The Reasons I wrote This
I've long been learning Mandarin ever since I was a kid. But to be raised in the language environment I have been in, I wouldn't consider myself to be a native speaker of the Chinese language. Even today, I find it challenging to converse very fluently with the Chinese from China. I've found that I still frequently include some English expressions that I simply cannot explain in Chinese without stopping the conversation. However, my exposure to Chinese continues to be good as I majored in Chinese in university and I've been giving lessons to numerous people for a fair few years.
During these years, I've come to know that to master Chinese, you really would need to be equipped with three things. You need enthusiasm, the proper techniques and good learning tools. I have my individual way of thinking when it comes to Chinese language learning. It often irritates me whenever I observe how schools within my homeland are educating the students in the wrong manner, either by continuously lowering standards, or reducing the learning of important aspects of the language such as writing.
So here I am, hoping to write an article that would help others learn some correct concepts about Chinese that would help them in their learning!
The Three Aspects of Language-Pronunciation, Semantics and Language Symbols
The many learners of Chinese most often would lament that Chinese language is far from easy to achieve proficiency. They normally concentrate in learning how to communicate in Chinese.
But, what did not hit them is that every language has its distinct features. In Chinese, there exist a close bond between the pronunciations as well as the written character and meaning. When we ignore the latter two aspects and just wanted to learn how to speak Chinese, we are essentially making the learning curve steeper for ourselves. Chinese, being a language with very limited combinations in the way we pronounce a character, can only depend on the different written characters to differentiate the different morphemes in the language. If we only memorize Chinese sounds, we are going to end up not knowing which individual morpheme the many similar sounds refer to.
I continue to request students or beginners to put into memory the fundamentals of Chinese pinyin rules, grammar and word order, as well as how the general guidelines are for writing Chinese characters. It's just impossible to master Chinese without memory work, through creative teaching or creative learning, whatever they call it nowadays.
The greatest obstacle anyone can encounter in the course of learning Chinese characters is that they have no clue what different words mean when familiar characters come together. Although all these characters are the highest appearing characters and the student has already learned about it, they still do not know what different combinations of these characters mean.
Well actually for me, I would advice that you don't need to memorize every single word that you come across, because that would be impossible. (I forgot to mention that in Chinese, words and characters are two separate concepts, because usually a word would consist of two or more characters, also not necessarily so.) However, what you do need to do is to memorize those characters that have the highest frequencies of occurrence and understand their individual root meanings. This will immensely speed up your absorption of new words as these new words are formed by the characters you already know, and you would be able to fairly accurately guess their meanings when combined.
There are bound to be words that can't be guessed from the basic meanings of each character that forms the word. However before you jump to a conclusion saying that most combinations can't be guessed, I need to tell you the ugly truth that many Chinese characters have multiple basic meanings. Some basic meanings can even be more than one. You might start to wonder just how large the amount of basic meanings you need to commit to memory.
How do you prevent yourself from instantly forgetting everything that you've learned? You simple have to practise. Make sure you have the chance to see the Chinese character, listen to its pronunciation, see it in use and use it yourself, and connect the usage with actual experiences. The more senses and experiences that can be hooked to a particular piece of information, the better we'll remember it. It's even better if you can associate with feelings that you felt regarding the particular situation when you used the word. An example is that you would never forget a word if there was ever an occasion when you used the word wrongly and resulted in a very embarrassing situation.
How to Maintain Perseverance
There will be a portion of those who started out learning the language, who will surrender before mastering Chinese. These people sometimes will find fault with the language so that they can feel better about giving up.
Motivation plays a vital role in ensuring that learning continues to be fun, so that we don't give up. Steve Kaufman, a polyglot who have learned ten languages revealed the secret to language learning as engaging in motivating and interest-triggering content.
He believes that we must find that piece of article that is interesting to us, that would encourage us to find ways of finishing the article, that story, or any piece of writing for that matter. That is the motivation that will help us learn. The rest is just up to the brain. If you're curious and interested enough, you will definitely find the resources to acquire the knowledge. People actually learned Japanese just so that they can understand Japanese anime (a form of cartoon). Most who didn't would also prefer to watch the cartoon in Japanese without being dubbed in English. Another great example is the Korea show "Running Man" and the song "Gangnam Style", most teenagers are learning Korean just so that they can feel more "engaged" to their Korean idols.
Other motivators definitely play a part too. We can design milestones for ourselves to achieve and then reward ourselves for it. We can also keep progress reports and find the particular TV show or music video on the language that we're learning to motivate us.
Learning Resources
We all need to find the right tools for the right job. Learning Chinese is no different.
Get yourself the essential learning tools such as dictionaries or learning softwares. You would probably also need audio tapes for practices in pronunciation and listening. Also get yourself a book on Chinese characters. All in all, do read up the Chinese culture as well, and ensure that all topics that frequently come in handy are learned. Once done, take action and start learning!
I've long been learning Mandarin ever since I was a kid. But to be raised in the language environment I have been in, I wouldn't consider myself to be a native speaker of the Chinese language. Even today, I find it challenging to converse very fluently with the Chinese from China. I've found that I still frequently include some English expressions that I simply cannot explain in Chinese without stopping the conversation. However, my exposure to Chinese continues to be good as I majored in Chinese in university and I've been giving lessons to numerous people for a fair few years.
During these years, I've come to know that to master Chinese, you really would need to be equipped with three things. You need enthusiasm, the proper techniques and good learning tools. I have my individual way of thinking when it comes to Chinese language learning. It often irritates me whenever I observe how schools within my homeland are educating the students in the wrong manner, either by continuously lowering standards, or reducing the learning of important aspects of the language such as writing.
So here I am, hoping to write an article that would help others learn some correct concepts about Chinese that would help them in their learning!
The Three Aspects of Language-Pronunciation, Semantics and Language Symbols
The many learners of Chinese most often would lament that Chinese language is far from easy to achieve proficiency. They normally concentrate in learning how to communicate in Chinese.
But, what did not hit them is that every language has its distinct features. In Chinese, there exist a close bond between the pronunciations as well as the written character and meaning. When we ignore the latter two aspects and just wanted to learn how to speak Chinese, we are essentially making the learning curve steeper for ourselves. Chinese, being a language with very limited combinations in the way we pronounce a character, can only depend on the different written characters to differentiate the different morphemes in the language. If we only memorize Chinese sounds, we are going to end up not knowing which individual morpheme the many similar sounds refer to.
I continue to request students or beginners to put into memory the fundamentals of Chinese pinyin rules, grammar and word order, as well as how the general guidelines are for writing Chinese characters. It's just impossible to master Chinese without memory work, through creative teaching or creative learning, whatever they call it nowadays.
The greatest obstacle anyone can encounter in the course of learning Chinese characters is that they have no clue what different words mean when familiar characters come together. Although all these characters are the highest appearing characters and the student has already learned about it, they still do not know what different combinations of these characters mean.
Well actually for me, I would advice that you don't need to memorize every single word that you come across, because that would be impossible. (I forgot to mention that in Chinese, words and characters are two separate concepts, because usually a word would consist of two or more characters, also not necessarily so.) However, what you do need to do is to memorize those characters that have the highest frequencies of occurrence and understand their individual root meanings. This will immensely speed up your absorption of new words as these new words are formed by the characters you already know, and you would be able to fairly accurately guess their meanings when combined.
There are bound to be words that can't be guessed from the basic meanings of each character that forms the word. However before you jump to a conclusion saying that most combinations can't be guessed, I need to tell you the ugly truth that many Chinese characters have multiple basic meanings. Some basic meanings can even be more than one. You might start to wonder just how large the amount of basic meanings you need to commit to memory.
How do you prevent yourself from instantly forgetting everything that you've learned? You simple have to practise. Make sure you have the chance to see the Chinese character, listen to its pronunciation, see it in use and use it yourself, and connect the usage with actual experiences. The more senses and experiences that can be hooked to a particular piece of information, the better we'll remember it. It's even better if you can associate with feelings that you felt regarding the particular situation when you used the word. An example is that you would never forget a word if there was ever an occasion when you used the word wrongly and resulted in a very embarrassing situation.
How to Maintain Perseverance
There will be a portion of those who started out learning the language, who will surrender before mastering Chinese. These people sometimes will find fault with the language so that they can feel better about giving up.
Motivation plays a vital role in ensuring that learning continues to be fun, so that we don't give up. Steve Kaufman, a polyglot who have learned ten languages revealed the secret to language learning as engaging in motivating and interest-triggering content.
He believes that we must find that piece of article that is interesting to us, that would encourage us to find ways of finishing the article, that story, or any piece of writing for that matter. That is the motivation that will help us learn. The rest is just up to the brain. If you're curious and interested enough, you will definitely find the resources to acquire the knowledge. People actually learned Japanese just so that they can understand Japanese anime (a form of cartoon). Most who didn't would also prefer to watch the cartoon in Japanese without being dubbed in English. Another great example is the Korea show "Running Man" and the song "Gangnam Style", most teenagers are learning Korean just so that they can feel more "engaged" to their Korean idols.
Other motivators definitely play a part too. We can design milestones for ourselves to achieve and then reward ourselves for it. We can also keep progress reports and find the particular TV show or music video on the language that we're learning to motivate us.
Learning Resources
We all need to find the right tools for the right job. Learning Chinese is no different.
Get yourself the essential learning tools such as dictionaries or learning softwares. You would probably also need audio tapes for practices in pronunciation and listening. Also get yourself a book on Chinese characters. All in all, do read up the Chinese culture as well, and ensure that all topics that frequently come in handy are learned. Once done, take action and start learning!
About the Author:
Do not miss our popular guide to learning Chinese here, or alternatively you can read up more on our useful blog posts on Chinese language here.
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