A case against the 'Vacuum Approach' Benefits of Learning All Characters Upfront

Ouch... This came out rather unreadable due to paragraph breaks being all condensed together. Also, the title was meant to read '...PLUS Benefits of...' etc. Oh well.

auntie68, Thanks for the kind words, actually, at the time that I had come to the realization of what 小心 meant, I did not have the references at my disposal that I do now. I actually did learn (inferred) it from reading technical documents in Chinese and English. I guess my point (although vastly understated) was simply that Chinese is not really a simple language based on words but one based on concepts and the combining of concepts to formulate words. For example, in English you have telephone and cell phone (or mobile phone) and most people can deduce that the two are related without context "Can I use your phone" would mean the same reagardless of which one. Chinese does not make things simple in this instance (as well as others), 电话 and 手机 don't immediately bare any resemblance to one another (at least to newbies) until they are placed in context with actually making a phone call of some kind. While some combinations of characters make sense by simply looking at them, others may not, and at this point in my learning, I would rather trust looking them up (in most cases) than trying to guess what they mean. I feel that this benefits me in several ways, it exposes me to looking up characters based on their radical and stroke count and helps me remember characters and words that I may not normally remember without looking them up. While I realize that I am still a baby when it comes to learning Mandarin, I do concede that my way of learning isn't necessarily the best way, but at this point, I really don't see much in the way of alternatives, and I do agree with you in that respect, there does have to be a balance between trusting (and pushing) your own comprehension level and seeking out the answers for those things that don't make sense. Some day, I will get to the point where I am not looking everything up, but at this point, I really don't see much of an alternative, after all without knowing the actual character and it's meaning, there really isn't a way to infer its meaning in context with other characters. OK, I will shut up now and leave the discussion to those of you that have far more knowledge and experience than I do. Excellent topic by the way, thanks furyougaijin for initiating this thread.

(a) One of these characters that I spent time on was 散. That's because I noticed 散放区 (translated by you as, "cage") and my attention was caught by another use of 散, in "24日当天，无散客购票入园记录", the phrase which provided the key to the mystery of why the keepers didn't detect anything during their routine inspection (could be b.s.!). My little dictionary didn't have those exact word compounds, but looking at all the entries under 散 gave me the impression that the first one is 散放 san4fang4, probably meaning the "free" or open part of the enclosure, where the animals can roam about a bit. The second compound I think is 散客 (san3ke4; different tone for the 散), in the sense of an individual visitor, who is not a member of a group (which -- presumably -- would have made it possible for everybody to be accounted for). (b) The other character I looked up was 及, because of the 及时, which both you and me noticed. I am not 100% sure, but I think that the 及 character conveys urgency, they reported the matter without delay. Well, thanks again for doing this, furyougaijin. I think my reading comprehension may be a tiny bit better than yours (depending on the subject-matter), so I may have had a slightly easier time of it. Glad to see that you and I understood the news story in the same way.

auntie68, Thank you for your comments. The purpose of my detailed write-up was to show that one can get away with only looking up a small portion of new words and still be very THOROUGH in analysing the text. In the normal course of events, I would only do those 13 look-ups I mentioned but now I took the pain to look everything up to see what the hit and miss rate was. Obviously, all comments and conclusions (right and wrong) related to my current level of understanding. 散 is a tricky character that is used to create all sorts of not immediately obvious words in Japanese so I shrivel every time I see it. 散放区 was translated by me as 'a place were big cats are kept', not as 'cage', I do agree that it sounds more like an 'enclosure' (that was me being lazy with my non-native English...). On 及时 you're right and this is what came out of my dictionary search yesterday, too. I do believe analysing dictionary entries is a very valid strategy and I did some of that on the 13 look-ups that I mentioned. Sometime it takes you away from the original article on a totally different tangent as you have to look up more words to understand the examples - nothing wrong with that either. Still, there is a difference between analysing the bits that are seen as important and looking up every single word.

furyougaijin -- I think we two actually aren't so different from each other in the way we approach language? Still, you're definitely my "senpai" and I'm your "kohai"; there's no running away from the fact that you know about 4,000 more characters than I do! You inspire me. Thanks. And I totally agree with you if your main point is that looking up every single "new/strange" word reflexively may not be as useful as making the call to right call to go into language points. If the vacuum approach is taken too far, one can end up failing to see the forest for the trees... I tend to be very lazy about being "sure" over Chinese words where there seems is a single word in English which seems to be an exact fit. For me, the "middle way" seems like a safe thing to aim for. If one is relying on guesswork most of the time, it may not be harmful to look up the dictionary sometimes. And if one is the kind of learner who looks up every unfamiliar word, a break from that once in a while can't hurt.

Hi furyougaijin, thank you very much for taking all that time to do it. I found it very interesting. For all my relentless plugging of the advantages of the "vacuum" approach on Henning's thread, this exercise made me realize a few things about how I use dicitionaries when reading Chinese: (i) I think I'm actually less diligent than you are about wanting to know what specific words mean! Especially if I can still follow the story without being clear about their meanings. Eg. I simply skimmed through the list of different enclosures in that final paragraph. You figured them out, and even looked up 长颈鹿! I didn't even bother with 紧临. (ii) I looked up four characters to satisfy my own curiosity regarding what the correct pronunciation might be. Namely: 饲，巡，辖，and 侦. (iii) Apart from those four characters, I looked up only two other characters, but spent nearly 10 minutes analysing the dictionary entries (incl. examples) because I thought they were interesting language points:

While this may work for people who have a greater knowledge of characters, some of us who are still new to the language and only know and recognize 100 characters or less from sight still have to resort to looking them all up. I have two fairly decent tools at my disposal for this, while one is strictly for single characters, the other is for words. For example, I have known the characters 小 and 心 for quite awhile, but it took several times of seeing 小心 before I knew that it means careful or caution. While I am still looking forward to the day when I can read through Hanzi text and read it in context, I will continue looking up every character and every word until I get to that point. When I can get to the point that you and people like Henning, Bazza and others are at I will look back and thank myself for being diligent in this learning path. As I am sure I will thank people lik yourself and others for demonstrating that it is not the insurmountable task that I once thought it was.

jimkahl, that was a very thoughtful (and gracious) reply. Because it reminds me that the skill of "character inference" really is a function of two processes: (i) Actually knowing enough characters, not through guesswork, but by learning them; and (ii) getting used to the discipline of using this hard-earned knowledge to figure out unfamiliar characters and character compounds. I think the "anti-vacuum-approach" camp is actually focussing on not neglecting (ii), on not downplaying its usefulness. It's not a "zero-sum" situation we learners are in. I think that maybe we have to make a conscious effort to keep both processes going. Please don't take this as an attempt to be "smart" (it is not), but if you had looked up the compound 小心 when your instincts told you that it didn't make sense, rather than trying to infer the meaning from the context, you would have known the meaning of the compound straight away. Guess it's a question of balance, of being open to challenging our own language-learning habits and assumptions.

Furyougaijin, thanks for taking the time to put this together. I know I'm nowhere near the character knowledge level to understand even 5% of the story, but I thought I'd read it, simply out of interest. Obviously, I'm currently not a good candidate for this type of approach, but it (and some of the comments) got me to thinking about the type of person that is best suited for learning characters and reading in this way. I'm a right-brained person (visual, intuitive, creative, etc.) and it seems to me that a left-brained person would be (generally) more suited to this approach, as they are more analytical, logical, articulate, etc. (tend to do well in reading/writing, math, etc.). I assume right-brained people may generally have better speaking/listening skills, since Chinese is tonal and right brains tend to be better with speech, music, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, because when I think about it more, right brains are better equipped to see the big picture, and more apt to "break the rules" (i.e. not use a dictionary) and skim the text. And characters are quite visual. It'd be interesting to hear others' thoughts on this. Sometimes I just don't feel "left brain smart" enough to learn Chinese. That's okay I guess, because I know my determination will get me there! Maybe I'm over-anylizing it (left brain!), and it doesn't really matter - maybe determination, when it comes to learning characters and reading, is what is the most important. I'd love to give this approach a try, but I guess I'll have to wait until I learn about 3,000 or so more characters....

Hi furyougaijin, Thanks for an interesting thread. I guess that you are not a "furyougaijin", but a "ii-gaijin-san". People who can speak Japanese have a great advantage in remembering Chinese words and characters, even though those learners sometimes walk into a linguistic trap just because of the advantage, i.e. similarities between Mandarin and Japanese words. One of the most famous (or humorous) examples would be 手纸, which means “a letter” in Japanese, but “toilet tissue” in Chinese. Apart from the advantage, I always find it very intriguing and challenging to learn a Chinese word I cannot guess the meaning exploiting my knowledge of Japanese. In a sense, they ARE genuine foreign words to me. Let me show you some examples. I am sure that almost all ordinary Japanese people cannot infer the meanings of those words only from the appearance of characters. 唠嗑 chat 罗嗦 be wordy 嘟囔 mumble 折腾 turn, do ～ with a lot of trouble 姑且 for the time being 惦记 be concerned about 刁难 pester, embarrass 捣蛋 disturb 搭档 cooperate 蓦地 suddenly 挑剔 find fault with 好歹 good and bad, at any rate 干脆 simply, frankly 索性 just, simply

First of all: Thanks for sharing. The discussion here has let me become a little less apodictic about the "vacuum-approach". I see it now as one component that helps me personally at my current skill level and should definately be complemented by more "lax" approaches. I actually tried to read your text without any dictionary whatsoever and it worked surprisngly well. But that does not come a surprise considering that I am having kids - lots of animal and zoo vocab exposure. And the story is indeed really dramatic which helps a lot. In many other texts I feel a lot more lost... Caveat: You yourself name two prerequisies that I in my eyes cannot be taken as given: 1. Japanese, I definately see that having studied Japanese comes as a helper. Maybe in a next life I should start learning that language. 2. Character knowledge My character knowledge is not yet as solid as yours. 6,000 characters is a big goal and unlike you I strive for it rather "long-term-ish". Right now learning all characters in one go is really 太枯燥了for me. I am too impatient because there is so much other stuff to discover in my limited study time. Actually both points run down to character knowledge. I agree: Inferring from characters is a powerful booster for inferring words and the *correct* pronouncation. I often especially struggle with the latter, especially the tones. That is why I also look up the *characters* over and over if I am not certain. It helps me to remember them. Also, as pointed out in the other thread, not looking up words can be risky, especially if it comes to more formal settings, e.g. news. Too much potential for wrong inferences. I draw the following conclusions for my personal study approach: I will definately will continue with the "vacuum" look-every-detail approach - within intense high-quality study time. I do it primarily with the lessons and the 88news content. The "casual inference mode" however is perfect for additional input that comes e.g. when reading Chinese emails, following an additional link from one of the learners or teachers (e.g. the PK-link from John), or when "enjoying" a Chinese Harry Potter in the evening. I think in those settings my current approach is indeed too tiring and prevents me from sucking in high volumes of valuable additional input. So I will do both.