Additional thoughts about studying the Chinese idioms with elementry or middle school texts.

The purpose is NOT to learn the obscure idioms so much as it is to learn the explanitory text with its grammar, phrasing, and clarifying vocabulary.

I most cases, the idioms themselves are what linguists call opage. This is that they are very difficult to guess the meaning, one has to study them. Knowing and using a lot of them might just confound others by talking over thier heads.

But the supporting text is extremely rich in ways that 2nd language texts tend to ignore. We need to graduate from “This is a door.” and “I want a bowl of noodles.” to a mode where we identify topic, the salient itemss and inferred relationships. We these texts, a lot is presented in short texts, a bit of Q & A, and we also learn some obscure idioms with related characters.

I enjoy this and feel it is impowering.

I also watch Chinese TV with a phonetic dictionary handy to look up phrases that keep hearing and wondering about. It is good to have more than one dictionary and place them where they are most useful (with the TV in one case, with reading material in another case.

Overly ambitious text book authors and publishers are a real hazard in any field of study. Good authors are informative and helpful to students. Generally the good authors are just writing in their native language, so that is why I suggest mainsteam material over 2nd language material.

The transistion is important and helpful. But there will always be some poor writers and poor publishers (I really dislike Oxford for teaching second language English as they tend to be overly ambitious and try to sell a big array of must have accessories. If you see these kinds of behaviors, go elsewhere.)

Ask a native elementry or middle school teacher to recommend something.

I think it’s reflective of our instant gratification world, I want to be skinny now, I want to speak Chinese now.

There was this great talk I heard about a guy trying to establish the habit of flossing his teeth. He simply set the goal of flossing ONE tooth per day and he’d consider it a success. More often than not, he did more than one tooth, but the point it he formed that long term habit with one easy step. That’s it.

It seems like you are criticizing a generalization by making another generalization.

For me, this post certainly rings true. What matters most to me is not that I am “able to communicate what is needed at the appropriate time.” As an intermediate level speaker, I can pretty much already do that. My goal is to find the motivation to continue to build on my language skills but at times it’s difficult go motivate myself and study consistently. I think finding low-intensity learning habits is really great advice, at least for me.

My Korean level is currently way, way, way lower than my Chinese level, which means it takes more effort to make certain kinds of progress (for example, it’s a lot easier for me to learn ten new words of Chinese than ten new words of Korean because my ‘knowledge web’ for Chinese is much more expansive).

I’ve formed enough habits which involve Chinese that, even when I focus less intensely on learning Chinese, I still get quite a bit of practice. Of course, it helps that I live in Taiwan ex-Taipei – even if I dropped all of my other habits involving Chinese, I would still need a bit of Chinese for certain every-day interactions (or rather, using a little Chinese would be easier than not using Chinese, such as when I asked a sales clerk how much a certain item costs today). However, I also have other habits which involve practicing Chinese, not unlike your habits.

The only habit I’ve established for Korean is reviewing my Korean Anki deck. That means that, when I’m not intensely focusing on Korean (and I cannot focus intensely on Korean all the time), the only Korean study which gets done is reviewing Anki cards. That is still way, way, way, way better than not getting in any Korean practice at all – at least it means that I still remember most of the vocabulary when I return to focusing on Korean – but I feel that it is not enough. Perhaps I need to deliberately need to establish some low-energy Korean habits (such as finding some Korean songs I like and learning the lyrics) so that when I go into a slump I have more to do than just review Anki cards.

Sound advice in general, but I do think there lies some danger in choosing books for children at random. Some of them, even for fairly young ages, contains tons of flowery language that most beginner and/or intermediate learners really don’t need. It’s as if the books are written to educate children about proper Chinese language rather than entertain them and encourage them to read. I still have tho word lists from the first book I read five years ago and it contains tons of words and phrases that I have yet to see a second time. I know, not all books are like that, but it’s still a real risk. In general, though, I think people wait too long before diving into native material. I have an upcoming article about this, but it will take some time before it works its way through the publishing queue. 🙂

I have tried a lot of different materials and due to the fact that I see similar results from similar materials in teaching English in Taiwan, I would have to say the biggest hazard is that there is a huge amount of introductory material that never goes much beyond that in the Second Language Learning publishers.

I have turned to native elementry school texts with good results, but these do get a bit silly in terms of topics.

But recently I discovered a source for Chinese idioms, (Cheng2 Yue3) for elementry school and middle school learners. Reading these are really helpful as they diversify my vocabulary into the wider realms of Chinese culture, they tend to be short chapters, and I can see what is considered excellent quality written text.

I found in teaching English in Taiwan, the same applies. If I import middle school mainstream books from the USA, the students are exposed to more real everyday English. Before the “Magic Tree House” series arrived in Taiwan, my young students were NOT learning to talk like American kids.. they never learned words like ‘peek’, ‘to take off (run)’, and so on.

Wrong word choices make social interation and listening expectations difficult.

In sum, explore mainstream literature for kids ASAP and don’t try to cram second language texts for a limited range of generalized vocabulary.