Self Intro
I teach HSK 5/6 at an online school and I’m trying to help students at this level to develop better fluency. I hope to share some of the learning techniques that I find helpful. Please let me know what you think so I can continue to refine these ideas further.
Summary
I think the key of progressing beyond HSK 5/6 is to focus our efforts on “acquisition” rather than “learning.”
Acquisition vs Learning
As Stephen Krashen points out in his book Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning (1981), the term “acquisition” refers to how one “picks up” language naturally. An example of this is when we see an English sentence that’s wrong, we don’t know exactly why it’s wrong, but we just know that it “doesn’t sound right.” This is because we’ve “picked up,” or “acquired” this language point and not consciously “learned” it.
One acquires Chinese principally through “comprehensible input,” that is, reading or hearing messaging in Chinese and understanding it. For example, when you read a book in Chinese with the help of a dictionary, you’re getting “comprehensible input.”
To further illustrate the differences, here are some typical activities that’s associated with acquisition and learning.
Activities for Acquisition / Comprehensible Input
- Reading a Chinese novel
- Reading Chinese news
- Watching a Chinese movie
- Watching a YouTube video intended for Chinese audience
- Listening to a Chinese podcast
- Listening to a lecture given in Chinese
- Having a Chinese conversation with a Chinese tutor
Activities for Learning
- Learning how to use “幸亏” in a sentence
- Memorize a list of words related to art and artists
- Completing an HSK 5 mock test
- Write a 3-page paper and have it corrected
I think at the HSK 5 and 6 levels, students should spend about 80% of the time on acquisition (or comprehensible input) and 20% on formal learning.
“The Tree”
I think of learning Chinese as growing a tree. At the base of the tree is HSK 1, the trunk would be HSK 2 and 3. Up to this point the tree hasn’t branched out yet, so the learning path is also singular: you simply need to follow one textbook, one course, one program.
However, at about HSK 4, the tree trunk splits into two, then two into four. It starts to grow branches and leaves. At HSK 5 and 6, we can no longer simply follow a single course or program and expect to get the full coverage. We need to “branch out” and “grow leaves.” We need to focus on natural acquisition in a seemingly random fashion.
Applying this technique to my Korean learning
I decided to test out the idea by learning Korean again. (Chinese is already my first language and my English is already way beyond “HSK 6.”) I’ve been learning Korean on-and-off for about 8 years, and I’m also at a level similar to “HSK 5.” My goal is to bring my Korean to close to my English.
For the last four months, I focused on improving my Korean through comprehensible input:
- I watched two Korean dramas in full and looked up every word.
- I read a few Korean eBooks on career and business.
- I travelled to Busan, visited many museums there, took photographs of the descriptive text displayed in the museum and studied the text when I got home.
- I bought a lot of history books, read a lot of them and developed a keen interest in Korean history.
- I watched lots of Korean history lectures on YouTube.
- Whenever I had time I would listen to Korean podcasts.
- I started taking 1-to-1 lessons from a tutor at a local language school.
The result?
- When I started taking Korean lessons, my teacher gave me a reading test from a TOPIK II mock exam, and I got 17 out of 20 correct.
- She also gave me about 70% for essay writing.
- I can understand most of what my teacher says (although she does speak slowly and clearly for me.)
So I think my Korean got a lot further compared to 4 months ago.
What has been your experience?
Are you at HSK 5/6? Have you had any experience with learning Chinese through comprehensible input, such as reading books or watching movies? Please let me know how things have worked out for you. :)
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