Let’s push on with our discussion on the role of speaking practice:
Communicative output
The key to effective fluency practice lies in using as much communicative output as possible.
Let’s look at some of the characteristics of communicative output:It’s natural
Speaking practice should approximate real conversation. Our brains are hard-wired to communicate and engage in conversation. Rehearsed conversations, or memorized answers are not genuinely communicative - in real life people don’t do that.It requires communicative intent
Natural conversation happens when speakers have a communicative purpose - exchanging messages, or performing tasks. Asking your language partner to describe people, or habits, her views or opinions, even on the simplest matters, are all perfectly good examples of ‘communicative intent’, particularly if those things interest you and promote further discussion.Function over form
In real life, function beats from: speakers do not engage in conversation in order to examine each other’s grammar, still less in order to practice it. (In fact, one way to slow communication down is to focus on the form of the message rather than its content.) When practicing, communicate ideas. Over time, the forms will gradually fall into place.The conversation flows
When you practice, try to keep the conversation flowing. The teacher can obviously correct your mistakes from time to time, but she should do so selectively and strategically (i.e. with a specific end/focus in mind). If the teacher is overly helpful in this context, it will kill the free flow. Nothing is worse for motivation than pedantic over-correction. Avoid the stop/start and the constant explanations.
Ken Carroll
One thing I try to do when I start learning a new vocabulary list is to take each new word and make it a mini topic of discussion. For example my new word is “hand” I’ll say aloud, in as much Chinese as I can use, “This is my hand, my hand has 5 fingers, my left hand is cleaner than my right one, my hands are big, your hands are small,” etc.
Right or wrong, it must come out of my mouth at an audible volume. It doesn’t take a lot of time and has helped me a lot.
James,
This is a good technique - over-using the new item. It can be done at any level. I recommend that you learn word groups, rather than just individual words -’left hand’, ‘right hand’, pai shou ‘to clap’, and so on. By deliberately ove-using them in conversation it hleps to acquire them.
Good suggestion.
Ken
I’m very interested in word groupings will Cpod be providing anything like this? Associated Vocab for each vocab item etc?
Ken, it’s true that this can and should be done at all levels, but the reality is that until you have accumulated a few different sets of words you can’t vary the sentences much. A better way of putting that is that during the first ten or twenty lessons you have to be really inventive and plan carefully in advance.
I’d like to do some analysis of the vocabulary and see how the vocab of some of the first few lessons can be combined into conversation topics (unless someone beats me to it), even if there’s only one or two words that can be pinched from an earlier podcast. So to that end I’m wondering, will new people generally be taking the first ten twenty or thirty lessons from last year in sequence as their first step?
That’s what I did, so perhaps so. When I found chinesepod I started with 4-5 newer ones trying to find where my level belonged, then started downloading the first ones from that level. Later when I was all caught up I started exploring other levels but didn’t bother (on newbie for instance) to take them in sequence, more by subject being interesting.
I did speak briefly in my blog about the idea of learning pathways My idea is based more on subject than vocab but both should really be taken into consideration. Probably something else you could do is create a business Chinese stream that is just the language needed for business or a travel stream with just the useful podcasts for travel. At the moment CPod is all about people who want to learn to speak Chinese to anyone. But both business Chinese and travel Chinese probably make up a bigger demographic of people learning Chinese. Maybe you should even set up separate sites for this as I did show one of my friends who is going to China CPod but all they wanted to learn was stuff for travelling in China and were overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in CPod.
Charles, have you tried using the category tags? They lead me to nice sets of podcasts on related topics, and from there you are offered links to related categories that may also be of interest.
Ken and CPod Community
I am wondering if others have taken up Ken’s suggestion to start speaking. I would like to share my recent experiences. First a bit of background. I am living in Taiwan. Plenty of Chinese around. Elementary Level CPod is my comfort level - Hearing wise and Low Intermediate is my comfort level reading the printed text to myself.
I asked my neighbors across the hall if we could perhaps trade English lessons for Chinese lessons. They were excited. I meet with Jasmine (age 6) and Alice (age9) along with their father an Engineering Prof. twice a week for about 45 minutes each time and alone with the father once more per week. What a reality check.
At this point my reading level in Chinese is just a little above Jasmine’s - She is in Kindergarten and we are reading The Little Match Girl in Chinese and English. This is supposedly a 1st Grade book in Taiwan for learning English! Alice is way ahead of me in reading Chinese. Speaking wise with simple questions in Chinese and sometimes in English as well Jasmine can answer my questions mostly with yes’s and no’s. If she does seem to understand my questions in Chinese or English papa will help. With Alice the questions are usually followed by me asking 為什麼 or her father does and so she will try to explain a bit more in English .Then it is my turn in Chinese as well. By the way having her father who is (1) a teacher and (2) can speak English very well although he is humbly says he does not helps when you have beginners on both sides of the table. So he is our “Ken or Jenny” to help when confusion comes about but he is doing a wonderful job of letting us talk.
In these “discussions” I feel rather comfortable as the pace has to be slow. My successes are when I can put together something that I just guessed and it was understood. Since the story of the Match Girl takes place in cold and snowy weather. I asked (in Chinese to Jasmine) if she had ever seen snow. And got an excited answer of yes!. I asked her again in Chinese if she had touched snow. Again ,Yes. And then where and she said in English in the “mountains”. So I knew next what I wanted to ask but could only guess the important words so I asked “你做 了雪人嗎” It worked I had no idea if 雪人 was snowman but it was the only idea I had. Little victory for me. She understood!
We have discussed babies/baby dolls, puppies and Jolin (C-Pop music star) and what I called 你好,小猫 . That one caught them off guard as I guess they only thought of it as Hello Kitty.
So I am finding this very useful and rewarding as thankfully so do the girls.
Now the reality check occurs when it is just dad and myself. We talk just in English for a bit to help him and then a bit of both English and Chinese. He is very good and has adapted to my level so the questions he asks are not much different in detail than I would ask his daughters. But where he is helping and where I asked him to help the most was reading aloud. I am pitiful. I am not sure if others at my level have tried reading pure Hanzi no pinyin as a crutch. I know all the words but here is where my pronunciation is poor as well as my ability to run “syllables” together is very bad. By this I mean something like 一個人影 or 不久之前. I “read” just like a kid one word/character at a time. Right now I would say this is the big hurdle for me.
So what works is (1) having a 3rd person who speaks Chinese and English to help the flow when otherwise the people on either side are near beginners. (2) I can’t remember who said read and read more. I agree but more importantly read aloud. I feel if I can read at coherrent pace meaning I am processing fast enough to pause at appropriate places it means I am making strides in learning. (3) I prepare for these classes so it means I am spending far more time than just listening to a Cpod dialogue two or three times. Probably my real time per week studying seriously has gone up by a factor of four.
Would love to hear from others as well as what do you talk to little girls about. Mine are 23 and 28 and no grandkids yet. So any ESL teachers of this level would love to hear from you.
Mike in Jubei
Sounds like you’ve got a great deal going there, Mike in Jubei. That’s a good resource, and I’m sure there are jealous CPoddies all over the place. I’m pretty clueless on what to talk about with little girls (no children or nieces…). Perhaps you could ask them what they like. I’m sure they’d just love to tell you all about their favourite things. Perhaps ask about their (least) favourite teacher and why they like/hate them or which TV show they just can’t miss. 为什么is a great follow up question, because unless the girls are shy, they’ll probably want to tell you too much information.
Speaking of children’s books, I have a funny story about a funny story. There’s a site that sells Taiwanese children’s books, mostly fairy tales well known in the west (Red riding hood, Big bad wolf, etc.) with accompanying CDs. There was one title that sounded intriguing, “The Fragrant Smell.” Aha, I thought– finally a traditional Chinese story that I haven’t heard of! Probably about a jasmine fairy, or some magical perfume. There was no image of the book but from the title I felt sure it would be a beautiful story. So when the package arrived, I eagerly ripped into it, and saw– on the front of the booklet was a picture of a boy with an unmistakable drawing of a cloud of gas escaping from his nether regions. In short, the pleasant odor occurred when Younger Brother ate beans that grew on the grave of his beloved dog. The accompanying CD had very graphic sound effects that sounded more like a horse with indigestion. Someone in the studio was having way too much fun with the sound effects. It was very disappointing. Also the magical flower/fairy/perfume traditional Chinese story that I had anticipated, did not exist at all, which was also disappointing.
There seems to be a lesson in that– you’re looking for magic and flowers and perfume, and get– well, something else. BTW If there any 8-year-old boys out there going through a gross humor phase and are interested in my copy of “Fragrant Smell,” let me know and I’ll send it to you.
One amusing thing, though, was hearing the young American woman’s voice in the English audio glossary section pronouncing “Fart!” with the same unvarying and precise cheerfulness that she used to pronounce “to grow!” or “before!” Just another vocabulary word that ESL students need to know! It reminds me of Sunday school, when we were tots of 7 or so, and were having to read a sequence of Bible verses out loud– and Eric had the verse that described how Noah was “naked”! We were all waiting to see how he would handle this and giggling among ourselves. He stopped at the strategic word and asked Mrs. Patton how to pronounce it. “Nekkid,” she answered, with a pronunciation so sanitized and proper that it removed all the anticipated scandal. “Nekkid,” continued Eric, and to our childish disappointment it wasn’t even funny or embarrassing. It was the short “e” sound that got him off the hook and removed any sordid trace from the word…
Gosh, I didn’t realize Will was posting at almost the same time (and probably tomorrow morning, or am I posting yesterday evening?)– I actually did write “I’m jealous” about Mike of Jubei but then deleted it! Yes, Mike of Jubei, there are lots of jealous poddies! What a wonderful opportunity you have to learn Chinese– And if your study time has gone up x4 per week, you’ll certainly make good progress!
Mike, I admire your indefatigability. (How do you say that in Chinese?) Reading aloud isn’t easy. I personally wouldn’t want to spend that much time on it because I’m not sue how cognitive it is to have someone correct your reading. However, it’s all part of the process.
Catherine, er, if you don’t need that book, maybe I know someone who may be interested in that fart book. Not me, of course - I grew out of that kind of humor some time ago - but a friend of mine, you know.
Ken
Tomorrow morning for you, I’d just logged on at work. It’s heading towards (early) lunch now.
Wait that’s confusing - I was posting the next morning from your perspective, and you were posting last night by my perspective… Ain’t relative time a wonderful thing! It must be perfectly timed for you in NAmerica, you arrive home from work just in time to see the next lesson pop up. It usually comes up just after I get to work (late). Must arrive in the middle of the night in UK, though…Bazza? When do your lessons arrive your time?
Yes I know I am lucky to be able to be in a Chinese land. I can even find a reasonably decent pizza when I crave it. The real luck is having neighbors who are so nice it is really fun talking and bringing out the Chinese from my mouth as well as little English sounds from the girls. Their father is always asking them to speak louder.
Will your timing was great !I was thinking about Friday’s class (my tomorrow) as I biked to work and decided Iwas going to make a paper for Jasmine (age 6) with the following on it. “我喜歡 ” I like …….. and have her start saying this with things she likes (in English) and see if I can repeat it in Chinese. Games are fun.
Catherine speaking of farts, there is a commercial on TV here in Taiwan. Dad and son(maybe 5 or 6 years old) in the tub together when the little boy kind of lifts up a bit and you hear the “glug” and bubbles coming to the surface of the water. He does this two or three times and starts laughing and the dad kind of rolls his eyes. Never pay attention to what the add is trying to sell.
Ken - partly agree about read aloud. I do find speaking without a text flows more smoothly. But the reading aloud does two things (1) see in lexical chunks and (2) prevents me from avoiding words with zh’s and ch’s and all those other words that hurt my tongue. So I think it does help with my pronunciation. The dad will let me speak many sentences and then we can go back over the words I completely butchered and he will pronounce it slowly and clearly and then I try to speak again and again until it begins to sound not real bad.
Mike in Jubei
Mike, excellent point about those chunks! Reading aloud helps you to focus on how the chunks fit together aurally! Terrific.
Ken and our Community
A little bit of update on my lessons with the girls and their dad. With the girls great progress. They now call me Uncle Mike! And sometimes stop me in the elevator to talk. The lessons with them are very useful for me. I make my own lesson plan with phrases in english for instance ” Can you…..” (1) make dad laugh or (2) ride a bike or (3) go to the movies . So I will say the first part in English AND Chinese and let them repeat it along with the answers I have given them and then I will say these answers again in English AND Chinese. Dad can correct my pronunication if it is wacko. Then we try to talk from there. And I try to see if I can say their English answer in Chinese.
We also just try to talk. They had been to Singapore as have I a few times and kids being kids what they remembered most was no 口香糖 “kouxiangtang” chewing gum. So now I will always remember that word as I learned it from a 6 year old!
I leave it to Dai and Lantian to come up with the measure word for a stick of gum and a pack of gum.
So I am making progress. Having children as my teacher/students works very well for me. As we all know “from the mouth of children… ” or kids say the darness things….”
I also have a suggestion for Ken and the Cpod HQ. Can you consider getting Skype and everyweek doing a practice lessson with a willing volunteer? Record it and let us all hear. I don’t want to put Bazza on the spot but use the lesson plan with he and Jenny. ( Bazza you can only say 我愛你 once to Jenny) See if it works and modify based on real data. Use as many volunteers as possible. Ideally we can hear Newbies, Elementary……. Aric with Faye Wang making a guest appearance!
Mike in Jubei
Mike, we tried recording a demo practice session a month ago, on both Microsoft and Unix platforms, and Skype does not record, even using software designed for the purpose. A few small groups including some of the best Internet protocol and software minds looked at our problem, and no solution could be found that really truly worked. We contacted a place that records skype interviews for a podcast, and they were using a hardware solution.
If anyone has a solution, and HAS ACTUALLY MADE IT WORK SEVERAL TIMES, please let me know. (I’m not interested in testing any more of the “I’m certain it will work” theories. They don’t, and they waste time.)
Mike, I’ve also sent you a private message.
VISITING - About finding others to talk to. I have been reading links provided by JohnS about learning hanzi, there’s a great deal of information I am finding fascinating about the input versus the output, especially valuable to me are the authors descriptions, because they have put into coherent words what I have been trying to describe about my own experience with learning Chinese, I recommend others go thru the links–I wish I had, months ago.
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks.....siveEx.htm
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks.....ToMass.htm
http://www.languageimpact.com/.....shenbk.htm
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks.....pingOn.htm
http://www.tesol.cn/yan_jiu/ke_la_shen_lilun.html
http://www.chinesepod.com/blog.....arn-hanzi/
For example they describe how for our friends and language resources “conversing with you is hard work”, YES!
“In addition to formal language sessions, you will increasingly be able to engage in conversation with friends. >>, so it requires some commitment on the part of your conversational partners. But again, people who know you well will be able to communicate with you far more effectively and easily than people who do not yet know you. With time, you can systematically expand the number of regular conversational partners with whom you visit (see Thomson, 1993c). So once you are past the very early stages of language learning, an obvious way to increase your comprehensible input is to engage in a lot of social visiting. You may not be a person who normally does a lot of social visiting. If so, it will help if you can view social visiting as part of your daily work routine.