Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

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I began my study of Chinese in 1975. I got to be good enough in reading Chinese to set the ceiling of scores obtained in an experimental administration of a test for Chinese language for speakers of English. (The test was not further developed by the test developers, but I saw the summary of norming administration scores.) I worked for quite a few years as a Chinese-English interpreter for government-sponsored people-to-people visits to the United States. I was just reading Chinese-language newspapers via Google News just before bopping over here to Hacker News.

Simply put, the biggest single mistake learners of Chinese make in learning Chinese characters is learning them only in isolation and not also by reading connected Chinese-language text in which Chinese characters appear in "compounds" (meaningful Chinese words). The full argument for doing this is developed by the late John DeFrancis (a brilliant language teacher and textbook author) in the front matter of his book Beginning Chinese Reader,[1] which is still a very worthwhile book decades after it was first published. DeFrancis built in a lot of spaced repetition in the book lessons, back in the days before "spaced repetition" was a trendy term, but he crucially also makes sure the lesson texts illustrate the various ways that Chinese characters enter into compounds to form high-frequency words in the modern Chinese vocabulary. Try it if you'd like to more Chinese in the most efficient way possible.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Chinese-Reader-Part/dp/03000...

P.S. for a more extensive discussion of how to learn natural human languages effectively, see a comment of mine from about two years ago that was very popular with other readers of HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302276#up_6302816

I'm really glad to see such an encouraging and useful comment on HN.

I'm right in the middle of the John DeFrancis series (just started Intermediate Chinese Reader volume 2). These books seem to be almost forgotten and I haven't found any modern equivalent, so I was starting to feel slightly lonely in my quest for Chinese reading fluency :) I started them after trying

* regular flashcards: not very effective for me, as all the accumulated knowledge would disappear very quickly after I stopped practicing

* "modern" graded readers: they're nice, but far less structured than the DeFrancis' series, and they often stop at a beginner/intermediate level.

What's truly unique about the DeFrancis' series compared to other graded readers is that the texts are adapted to the vocabulary lists, rather than the other way around. Therefore characters and compounds can be introduced logically, in a coherent manner: for example each new character comes with a cluster of words that use this character, making the whole much easier to remember. The downside is that the texts often feel contrived and boring, but if you're serious about learning to read it feels much more effective and gratifying on the long term. The approach used by most other readers is to start from a simple and enjoyable story, and then adding a glossary containing the more advanced words in the story. But although the story itself is more natural and enjoyable for the reader, the vocabulary itself is much harder to remember.

It would be awesome if someone was willing to put in all the hard work it took to craft the DeFrancis' series, and write something similar with a more modern and less academia-focused content.

I used Pimsleur to learn Japanese. They use a kind of SRS where words don't get quizzed directly, but embedded in small phrases. Using words in context made me more sure of myself and I was immediately able to use them in conversations or understand them in videos. With each phrase more than one concept could be refreshed. I think it is essential to put small phrases in order to develop the vocabulary.

Also, for absolute beginners this method has the advantage of forming a solid understanding of the core of the language (those 1000 words that see over 50% usage in regular conversation) and also learn accent really well - cards being in audio format. It feels as if I were a small child learning his native language.

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