Moving backwards?
henning
October 20, 2008, 04:25 PM posted in General DiscussionWarning: Frustration post.
In the last 6 months I got that strange feeling that I am actually moving backwards with my Chinese abilities - with a narrower and narrower active vocab base, stagnating speech recognition, and a losing grip on Grammar. This is actually a lot worse than the usual "oh, I hit the next plateau" feeling. This "plateau" seems to have a downwards inclination.
And all this despite the fact that I didn't at all reduce my time slot - much the opposite so. I ramped it up. I inserted new sources (HSK material, exercises, 红楼梦, more Chinese with my collegue...), but it all doesn't help.
For a long time it was always moving upwards - conquering more and more territory with an almost linear builtup of vocab and grammar, seemingly getting within reach of basic fluency and a 80% listening comprehension (at least in my daydreams). But recently this all seems to blur away from the edges.
Has anybody else besides me experienced this? Is it only temporarily? Do I need different input? Should I take "real" classes?
All with the scary question in the back: Can this actually be done from outside China?
triplelatte
December 02, 2008, 06:40 PMhenning
I feel like I am always backsliding at some constant rate, but if I keep the review and learning rate at a certain level, i'm still making progress. You are much more advanced that I am, so perhaps there is a larger set of knowlege to lose from and therefore it is more difficult to maintain. If that makes sense.
Maybe there is, inevitably, some crossover point where you have learned so much or at such a fast rate that it is not all solidly locked in to long term memory - baifameizhong's point - and you begin to lose at a faster rate than you can aquire.
I think Xiaohu is probably correct that devoting more attention to (re) reviewing 'aquired' language is the key to stopping the slide.
Even at my level I've found this to be true.
mikeinewshot
October 20, 2008, 09:30 PMWell - we need to encourage each other. I am going through a tough time at the moment after 4 years of working very hard.
I am letting the learning drift but am looking for a new source of motivation or rather a new way of working....
I would like to find some 'guaranteed' way to progress. For example, if I could follow some course that would guarantee that in (say) 3 years I would have reached a certain fluency level.
The problem with Chinesepod is that you don't have a progressive learning environment - I mean one that builds.
david0000
October 21, 2008, 06:43 PMKeep it up. It is never easy to master a foreign language. Besides the characters and sentences, you could participate in your local Chinese community activities. The more you know the culture, the more interesting stuff you will find!
calkins
October 21, 2008, 09:27 PMEarlier today I was reading this conversation remotely. Because I was using a Palm TX (not an iPhone), I couldn't see who had written the original post until I got to the end of it...so I'm reading and reading and I get to the end and see that it was from Henning! My heart dropped...I said to myself, "No, it can't be."
Ironically, I also had my iPod on shuffle this afternoon and the DA with Henning and his wife played. Listening to you speak English amazed me more than anything. Your English is incredible, and though I've never heard your spoken Chinese, I think it must be pretty amazing as well.
I believe you definitely have an ability for learning languages. No doubt that your Chinese will someday be as good as your English. And you could always make your wife speak only Chinese, all the time to you!
And if you take a break, don't take too long...we need your insights here.
sebire
October 21, 2008, 10:00 PMYeah, who will keep up Henning's grammar thread?!
pearltowerpete
October 21, 2008, 11:12 PMHi henning,
sebire and light487 aptly compared this situation to playing music. It's also like preparing for an athletic event-- too much training is counterproductive.
I have definitely had periods where my Chinese seems to be slipping (although I've been lucky to be living in China since I began studying seriously.) Some days I wake up and after stumbling through a few headlines or sentences, I know that this will be a bad Mandarin day. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.
At least I don't rely on Chinese to get my salary...oh, wait :-)
Like the rest of the CPod team I would sorely miss your insights and suggestions. But a short break might be just the thing you need. It might help jump-start your relationship with the language.
xiaohu
October 22, 2008, 01:49 AMI've had the same experience recently, until I went back to basics.
Sometimes, once you become advanced, it's too easy to rest on your laurels, and take for granted that certain things are going to stick with you forever.
I had to go back to a balanced approach with my Chinese, meaning going back to exercises for all the most important aspects of language.
Lately I've been doing drills for, pronunciation, listening comprehension, sentence patterns, vocabulary exercises, set-phrase exercises, grammar, character comprehension and writing.
I've seen a lot of improvement over the past couple months since I've been doing that I've seen a lot come back.
One thing I noticed was that if I spend too much time posting messages in English on the Chinesepod message boards that I start to lose focus with my Chinese and backslide very quickly. It came down to a simple matter of budgeting time, I need to spend as much quality time as I can focused on Chinese, anything that deters me from that goal has to be sacrificed to continue forward momentum.
Of course, if you want to practice with me, I'm always glad to help, I'm certain with your advanced level, you can help me more than I can help you.
If you want to set up some time to chat online, or just e-mail in Chinese, you can always e-mail me at: xiaohucai@gmail.com
All the best,
Xiao Hu
小虎
henning
October 22, 2008, 05:40 AMThanks everybody for the advice and the encouragement!
Actually, I am sceptical about taking a break until it is not strictly confined to something like a holiday. Those breaks have the dangerous tendency to get longer and longer...
In the next couple weeks I might be forced to shut down a large part of my Chinese activities, anyway, though, due to some work related pressures. Afterwards I need some kind of restart with a fresh approach.
Actually, I can relate with Xiaohu's advice best. Maybe some more fundamental, formal, and structured learning is in order again.
mark
October 22, 2008, 06:22 AMI hope it can be done without living in China. I haven;t encountered back sliding, yet. Or more properly backslide a little less than my forward progress constantly.
light487
October 20, 2008, 09:00 PMYeh.. definitely.. time to take a step back I think. I find that also with music. I take a break for a week of not playing a single note then when I do play, I play better than I did before.
I think it's a little like sleep/dreaming. It gives the brain time to sort out the mess. I find this in a little way with Chinese as well but as I am not at the level you are at yet, I can't be sure yet if it is working the same way but like sebire says, there's no reason it wouldn't be the same.
Yeh.. take a break, don't think about Chinese for a week or so, enjoy life without Chinese, do the things you would do if you weren't studying Chinese. If I was doing university, I would be studying during the week and partying on the weekend, and taking my mid-term holidays. I think you might need a mid-term holiday or some weekends. :)
Sue
October 28, 2008, 07:24 PMJust found this link Henning. It might help you to redefine your next learning phase and get out of your own burnout http://learningonyourterms.com/2008/learning-through-a-language/
henning
October 29, 2008, 06:14 AMSue, thanks!
Actually I will be busy until the 15th of this month - afterwards I will engineer some kind of restart design.
mark
October 29, 2008, 06:41 AMBTW, my study style includes a heavy dose of review. I study a sliding window of 4 weeks worth of lessons and occasionally put the mp3 in suffle mode to review older ones. The basic reason is that my brain is a leaky basket; I have to keep putting the water bainto it. Over time, I seem to make progress, but it is definitely non-linear. I don't know if this thought helps your situation, but maybe tweaking the mix of new and old study material would help.
baifameizhong
October 29, 2008, 09:19 AMi have had that frustrating feeling quite often. learnt a whole bunch of characters and a few days later when i had another look at them I could have sworn that I had never seen them in my whole life....
i just remembered a few courses i had in my studies where they explained how the things you learn get stored in your brain and are connected (associated) to other things you have learnt. so the new word you just learnt might remind you of another character or joke or situation. the annoying thing is that those connections will gradually start fading away if they are not used. even the stronger connections will start fading until they are not strong enough to let you consciously remember a connected part. the key is firstly making sure that those connections are used regularly (the more they are used the stronger they get) and to have as many connections to a new word as possible (so even if one fails, you will still have tons of other cues to help you remember).
so from a psychological point of view, mark's approach of repeating things heavily is spot on.of course it can be frustrating if a connection has faded, but as a rule, you will be able to relearn it a lot faster than the first time because you do still have part of that connection. (which is why people living in china have a nice advantage...they get repetition whether they want it or not :P)
(although i know that frustrating feeling when you seem to do more revision than actual learning or new words...)
don't know whether it helps. maybe all i said is for the cat (alles für die katz :), but either way....加油
freakyqi
October 30, 2008, 04:59 PMHenning,
I have been backsliding since coming back to the US after 2yrs in China. I am SO unhappy about it! I learned most of my chinese there, and now, even though I'm reading more chinese, watching more movies, studying more online, listening to more songs, etc (than I did in china)... this is all great and helping a lot, but what's missing is INTERACTION with other humans speaking chinese. I'm thinking maybe the difference is... an element of surprise. You don't know, or can't control, what the other person is going to say or how fast or clearly they'll say it, so it's more of a mental challenge.
- New words pop up unexpectedly.
- A simple word is unfamiliar because they mumbled over it or added an 'r at the end.
- Instead of repeating their sentence to you, they say it a different way and you think "damn, that new sentence is even worse, I want him to say it the first way again".
With all other study methods YOU are controlling what you learn and at what pace. That's what I just thought of today after reading this blog (or whatever it is) and I want to thank you for leading me to that thought. It can get frustrating and boring after a while even if you change methods.
So now... how do we find humans to actually talk to? Now I know how the chinese people felt in China when they'd see me and think "oh wow! maybe I can practice my english!" and we foreigners would think "oh no, here we go again. 'Yes, hello...'."
henning
October 31, 2008, 01:30 AMThanks for the suggestions, baifameizhong. I will consider all suggestions thoroughly when I find the time to seriously study again.
freakyqi,
what you say is highly interesting. Yes, there might be some kind of wall that one cannot pass without the total-surround experience.
This also fits with my most recent observation that my *reading* abilities actually do still grow - at least subjetively. I have less and less inhibitions to read Chinese texts. It is indeed more the active usage that is falling back.
helenhelen
November 01, 2008, 01:57 PMAnxiety will inhibit your ability to learn stuff. If you feel threatened, your brain just won't want to hold on to the material. I was having problems with this in my degree (maths, not Mandarin). A few things I was told that I found useful; 1.the 'engage with the task, not the anxiety' mantra, i.e. unless you are currently doing something to help the problem, try not to let yourself think about it. 2. devise some way of actually assessing your progress. You want something simple and painless that you can do often. That way you can actually *see* that the work you do is paying off, even when it doesn't feel like it. 3. take a break if you need to, but decide beforehand how long the break will be, and stick to it.
I also have a question; when you say you're now using new sources, do you mean on top of everything else you did before?
henning
November 01, 2008, 02:04 PMhelenhelen, actually I don't feel anxiety as I have nothing to lose. Just unhappy with my current "progress".
As for the new sources: I haven't decided yet how my learning mix will look like when I do the restart.
Sue
October 26, 2008, 06:13 PMMmmh. Fear (i.e. being scared) seems perhaps to be a bad companion to learning. Better like pearltowerpete says: always think tomorrow can only get better. It may be time to think about what areas of proficiency are most important to you personally: speaking, understanding, writing or reading - and then, for a time, just concentrate on that aspect, perhaps using different sources to usual to get out of a rut. I'm sure the comparison with playing an instrument or athletic/game training is valid. An obvious attitude, but probably rather hard to put into practice at the moment, might be to get back to just enjoying the language rather than watching the level indicator all the time (or what do they call those things on amplifiers?) - like, it's the journey that counts not so much the destination. Ugh! not much consolation I suppose when you're feeling down about. Sorry.
sebire
October 20, 2008, 08:28 PMHenning, maybe it's a completely different thing, but if I ever learnt to play a really hard piece on the piano, I find that I used to get better and better until one day I just couldn't play it properly, and every day it would get worse, for no apparent reason. My teacher suggested I take a break, and a few weeks later after having not touched it, I found I could play it even better than before.
Maybe it's the same for Chinese learning? I wouldn't be surprised. I often find that if you just take a break for a couple of weeks with stuff, something just clicks in the back of your brain.