentences for learning, I think this is a great and extensive collection of useful sentences to raise your awareness of the sentence structure of Mandarin.

http://www.zhongwenblue.com/

The Objective

The objective of this blog is to keep a journal of my progress learning Mandarin Chinese from scratch without learning the characters first, that is, only using audio, pinyin and translations, with listening as the primary source of input.

To see how I got started learning Mandarin, check out this post

http://mandarinfromscratch.com/2009/12/03/how-i-learned-to-understand-1000-words-of-mandarin-in-1-month/

In my next post I will be expounding on my reasoning for using this method to learn Mandarin (I hope to learn as a child would: listening -> speaking -> reading -> writing), as opposed to the traditional route of learning to speak and write at the same time, as most adult learners do.

How to Learn to Speak (Language) Fluently

My thanks go to Jeff Lindqvist at LingQ for turning me onto this site

http://sites.google.com/site/fluentczech/Home

On it, Anthony Lauder defines what he thinks fluency in a language is, describes his struggle with fluency in Czech, and gives great suggestions as to how fluency can be attained, primarily using what he calls ‘connectors’.

I recommend these methods for more advanced language learners, as beginners should still be concentrating on listening and increasing their aural comprehension.

Learning Languages Like Children

This is a re-post of one of my recent contributions in this thread http://www.lingq.com/learn/zh/forum/1/5099/ on the LingQ Open Forum

@ asadkhan

You may have been listening passively for 6 years, but HOW INTENSIVELY? (how many hours per day EVERY DAY)? Students in the ALG program, on average, go to class 3 hours per day every day for a year before they start speaking – that is, they listen very intensively over a relatively short period of time.

I’ve found that after only 60 hours of listening to Mandarin (an hour a day every day for 2 months), words and phrases are starting to just ‘pop’ into my head without me even thinking about them. I’m certain that this type of ‘thinking’ is not detrimental, as the words and phrases just ‘rise to the surface’ and you’re not yet trying to say them out loud. The ‘thinking’ the article refers to is trying to ‘come up with’ language (whether it’s grammar conjugations or vocabulary) instead of just drawing on the vocabulary base (which INCLUDES grammar) you’ve acquired from listening.

@ Cantotango

I do believe that words and phrases will come naturally if you listen INTENSIVELY and wait long enough to start speaking. Just ask Steve about his experience with Russian, which I’ve heard native speakers say he speaks very well – check out his video and the comments here

http://tinyurl.com/yzkc6a7

Notice that, although he has to think about what he wants to say, the words and phrases seem to ‘flow out’ quite readily, an obvious sign that he did lots of natural listening to the language before starting to speak to any great extent. And, although he may make some mistakes with grammar, remember that native speaker children ALSO make grammar mistakes (‘I goed’ instead of ‘I went’ etc. – confer Krashen’s Principles and Practice in SLA) and yet they still come out speaking fluently.

I think that, once you reach a certain level of understanding (ALG posits about 80%) after CONSISTENT and INTENSIVE listening, you’ve already established a solid pronunciation and grammar base, at which point it’s just a matter of activating your passive vocabulary (which, once again, INCLUDES grammar like conjugations and endings etc.) while continuing to augment it, which is what Steve says he started doing after about two years of learning Russian.

Finally, consider that adult native speakers also make grammar and pronunciation mistakes and yet we still think of them as ‘fluent speakers’.

————————————————

This is A.J. Hoge’s text and recording of an excerpt from ALG’s Dr. J. Marvin Brown’s article entitled ‘Learning Languages Like Children’

http://tinyurl.com/yfwef8l

The original and unabridged article can be found here

http://www.algworld.com/archives.php

Lingro (Ling Grow) language learning tool

Below is a description of the lingro language-learning tool, which I think is a great supplement to LingQ, especially if you’re an Anki user. Also check out Ramses’ description of the available functionalities here http://www.spanish-only.com/2008/09/lingrocom-dictionary/

Quoted from the lingro website (http://lingro.com/docs/about.html):

lingro was conceived in August 2005, when Artur decided to practice his Spanish by reading Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. As a competent but non-expert speaker, he found that looking up new vocabulary took much more time than the reading itself. Frustrated with how slow existing online dictionaries were, he wrote a program to help him translate and learn words in their original context. lingro’s mission is to create an on-line environment that allows anyone learning a language to quickly look up and learn the vocabulary most important to them. Whenever we’re developing new tools for lingro or planning the next big step, there are two principles we always consider:

• Knowledge and information essential to human communication and interaction should be free and accessible to everyone. This is why we created the most comprehensive set of free dictionaries available under open licenses so that anyone can contribute, download, redistribute, and modify the dictionaries for their own needs. These licenses guarantee that they will always remain free and useful to society. • To have the best dictionaries, you need to have the best tools. Every tool we create, from games, quizzes, and study tools to in-context word lookup is designed for you, the user. To us, this means that they should be intuitive, fast, easy to use, and hopefully fun. 🙂

Why you think you need grammar

Yet another great post from Ramses at Spanish Only: Learn How to Learn Spanish

http://www.spanish-only.com/2009/12/grammar/

I personally don’t spend any of my time learning grammar, as listening, reading and learning vocabulary are more interesting and grammar knowledge comes as a result, not as a precursor.

If it’s not top-down, get outta town.

The Simulganeous (Simultaneous) Method

I just recorded a new item to the LingQ English library entitled ‘The Simulganeous Method’, which I translated from the original German

http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/workdesk/item/888330/reader/

The original article was written by Matthias Poehm and can be found here

http://www.rhetorik-seminar.ch/simulgan-technik.html

Here’s the English text from the article:

Rhetoric Tip: The Simulganeous Technique

(note: ‘Simulganeous’ is explained below)

An important basic requisite for rhetoric is vocabulary. The more words you have available, the better you can express yourself.

The German language contains about 400,000 words. In the dictionary Duden there are approximately 120,000 words. Your passive vocabulary – these are all words that you understand, but not necessarily use yourself – comprises between 30,000 and 50,000 words. You know and understand the word ‘exalt’, for example, but would (probably) not use it yourself. And then there’s your active vocabulary – these are all the words that you say at least once over the course of a year. Your active vocabulary contains between 3 and 5 thousand words: Approximately 1/10 (one-tenth) as much as your passive vocabulary. However, there’s a step lower than that. The ‘Bild’ newspaper gets by with about 1000 words. On the other hand, that means that you can express just about anything with 1000 words. Konrad Adenauer, for example, is said to have gotten by with a vocabulary of 1000 words.

To expand your active vocabulary, you don’t have to learn new and unknown foreign words, no, it’s enough to ‘lift’ words from your passive vocabulary into your active vocabulary. So, words that you know anyway but simply do not use. For example, most of you understand the sentence “Since his appearance on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’, the teacher has been exalted by his students as being an Einstein of general knowledge”.

Although you understand the word ‘exalted’, you probably wouldn’t use it in this context (you’d be more likely to use the word ‘glorified’).

I have created a technique that allows you to expand your vocabulary without wasting time. You have a skill you didn’t know about and which you can just switch on.

You are capable of mimicking any speaker, whether on the radio, on television or directly from a CD, with a short delay.

Do it right now simply for fun. Switch on the radio or TV and speak simultaneously along with the speaker. You will succeed right away.

The great benefit of the Simulganeous Technique

I have called this technique the Simulganeous Technique. Simulganeous means: simultaneous, that is, simultaneously listening and mimicking. The GAN in ‘GANeous’ means: G for the same time (Gleichzeitig), A for actively listening (Aufnehmen), N for mimicking (Nachsprechen).

Wherein lies the great benefit of the Simulganeous Technique?

You expand your vocabulary without any extra time investment. You listen to the radio and television anyway, and I hope you also listen to other audio programs. So go ahead and use this opportunity. Whenever you hear a speaker, just repeat after them. If you also repeat rather than merely listen, your brain recognizes these words as already having been used. You are actively participating. And, for example, if you have already said the word ‘exalted’ itself 3 times out loud, then the chance that you will do so again will have increased dramatically. Your passive vocabulary is ‘activated’ bit by bit.

The next advantage: You’re pronunciation will be cleaner. You will automatically mimic the speaker – and they are mostly professionals. After a while you’ll pick up the speech behavior of professional speakers.

You will be able to speak faster. If you use speakers who talk at machine-gun pace as a model, then you will be able to do just the same after a certain period of time.

You will think more quickly. The response time between hearing and speaking will get shorter and shorter. In this way you’ll also shorten your ‘rate of access’ to the words.

You’ll retain more of that which you mimic ‘simulganeously’, and you’ll remember it longer.

The Simulganeous Technique and learning foreign languages

And one more thing on top of that: With the Simulganeous Technique you can even considerably improve your foreign language skills. If you have ever listened to a language tutorial on CD-ROM, you know what I mean. From the first syllable you can join in and mimic the whole CD ‘simulganeously’. The learning effect is many times higher than if you were to only listen. In this way you learn the language much faster.

What you can also do: Mimic any message in French, English or Italian simulganeously. You do not even have to understand everything. Even if you only understand 50%, you’re already making great progress. The chance that you’ll actually use the words that your parroting is three times higher than if you just listen passively. You not only consume, but you also produce. This engrains itself much better in your memory, dramatically increases your speech flow and enhances your foreign language vocabulary.

Make speaking simulganeously your new hobby. I do it permanently. I have many audio books in English. Sometimes during a three-hour drive I talk simulganeously in English the whole time. Eventually it becomes so automatic that I do it quite unconsciously – it’s a lot of fun – and then I’m so fluent in English that it sounds like I’ve been in America for two weeks.

(Copyright Matthias Pöhm. This article is a permitted copy of the website www.rhetorik-seminar.ch and may only be used with the permission of the author.

The biggest verbal attack collection on the internet: 4’500 verbal attacks, insults and offences with its corresponding clever comeback linesVerbal-Attacks-Library)

Screw grammar

This is the name of a great post on my newly-discovered blog of interest

Spanish Only: Learn How to Learn Spanish

http://www.spanish-only.com/2009/01/screw-grammar/

Other great posts are

http://www.spanish-only.com/2009/01/just-listen/

http://www.spanish-only.com/2009/02/how-to-ignore-grammar/

http://www.spanish-only.com/2008/03/how-to-roll-your-r/

http://www.spanish-only.com/2009/02/frequently-asked-questions-about-sentences/

Also check out the Spanish-English Sentence Database here

http://sentences.spanish-only.com/

Note: I recommend that only upper intermediate/advanced students with lots of natural listening and reading experience use SRS systems to accelerate their learning of new phrases (and you should always learn PHRASES and not just words). If you’re a beginner/low intermediate learner, just stick to your listening, listening, listening (that’s how much listening you should be doing!), reading and saving lingqs at LingQ.

How long does it take to become fluent in a language?

This is a re-post of one of my posts on a recent thread on the LingQ forum (http://tinyurl.com/y8b4ogz):

In language learning, ‘hard’ is a relative term. It all depends on what linguistic and cultural background you come from. If you’re language and/or culture is more similar to that of the language you’re learning (http://tinyurl.com/ydlcg7c), you’ll learn faster than others, all things being equal. In the same way, if a language you’re learning is similar to another language you’ve already learned, all things beings equal, you’ll learn faster. This is simply because your brain ‘puts the pieces of the puzzle together’ faster than it otherwise would.

***Instead of thinking about Spanish/French/German (FSI Level 1/2 languages) etc. as being ‘easy’ and Japanese/Chinese/Thai (FSI Level 4 languages) etc. as being ‘difficult’, think about Japanese/Chinese/Thai etc. as being ‘normal’ and Spanish/French/German etc. as being ‘easier than normal’.***

That’s because when you’re learning Japanese/Chinese/Thai etc. as an English speaker, you’re essentially ‘starting from scratch’ in terms of having a related grammar and vocabulary base. Almost nothing in your language shares anything in common with these languages, so you’re learning as a child would – from nothing.

But in fact, you’ve STILL got an advantage over a child (and you will consequently learn faster than a child would), because you ALREADY speak another language and know about the world (you already have ‘schemata’ http://tinyurl.com/ycewufa), which means you have a greater imagination for what someone COULD be saying, and language learning is all about guessing and discovering.

When you’re learning Spanish/French/German etc., however, you’ve already got a headstart/advantage, because grammar and vocabulary in those languages is similar to that of English. So you’re able to learn AT A FASTER THAN NORMAL RATE than someone whose native language doesn’t share those similarities, and much faster than a child would.

In these threads Steve gives a lot of great advice on the subject:

http://tinyurl.com/ych94ta
http://tinyurl.com/ycb5dfp

Definitely check out the first link ‘Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers’ (http://tinyurl.com/5w8k32) in the first thread, but remember that these figures are based on FSI CLASSROOM COURSES, and that with LingQ learning independently you can learn much more efficiently (you spend all your time with interesting input, instead of potentially boring teachers, grammar, and people), and therefore faster.

http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html

Shout out to red, you know who you are! 🙂