8 mistakes to avoid when learning Chinese
Written By: 孙智谦 on December 26, 2008
2 Comments
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| I just came across a great post on TheChinaExpat.com highlighting some common mistakes learners of Chinese make, and I thought I’d post about it here. The eight mistakes highlighted by the post are: 1.) Not mastering the tones, 2.) Not learning characters, 3.) Killing yourself learning characters, 4.) Focusing on progress over process, 5.) Not making good Chinese friends, 6.) Not using the best learning materials available, 7.) Choosing poor classes, and 8.) Not using [awesome] tools for learning Chinese. |
| Number one, I have to say, is usually a matter of ability. Some people I know who really try hard to learn Chinese just don’t have the ear for the tones. They try and try and try but never get the tones down. Everything they say is said with a rising tone, which is pretty hard on native speakers’ ears. So for those people not to master the tones is understandable. But I’ve also met some extremely arrogant foreigners who just plain don’t care about tones and don’t try to learn them. Not long ago, I talked to a guy who had lived in Shanghai for over 2 years. I had heard he had been living there before I met him, so I was fully expecting his Chinese to be pretty amazing. But then he opened his mouth to speak, and he sounded horrible. And he went on to say that he doesn’t care about the tones and doesn’t think they’re important to the language. Tones are an integral part of Chinese! To say they’re not important is incredibly disrespectful to Chinese speakers. It’s the equivalent of someone saying, “I don’t think consonants are important for speaking English.” It’s just wrong, and if you have that attitude, you don’t deserve to be understood. |
| I also appreciated number four. I at times struggle with this myself. It’s easy to get discouraged by the fact that you just can’t express yourself fully in any situation, read and understand any newspaper, and follow any movie’s plot without subtitles after studying the language for over five years. But apparently it’s realistic to expect to have to study Chinese full-time (and probably live in China) for 10 to 20 years before becoming truly fluent in all respects. But if you focus on what you can’t say/understand rather than on using what you can say/understand, you’ll have a hard time progressing beyond where you currently are. The ChinaExpat post links to some pretty encouraging (or discouraging, depending on your disposition) articles about the subject. |
| The other points seem to me to be pretty good advice as well, so if you’re just now beginning to learn the language, go check it out. You’ll save yourself time and frustration. |
| Link to article |
ummm…今天26号了哦！？检查下你的邮箱吧…：）
Chris,
Good points and thanks for the link. Struggling with tones is understandable, ignoring tones because you just don’t care makes you seem ignorant.
If you went all out in learning Chinese, it shouldn’t take a full decade or two to learn, but life tends to get in the way.
Merry Christmas