#so congrats chinese - speaking skill is almost/at french level.

[rigelmejo]

was told today i have an impressive vocabulary in chinese. also that it shows that i still kind of write like i’m saying things like how i might in english

i’ll take it lol ToT. my vocabulary is not very big actually, but if its big to someone else maybe it IS in the B1-B2 intermediate stage now.

i 100% agree with the grammar critique. i think i write okay enough to be understood by others, since generally the past several months no one has been so confused by how i phrased things that they had to ask me to clarify. but i am very aware of the fact i tend to not use: repeating verbs, bei, ba constructions. particularly the ba and bei constructions, because to me they seem pretty common and usual to hear/run into, i can read them without thinking about it, i just do not use them very much. i also tend to avoid measure words, often phrasing things in a way where i can just use nage/naxie and zhege/zhexie, and youxie. i also know that the whole ‘make a clause and then attach de at the end’ which is a very easy construction to read, but a different sentence order than english, is another sentence structure i tend to avoid a lot. i mainly rely on le and de and yao when speaking (no idea why i rarely use hui though as reading-wise that is not hard for me and i feel like i understand how to use it as well as yao). but yeah if i was interacting with me? i would definitely notice most of my grammar stays at this sort of hsk3 or lower level, even though the vocab is going way over those levels. 

this is a big reason why i think i just... need way more grammar drills (as in writing/speaking several examples After studying one grammar point etc).  i can tell that reading/watching passively is not helping me get into the habit of producing language in the right patterns even though i can understand it passively. 

i mean i’m still happy and excited. because i wrote a decent length paragraph without looking any words up (except my home’s name in chinese), and i did not grammar check what i wrote so that means its comprehensible enough other people can understand what i expressed. its not the kind of grammar that’s as natural or correct, but it was at least understood so yay at least my brain is making sentences from its active vocabulary that can convey information without being so messed up they’re impossible to understand. baby steps. 

i’m thinking probably until december at least, I’m going to keep focusing mainly on reading (and/or listening as the urge hits me to listen to audio instead). Ideally, I’d like to continue focusing on reading until at least some of my goal novels are things I can read extensively to the point of finishing reading the novels (Zhenhun, Modu, qi ye, living to suffer, liuli etc). I think once I have a much more solid vocabulary as far as reading and listening, then I will want to build up my active vocabulary AND GRAMMAR more to a decent level. So I’m thinking probably not until 2022 do I want to focus on grammar drills (maybe then I can read all the cool grammar books I have!). Realistically? I am probably going to work on grammar whenever I get the urge. Which is how much of my studying actually pans out. 

i studied like. a Touch of italian a couple weeks ago. and it is such a difference switching to a romance language that has so much more similar to languages i already know compared to chinese. just like. i can feel the base level of what’s not comprehendible is never as low as it was with chinese the first year i started. i was going through dantes inferno a little in italian, and i would have NOT been able to go through romance of the three kingdoms or the red chamber with a translation side by side on DAY 1 of chinese ToT (or year 1, or year 2 which is where i am now)

[rigelmejo]

it is really... not even an understatement... that the me from august 2019 would be blown away at the progress i’ve made in just a little under a year.

in august 2019 i definitely did not think i’d be able to watch and comprehend the main plot of a show in only chinese, within a year. i literally only knew the greetings, thank you, and the numbers 1-10 in august 2019. 

congrats me from august 2019, i am glad i accomplished one of your goals. you can now go watch guardian again and see how much better you’ve gotten at chinese since august. ovo)/

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i am sure a part of this quick progress has been due to me having studied languages before, so i personally know what study methods work the most efficiently for me. i’m sure another part, is due to the existing knowledge i had of japanese, which admittedly i do think helped with my ability to learn hanzi. another large part is just how determinedly adamant i am to want to read chinese novels and watch chinese shows. So utterly determined. So completely determined, that I actually tried to do it from month 3 onward, repeatedly. Even though for much of the time I attempted to do this, I sucked so much that it was a draining slog and I struggled to get through a few paragraphs and then a few pages. I struggled to get through more than a few minutes of a show. And yet I kept making myself try again, and again, with small noticeable progress each time. 

I am well aware that I never tried so adamantly to attempt to understand japanese, especially so early on and so frequently. Because... it is an absolutely brutal experience lol. And it is the most brutal in the very beginning, when it’s also the easiest to get demotivated! That’s why with japanese... I didn’t even try to read SIMPLE things like tweets and titles, or watch SIMPLE short youtube skits in japanese, until I had studied for an entire year! In japanese, I did not even try to slog through mangas until 1.5 years into studying. Precisely because the slog is really so brutal, and I got so demotivated whenever I tried to engage with target-language-only material in japanese. It probably wasn’t even until 2-2.5 years of studying japanese... that I even attempted trying to read through manga chapters just trying to comprehend the main plot points. 

Meanwhile, in chinese? I tried to read through comic panels by like month 3, and got a bit decent at it by month 6. Now I’m like 11 months into learning chinese, and I feel comfortable enough with comics that I could skim through one if I wanted and translate a decent bit of it (which took OVER 2.5 YEARS to do in japanese). 

I am certain that part of my rapid progress has been my kind of intense determination to try and comprehend chinese NOW, to keep trying every so often. Even though my language skills aren’t ‘good enough’ yet. I only attempted to do this in chinese, because when I did it in french it seemed to help a lot... and I figured I might as well try it out in chinese and see if it helps too. I think it’s almost as difficult as doing it with japanese was. The main difference is I am more willing to feel confused/frustrated/drained trying to read/watch chinese content. With japanese, when I got frustrated/drained, I would give up for months at a time before trying again. As a result, I saw quite slow progress, and it took 6 months - 1 year at a time for me to ever notice significant improvement. With chinese, I have actually been using these ‘attempt’ activities to gauge my progress. So I kept doing them every couple of weeks, despite how intensely hard they felt to do. So with chinese, I have seen noticable progress every couple of months. Which is, expectedly, slower than my progress was in french. But it is, thankfully, quicker than my progress in japanese.

Again, I think the other big reason my chinese improved more ‘rapidly’ than I expected, was also just me having a study plan already tested and ready to utilize since I’ve studied other languages before. So I didn’t waste a lot of time figuring out HOW to study for my goals, whereas with japanese and french I definitely wasted more time figuring out how to study to meet my goals, and which study methods helped me most personally. So I got to skip a lot of the figuring out what methods to use portion of the learning process. My japanese study experiences helped me come up with a plan for studying chinese that helped account for the special difficulties of characters and lack of cognates. I didn’t have that experience to help me when I started studying japanese.

A little timeline comparison for myself:

French progress: bare minimum reading skills - 3 months. read simple stories/comics and grasp main ideas - 6 months. read general content, grasp main ideas - 1 year. read most content, at least grasping main ideas - 2 years.

Chinese progress: bare minimum reading skills - 6 months. read simple stories/comics and grasp main ideas - 11 months.

Japanese Progress: bare minimum reading skills - 1 year. read simple stories/comics and grasp main ideas - 2 years.

So for me, chinese is taking about twice as long as french to learn to read. japanese has taken 4 times as long as french to learn to read. 

I speculate that if I had not had such a solid study plan, and had not engaged so frequently with chinese content, then chinese would probably also be taking 4 times as long. Hopefully, if I got back into studying japanese, the study methods I’ve utilized me would allow me to speed up my improvement compared to how slow it took me to improve in the past. 

And, for fun, a comparison of my speaking skills, and listening comprehension:

French progress:

speak about really simple topics - 3 months. 

speak about things on my mind in at least a basic way (like a 9 year old, with worse grammar probably) - 6 months. 

speak about things on my mind in some detail - 1 year.

write letters, speak on a somewhat specific topic with someone - 2 years (highly dependent on the topic, on if i’ve refreshed my french recently since i only use french every few months now, and if i’m allowed to use a dictionary to look up words i might want to use)

can listen to simple conversations - 6 months.

can listen to shows/videos and get the gist - ahahahah no. i need french subtitles.

can listen to audio only content - i have never tried.

(Can you tell I almost exclusively studied french to read?)

Chinese progress:

speak about really simple topics - 5 months.

speak about things on my mind in at least a basic way - 8 months (I joined HelloTalk and I credit that to my improvements in this area, it forced me to use chinese to write and speak a lot more... if I go back to studying french with the goal to speak/write, I’m going to do that with french).

speak about things on my mind in some detail - 11 months+ (I’m in a grey area right now... I can write about most topics if I can look up words to use, and I can speak about my life/interests without a dictionary and have an exchange with someone. If speaking, I can speak about most ‘tangible’ topics like what is happening/who feels what/what is something - it’s concepts like ‘the idea that the political system is blah blah’ or ‘my meaning is that...’ which I struggle to talk about, because I don’t know very many ‘concept’ words.)

currently I cannot write about any specialized topics. i can write about most things in a broad way though, granted there will be a plethora of grammar mistakes and i may need a dictionary if i need to say something detailed. my writing skills are only comfortably able to discuss everyday kind of ‘chat’ topics like what’s happening, how people are feeling, what they’ve done/plan to do, what they like. I am not adequate at discussing topics such as ‘how do you feel about politics/this theory’ or like poetic language like fiction. 

can listen to a simple conversation - 6 months. (I think it improved better than my french to be honest, because it’s much easier for me to listen to chinese. I’ve practiced listening in chinese from day 1, I... rarely ever practice listening to french and it shows in my pathetic french listening skills).

can listen to shows/videos and get the gist - 8 months. (if we are talking bare minimum, I could probably start managing to follow the main ideas back at 8 months it was just... such an intensive difficult task. it is getting easier.)

can listen to audio only content - not there yet. (at my current 11 months, I can comprehend audio only graded-reader type content and learner podcasts - which is barely anything but way better than my french listening comprehension. I can also currently follow audio only content if i have some kind of transcript to refer to for context first... I’m going to make a guess that this skill will take me 2 years to get to any comfortable level of ‘catching the main ideas’ at. Based on the assumption I never practice/study listening comprehension enough, and on the fact chinese is more difficult for me than french. Then I’m going to guess it will be a minimum of 4 years until I’ll actually feel like it’s not draining, to listen to chinese audio only. I might manage to progress a bit faster, depending on how often I study this skill.)

And, for fun, Japanese progress:

speak about really simple topics - 6 months. (I took an intensive japanese class in college, and used the Genki books, those first months).

speak about things on my mind in at least a basic way - never got to that point. (after the intensive japanese class, I switched to focusing on learning vocabulary/kanji/grammar patterns with the intent to learn to read, and never actually practiced speaking again). 

speak about things on my mind in some detail - never got to that point.

write letters, speak on a somewhat specific topic with someone - never got to that point.

can listen to simple conversations - 1 year roughly. 

can listen to shows/videos and get the gist - no. maybe 2 years for the ability to only catch some very main ideas (I can get the gist if they’re about simple life/job/interest topics, otherwise I am useless without a dictionary. Sometimes I can watch youtube japanese videos about daily life/humor/politics/culture/fandoms and follow along from context, but it can be draining depending on how long I do this, and I only catch the very narrow main ideas... I miss many details unless I use a dictionary). 

can listen to audio only content - no. (Like the other two languages, I can mostly only listen to slow paced audio only content about subjects I know very well already. In japanese, that’s mostly daily life related audio. My chinese is better hands down than both other languages. My japanese listening comprehension is better than my french though - I am very good at listening and recognizing japanese words I know, whereas in french I am very bad at that. )