I doubt there is direct research that can conclusively answer this question, but I see no problem with writing an outline in one’s native language. We’re talking about few words that aren’t going to influence sentence structure or word choice once you get down to actually writing the text. If it’s easier to arrive at a clear structure by doing so in your native language, then do that!

Feels a bit weird to respond to your comment six years later, but I have now updated the article and included double translation as well! It’s something I often recommend students doing and I should of course have mentioned it in the old article as well. Thanks for reminding me about it, even if it took me many years to actually do something about it! 🙂

Chinese, like English, often allows the grammatical identify to be defined by context. And in other cases, we add a suffix to mark a change in grammatical function.

In English, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs do use suffices to migrate a root word and in some cases to clarify role (which seems to originate from Latin).

A noun such as ‘work’ is also the verb ‘work’, whereas ‘working’ or ‘worked’ can be adjectives. And a verb such as ‘do’ can become a noun infinite ‘to do’ or noun gerund ‘doing’

All those suffix shifts are extremely difficult to the Chinese learner of English. Being able to not bother with them may actually be an eventual blessing.

There are words in Chinese that tend to be strictly one function — mostly conjunctions and prepositions.

In any event, the need to spend so much time with dictionaries can be a bit tedious and daunting, and a struggle at first. But it is well worth it.

I try to cultivate curiosity about connotations and Chinese vocabulary, and let myself get sucked into Wikipedia, so that I can get myself into good habits. I find Wikipedia an excellent source both for the types of words which are often not in dictionaries, examples of words being used in context, and more detailed explainations of a word than most dictionaries provide.

It’s also exciting on the rare occasion I find a Chinese word/phrase/chengyu which describes exactly what the original writer expresses in English, but more concisely and elegantly.

Take the word 轰动 for example.

My ABC dictionary says it’s an adjective (stative verb) but then goes on to define it as: “cause a sensation; make a stir”.

My PlC dictionary gives these two examples:
轰动全国 — cause a sensation throughout the country
全场轰动 — make a stir in the audience (or in the hall)
Hmm…I wonder why the position of 轰动 is switched in both of these very similar constructions?

CC dictionary says it means “to cause a sensation”.

Finally, my ADS dictionary, says it’s a Noun and means “sensation”.

Now, accepting for a moment that 轰动 can be all three (verb, adjective, and noun), why doesn’t each dictionary state this simple fact?

–Daniel

Sounds great! Seems like an inexhaustible source of topics. I was on a roll with more than one entry per day for a while, but then… I stopped. I’ve been doing other things, but writing sentences now and then should be possible.