User Comments - JohnT
JohnT
Posted on: Chinese Wedding Customs
May 25, 2007 at 7:46 PMOne thing that set my expectations high in learning Chinese was that when I was 19, I served a Spanish-speaking mission in Chicago. I was sent to what was then called the Language Training Mission center at BYU in Utah for two months, and pretty much felt comfortable with the language after only a couple months in the field. Thus I thought that when I started to learn Chinese that even given that I couldn’t speak it a good part of every day like on a mission, it would probably only just take me a year to get fluent, since I hadn’t actually had to study Spanish all that hard. NOT! Of course, I’m now 50, not 19, and it does seem the brain cells don’t fill up like they used to. I study Chinese way harder than I did Spanish. I go to a Mandarin-speaking LDS church in California every week, and we have missionaries that come and serve for two years, who learned Chinese for the mission. They go to the Missionary Training Center (as it’s now called) in Provo for three months, and they come out speaking better than I do with my couple of years or more effort. And, like it was with Spanish and I, after just a couple of months they seem reasonably fluent, and by the year mark they are very comfortable. I even was given a copy of the book that they use to study Chinese, which I went nearly completely through. The speaking practice they get every day must really make a difference. Of course, there might be some heavenly help involved too…
Posted on: Chinese Wedding Customs
May 25, 2007 at 7:13 PMI'm sorry to be joining the discussion so (too) late. I don't very often follow the newest lessons because I'm back on previous lessons. In fact, a few weeks ago, I started back going through the intermediate lessons in chronological order, pulling out the words I still didn't know, making flash cards, and memorizing the dialog sentences such that I could translate from the English, even though I had studied them a year or more ago. I used to feel the same usr1 that the elementary-intermediate gap was too big, but I'm thinking now that I went to the intermediate too soon, that it actually was too high a level for me. But of course, I don't think it was time wasted; it just meant more learning pain. So, what I did then, was to got back and systematically study the elementary lessons in the same way. Before, I would at least listen to them, but felt that they were too simple, since I could understand the dialog by the end of the lesson from just listening, and if I went over the transcript, I generally could only write down 2-8 new words per lesson. What I wasn’t fully understanding then is that learning Chinese is far more than just learning words. I could do my flash cards great, but I still felt very frustrated anytime I had to construct a sentence I hadn't done before in an attempt at conversation. What I discovered was that the elementary lessons are a wealth in basic sentences, phrases, and grammar, and not so much in lots of vocabulary. In doing this systematic approach I could go through 5 elementary lessons a day, pull out the vocabulary I still didn't know, and memorize the lessons, just like I had done with the intermediate, and I felt very proud when I made it up to the current lesson at that time. But boy was I surprised when I went back to the intermediate lesson! It just seemed like suddenly I was able to follow more of Jenny's speaking, though still not all. I then went on to some of the latest intermediate lessons, but then decided to try again the systematic approach of trying to absorb the lessons chronologically. I'm still pulling out vocabulary, but this time trying also to pay much more attention to the sentence structure, patterns, and especially the idiomatic phrases. I’ve also accepted the reality that learning Chinese requires a major, multi-year commitment. CPod, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Posted on: Shut up!
April 23, 2007 at 2:26 AMI've finally caught up on all the elementary lessons. In the process, I made some paper flash cards for the vocabulary (pinyin/English), eight per page, printing them out on 87 pages of 90-110 weight paper. If anyone is interested, I can put up the Word .doc files somewhere. Thank you ChinesePod, for the best learning resource I've encountered.
Posted on: Shut up!
April 22, 2007 at 3:20 PMI've finally caught up on all the elementary lessons. In the process, I made some paper flash cards for the vocabulary (pinyin/English), eight per page, printing them out on 87 pages of 90-110 weight paper. If anyone is interested, I can put up the Word .doc files somewhere. Thank you ChinesePod, for the best learning resource I've encountered.
Posted on: Chinese New Year Fireworks
April 20, 2007 at 12:30 AMThe MP3's are still missing.
Posted on: Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
April 16, 2007 at 4:21 AMIt's nice to be able to see the online dialog. Is there an option to switch the whole dialog to pinyin or English? The pinyin would be really useful, as I don't plan to learn characters for quite a while. And if there were English, I could use it to test my translation/memoryization. Thanks. -John
Posted on: Chicago
May 9, 2008 at 5:00 AMWow, a lesson about some place I've been to too! I was there for 2 years back in '76 as a Spanish-speaking LDS missionary. I'm afraid it set my expectations of learning a new language too high. I thought that because I learned Spanish pretty quickly, I could pick up Chinese pretty quickly too, if I studied hard. Well, I've been studying for over two years now, and my Chinese ability is still less than where I was after the two-months language training I received at the start of the mission at BYU. Sigh. Hmm.. I was going post a picture, but without any buttons to press, I don't know how to do it. Oh well. It's just a 19-year-old version of me bundled up for the freezing cold in winter Chicago, holding a Spanish Book of Mormon.