Hi, guys, I'd like to share my learning Chinese story with you. I think this will be entertaining to two kinds of people: those just starting out and curious to know what a Chinese study journey is like, and those who have been on this journey and will look back fondly on some of the hardships and fun times in here.
I've been studying for about 3.5 years. I started at absolutely nothing and now I am in grad program which is full Chinese and study legal issues, economics, politics. At my part time job I translate technical software instructions from English to Chinese.
Sorry if the story is too long and boring to you. These are all just my opinions. You can disagree if you want.
I wanted to write this because I see lots of people talking about their meticulous study plans that include lots of data and tracking progress and what not. I don't really agree with that system. I think studying the language, shouldn't put up so many artificial methods. Should flow like a river. Let the study style change when your gut feels like it should. But instead of presenting it as an argument, I will just present it as a story.
The story has five tips I think throughout. You can just read these six tips and be on your way if you don't really care:
- Stay positive
- Always find new ways, new places, new topics, new systems to revitalize your study. Only YOU can design a study method that fits your personality, because only you know the real YOU
- Social > Books
- Ultimately, time spent studying is more important than how...the best way of how to study for you personally will come naturally as you move from beginner to intermediate
- Sometimes there will be things that suck but which you should push through, just know when you are pushing too hard.
- The power of "specialist pathways" (read the story to see what I mean by this)
Okay, here's the story.
I graduated bachelor's in May 2013. I began studying Chinese on December 21, 2014. I had never studied a single character before that day. At the time, my hands were injured and I was forced to stay mostly at home on work comp for a few months. I got very bored and started drinking more to pass the time, which of course made things worse. I couldn't do simple things like open a door or make a sandwich without being in pain. It was chronic pain.
Finally my roommate recommend I learn a language to pass the time instead. I had nothing better to do, and couldn't do my normal hobby which is make music on piano or PC because of my hand injury. So I started learning Chinese on a program called Mango for free through my local public library. I mostly just repeated what the computer program said like a robot, for about thirty minutes a day. I also wrote out the characters for about ten minutes a day. It hurt to write, but I did it, to remind myself that I still had hands that someday I could hopefully use again.
I decided on Chinese because I wanted to teach English in China. I wanted to do this because I have a bachelor's degree in English-related field, some minor computer skills, but I couldn't use a computer at work because of my hand injury. Teaching uses mostly mouth so I thought that would be a good field to move into. I really felt like it was my only option. I thought after getting some fluency that I could get my PhD in Chinese history. I studied and took the GRE and did really great.
I wrote down every single character from Mango and practiced with correct stroke order. Every day I would write out every phrase I knew. It started with just 你好 on the first day. I would write those same two characters for about ten minutes. Then the next day I wrote out 你好，早上好. On the third day, 你好，早上好，下午好. By the thirtieth day I was writing 30 phrases.
A professor from my university recommended the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship to study in Taiwan. Coincidentally I was looking on Netflix, and one of the only shows I could find with English subtitles was 败犬女王, a Taiwanese show. So I looked into the scholarship he said. It seemed I had no chance, and applied the very last day. At this point I had only been studying Chinese for three months.
Something went right because I received a 9 month scholarship to study in Taiwan. I was very happy. Still in chronic pain, but happy. It would start in September 2015.
Having this date in my head really motivated me a lot. Finally in May I escaped from the office job that cursed me with this chronic pain. I started working in a house with autistic kids. Again, because I couldn't work somewhere like a factory or office. So this was the only short-term job I could really see myself doing with my injury before I left in September.
I started watching through 败犬女王 for the second time. I really liked the show, and I don't know why. I didn't really bother doing much other research on Taiwan. I just watched the show. To this day I've watched it all maybe four times.
I decided to go to Taichung for my scholarship. Of the 15 people in the Chicago office with the scholarship, 14 of them chose Taipei. I was the only one who didn't. I did that because the cost of living was cheaper in Taichung, and I wanted a more local feel. Taipei I thought would have too many foreigners and too easy to get lazy. I think this was probably my best decision, not because of the too many foreigners, but because of the cost of living. The scholarship worked out to 25,000 NTD a month. That's enough to survive in Taipei, but you have to really count your money. I was able to not have to budget out every single 便当. I didn't have any parental support like a lot of the scholarship kids I met. But we're not in Taiwan yet.
Over the summer, I worked part time taking care of the autistic kids. It wasn't that bad. But I was a bad employee. They mostly watched spongebob or played with toys, and I would study Chinese. I would write characters a lot, read through Practical Audiovisual Chinese I (the book used in Taiwan). I bought little Hanzi books so that I could write my characters on a grid. My boss took me aside and said I needed to stop. I promised I would. But I didn't. I just tried to hide my notebooks better. She caught me a second time and I promised that I would not do it again (I did, and was caught a third time). Honestly I think it's unfair, because we're allowed to watch TV and use our phones while the kids are playing, but we're not allowed to write Chinese characters?
On the weekends I mowed lawns for a while, and listened to Pimsleur and Taiwanese music at the same time. My favorite was 大嘴巴. I had no fucking idea what they were saying about 99% of the time on the music. Pimsleur was kind of meh. I started doing Memrise on my phone while at work, because the boss wouldn't be able to catch me. Memrise was also meh, but okay. At the same time I randomly started learning Vietnamese.
I see a lot of people statting out their progress. That's fine if that's for you. But I find that way so depressing. The only progress bar I kept track of was the characters I wrote every day. And every day I would sit and recite every single sentence that I had handwritten from the Mango app. I wrote it in English, pinyin, and characters. It started out taking only a couple minutes, but by a few months I was spending twenty minutes on the computer using Mango, and another twenty reciting what I had already learned, and it was kind of painful. But not as painful as my chronic hand pain so I didn't really care. I was spending about an hour a day on active study, and then another hour or two on passive study (like listening to Pimsleur while walking the dog and only half-paying attention, or watching 败犬女王 with English subtitles).
I was also going to community class for Chinese taught by a Sichuan lady. She was very nice. The other people there were not as serious as me, just some people looking for a little cultural experience. I had some good exposure there, and she was able to answer my questions. I really owe her a lot of thanks for her encouragement. It was only once a week for a few months. I remember driving home one day, which took about 15 minutes, and repeating 出去 over and over again to get it right. For fifteen minutes. I really couldn't get it for a long time. She gave a good tip which is the 出 is pronounced like the "chu" in "church." I also remember showing up in class one day and proudly reciting a sentence I had practiced for an hour the day before, something like 那个红色灯放在桌子上. My teacher basically just laughed and said good work.
Once I got to Taiwan, I was kind of shocked. Up to that point Chinese had just been like a Sudoku puzzle to me. When I got there I realized it was real, and people actually spoke it. My school gave me a Taiwanese buddy, who helped me set up my life. Without him, I couldn't have done it. He helped me find an apartment, buy some things, and never asked for anything in return. Okay, in return, I guess he got to practice some English with me. He was so helpful to me.
I was sick my first week. Like really bad. And I didn't even know how to get food even at the 7/11. I was too sick to really stand. I missed my first couple days of class, and my first week I barely could listen.
But eventually I got better, and I went to class three hours a day. I would study about two hours a day as well. I spent a lot of time with Korean and Japanese students. One of the best tips I learned was to hang out with them. Their English is bad, and they are in Taiwan to learn Chinese too. So we spoke mostly in Chinese. It is more of a passive aggressive battle with Taiwanese sometimes who (understandably so) want to improve their English.
I wish I had studied harder. I started learning Korean at the time because I was chasing a Korean girl. But I still focused mostly on Chinese. I also just meet lots of cool friends and hang out with people like my buddy. Eat lots of hotpot. Played basketball. I really recommend playing basketball if you want to learn Chinese. I wanted to play more, but couldn't because of my hand injury. Speak about 33% English. My teacher was really helpful, and I was lucky to get her. The other teachers weren't as good, in my opinion. My class was small, and I was the only American. There was 2 Japanese and 2 Korean as well. Only five of us. But we had a great time together, even though we were all so different. One was only 18, his parents owned a hotel in Okinawa and they asked him to learn foreign language to help with customers. He thought English was too hard, so he began learning Chinese. Another was a barber from Tokyo. Honestly I don't know why he was there. He was the 高冷type, but very nice. Then there was a Korean Jehovah's Witness. She was nice but sheltered, a little older, and her husband was Jehovah's Witness as too, and his favorite show was Seinfeld. He spoke fluent English. I guess they were there paid by their church. Final one was a Korean guy who was 26. His girlfriend was Taiwanese. They met in Australia. These days they live in Korea. But they are planning to come back to Taiwan to open coffee shop. Other higher and lower level classes had other foreign students. It was about 15% American, 50% Asian, 20% European, and 15% South American. Eventually another Korean guy joined our class whose job was to go to nightclubs in Taiwan and convince girls to come to Korea for plastic surgery. He also said "oh yeah I totally have drug dealer friends in California." Not sure about that guy.
A lot of the western international students stuck together, but I hung out more with Koreans and Japanese, and Taiwanese. Very good decision. Nothing against the western students. But they liked to drink and party. I was 25 and had enough of that in my younger years. This was a very important step I took, and I improved my Chinese a lot staying away from westerners.
I remember being so upset my first couple months, because I still couldn't even order an iced coffee from 7/11. The lines were so long at the university and I felt pressured. I told my teacher how impossible it is to learn Chinese. All this time and they still don't understand me when I just want to order a coffee.
About three months in, I get a weird email. The people in Chicago say the basically found some extra scholarships lying around, and the first people to reply get more time. I did and was like YES I WILL TAKE MORE FREE MONEY. They respond, are you sure? It's really hot in Taiwan in the summer. And I was like WHAT?? ARE YOU KIDDING? Of course I said yes. So just like that my scholarship was extended to one year.
I remember having a dream around this time where I was floating in space with Chinese characters. And I was speaking some in my dreams in Chinese.
A lot of faces started to become familiar to me, like the lady at my favorite fried rice place, or the guy always sitting on the stool outside my house. I really fell in love with Taiwan at this time.
This kind of continues for a long time. I did eventually have Taiwanese girlfriend which helped me a lot with Chinese. I tried to help her with English as well, but she was very tired from work, and I was only student, so it was harder for her. Things didn't end so well with her and she stole my house key and demanded payments to get it back. But yeah that's not really a story for here.
What was most helpful about her was that she was not very tolerant when I misunderstood her. I was her first foreign BF and that played a part. When I didn't understand, she would be mad. So I really had to learn Chinese and listen, otherwise she would be mad. She would never say, "oh, it's okay, I know you are still learning Chinese."No, more like, "how can you not understand that? Don't you say you are good at Chinese and you don't even understand?"
Finally, I was going into 7/11 and order coffee so easy. I learned that progress in Chinese should not be measured as a progress bar, because progress plateaus sometimes. Sometimes I go a month and feel like I go backwards. Sometimes suddenly things start to click.
I wanted to get my master's. But I thought my Chinese wasn't good enough yet to get into the grad program I wanted to in China. So I decided to teach English for a year. My hand injury was still hurting but not as bad as before. I had two choices of job. One at international school where I would be busier but get paid more, look better on my resume. Other was at kind of dodgy family cram school where I would work less. Of course I chose option two, because then I could focus more on what really mattered, studying Chinese.
Transition from student to work again was hard. This transition was when things fell apart with Taiwanese girlfriend. If I had come to Taiwan and started out teaching, I don't know if I would have held out. I cried after a class once, I still remember, it was so depressing how much the kids didn't want to listen. I had to discipline them, there was no Chinese helper in my class. I hated this at first, having no helper. Later I would love it, because I could teach any way I wanted to and be very creative. But I really am a nice, more gentle kind of guy. Yelling at kids is not easy for me to do. But I learned to do it sometimes. I moreso learned to be clever and make them pay attention in other ways. My boss has good routine down after 17 years. Foreign teacher is good cop and he is the bad cop. It works out.
I didn't neglect my job like before. I made sure everything was done well and I gave it my all in classes. But I didn't go the extra mile. Extra mile went into my studies. I know this sounds crazy but my previous experience as dungeon master and doing improv in D&D made it easy to teach classes on the fly. Modeling things in a game-like fashion just sort of spins off my tongue thanks to 10+ years as DM. So between classes I wrote Chinese characters, read Chinese comic books （宅男篮球 my favorite), always constantly writing characters and learning that way. I had a system where I would then manually put them into Anki. Every day on the train I would go through 100 characters on the way to work, and 100 on the way back. Sometimes on the weekend I would just chill and drink a beer, write out characters, watch some TV, play some piano when my hands allowed it. Always flowing like a river. Why did I start reading comic books? Because I stumbled across a comic book store about half a mile from my house one day.
This is when I really learned how to study Chinese. My year as scholarship student, I was still kind of lost. I didn't have to try hard to study because I had so much time. But as English teacher, I was very tired from yelling at kids and dancing like a monkey. And then have to study on top of that.
What worked for me is always finding new ways to study. There is no system that you can put into place and follow through and things get fast-tracked in growth.
The key is to constantly change up the system. That's the way to get new breakthroughs. Read comic book one week, next minute have conversation with taxi driver. Then go back to Anki and write characters, check out the textbook. I would set daily, weekly, and monthly goals. But you know what? I almost never actually reached the goals, like "read textbook 30 minutes 5x this week." I was happy to get up to 3x most of the time. Staying positive was very important. Negativity like with the coffee thing, is what kills Chinese study.
I took all the grammar from my Practical AudioVisual books and wrote them down. That's another thing for me. Writing is key. Writing traditional characters I find to be relaxing, and you can kind of play with the shapes. I don't get the same feeling writing simplified. Learning Chinese without writing the characters, I think would be way harder, actually. (I didn't learning the Taiwanese zhuyin, though.)
I took the grammar, wrote it down, and then what? I posted them on my door, all 90 or so from the first four books. Then, every day I would read one page. Only takes about 30 seconds. Each grammar has an example sentence. And I would think to myself, okay, I'm going to try to use this grammar form outside today when I am talking.
I was always shy in USA. But in Taiwan, I forced myself to talk to people a lot more. It's easier to be extroverted when you have the introvert's internal drive forcing yourself to do it. You'll notice that the people with the best English in places like China are often the most extroverted. It's just necessary to learn the language.
So if taxi driver wants to talk about how beautiful Taiwan girls are, I will talk about that topic yet again. Sometimes I will even lie and make up stories because I was bored. I started talking about politics sometimes too, and other more advanced topics, in preparation to go to grad school. Taiwan politics is really fucking fascinating. If you're one of those new age tumblr whatever types who does the identity stuff, should definitely study Taiwan. Taiwanese identity is very intricate.
It was sometimes hard to practice Chinese. I wasn't allowed to speak it at work. I followed that rule. So I would talk with the 7/11 guy when I got my coffee. There is a reputation that a lot of foreigners come to Taiwan and China because they want to get laid. I actually think it's not quite this way. Some of the girls just really want to chat with a foreigner and see what it is like, Taiwanese really can be that innocent. Taiwanese are great people. I used these dating apps as my number one way to study. Many people say the best way to improve Chinese is through BF/GF, really good class, study hard. Well my best way was to chat on Tinder and meet people that way. You learn lots of slang, and when you meet people, you can choose whatever topic you want to talk about. You already know a little bit about them so you can prepare the topic a bit. Maybe they like surfing and you can study up a bit on the Chinese words about surfing before you meet them. I did this a lot. Of course I would speak some in English with them, because usually that's what they wanted. But I always avoided girls who treat me like free English teacher. I don't like to talk about this because it's a little weird, but I think Chinese learners need to know how vital this was to my improvement. People like to say language exchange is more like a date, and not really about practice. Well, I made my dates more into like a language exchange... to be honest, social stuff like this I think is like 80% the importance of learning. All the book stuff I see on here, I think is only about 20%.
I also liked to play basketball, but my hands hurt a lot. That was the way I met Taiwan guys the most. Basketball is really a great way to meet people in Taiwan, and China too. Oftentimes people like to eat dinner after playing. And there will be lots of slang you can learn. Taiwanese can be really crazy about basketball. I see hordes of guys playing into the night with the lights off, doesn't matter, they keep playing. If you are not good at basketball but are at least average height for a foreigner, doesn't really matter then how good you are. Just stand near the basket and try to get as many rebounds for your team as you can.
Always grabbed on to every social opportunity I can. One time I went to a wedding with my friend. We take a bus home from Taoyuan back to my city of Taichung. There are some drunk old people from Kaoshiung there who are singing karaoke. They invite me to sing with them. I sing the only Chinese song I really know, and they start pouring me shots, next thing I know, I'm drunk and they are telling me to visit Kaoshiung next week. I never did visit them, but I remember that bus ride.
Always doing little things to improve Chinese. For example, I like to play Hearthstone, because it's one of the only games I can play with my hand injury. But I force myself to play in Chinese. If you want to waste time playing video game, you will have to play in Chinese, I tell myself. I bond with my Taiwanese GF about Hearthstone (before we break up). We can talk about the game and strategies. It is always a good way to find these "specialist pathways" to advance language. It seems pointless to learn about the techniques of hearthstone in chinese. But what it is really teaching you is how to quickly build these pathways in your head. So the next time you need to learn about a topic in Chinese, you can do so very quickly. These days I have to translate software instructions, and that is really hard every time I have a new topic, but within a few hours I know what I am doing no problem. It's thanks to activities like this, learning the special words in hearthstone that really matter for shit in reality, teach you exactly how to go down these specialist pathways when necessary in the future.
I was still writing characters on a grid, but now as words, almost never as single characters. I started learning 成语s at this time and trying to put them into daily conversation, but that never really worked. Still struggling with this part. Anyways, I would write the word once, then the english and pinyin, and do that for many words that I read in a book or comic book or saw on TV. A few days later, I would go back and write the words four times again. Then, another day, I would put into Anki. That was pretty much the only "system" I was doing now. No fancy thing you have to buy. I wasn't even reading the textbook anymore. I think once at intermediate level, it's more about these pathways like I say. Learning how to learn the language, because the truth is, I would forget the next day most of the stuff I learn. I would study and remember 10 characters, and the next day forget 7-8 of them.
Negativity, like I said, is the ultimate killer. At beginning, that would upset me, like with the coffee thing. I notice a lot of Chinese people get upset about this point in English, when they forget how to say a certain word, and say, wow, learning English is so hard, I can never remember this or that. And then they give up again.
But I learned to stay positive. You will always forget stuff. You will always feel like an idiot. Sometimes even today in 2018 the taxi driver is like WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT LAOWAI. Sometimes they still don't understand I don't want corn in my freaking beef noodle. I am translating software and writing papers about legal issues in Chinese, and the DiDi still doesn't understand that no, I am across from the bus station, not next to the bus station. But failing over and over again when you think you are already PAST that stage, that's part of learning the language. Honestly I love it. It's so fucking difficult and unforgiving. That just shows how few people will actually tough it out. Those are the kind of things that will actually count as accomplishments. I hated learning Spanish. But I love learning Chinese. I think a big part of it is just how inaccessible it really is. I don't know.
Anyways, I applied for the grad school, and got in. It's in China. I'm not going to talk about where it is or anything like that. Sorry. But it's in Chinese and pretty difficult. I spent a year here so far. Really miss Taiwan, but have to be in mainland China for now. My reading and writing Chinese has improved a lot. My speaking? Maybe gone down, actually, because I am speaking less. My listening? About the same, if not worse. However, my overall understanding of China has certainly spiked enormously.
I wanted to share this story for people to get a real-life example of what it is like to learn Chinese. It's not about books. I have spent 3.5 years on this road. At no point have I ever felt like I can say, yes, I speak fluent Chinese. Any foreigner who says that is either lying, or they have been studying super long time or in Chinese environment very intensely. The fluent Chinese thing is kind of a myth and a little stupid. That shouldn't be the goal, in my opinion. My goals have always been daily. Weekly. And more concrete: get this scholarship. Get into this program. Get my GF not to yell at me for not understanding her Chinese. Haha! Rather than, "I want to be fluent and work in international business."
Having head start, both at the beginning where I was only working part-time and then when I had a scholarship, improved my situation a lot. This would have been impossible without it. I would have given up, I think, if I just went straight to China as an English teacher learning Chinese on the side.
3.5 years and now I can read academic Chinese and talk about politics, although perhaps not in a super deep way or the more philosophical articles. I think that's pretty good. More importantly, I can learn quickly on the fly whatever topic I need to prepare for. I still have some chronic pain, but I can use a computer for about two hours now with light typing. No video games, no tennis, but I can play basketball for about an hour. And Chinese, practice every day wherever I can.
Hope this story gave you some cool ideas or inspiration for your own study. If you have any questions or want to 骂我, go ahead and do that. Thanks.
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