So a little before arriving here I decided to start studying Chinese. A while after I got out of high school I thought to myself 'I'm a smart guy, I love to travel I should really be able to speak two languages... or at least 1.5'
So before I got here I bought myself more textbooks than I could possibly need and listened to a lot of chinesepod tracks on my ipod while I worked in my bullshit factory job. It's now been about 9 months. First thing is first I was told the best way to truly learn a language is to go to a country that speaks it and live. You have it constantly around you, you are forced to use it to survive and before you know it you are yammering away like a local...sort of.
Although I imagine I am getting more input and practice opportunities than the person studying Chinese at University I wouldn't say I am by any means immersed. First of all for my job I am required when I am there not unsuprisingly to speak English. They have some what of a ban on speaking Chinese to the kids as they believe it is harmful to their English, they won't force themselves to express themselves in English if they know teacher speaks Chinese. Although I frequently break this rule as it provides a shortcut to check that the students actually understand what I am talking about. So for a large chunk of the day I speak mostly English.
As far as needing Chinese to survive that is true to an extent but my trips down to the shop to buy food, buying train tickets and ordering at restaurants don't constitute a wide range of vocabulary. At the shops I can say 'No bag thankyou, I don't have a membership card and how much is that?' Apart from occassionally needing to ask 'where something is' assuming I have the vocabulary to ask for it, it isn't a wide range of language. Same as going into a restaurant to order food besides 'I want ......' and 'how much is it' you don't really need a lot of Chinese. Of course there is learning food items but the thing about Chinese is if you haven't been taught it before you won't know what the characters say so more often than not you just ask for the same old. So you will get reinforcement for the basics but beyond that all the more rarely used vocab barely gets a chance to come up.
Same as for social situations most of us here end up making a circle of friends who are also teachers and staying in like kind. So socially we don't practice much Chinese either. On the chance that you do make a local friend many of them will want to actively search you out as a friend because you are a great opportunity to study all of that English they have been learning since high school. Not only will they be really keen to speak English with you but it's usually the easiest option as they have been studying it for a lot longer than you have Chinese.
Another thing with phonetic languages is walking out and around you will see a lot of writing. Once you roughly know what sounds the letters make you can constantly learn new words and phrases by realising what the place is or does, what an advertisment is selling then just make the connection to the English. Not so with Chinese if someone doesn't tell you how to say a character you can't reliably guess.
So how is the Chinese coming along? Slowly slowly When I look at other people in the same situation as me I realise I am doing fairly well but even in a full immersion environment few people are going to be fluent in under a year. A language has thousands and thousands of words just because there are litterally millions of things around us in the world worth describing. There is nothing intrinsically hard about learning that this word means this action/ object/ quality but there are so many words to learn to become a fluent speaker that it is hard to get them all in there. You learn new words then learn some more then realise you already forgot half of the original words you 'learned'. So it's a battle to memorise them and constantly review so you aren't forgetting all the words that didn't come up in real life.
I find I'm able to have basic conversations with people. Nothing too complex but all the getting to know you stuff and lots of practical things. How fluent I feel will depend on the day and who I'm speaking to. Somedays I feel like a linguistic virtuoso somedays like a bumbling deaf mute.
But every little bit more I'm able to use without thinking too much is another little incentive that things are paying off.
So before I got here I bought myself more textbooks than I could possibly need and listened to a lot of chinesepod tracks on my ipod while I worked in my bullshit factory job. It's now been about 9 months. First thing is first I was told the best way to truly learn a language is to go to a country that speaks it and live. You have it constantly around you, you are forced to use it to survive and before you know it you are yammering away like a local...sort of.
Although I imagine I am getting more input and practice opportunities than the person studying Chinese at University I wouldn't say I am by any means immersed. First of all for my job I am required when I am there not unsuprisingly to speak English. They have some what of a ban on speaking Chinese to the kids as they believe it is harmful to their English, they won't force themselves to express themselves in English if they know teacher speaks Chinese. Although I frequently break this rule as it provides a shortcut to check that the students actually understand what I am talking about. So for a large chunk of the day I speak mostly English.
As far as needing Chinese to survive that is true to an extent but my trips down to the shop to buy food, buying train tickets and ordering at restaurants don't constitute a wide range of vocabulary. At the shops I can say 'No bag thankyou, I don't have a membership card and how much is that?' Apart from occassionally needing to ask 'where something is' assuming I have the vocabulary to ask for it, it isn't a wide range of language. Same as going into a restaurant to order food besides 'I want ......' and 'how much is it' you don't really need a lot of Chinese. Of course there is learning food items but the thing about Chinese is if you haven't been taught it before you won't know what the characters say so more often than not you just ask for the same old. So you will get reinforcement for the basics but beyond that all the more rarely used vocab barely gets a chance to come up.
Same as for social situations most of us here end up making a circle of friends who are also teachers and staying in like kind. So socially we don't practice much Chinese either. On the chance that you do make a local friend many of them will want to actively search you out as a friend because you are a great opportunity to study all of that English they have been learning since high school. Not only will they be really keen to speak English with you but it's usually the easiest option as they have been studying it for a lot longer than you have Chinese.
Another thing with phonetic languages is walking out and around you will see a lot of writing. Once you roughly know what sounds the letters make you can constantly learn new words and phrases by realising what the place is or does, what an advertisment is selling then just make the connection to the English. Not so with Chinese if someone doesn't tell you how to say a character you can't reliably guess.
So how is the Chinese coming along? Slowly slowly When I look at other people in the same situation as me I realise I am doing fairly well but even in a full immersion environment few people are going to be fluent in under a year. A language has thousands and thousands of words just because there are litterally millions of things around us in the world worth describing. There is nothing intrinsically hard about learning that this word means this action/ object/ quality but there are so many words to learn to become a fluent speaker that it is hard to get them all in there. You learn new words then learn some more then realise you already forgot half of the original words you 'learned'. So it's a battle to memorise them and constantly review so you aren't forgetting all the words that didn't come up in real life.
I find I'm able to have basic conversations with people. Nothing too complex but all the getting to know you stuff and lots of practical things. How fluent I feel will depend on the day and who I'm speaking to. Somedays I feel like a linguistic virtuoso somedays like a bumbling deaf mute.
But every little bit more I'm able to use without thinking too much is another little incentive that things are paying off.
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