Jiaozi on the zhuozi

I started a new language exchange recently with a Chinese girl who works in Tokyo. I'm very glad I did it. There's no substitute to practicing with a native speaker, especially when it comes to Chinese it seems.

You have to hit those tones spot on, or you won't be understood at all, it's like fine tuning a frickin harp! One missed vowel sound and the comprehension level just completely disappears.

I've been doing a lot of practice listening and repeating to try and get my pronunciation down, but I think I need to be more conscientious of the tones when I learn a new word, and perhaps practice my vowel sounds a bit more too. I couldn't get her to understand 桌子 (zhuozi: table) all night, but that's because I had it written down as zhouzi (o before u) and I kept pronouncing it wrong, I also fouled up and said 饺子 (jiaozi: dumpling) by mistake once aswell.

She kept repeating it for me, and I would copy her 5 or 6 times, move on, and then make the same mistake 5 or 6 minutes later. In the end I decided to make a mnemonic connecting the pronunciation to "Jaws" the movie in my head—it's not a perfect match, but it'll do for now.

It was only later that I realized I had written the damn word down wrong and this was probably the reason for my repeated failure to get the pronunciation right.

Anyway, when your in the thick of these conversations it makes you wish you'd spent a bit more time on the tones and pronunciation of the words when you first learnt them, so I'll be trying to do that a bit more in future.

Prove It!

Language learning is a series of stages that you need to prove that you can do. Once you have proved that you can do something you are then free to use it, experiment with it, improve it, fine-tune it, do what ever you want with it, but the first and most important stage is proving that you can do it.

Who do you have to prove you can do it to?

Well, first and foremost you have to prove that you can do it to yourself. Once you feel confident with the knowledge that you are able to do it, then you will feel like you have proved it.

How do you prove to yourself that you can do it?

By proving to other people that you can do it.

The biggest hurdle is getting across that barrier that people put up. The barrier that says you cannot do something, and if you try to do something I will listen carefully and comment on your ability to do that thing. When you fail, I will correct you. When you screw up big time I will laugh a bit and offer you encouragement. When you succeed, I will applaud you. When you have succeeded enough times to prove to me that you can do something, then I will just listen to what it is you are saying and take it on face value.

Only then have you proved it to yourself, and you are free to use it.

This is definitely the case with people you know. With complete strangers you have the advantage of them having no idea what your language ability is. But they will soon find out, and the barriers will then be set.

So, to be able to work on gaining full mastery over something you need to prove that you can do it. To yourself, through proving that you can do it to others. You will then be able to experiment with it to your heart’s content, all the while receiving natural responses because the listener knows you can do it.

That’s my experience, anyway.

Recall flashcards are no more

I decided to suspend the recall cards in my Anki flashcard deck. (recall cards are when the English sentence appears and you have to try and remember the Chinese.) I'm not sure how much good they're doing, and they are the most frustrating part of doing flashcards.

I said before that the help I'm getting from the audio files with my pronunciation is the best part of the flashcards for me. Trying to translate the English sentence into Chinese in my head is taxing, and could potentially be counter-productive seeing that translating in your head is one thing you should be avoiding when speaking/learning a foreign language.

The recall cards are still there, but for now I want be using them. This means I won't have those painful moments trying to rack my brain for the corresponding Chinese sentence to translate the English. It'll just be straight reading the Chinese sentences, whilst listening to and practicing the pronunciation. Hopefully, this will make using the flashcards a more efficient and enjoyable experience, and I should be able to get through a higher volume of sentences faster.

The flashcard debate

One of my more personalized flashcards

Are flashcards really the answer? Doubts are beginning to creep in to be honest. They're definitely helpful, and with the audio file added, they give me good practice listening and repeating after a native speaker, which is pretty valuable for Chinese because of the pronunciation difficulties.

But I've begun to think that as far as absorbing vocabulary and sentences goes, maybe using podcast material is more beneficial over the long-term. Podcasts give you more context, and are certainly more interesting than the flashcards, which are really just a series of unrelated, random sentences.

I follow a few other language bloggers on the internet, and I know that there are those that are against flashcards, and those that are for. I'd probably say that I'm in the 'for' camp for now, just from the point of view that they are a good tool for remembering certain phrases, and for remembering Chinese characters.

But they do have their drawbacks. One of the main ones—which is really the reason I have begun thinking about them a little more critically of late—is that you really do have to tailor them for yourself, and this can be time-consuming. I sometimes find myself spending more time, looking for, copying and pasting, and uploading sentences, than I do actually thinking about them in a meaningful, semantic way.

But like I said my current deck of cards has definitely helped me progress in some ways, especially with the pronunciation, so I'll keep them ticking over for now I guess, just to keep my options open.

Music

I still remain to be convinced of the benefits of using music to learn a foreign language. I've been playing a couple of Chinese language tunes that I like on my ipod for a couple of weeks now, but the lyrics are not really sinking in.

I guess I need to study them harder or something, but making out the lyrics on songs was never my strong point anyway. I tend to be more interested in the tune when I'm listening to a song, and very often don't pick up on the lyrics.

Two of my favourite bands are Massive Attack and Radiohead. And I've listened to their albums for years without really knowing the lyrics that well. I think their songs really speak to you through the music itself.

Anyhow, from the point of view of picking up vocabulary, and increasing your ability to speak the language, I don't think music is that useful. One thing I will say for it though is it does give you a topic of conversation to use with native speakers.

Living in Japan, I've come to like a couple of Japanese artists. One of my favourites is Angela Aki. I think she's got a great voice. I don't think she's the kind of artist most people expect a thirty-something British guy like me to come out and say they like, so it's always surprising to people when I bring up her name. It makes for good conversation anyway.

If your interested, this is probably my favourite of her songs 孤独のカケラ — translates as fragment of solitude.