听的技能
在我第一年期间在台湾，以我的中国技能在一个极小值，我发现了它挫败经常是在情况，我不可能了解什么人们在我附近说，或者对我。 那是我学会一个整洁的把戏得到更加包含-猜测! 我在什么开始认可样式我是听力在我附近，并且开始在那附近修造。
I第一学会了如何认可主题- “我”， “您”， “他或她”等。 我然后学会了如何认可问题- “….ma ？” 与关键问题一起措辞“”， “”， “的地方的什么”， “谁”等。 在那以后，它成为了赛填装空白。 我也许是在电梯，当某人要求“您…时…的地方？” 我立即会回复“Jiānádà” (加拿大)。 微光在他们的面孔告诉我我回答了他们的问题，在哪里我从正确地!
以后，当我的词汇量开始增加，我开始认可关键动词。 我会走入McDonalds和点在什么我想命令。 出纳员然后会问我问题(您要… ？)。 进入早期，这是纯净的猜谜。 我迅速会折磨我的脑子设法认为什么问题我在加拿大时会得到问，当点快餐。 “什么您想要喝？” -得到它! 我然后会指向我要的饮料(这次它是有微光的我，因为她倾吐了饮料我要)。 下个问题，在付款-之前“您要…或… ？” 我已经等待她问我是否计划用餐或去掉，因此我迅速指向地面表明想要用餐in。 这是一台伟大的信心助推器为了我能能起作用这样。 很好，直到我跑了入出纳员要求“您的一天要…” 由一些新的词跟随我以前没听见。 在事例消失的我确信的态度。 这一个新的方式问我是否想吃？ 我设法指向地面，但可能由她迷茫的神色告诉我不是甚而接近的。 (It turns out that she had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to upsize my fries and drink!)
I realized then that I had to increase my vocabulary to increase my guessing odds. But how could I forecast what questions and what new vocabulary someone was going to throw at me next time? I decided to play the odds again. Over time, I began to pick out words that I would hear repeated in these different questions. I figured that if I heard a word being used repeatedly, that meant there was a greater chance it would be used again in the future, so it was in my interest to find out what it meant. After finding out that “hē” meant “to drink,” I was a lot more confident answering “you want drink what?” than answering “you want… what?”
This is the same concept used in the CLO course. Certain words get introduced in lessons and are never brought up again, so you are probably less likely to remember them. Other words get introduced, and then are later brought up again in future lessons. Learning the more frequently used words first allows you to set the context to “guess” the meaning of the remaining words. You may notice this approach in the explanation portion of the lessons too. We first listen to a conversation without translating, then pick out the words we do know to help us figure out what’s remaining. Developing this technique can be valuable in improving your listening skills.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
That is a really good way of learning I think. I’m using sort of the similar techniques whenever I get a chance to interact with people who speak Chinese. When my Chinese colleagues at work speak, I literally cannot a single word they’re saying. I don’t know if that’s because of the way they speak, the amount of slang or background knowledge involved or because they talk really, really fast.
However, there is a Chinese gentleman who goes to the gym at the same time as I do and I can usually understand everything he says and reply back to him in Chinese. It’s very rewarding when I understand something and can reply back, and I feel very good about myself.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I find it hard to tell when I’ve “finished” a lesson and it’s time to move on to the next one. I know that doing all of the tasks once isn’t enough for my slow brain, but spending excessive amounts of time on a single lesson can have a negative effect too. Any tips?
August 17th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Good point (and good suggestion for a future blog post!) I don’t recommend spending excessive time on any particular task. Sometimes the brain functions better on a good rest, so move on to something completely different.
The site and lessons are designed to allow you to easily return to an earlier lesson at a later point if necessary. If a concept isn’t clear, you can either post a question in the comments, or move on without worrying about it. If it’s important enough, it will be revisited in a future lesson at which point it should hopefully become clearer.
August 18th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Thanks Adam. There’s seldom any problem with clarity, and if there is it’s easy to get a good answer to a question, as you say. It’s mainly an issue of how well it is remembered, and knowing how much is enough for now.
I think I’ve fallen into both extremes in the past, and would like to become more efficient than that. The cumulative vocabulary and reuse of words provide a nice safety net, allowing both extremes of study depth to still work, but now I’m looking for some way to recognise a more reasonable midpoint. It’s hard to see it clearly when you’re standing in it.
August 18th, 2007 at 2:32 am
I would say as a general rule, you only need to understand 70-80% of a lesson to continue, since as I said earlier, the important stuff will come up again. This is easier to do pre level 3 since it’s only a few words per lesson that you have to worry about. This 70% figure may be harder to achieve in level 3, since there is a lot more content to go through.
In the past few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of working with users of my course on an individual level (part of an upcoming addition to CLO) which has given me further insight on this matter. Some listeners are content to proceed to newer lessons even if they haven’t “mastered” older content. Whereas other listeners, who I would consider to be at a much higher level, prefer to dwell on earlier lessons to make sure they understood 100% of the content before proceeding.
I guess at the end of the day it comes to your own learning style and what goals you hope to achieve. Some might choose to focus on acquiring vocabulary or grammar, whereas others might instead focus on pronunciation. I’m happy to see that all these types of users seem to find value in the course. In the future, as I figure out more areas of weakness among my listening audience (through comments like this), I hope to be able to offer more options for users to be able to more specifically focus on their desired area of importance.
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Hmm…interesting strategy. It makes sense to concentrate on words that are used a lot. Surprisingly a lot of study materials out there don’t seem to recognize this point. There is this site, and I can’t remember if I found out about it here–but it lists the most frequent characters:
http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html
I wonder then–would it make sense to create learning materials and lessons based on these characters as a way to learn Chinese efficiently?
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:56 pm
You are right that most study materials out there don’t necessarily follow this approach. I’m hoping to differentiate my material by using my own experience learning Chinese which has come from what I’ve learned myself while living in Taiwan. Things I hear often tend to stick, while things I don’t tend to get forgotten (I’ll elaborate more on this in a future blog post).
If you go through the characters in the site you mentioned, you will find most of them turning up a lot within lessons (since they are the common ones). You can go through the word bank entering different characters to see how many times they have turned up in the past. Then try to guess the context of the example sentences by picking out the characters you do know.