Reflections on two years of CPOD

Being interested in economics-finance-current affairs, the WSJ chinese edition has been a helper for me. Check out:

http://www.chinese.wsj.com/gb/index.asp

This is a helpful and interesting discussion. I could have written wolson's comment myself: "ChinesePod has been a very important tool in restoring my Chinese ability. Much of what I have heard on ChinesePod, I am now using on a daily basis. ChinesePod has made the language real, not a textbook exercise. They aim at everyday spoken Chinese and that has been extremely valuable for me." I lived in China a few years ago and really missed opportunities to listen -- and continue to advance my vocabulary better than tapes and textbooks.

Sounds like my language level and mark's are similar. Here's how I generally use ChinesePod: I listen to almost all the Upper-Intermediate lessons on days that I feel a little "lazy" -- always new material there, but I can get most of it on the first or second time. Advanced lessons, and especially Media lessons depending on the material, is where my study here has shown improvement and still challenges me a lot. I can now hear and understand the majority of them on the first run-through while 6 months ago the speed was too much for me (as was most TV and radio in China). I fleece vocab out of more basic lessons: if the topic interests me, I open the "Dialogue" section and look for new words. I've found new words, slang words especially, even in Newbie lessons.

As far as additional Chinese input goes, I've just gained enough courage to begin using Chinese websites in earnest. I've learned to use www.baidu.com (search engine) and www.youku.com (videos). I get a lazy brain when faced with a whole webpage full of characters, and so I'm aiming to reduce that feeling. I think that the internet has an endless supply for more Chinese input.

Love the suggestion from Clay. I will try it! Intimidating blocks of Chinese can be approached this way -- plus, if I discover on a quick run-through that the page doesn't interest me, I don't really want to slog through slowly to get all the unfamiliar words anyway. This is the same reason I may skip over posts in Chinese: takes more time than I want to spend.

Regarding opportunities to practice speaking: I've heard about, but not attempted, things like: http://www.mylanguageexchange.com. I've found language helpers through Chinese churches and on university campuses (put a post up in Chinese -- in the graduate science area most likely -- saying an American with some Chinese ability is looking for a language partner). It has worked well for me.

if you can talk, and think, you can start to write in Chinese

John..

I used to do the same with fantasy novels in English when I was a teenager. So it's not different now. I am at such a basic "newbie" level of Mandarin that I look up just about everything because without knowing the basic words, nothing makes sense at all.

I had a real moment of "I'm really starting to learn something now" the other day on the train when for the first time I realised that a small family nearby was speaking in Mandarin and I recognised the language. I didn't really understand what they were saying, and it would have been rude in any other context to eavesdrop, but I really felt great that I recognised the sounds and "music" of the language being spoken.

I fully relate to what Ken is saying about it being "hard to consolidate ever more items if you're not using them". I have been text messaging my new girlfriend in pinyin for the last 2 weeks or so but it wasn't until this past Sunday that I had a real chance to speak to her face-to-face in mandarin for the first time. I forgot just about everything I had learnt in a matter of seconds.. then slowly, things would come back to me as the context of the moment matched the the various phrases I had been practising over and over. I learn may be 4 or 5 new words a day at the moment.. but I am only able to recall 1 or 2 of them.

My latest couple of words are jintian and duibuqi. The first, the word for "today", I have been hearing since the first podcast lessons I started to listen to... but until I started to actually use the word, I would never recall it... there was no real use for my brain to remember it. Then the word for sorry "duibuqi" came up on Sunday when I kept bumping into people in China town. :)

Chinese people in Sydney really like it when I thank them with "xie-xie".. it makes them smile and feel appreciated... I just wish I felt more confident to be able to initiate, maintain and finish a conversation.. rather than just finish the conversation.

Also.. I am still having trouble finding a starting point for reading the characters... I can read the numbers 1 through 10 but that's only through playing the game Mah-jong.. and that is about it.. the characters overwhelm and confound me.

Jenny,

I like your technique of 20 high frequency words! Looks like it worked great because your command of the English language is incredible.

I totally agree with the problem of consolidating learning in a non-Chinese speaking environment (since i'm learning Chinese in the Philippines.)

It's one of my regrets that I only started listening to Chinesepod when I got back to Manila after a year of studying Mandarin in Shanghai. I have no idea why it didn't occur to me at that time, but I guess the time I lived there made me take for granted other avenues for learning. It's utterly frustrating to want to practice but find no one to practice with.

Clay,

Cool technique with the reading! I'll surely try that out when I'm reading my Tintin comics and 101 Mysteries of the Ancient World chinesebook. Hahaha.

Cpod lessons are great and with Amber's guide to China, it just refuels my passion to learn the language and rekindles my dream of someday returning to Shanghai. Thanks Cpod!

Mark,

Hope we make your third year ever more worthwhile. And thank you for your support and starting a truly rewarding discussion.

I had a similar problem with English. Very few can evade the learning plateau. I found it extremely useful to venture out of my comfort zone, e.g. the books that I'd been using chronically, or the type of language I had grown accustomed to. So I started to hunt for alternatives, mostly from the media, because the content was in general more real life. But what really helped me was I set a daily target, 20 high frequency words which I'd use. I shut off the 21st and beyond, lest they overwhelm and discourage me. I'd look the words up and pay extra attention to the usage in daily life. But that consolidation was only possible because I lived in an English speaking environment. A majority of poddies don't. But I guess and hope the banter during the lesson would be useful.

Clay, thanks for clearing that up.

I would recommend doing the same kind of thing with the podcasts. I know a lot of people are using the backwards approach, especially on the more advanced levels, but I always just listen to the lesson first. Then when I have the time for it, I first listen to the vocab, then I listen to the dialogue sentence by sentence on the dialogue page without looking at the text and then again reading the text. Finally I listen to the whole lesson again.

Ideally this is supposed to happen within a couple of days so I can consolidate what I've learned from the lesson. In reality most days I only have the time to listen once to a lesson and maybe the repeat shuffle of the dialogues on my mp3-player. Then on the weekends or if I get an unexpected day off (I'm temping) I'll do a whole bunch of lessons, exercises, characters etc.

When I first came to CPod some people recommended just listening to a lot of lessons no matter the level but I didn't really believe them when they said you would benefit from it. I still don't completely agree but it is amazing how much you can actually pick up from just listening.

When I say that I partly disagree, it's because listening to too many difficult lessons when you're just a newbie or ellie may be counter-effective, making you think you're not learning anything and loose your motivation. On the other hand it's important to challenge yourself, so don't just stick to the newbie level and do all the newbie lessons before you begin listening to the elementary lessons. Don't even wait until you feel comfortable at one level but keep adding 1 to 1.

Henning, Sorry for leaving you hanging so long... Let me answer your questions now. You asked: do you really think it is a trap? Didn't the "looking up every word" phase leave any noticable advances in your passive vocab base? Actually, I think this is partly a function of your current level, your personality, and your motivation. When I first started studying Chinese, I DID look up every word in the material I was studying. After three semesters of Chinese, I came to China with my Oxford English C-E / E-C dictionary, and I literally took it with me EVERYWHERE. I really did look everything up. There comes a point, though, when this becomes quite inefficient, and it's much more practical to figure out words by context or to ask people, or to just make simple notes and look words up later at home. If you are still looking up every word and you don't mind, then I say do it. But you will probably reach a point when this begins to become very laborious and it begins to hurt your motivation. It's crucial that when you get to this point you realize that you don't HAVE to look up every word, that it's a rule you set for yourself and a habit you got into; it's not the way you HAVE to learn the language. (It's also not likely to be the way you learned your first language as a child... I have two librarian parents who used to always tell me "look it up," but you better believe I only did that as a last resort.) Now, when I read a Chinese novel, most words I don't know can be easily inferred by context. I don't worry about them. I don't add them to a vocabulary list or anything; that would hurt my enjoyment of the novel and thus my motivation. Of the words I don't know on first glance, there are a small class of words I run into which I think are either (1) really worth learning, or (2) crucial to my understanding of the story. These words are usually not hard to recognize. I like to highlight them, but I don't stop to go look them up right then. I keep going. Only when it becomes cognitively unbearable do I actually look up those words (or, more often, ask my wife). It turns out that the majority of the words I highlight I never go back and look up, because I actually understood the story just fine without looking them up. Sure, I CAN go back and look them up, but I just read a story in Chinese and enjoyed it. Do I really need to look them up? The answer to that question comes down to personality.

Gang,

I should have stressed that in the First reading of a passage, you literally read as fast as you can! (better yet, dont read, glance as fast as you can) Dont bother reading them out, that will slow you down. Therefore, if you only comprehend 5% of the words, then that is completely OK. Your going to hit it up again 2 more times.

An intermediate length lesson from Cpod should take you about 30 seconds, regardless of you level. Only difference is a newbie may only get one word out of it, while and an advanced all but one. Same speed though...

Even if you dont want to do the whole 3x reading thing, get in the habit of at least doing the first one. Less than one minute of time is a sound investment.

Wolson - use plecodict and write the characters to look them up - it is much much faster

"or maybe we should say languages written with the latin alphabet" Well, you could also apply this method for languages using the cyrillic alphabet or even languages like Arabic, Hebrew or Khmer as long as you're familiar with the script.

Surprisingly, I find it much easier to infer from context when it come to spoken language, I attribute it to my 2 semester training of simultaneous interpreting for which predicting what the person whose speech you're translating is absolutely vital.

Majamaya points out that while Clay's method is good when it comes to Indoeuropean languages, or maybe we should say languages written with the latin alphabet, the characters are a problem when you're trying to read Chinese texts.

I feel that it's not impossible to get by this problem but I've had to accept that I just can't read the kinds of texts that I've been used to reading when I was at the same level of learning other languages. It's very important to choose a text that's not too difficult and then Clay's method is actually working quite well.

I myself am reading a lot of illustrated children's books and find it very useful. Some of them will have the pinyin written above the characters and if you've just begun reading I would recommend those. It's so much work having first to look up the pronounciation and then the meaning that sometimes it's just nice to be able to read the pronunciation and only worry about the meaning.

This has been a very interesting discussion and full of useful suggestions. There has been a lot of talk about inferring from the context in written text but I was wondering how and what everyone is doing when it comes to the spoken language?

I myself had an interesting experience today when I was meeting with my friend from Shanghai as usual and she happened to receive a phone call during our session. Of course I took it as an occasion to see how much I could understand and I ended up being quite surprised.

Even though she was doing a lot of code-switching (between Shanghainese and Mandaring) I was able to pick up she was telling a friend how to find some questions their professor had posted on the internet.

I don't think I understood any of the phrases completely but hearing certain keywords like 老师，问题 and 看看 and connectors like 因为，如果 and 而且, the gist of the conversation was clear to me and my friend did of course confirm it afterwards.

thanks, henning, it's interesting and reassuring to see that they're not terms like inveigh, bellicose, wastrel or abeyance ;-) Gato bears some resemblance to "Kater", is that why you understood the gist of it, are you learning Spanish or were you familiar with the English saying? This is slightly off-topic, but if you want to improve your English vocabulary, I recommend checking iTunes for "Just Vocabulary" and "Merriam Webster Word of the Day". These podcasts are really useful. Your trouble with "" reminds me of a conversation I had just this morning - my sole foreign colleague (a TEFL teacher from Minnesota) remarked that "Yo estoy en un bocadillo." (I am on a (bread!) roll) I have no idea why he didn't use carrete (a coil which is porbably closer to the origin of the idiom "be on a roll"). He was deeply humbled about his Spanish skills when seeing my face go blank.

I agree, clay's advice is brilliant! The only problem is that you won't even get past the first step if you don't know the pronunciation of all the words. I will put it into use immediately, although not for Chinese, that would be rather futile, but Italian and German.

wolson,

If your goal is to better understand Chinese relationships, then my suggestion will be no use to you. However, if your goal is to improve your reading ability, you might try reading a book or two that has been translated from Enlgish (written by an author from your native country) into Chinese. These books are more simple to read because you know what to expect from the plot - you will understand the humor, you'll be able to predict twists in the plot, etc., simply because it was written by someone from your culture. I am able to read children's books written by American authors far more easily than I am able to read books by Chinese authors. Also, as annoying as it may be, romance stories are often the easiest to understand, simply because everything in them is absolutely predictable.

I just read Clay's advice: I think it is excellent: it puts yet another stage in the process that I proposed.

mikeinewshot, Since I am now in China, I picked up several books in Chinese. My theory was that novels teach how Chinese relate to each other which is different than how a textbook says they relate.

Well, I am only a few pages into the first one: 驻京办主任 by 王晓方

It is proving to be very difficult and slow going for me to read it ... my character work needs some paractice. I find that I know about 2/3's of the characters but still have difficulty trying to determine the meaning of the text. So what I do is highlight the characters that I do not know and then later reread the text but this time with a dictionary. First I will use the characters that I do know in front of the unknown character as a lookup. If this fails, then I use Hanzidict to get the character. Sometimes, even this fails and I have to resort to the old find the radical and lookup the character method in a good dictionary.

But I don't think the effort has been wasted: despite the difficulty, I am learning. So I am continuing to spend time trying to get through the material. I suspect that this, like any other endeavor, gets easier the more time you put into it. So my advice would be to hang with it.

Here is my two cents on the looking-up-every-word-as-you-go habit.

I also fell into the habit John warns about. It really limits the amount your amount of input. You can get so meticulous in breaking down every single word, that you acutally loose the meaning of the passage. i would sometimes get through an article, breaking down every word (and tones!), and two hours later, i dont even really fully comprehend it.

I had finally had a teacher break me of this, with a pretty simple yet effective method of reading (newspaper aticles and short stories in particular) . She had me read the passage 3 times

1st time: try and read the passage at a speed you would read in a similiar speed in your native language. Therefore, FAST!

2nd time: read it at a slower pace, and circle the words you dont know with a pencil

3rd time: read it at the same pace, this time flip your pencil around and get ready to erase the ones you firgured out on the last go round. there will almost always at least be one of those circled that you will erase.

you can take a normal sized article and get through it three times using this method in 10-15 mintues. In that class, we were timed, and asked ten or so comprehension questions. its amazing how much more of the MEANING of the full passage you can decipher. I know its hard not looking up all those words, as you want to know EVERYTHING. I still have the urge to do it, but it really will limit your input.

another two: rebuttal (from Ken's post), cameltoe (from South Park)

majamaya,

well, I just looked up "el pobre gato" (in a Spanish dictionary, obviuously) despite having an idea what it roughly might be.

Besides, here 5 arbitrary examples of English words that I looked up recently:

to rehearse

barfly

chestnut

immaculate

jock

Plants/animals/food, proverbs, colloquialisms, and neologisms are usually a good source of fodder for my online dictionary (or if it gets tough - for wikipedia).

Dear majamaya, thanks. You're right. Within my light "humour", there is a lot of baggage (long story!) which CPOD -- amazingly, incredibly -- is helping to clear away. But users like "casie" will be able to tell you that there is still enough baggage in my "Mandarin Terminal 5" for me to be still pretty phobic about writing (and even speaking) Mandarin. I'm always grateful to casie for constantly encouraging, and gently prodding, me to write. So thanks for this much-needed reminder, which I kind of know intuitively! Good luck with your Chinese studies!

In addition to my previous ramblings, I ask you to consider the following: Language evolves. If a construction is inefficient, I gets discarded over time (Does this apply to Latin? ;-) ). We can observe microevolution easily: It comes in the form of the introduction of neologisms or non-standard colloquialisms. Just like the ID- inspired hypothesis of "irreducible complexity" is utter rubbish, no language is fervently trying to be a pain in the figurative behind of the learner. We simply ought to take it as it is without bothering with the troublesome aspects too much. On our way to proficiency, we may eventually master even the tiniest problems that always tend to crop up.

@Auntie A note of caution: Whilst referring to yourself as "mandarinistically (btw, a neologism ;-) ) challenged", you probably use this self-deprecating manner as a means of humour. However, if you keep telling yourself this, you could actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy even if you're not being serious about it. I have noticed this ever so often in my students, I wouldn't want you (or anyone who is, subconsciously, afraid of learning a new language) to suffer the same decline in success and enthusiasm.

I'm inclined to agree with John, using your dictionary excessively might hamper your actual progress. If you really have look almost every word up, you're not going to enjoy the text, nor get much out of it in terms of broadened understanding of grammar or vocabulary. An obvious major drawback regarding Chinese is that you have to familiarize yourself with the character on top of its sound, perhaps pinyin, and meaning, especially in compounds. Languages relying on an alphabet are somewhat easier in this respect. So, speaking of "passive vocab", do you really expect to somehow subconsciously remember the majority of the words? Quite frankly, that's not very likely. Might work a treat in the long run, but I'm not convinced. Yesterday, I tried to read a Chinese article about a party meeting and today a faint clue of what the character for "province" and "communist" look like lingers in my brain. Jajaja, way to go...;-) I used to make flashcards of important vocab I encountered, or look them all up, but I came to realize how futile this approach was. Bear in mind that this verdict is coming from someone who likes to memorize whole pages of dictionaries. Nowadays, whenever I read a book in a foreign language, I make a quick note of any term which is not in my active vocabulary. I don't look these expressions up, however, as I'm usually able to infer from context. The next time(s) I come across one of these words in a different context, it almost miraculously transfers into my vocabulary. Become a living thesaurus, try to find as many alternative translations or versions of expressing a single idea. Find out about subtle distinctions later on. This will enable you to at least to spot inappropriate usage in your fellow learners' speech/texts. :-P

On the subject of "conventional studying", I'm with the ChinesePod policy of not focusing too much with grammar, after a while you're just bound to get it right. All it takes is exposure. I mean, if you see a certain structure often enough, why would you have to think twice?

The more rules you introduce, the more confused people will get. This even affects your mother tongue: A this cr** about "leísmo" vs castellano estándar, "de lo que" vs "del cual" is driving me, a native speaker and teacher of Spanish crazy. I usually use the right form, but awareness of there being rules for it increases insecurity. Rules of thumb are great, though they are unfortunately too general and don't take variations into account.

@henning I know, curiosity killed "el pobre gato", but I'd like to read a few examples of the kind of English words you look up.

I have expressed my opinion on the dictionary look-ups a few times and it probably merits a separate thread.

I will try to write up my thoughts on the subject, complete with specific examples and will open up that thread when I'm ready.

I'll have to partially side with John on "looking everything up in the dictionary". It kind of depends on you and what you feel like though. Sometimes I'm in the mood to look up everything and take note of all the words I don't know, but I don't force myself to do it when I'm not in the mood. A lot of times, I just rather enjoy whatever it is I'm watching/reading/listening and be satisfied with contextual clues at meaning. The dictionary *will* do wonders for your vocabulary, but careful that it doesn't get in the way of learning or your enjoyment.

changye,

I couldn't agree with you more... technology has done wonders for language acquisition!

Dear mikeinewshot, now I'm really impressed, because I've never attempted to read any books in Chinese before!

uncle changye - you are a great "study buddy" for this Mandarinistically challenged Auntie. Thanks!

On the "dictionary" debate, I'm actually with henning and mikeinewshot. That is, I look up everything.

But I think that's only do-able for me because my areas of interest tend to be very narrow, eg. gastronomy, Formula One, one subject which I don't wish to mention here, certain kinds of music, and architecture/interior design etc etc. John's advice makes a lot of sense if the learner in question needs to acquire a very wide general vocabulary that would serve in most general situations, I think.

Since my focus is so narrow, it's normally well worth the initial time and effort invested in acquiring the "base vocabulary" required for exploring these areas of interest deeply enough to attain a great deal of satisfaction.

This is a luxury I enjoy because I don't live in a Chinese-speaking environment, my daily comfort does not depend on my command of Chinese. So I don't feel any pressure to acquire Chinese for every situation.

The challenge for me, so far, is finding an existing area of interest which is a good match with my present interests and habits. But I have just bought a book -- "Origins of Chinese Food Culture", only 150+ pages, and LOTS of nice illustrations -- which seems terribly interesting. Hopefully this may become the first "Chinese" book I read in my life!

Mark, thanks for this thread. Wish you all the best.

When I was young (a long time ago), learning foreign languages was often a lonely training without a good teacher, study buddies, up-to-date dictionaries, and sophisticated textbooks, however, thanks to Chineseopd and Internet, I have everything I need now, except for my diligence.

Thanks, guys!

I am with the "Henning School" of thought.

I have started reading a modern Chinese Novel and am close to finishing the first chapter (13 pages) after several weeks. I am looking up every new word and also those I am not sure of.

I am hopeful that my progress will speed up progressively during the rest of the book as I get used to the vocabulary.

I am considering plotting the number of new words for each page/chapter as I progress to (hopefully) watch it diminish.

I believe that if I hadn't looked up every word I would have missed vital clues to the plot

John,

do you really think it is a trap? Didn't the "looking up every word" phase leave any noticable advances in your passive vocab base?

Because I do that and will continue with it. I even look up words I do know just to doublecheck I get the tone right (although I stopped trying to "learn" them in a classic sense)

I also still look up every unfamiliar word in English(thanks to leo.org which will start a Chinese-German dictionary soon), although in English language I got to the point where the situation occurs rather rarely (still need to look up about 5-10 words a day). I attribute major chunks of my current English (passive) vocab base to the crazy lookup-strategy. Definately does not look like a trap for me.

Mark,

I'm really happy to hear about your progress, since you've been listening to Jenny and me so much. Thanks a lot for letting us know!

As for your conclusions, I think I agree with you that you DO need more input. Don't treat all input equally, though. Massive input is great, but you definitely don't need to be looking up every word you don't know. This is a trap I myself have fallen for many times in the past. It can turn a great source of input into a frustrating chore.

So I think the best thing for you would be to expose yourself to as much Chinese as possible (that's always great), but don't actively STUDY it all... Just listen/watch/read and absorb what you can, and don't worry about the rest. Concentrate your studies on using what you have already learned, with incremental advances. Meanwhile, all the extra input you are getting in between "official study times" will be quietly improving your Chinese in the background of your mind.

mark -

You said it yourself... "I need more input". Get as much as you can in the form of TV, podcasts, and books in the topics that interest you. What would you watch/listen/read in English? Now sometimes watch/listen/read those same things in Chinese instead of English. If you listen to the news, start listening to some of it in Chinese (BBC has a daily chinareel podcast and there are several Chinese radio stations you can listen to over the web). If you browse the news over something like Google News, switch to Google News Chinese.

Being a Harry Potter fan (yea, one of those), I'm currently "reading" the HP books in Chinese. My goal is to eventually read the major Chinese classics... 紅樓夢, 水滸傳, 三國演義, 西遊記 (maybe not all this year) and since I grew up watching Chinese TV drama adaptations of JinYong's wuxia novels, I'll be looking to read the original novels at some point. My recognition of characters pales in comparison to my listening + comprehension ability, so I'm "reading" while listening to audiobook renditions for now. This example is very specific to my interests; I think the specific input for you at this point is entirely dependent on your own interests... the important part is to increase the input flood.

Well, I strive to become fluent in every language I learn. Chinese is my fifth foreign language and I honestly think I can reach my goal of becoming reasonably proficient in up to 12 languages, seeing as I'm still very young.

A previous commenter stated that "Another thing to consider is that being "bilingual" rarely means having a full match between the vocabularies of both languages."

Well, I have to agree. There are so many things I couldn't express in my mother tongue (Spanish), but which come easily to me when speaking English and vice versa. I think that when you're learning a new language you need to shed all your previous concepts of grammar and word formation and get into a totally different "mode" as well as receptive state. This is almost impossible, as we always depend on explanations/translations in our "base language" (as opposed to "target language"). Therefore, if there is no match between base and target language, it's difficult to make the words come naturally. It gets even worse when two languages do overlap slightly. We're all aware of the phenomenon of "false friends", unfortunately, we get suspicious about each word/construction bearing resemblance to the equivalent in our native language.

Investigation into the neurological aspect of language acquisition suggests that information about a foreign is stored in different areas of the brain. Moreover, if you're older than 20, it's extremely unlike that you'll ever manage to attain a native speaker's accent.

CP has been very useful for helping me with my efforts to learn the beautiful Chinese language, but obviously it isn't possible to learn just from one source, though if I were to venture a guess I'd say 70% of my vocabulary comes from the podcasts and expansion sentences. On a side note, I have noticed that after approximately 4-5 months of studying, I know (i.e can read) about 2000 characters, but I can write only about 100. Is there any way I can improve my writing skills (of hanzi) other than writing the character/radicals fifty times? In fact, I'm afraid of trying to piece together sentences because I'm sure they'll be wrong anyway. I have no opportunity to get tutored. *sigh*

By the way: "I'm not talking about memorizing dictionaries." I've got a big fat 1500-pages unilingual English dictionary. Every evening, I try to memorize some of the vocab of 4-5 pages. Geeky, I know. It can be great fun, though.

My tip for boosting your language acquisition speed: Listen to TV/read books in that language even if you haven't faintest idea what the text means. And buy workbooks that are (way) above your current level. Skimming through them, you'll A. feel humbled about your progress so far and be critical of yourself B. feel compelled to work even harder to be finally able to use the book. ;-)

Let me add some smoke here:

As person who once spoke pretty good Chinese over 35 years ago and then did not have the ability to use the language for the following 35 years, my level is also questionable. Sometimes, even a Newbie Lesson is the "right" level for me. While I often understand the Advanced Lessons, there are times when these are also very hard for me. In a technical sense, I would have to be classified Intermediate. If is very difficult to find the right classification of what skills I do have.

I have returned to serious study of Chinese this past October in preparation for this two month trip that I am currently on in China. There seems to be times when hearing and understanding Chinese is very easy. But there are also many times when it is a lot of work trying to get a grasp on what people are saying. I know part of it is my poor hearing; but also, even if I hear, I don't always quickly understand. The Chinese say accurately, 听不懂 (ting1 bu dong3). In part, I do not think in Chinese. As a result, it slows me up.

ChinesePod has been a very important tool in restoring my Chinese ability. Much of what I have heard on ChinesePod, I am now using on a daily basis. ChinesePod has made the language real, not a textbook exercise. They aim at everyday spoken Chinese and that has been extremely valuable for me.

Hi Mark. I caught your OP when it came back, but didn't post any comments. However, just about every word you wrote resonated with me.

On Ken's point: I think you may be able to consolidate your CPOD gains simply by continuing to follow the podcasts. For one thing, I seem to be detecting that CPOD is beginning to engineer elements of "spiral learning" into their course materials. And they're getting so good at it!

Thanks for that, Ken... I really value these elements of "spiral learning" because it means that users not only learn the "new vocabulary" for any particular lesson, but they are also -- perhaps without feeling it -- are also consolidating CPOD's basic vocabulary for that level.

But I am with you, Mark, on the question of "what next?" I won't presume to give you any advice, but perhaps what I doing might give you some useful ideas:

1. I am beginning to study classical Chinese (文言; wen2yan2) in parallel with CPOD's modern Chinese lessons. My sense is that you are already at a good level to have a go at this.

The benefit to you -- and to your long-term goal of attaining true bilingualism -- is that studying classical Chinese can have the effect of bringing your "sense" for modern Chinese into a totally different dimension. It will be useful when you move into more formal, written modern Chinese, because the written form (Cf. lines of dialogue) is closer to classical Chinese. In the latest "Qing Wen", the word 非 (fei1) is a classical Chinese word.

Another good thing about classical Chinese is that it is dense. So you can get a lot out of studying a single poem, can even consider memorizing it (recommended) so that it somehow becomes internalized.

One practical problem is finding good materials. Most of the resources -- especially a textbook which I think would be perfect for you (it has good English notes + hanyu pinyin + simplified characters) -- are out of print. But if you p.m. me on this, I think I have a simple solution for you...

2. Another thing to consider is that being "bilingual" rarely means having a full match between the vocabularies of both languages. Not even in a bilingual person who was brought up in a "bilingual" environment, with a very high level of ability in both languages.

But being a "functional" bilingual means that you can acquire new vocab in the second language nearly as efficiently as a native speaker, so for me it is a valid goal. In other words, being a mere "functional bilingual" means that you can absorb and process fresh language efficiently. For the rest of your life.

Well, that is merely what I have concluded after reading a lot of articles and books on language development in bilingual children, for the sake of the Stunt Toddler...

I don't want to discourage anybody. However I do think that making the effort to duplicate the vocabulary and syntactic command of the first language may not be worth the effort required, especially if the learner doesn't have the luxury of being able to be immersed in the second language.

For me, this means that my general focus is on being a "functional bilingual", and I only aim for "total bilingualism" in very defined areas which correspond to my personal interests (eg. food, architecture, Formula One racing, certain kinds of music, etc) .

If you allow your interests drive your learning, you stand a better chance of going deep enough -- at least in those areas of interest -- to give you a fighting chance to "know" the language in that area nearly as well as a native speaker who shares the same interest. And I like to think that the language-processing ability which that requires will spill over to other areas of language, perhaps enable you to approach those areas with the same basic receptive and language-processing abilities as a native speaker.

Having said that, I need to add the caveat that this approach suits my needs and my goals, but it may not suit anyone! The greatest risk, with such an approach, is "shallowness". It's just that for me, it is like my only pass to a deeper level of "language processing".

For Italian, my "areas" are cooking, wine, interior design, and -- of course! -- Formula One. If I have to miss a race telecast in Italy, at least I can go to a bar and ask people how the race went, whose engine gave out, who gambled with the set-up and got it wrong... And Italian Formula One news articles and opinion pieces are so refreshingly different from Anglo-saxon ones. The "cooking" Italian is really useful for me because I enjoy learning from my Italian friends in Singapore (or from the Italian cooks they employ in their restaurants, or their mothers/ aunts/ wives etc).

Mark, thank you for being patient with his long-winded Auntie! Good luck! And well done, too.

Ken,

I'm glad to hear you like having me around.

I think your message is that I should now focus on consolidating the vocabulary that I have. I have considered your advice and don't entirely agree. Here's why:

My goal is to know Chinese as well as I know English. When I was learning English, I don't think I would have learned it very well, if I were limited to only 4 or 5 pages of input a week. Further, Goulniky recently posted some graphs of frequency of encountering new characters. They showed a knee and then a long inclined slope. I'm pretty sure the pattern is the same for words, just the numbers are different. The fact that new vocabulary from CPOD lessons has tailed off tells me that I am at the knee. I know most of the common words which server as mortar for sentences. I just don't know the rare words that embed meaning in the mortar. So, I think I need more input. Also, it simply doesn't take me the same amount of time to study a week's worth of CPOD lessons as it used to. Its time for CPOD to be a bridge to something else. I'm just not sure what, yet.

I'm not talking about memorizing dictionaries. And I'm certainly not abandoning CPOD. I'm just looking for the next step for someone not living in China to learn Chinese to fluency. I think CPOD is still part of that step, but its not the whole of it. I'm just not sure what is the most effective increment of input to add.

Mark, I really enjoyed your self-evaluation. Thanks for sharing that with us. It gives me hope. I'm not as fast as you, still struggling in intermediate, but I hope I can be as dedicated. Congratulations on your progress. If you want to skype me, we can practice speaking. It takes me forever to get a sentence out and I practice speaking every day!

Mark,

Congratulations and well done on your efforts. I think there is always the compulsion to learn ever more words and vocab. However, in my experience, it is hard to consolidate ever more items if you're not using them. Sometimes they just go in one ear and out the other. Recognizing the meaning of a word it is just one step in knowing it. You also need to know how it functions, where it is likely to occur, and with whom it consorts, as it were. Much of this becomes clear, I think, through practice.

I'm glad to see you'll be around for another year!

CP has definately improved my Chinese for the past year I've been using. I still remeber my very first lesson! Sweet Watermelon.

Yes, I agree with you. CP was a great find for me too. I started studying Chinese 3,5 years ago now. It is not the first foreing language that I learn, but by far the most difficult. I has become a real challenge for me. One day I will be fluent in Chinese. So for the foreseeable future CP will be of the utmost importance to me.

You said it well Mark. For the same reasons It was a jackpot find for me as well. Every day I am suprised by how much I know, right before I am overwhelmed by how much I dont know. There is no stopping now.

-RJ

Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like you have no problems with intermediate conversational Chinese now. I am not sure what your ultimate goal is, but i maybe it is a good time to focus on more formal/written Chinese (newspaper articles etc). Or if you are more interested in spoken Chinese, I recommend to start listening to podcasts by Chinese people (I mean personal journals and not language podcasts). For example, there are several people from Taiwain and Mainland China producing podcasts about their experience living abroad (like "Princess Remy"). Also, there are several other podcasts teaching Chinese like iMandarinPod and CSLPod that are completely in Chinese. Their quality varies a lot, because a lot of materials are ripped verbatim from Chinese textbooks. (This is especially true for iMandarinPod). But these podcasts are completely in Chinese and not as difficult as CPod's advanced lessons.