Do you ever find yourself learning Chinese for an extended period, without seeing any real progress?

Do you know anyone who has lived in China for several years, but still can’t speak Chinese?

Or maybe you’ve been taking classes at an institution for a while, but find yourself still stuck at the same level.

Why is this?

The problem in all these cases is that we easily get stuck in our comfort zone when learning.

When you move to a new learning environment, there is an initial excitement as you start to learn the vocabulary needed to survive there.

Once you get acclimatized though, you find that you know enough vocabulary to survive, without having to learn any more. There isn’t any stress on you to learn anything new, so you’re content at the level you are, without any pressure to learn any more.

Surprisingly, many schools and learning programs are content letting you stay in your comfort zones. You would think that students would drop out if they weren’t making progress, but it’s actually the opposite that happens. They get “comfortable” without the stress of learning, yet still feel good that they are making the effort of learning.

You may have seen this at your local gym as well. People come in for “workouts”, but use it as a social setting instead, listening to music and chit chatting with friends, while barely drawing a sweat.

If the experience becomes too “hard”, then students are more likely to drop out.

At CLO, we take the risk of upsetting you by purposely upping the level of difficulty at each level. Some levels have more of a jump in difficulty from one to another (level 2 to 3 for example). Some students quit when the material gets too hard.

For others though, who do slog it out, and put in the effort to catch up to the new difficulty level, the benefits are clear. It’s what is required to make clear progress.

Are you satisfied with your progress learning Chinese the last few years? Are you ready to get out of your comfort zone?

When you approach someone in a Chinese community, a game of chicken ensures. They hesitate to speak in English with you. Break the tension by approaching them first, in Chinese! Locals tend to be put at ease when they hear you make attempts to speak their language.

However, this also works well in western countries. If you overhear people speaking in Chinese on the street (it is best to confirm that they are indeed Chinese speakers first!), you can expect surprise, bewilderment and then encouragement (usually in that order) when you try speaking Chinese to them.

While it’s common to find westerners who speak Chinese in China, it’s very rare to find ones who do in western countries.

So show off what you know and stand out from the crowd! 

When I first arrived in Taiwan, one of my main goals while being here was to learn Chinese. In the beginning, I figured I would automatically learn the language just by being here. So I focused on learning street Chinese – the way locals spoke it!

After I began to get serious about learning Chinese in Taiwan, I started attending classes at local language centers. I ended up trying out three different ones to get a feel for the different styles.

I found clear benefits to learning Chinese in a classroom setting, as opposed to  Over time, I tried to integrate as many of these benefits as I could into CLO.

Having a Live Teacher

As good as online courses can get, there is no replacement for having a live speaker to practice with. The teachers I had were very good. There was a lot of interaction and they challenged you to come up with new answers to questions, using the Chinese that was taught in class.

While most of CLO is designed to be self study, I did try to integrate some of the “live teacher” aspect into the exercises feature. The questions posted there are purposely open ended, like the ones you would hear in a classroom. Submit your own answer in your own format and a real teacher will send you feedback on your grammar and character choices (if your answer was typed) or your pronunciation (if your answer was an audio submission).

And of course, we also offer the option of live one on one classes via Skype, if you prefer.

Lots of Repetition

I actually got a shock the first day of class when the teacher came in and began speaking a mile a minute. I barely understood 20% of what she was saying. I worried that I was in the wrong class and should transfer to a lower level. Fortunately I persisted.

As the classes continued, I realized that 80% of what she was speaking was repeated from class to class. Things like “Hello class, how are you? How was your weekend? Ok, let’s turn to chapter 3 of your text book. Who wants to start reading?”

Over time I began to learn these phrases and expressions very quickly as they were repeated again and again in each class.

Once I figured out those phrases, there was only 20% of new material. This became a good source of comprehensible input, as I could now learn new material in the context of what I already knew. I found my brain much more in tune at this stage, whereas earlier it would start to tune out when there was too much new material.

I’ve tried to implement this same concept in the CLO course. Lessons from later levels are conducted almost entirely in Chinese, which could scare some away. But:

a) It’s all Chinese that was taught in earlier lessons.

b) Most of the phrases are repeated again and again in each lesson. Phrases like “Welcome to Learn Chinese Online, lesson X”, “Let’s listen to today’s dialog at normal speed”, “Let’s listen to the dialog again at a slower speed. Please repeat after her.”, “What does this word mean?”, “Do you remember what that means?” etc.

So once you get used to all these phrases (which you should, since you’re hearing them so often), the rest of the lesson should be a breeze, since it’s only 20% or less new material.

Learning from Other Students

While in class, other students would ask questions that I hadn’t thought of, that I would learn from. The teacher would also ask the same question to different students around the class, so while you were formulating your own answer to the question, you could also listen in and learn from what other students were responding with.

The Comments section in each lesson is meant to emulate this aspect. You can read what questions others have asked and learn from the answers given, or submit your own.

While I enjoyed the experience of learning Chinese in a classroom environment, there were also some areas that I wasn’t pleased about, that I felt could be improved. I’ll discuss these issues in the next post.

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If you happen to be living in a Chinese speaking environment, you may notice a lot of common errors that native Chinese speakers make when they try to speak English. These errors can actually help you learn Chinese, since if you backtrack to see why they make such mistakes, you will often notice references to how Chinese differs from English. Knowing these differences will help in your quest to learn Chinese!

One to Many Translations

Many of the mixups are caused by several words in Chinese having multiple meanings in English, depending on context. So you can expect Chinese speakers to mix these up as the same word is used in multiple situations in Chinese, whereas each situation has its own word in English. Here are some examples.

1. he and she. Often times,  you will hear Chinese speakers mixing up he and she while speaking English. You might wonder how one could confuse males as being females and vice versa, until you realize that in Chinese, tā (in speech) can refer to he or she, so the concept of having a different word for each is new to them. (The written form is of course different, as 他(male) and 她 (female) use different characters, but in spoken form, there is no distinction made between the two).
2. borrow and lend.  You might hear questions like “Can you borrow me a pencil?” The reason for the confusion of course comes from the Chinese word jiè (借) which is used both for both “borrow” and “lend”.
3. problem and question. The word wèntí (问题 / 問題) can mean “problem” or “question” in Chinese. So the question “Do you have a problem?” sounds much more harsh than “Do you have a question?”
4. open and turn on. The word kāi (开 / 開) is used for both in Chinese. It even extends to other meanings like drive, start and operate so it’s a wonder it doesn’t get mixed up more often!
5. have and is. This is a big one. There are many situations in Chinese where the word yǒu (有), meaning “have” is used where we would use “is”in English. So as a result you hear English phrases like “There have” instead of “There is”.
6. watch, look and read. The same word kān (看) is used for all three.
7. big. In English, the word “big” is usually reserved for describing the size of a physical object. In Chinese though, dà (大) can be used in all sorts of situations, resulting in English sentences like “The rain is big today” (It is raining heavily) or “Today’s sun is very big” (It’s very hot today).
8. Special. The word for “special” in Chinese, tèbié (特别 / 特別) can be used to say that something is very good. Eg. “This food is very special” which would be an odd usage in English.
9. Terrible. Lìhai (厉害 / 厲害) literally means “terrible” but is often used in Taiwan to mean someone is very good at something (terribly good?).
10. Uncomfortable. In Chinese, saying that you feel uncomfortable, or not shūfu (舒服) is a common way to say that you feel sick. We don’t have this same usage in English.
11. Very. In English, some verbs are modified with very before them, like “very fast”, while other ones require “very much” to be added at the end. In Chinese, they are all “very”, so you end up with phrases like “I very like”.
12. Help. In English, “help” means to aid someone. In Chinese though help also extends to doing something for someone. So if you tell a Chinese person you are going to help them do something, they may hand over the reigns to you to do it on your own, since that is one of the meanings of bāng (帮 / 幫).

Can you think of other examples of English words or phrases that are used incorrectly by Chinese, due to differences in how they translate between English and Chinese?

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The key to learning a new language is finding sources of “comprehensible input”. This is a source of material that is slightly above your current level of understanding. Why is this important?

Your brain is remarkably good at identifying and learning patterns. Most of the learning you actually do is done in the background by your brain, without your conscious knowledge. The trick to optimal learning is to put your brain in an environment that it can learn from, and that’s where comprehensible input comes in.

When I first came to Taiwan, I was overwhelmed by all the Chinese signs and labels around me. I couldn’t wait for the day when I’d actually be able to understand what they all meant.

With so much material around me to “learn” from, I’d be able to pick up Chinese in no time, right?

Well, it doesn’t quite work that way.

Since all these characters were foreign to me, my brain didn’t know where to begin, and so very little learning could take place. In fact, what I found happening was my brain would instantly pick out the one or two signs that were in English, since that’s all it could decipher!

This is why when kids are learning to read, we don’t start them off with Harry Potter. You start with easy to read books with smaller sentences first, then let them work their way up to more difficult material.

When learning Chinese, you need to use the same approach. If you’re just starting off, you’ll want to start with some absolute beginner material that introduces you to the basics. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can them move on to more difficult (but only slightly more difficult) material, so that your brain can process the new material in the context of what it already knows.

If the new material is too easy, then while it may be fun to absorb, no actual learning will take place. If it’s too difficult, then your brain will give up as there will be too much new information to process.

CLO was designed with this approach in mind.

Each lesson only teaches a few new words at a time, while reusing words that were previously taught. Dialogs and articles are presented for you in their entirety in the beginning of a lesson, so that your brain can try and process the new vocabulary on its own first, before the explanations are given.

If you ever find your learning reaching a rut, where you don’t find your Chinese improving, it may be because there is a lack of comprehensible input being provided to your brain. This happens when you hang around the same people all the time who are speaking at the same levels that you are already used to.

If this happens to you, the it’s time to look for new sources of input. Try striking new conversations in new topics that you’re not familiar with. Or try reading or watching a program that is slightly above your current ability.

Doing so will ensure that your learning never ceases, and that you’re constantly making new progress.

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