Learning a new language is difficult, so any tip to make it easier is much appreciated. Coming across this link today about techniques to improve one’s memory sparked a bit of a discussion here today.
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_00.htm
When I studied Chinese characters, I tended to carry around a stack of flashcards with the hanzi on one side and the pinyin plus translation on the back side. I remembered something about how Nabokov used colours to study English so I thought why couldn’t I try something similar to help me remember Chinese tones. So I used blue ink for first-toned characters such as 天, yellow for second-toned characters such as 牙 (I drink too much coffee), red for third-toned characters such as 火 and green for fourth-toned characters such as 树. The poor state of my Chinese isn’t exactly testimony to the success of this method, but it does give me the excuse to solicit other tips from everyone else out there.
So, what tips do you have to make the study of Chinese easier?
Hank the Plumber.
The color idea is great. To remember the tones I always make some warped association. For example, 天 - (tian4) as in sky or day, I remember it’s the high tone, high in the sky. Or 到(dao2) as in arrive - we arived downtown (down as in falling tone).
I remember the characters themselves through Chinamonics, which is the sort of silly name I gave to the mnemonic associations I use. However, I was astounded one day when I memorized an entire deck of 100 flaschards in a single afternoon by making such associations. With review and practice I had that set down cold in a few days and still remember them. I even decided to make some of these into cards for others to buy and at the same time support my beer and pizza habit, but not sure if anyone will be interested.
Here’s a sample here:
http://chinalife.typepad.com/shop/
I tend to study and learn in spurts so I try to find methods which I can use in chunks.
For learning hanzi, I found so far the best method has been to read ‘Doraemon’ the robot cat comic books. The dialogue is quite short and colloqial and the words reappear many times in the course of the story. I look up the words I don’t know and write the translations at the bottom of the page. This way when I re-read the page I do not just instantly see the English translation. When I re-read sections sometimes I will re-read concentrating to see if I remember tones, other times trying to guess, and occassionally I’ll try to write out some of the dialogue to practice my writing.
I’ve gone thru various ‘childrens’ learning books and stories, but found them not very effective as I couldn’t find them interesting enough to re-read. I also have a Palm Pilot dictionary called Oxford, available for download on the web, which lets me write characters and then it gives me a pick-list to choose from. I can then save words to a word-bank much like the word-bank here on CPod.
I’ve started to tape Chinese tv shows now which have sub-titles in Chinese…I’ll let everyone know how it works. If anyone knows of a good series with modern-colloqial dialogue I can tape, let me know!
The idea of the flash cards is a good one, but I do something a little different. I ise 3X5 injdex cards which are quite inexpensive, and I put the word or phrase I want to learn on one side in English, And put the same word or phrase on the other sade in my own style of phonetic Chinese. For instance , I would put ” I am going to eat lunch now.” on one side and on the other side I would put “Wah yow shen zi cher woofan.” I keep going through the cards until I have what I want to learn memorized. It works very well for me. Thought I would pass it along.
Shawn–I like this technique, but, for me, at least, I need to go to the trouble of figuring out the mnemonics myself. Using yours, for me, is much like reading out of a text book. But spending the time figuring out each Chinamonic makes an indelible (I hop) impression.
FWIW.
Looks like making histories is the best method for learning the characters, as in the revolutionary kanji learning book by, James W. Heisig, “remembering kanji”. I’m not yet into writing chinese but I guess the problems memorizing characters has to be the same as kanji. Right?
Hello all, this is a really interesting thread! I have been using hypnosis to enhance recall with great success. I’ve produced a Self Hypnosis MP3 download for chinesepod users if anyone’s interested. You’ll soak up the podcast content much more easily. Have a look at www.sambrown.co.uk/chinesepod and let me know how you get on.
I have tried Hank’s idea of using colors for each tone but have only found this partially helpful. I guess it wasn’t visual enough for me to relate to. After reading through a few pages of the mind tools / Mnemonics web site, I came up with an idea which may work a little better. It initially requires visually remembering 24 different items. I live in Paris, so I choose 24 different locations, from monuments and museums to train stations and parks. A first tone place I put in the north of Paris, so a first tone/first tone combination I decided to associate with Sacré Coeur. So, to make my association with the word ‘ka fei’ coffee…I’ll think of having a coffee near Sacré Coeur. You don’t have to live in Paris, or use my monuments, but if you follow the method, you’ll need four places for single tones 1 - Champs Elysees, 2 - Concorde, 3 Louvre, 4 Moulin Rouge. So, a three syllable word like like kafeiguan 1 1 3 would be Sacré Coeur + Louvre. In other words, 4 images for the single tones, and 20 images for the four tones (1 1 / 1 2 / 1 3 / 1 4 / 1 - ) (no tone). This is my ‘jianyi’ for what it’s worth.
denis
Here’s how I’m attempting to learn more ‘advanced grammar’.
MyGrammar Notes: The One/Two-Verb Tango
Hey fellow Cpodsters, I added some of my own grammar notes into the Wiki, can you say “我的家离大学不远”?
http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki.....Verb_Tango
Comment by David — February 19, 2006 @
I used colour coding when I was learning the gender of nouns in German - blue highlighter pen for masculine; pink for feminine; green for neuter (un-PC; but for precisely that reason, no effort to remember). Pages ended up a bit technicolour but not too much so; in short it worked…
Obviously Mandarin doesn’t have genders for nouns. However, whilst tones are an obvious choice, that would mean colouring everything in what would look like a fairly random mess (colouring just German nouns leaves a lot of whitespace for other types of word), undermining the point of it.
However, it might make sense to colour-code word types, e.g. nouns, verbs, particles etc… so that sentences take on a colour-coded structure, and individual words are coloured according to where they appear within that structure. I’ve not tried this yet (just a newbie!) - what does anyone else think?
About “Flashcards”
I just found an online dictionary that also has a quite a unique flashcard function. You can cut and paste a block of Chinese text into a window and it produces a set of ‘flashcards’ for you. Each card also has lots of variations of the word so you can practice reading it. I have taken to taking a little clip of Chinese text from something I want to read, let’s say a story in the paper, and then going thru the flashcards and then reading the article! **By the way, the site has a interesting tool to learn Japanese hiragana/katakana if you don’t know it already!
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/c.....=flashcard
About the ‘colors’
When I am in the mood, sometimes I will go thru my Chinese-language learning books and mark up my sentences. I just take a pencil and underline and then I guess “block” out the verbs, the phrases, etc. etc., whatever grammar I can figure out. It seems to help me review the ‘grammar’ in a very analytical way which sometimes is a nice contrast to the ‘natural’ learning via the vocals in Chinesepod. I am really getting into the grammar in the Wiki if anyone is interesting it checking it out.
Pronunciation
I am re-visiting my pronunciation, does anyone know of a website that has a basic review of pinyin and the sounds of Chinese. Specifically what I am looking for is a site that has illustrations or very good written descriptions of the position my mouth, tongue, throat should be when I begin to vocalize the Chinese ‘initial’, and ‘final’. In other words, how my tongue/mouth should be when I say the “zh” in “zhe”.
Hi David,
Here’s a Wiki with that info:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/I.....e_language
I also posted my a short thing on our Wiki about about my (limited) understanding of z/zh/j, q/c/ch, and s/sh/x. It’s my mental notes of what I do to pronouce those sounds when I am not corrected by a native Chinese speaker.
http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ
And thanks for the two-verb page! I showed it to one of my Chinese coworkers and she even went through a few of the verb pairs with me for clarification.
I’ll be happy to add her comments to the page if you like.
I first listen to the podcast and go through the vocabulary (pdf)and learning center. Then I listen again to the podcast while reading the pdf.
Then I use “Chinese practice”. It is a very useful program. You can download it free of charge on www.chinese.yuehan.net. Not only it uses a kind of flashcard system, but you can also link sounds and pictures (memory tools) and has a function using hypnosis. It only takes a few minutes to understand how it works.
It is really worth to take a few minutes to give a glance to it and it combines perfectly with Chinesepod resources. I discovered it a few weeks ago while surfing, I first was septical since I could not find any references about it on the web. But I tried it and I am extremely happy.
Of course I listen again and again to the different podcasts to enhance my pronounciation.
Dominique
Hi Dominique,
Yeah, “Chinese practice” is great. If you are interested in the hypnosis aspects of accelerated learning, check out my page. Download the free FAQ.
www.sambrown.co.uk/chinesepod
All the best
Sam
I also use the flashcard approach. To remember the tones, I speak out the chinese word on the flashcard loudly. By doing this every day, the right tones come naturally.
I think the colours idea is great for some types of thinkers. I had started to do this myself. I tend not to do this with the text though but am trying to see them in my minds eye. To aid spoken and hearing tones I am also starting to attribute tastes to tones.
For me first tone is blue and minty,
Second tone is green and tasts of brocolli,
Third tone is orange and tastes of ginger,
Fourth tone is red and tastes of chile.
It seems to have started to help but I don’t think this will suit everyone.
[What a Great Week April 1-7, 2006]
Can I just say how great the internet, Cpod and people are! It’s only Tuesday going on Wednesday and I am completely overloaded with new interesting things to study which have been mentioned by other Cpoders.
AuntySue: like seeing some genius studying
http://www.chinesepod.com/blog.....-progress/
Johnathan: new very FUN site for basic restaurant words
http://www.inu.org/meiwah/
Bazza and Marchey’s new forum
http://www.wushu.be/ChinesePod/index.php
Eric in NY jumping in on the advanced lesson transcriptions
http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki.....Simplified
And even Aric jumping in with photos of Shanghai and places
http://www.chinesepod.com/blog.....f-the-day/
AND let’s not forget Ken and his Happy Mountain sign, plus his excellent hire of John P, and others.
Absolutely fabulous way to start spring.
As long as you are in Shanghai, you may listen to China national radio(http://211.89.225.2/) programs every day. That might be the most standard pronounciation you can hear in china.
可以听听中央人民广播电台或者中央电视台的节目，可能是你在中国能听到的最标准的普通话mandarin了,enjoy it
My method of improving my vocabulary and reading skills: watch Chinese television through internet(e.g. http://wwitv.com/tt/2078.asx ) , save the stream (using some program that allows you to do so), and read all - and I say all! - subtitles, then find the translations, then watch again and again. For character recognition I use an IME-pad, so that I can input the characters I see. Of course I also use the usual radicals + stroke count method. The best programs to watch are the soap series, because the language is simple and the stories are predictable. Count on 1 hour’s work for 6 minutes of television, good luck!
I am a little similar to Huibert, but not that advanced. I just read an article I am really interested in.
That involves usually working out every single character. But after a short while you know at least 50% of the characters, so you progress very, very fast.
It’s not a sophisticated method, more like brute force. But it works for me. Simple and good.
Since I can’t do that well wile driving I also listen to CPod and other mandarin MP3, but I prefer simple Mandarin only with no English in it.
Huibert de Man, & Fox,
Thanks for reviving this thread. I found some of the suggestions in this blog very helpful, especially David’s “One/Two-Verb Tango”. Many thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. You are obviously all serious students. Reading your comments was a wonderful way to start my day! Onward EVER Backward NEVER