[yomly]

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality.

IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique are going to serve you well.

Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones.

Thankfully there are only 4 tones so only 16 unique combinations of two tones (actually only 15 because 3->3 isn't really used) And only 64 combinations of 3 tones

If you master those combinations in terms of speed and accuracy (both speaking and listening) the rest of it can be composed.

Then begins the long path to memorizing every phoneme+tone -> character pairing :)

[bayesian_horse]

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all.

The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening.

Those phases overlap, of course, but in my opinion that's the overall process. I've used it successfully for English and Spanish (though I haven't completed phase 3 in Spanish yet). In Mandarin I'm currently struggling towards mastering HSK 4 vocabulary, though relatively advanced.

[jacobolus]

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. [...] The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening.

To clarify: This is the way skills develop when people extensively study but barely learn a foreign language, the way typically happens in classrooms. It is a cruel method with poor results.

All of the actual learning of the language per se happens from listening to (or reading) comprehensible input, which should start from day 1 (yes this takes considerable effort for teachers to implement). Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time. Memorizing atomized vocabulary words is also relatively ineffective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

[EliRivers]

Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time.

I am far more competent in written Japanese than spoken, both reading and writing it, essentially through understanding grammar. "Total waste of time" seems a harsh appraisal.

[jacobolus]

If you take two novices and dump one into arbitrarily extensive grammar lessons for 2 years, and the other into spending a couple hours per day listening (i.e. actively focusing attention on trying to understand what is being said) to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.

The first person is going to learn something, but it’s not an efficient use of their time if the goal is language fluency.

If you want to learn to read, then by far the most effective use of time is to practice reading, with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material.

This is not just speculation. There has been a ton of scholarly research on this topic.

[tasogare]

>spending a couple hours per day listening [...] to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.

It doesn’t work like that. For the student to make any progress he need to be able to understand most of the things in the speech (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading). That’s why there are people living in foreign country for years yet cannot speak or understand the language at all.

Also it’s kinda stupid to say that language learning must be either grammar/voc learning or listening: it needs to be both. Classes are needed because they make portion of listening material comprehensible, which is impossible by listening only.

[jacobolus]

> (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading)

Notice the link I put in my first comment.

Yes, the more comprehensible the early exposure, the faster the student will advance at the beginning. If content is too advanced learning will be much slower.

It would be great if more language teachers and curricula put more significant effort into developing hiqh-quality materials aimed at being largely comprehensible to complete beginners. Many extant materials and courses do a very poor job at this.

> there are people living in foreign country for years yet cannot speak or understand the language at all.

Learning a language takes consistent deliberate effort.

> kinda stupid to say that language learning must be either grammar/voc learning or listening: it needs to be both

Grammar lessons have low marginal value for language learners, and are by no means necessary. Many people learn a foreign language without any formal grammar instruction whatsoever.

[jacobolus]

By the way, here’s Krashen (the comprehensible input guy):

http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/teaching_grammar_w...

> Research on the relationship between formal grammar instruction and performance on measures of writing ability is very consistent: There is no relationship between grammar study and writing (Krashen, 1984). Perhaps the most convincing research is that of Elley, Barham, Lamb and Wyllie (1976). After a three year study comparing the effects of traditional grammar, transformational grammar and no grammar on high school students in New Zealand, they concluded that " ... English grammar, whether traditional or transformational, has virtually no influence on the language growth of typical secondary students" (pp. 17-18).

> In addition, research is equally consistent in showing that writing ability and reading are related: Those who read more, write better (Krashen, 1993a). The reform school boys in Fader's Hooked on Books study who read self-selected paperback books for two years outperformed comparison boys on writing fluency, writing complexity, and reading, as well as on measures self-esteem and attitude towards school (Fader, 1976).

> It is well-established that one can become an excellent writer with very little formal instruction in grammar, and those who do often give reading the credit for their writing ability: "I wanted to write and I did not even know the English language. I bought English grammars and found them dull. I felt I was getting a better sense of the language from novels than from grammars" (Wright, 1966, p. 275).

> Finally, our ability to consciously learn the rules of grammar is very limited. Linguists have told us that they have not yet succeeded in describing the rules of language, and anyone who has studied linguistics will attest to the complexity of the rules linguists have described. Studies in second language acquisition show that even experienced students have an incomplete knowledge of the rules they are taught, do not remember the rules well, and have difficulty applying them (Krashen, 1993b, Alderson, Clapham, and Steel, 1997).

> [...]

> I am proposing, in other words, a two-step procedure: 1. Students first acquire (absorb subconsciously) a great deal of grammatical competence through reading. 2. Students are taught to use a grammar handbook to increase their grammatical accuracy further, using consciously learned rules. The grammar handbook can be introduced in junior high school or high school. If a great deal of reading has been done, and continues to be done, the grammar handbook will need to be used only occasionally.

[bayesian_horse]

I haven't seen any research that says passive listening without instruction has any effect at all.

You may have some success in a language related to your native language. Good luck with something truly foreign...

[EliRivers]

with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material

That's how I started reading. Basic grammar, and some vocab. Vocab I didn't know was simple to look up; grammar I didn't know rendered the entire sentence incomprehensible and looking up the individual words did very little to help. If I knew the grammar but not the vocab, thirty seconds to comprehension. If I knew the vocab but not the grammar, order of magnitude more time to understand, often requiring assistance from someone else. Knowing the grammar felt like doing it on easy mode.

Not knowing the grammar rendered it a waste of time. THAT was the "total waste of time".

It was basically how it worked. "Here is some more reading to do, in order to comprehend it, here is some grammar that you will need." Literally front-loaded. My experience of effective learning is basically the complete opposite of what you advocated; no front-loading of grammar rendered it extraordinarily inefficient.

I dread to think how long even the basic sentence structure of "topic - comment" in Japanese would have taken me to realise if I'd had to learn it by just listening to people use it; like I'm meant to be some kind of linguistic detective. Telling me that before hearing the sentence spoken rendered it SO much more understandable, right from the start. I was able to start making valid, meaningful sentences in Japanese within sixty seconds. Topic - comment. Here's some nouns, here are some words that are like adjectives, here's how you mark the "topic" which you could think of as similar to the "subject" in English grammar, but go easy on that because the grammar is different, here's the copula, off you go.

Great work, that was a nice sixty seconds of comprehensible and correct Japanese, none of which you had ever heard before - you constructed it all yourself. Pretty good for someone who's been studying the language less than ten minutes. Here's the copula in the past tense, off you go with that.

My God, I genuinely flinch to think about how long that would have taken me without any front-loading of grammar. If I was meant to just guess how the language worked based on listening to it. What a waste of time that would be.

I reckon someone could listen to Japanese for a very long time before realising that some of the things that are kind of like adjectives can change depending on tense, but for some of them the copula changes. A native English speaker would have to really be good to spot that quickly. What a waste of time that would be compared to simply learning that piece of grammar.

[ximeng]

I self-studied Chinese mostly using Skritter (skritter.com) for spaced repetition of vocabulary and found it effective. The problem with learning via listening is the availability of suitable material.

I estimate you need around 20k of common words, characters and phrases for understanding a large variety of vocabulary for everyday use (e.g. watching television, reading newspapers, daily conversation, business discussions, books, songs, poetry, etc.). This takes a considerable amount of time to commit to memory, so doing it efficiently is important - at 2000 hours a year, this is two years of memorising 5 items an hour, which is ambitious. While learning, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the same word might be used in different ways in different contexts.

I agree grammar is relatively irrelevant from a wider perspective - there's just not that much of it compared to vocabulary, and an intuitive understanding is fine for the most part. However it is also typically taught at a beginner level with basic vocabulary and varied sentence structures, which are useful in themselves (not "a total waste of time"). Understanding the terminology also makes using reference materials easier in some cases.

In practical terms then, carefully graded tuition and listening practice might be the ideal, but in practice this is an expensive route for most people when you are looking at two years of full-time learning. Realistically drilling vocabulary will get you a long way towards understanding native materials (e.g. movies with subtitles), and allows you to self-study by looking up definitions in the native language. It also allows this to happen relatively cheaply, as you can study yourself.

You're not going to get to fluency without a wide vocabulary, and from a vocab / time unit level, drilling vocab is not a bad way to get there.

[flomble]

> Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time.

I completely disagree, partly because studying grammar is an effective shortcut to making input more comprehensible. If I memorise the verb conjugations for Spanish verbs, for example, I now understand more information about every sentence (e.g. omitted verb subjects and tense/mood information). It will still be necessary to listen and read extensively in order to internalise the formation and meaning of the verb forms, but it skips a lengthy process of reverse engineering. Ditto for producing your own sentences, which I think is also fundamentally important for learning a language.

> Memorizing atomized vocabulary words is also relatively ineffective.

This is absolutely true; when using flashcards or spaced repetition, it is vastly better to have a full sentence with the target word blanked out compared to only having the definition.

[usaar333]

One problem with comprehensible input methods (like what Rosetta Stone does?) is that it can be extremely boring as an adult and ultimately demotivating.

Studying grammar can be fun - and it feels like an accomplishment to be able to say some pretty complex things in Chinese.

Sure my listening isn't that great.. but on the other hand being limited to a two year old's conversation ability isn't particularly enticing.

Also, fwiw, reading and listening is a way different skill... Thanks to the ability to rewind when reading

[bayesian_horse]

In my opinion it takes years to be able to comprehend random sentences uttered by native speakers, in pretty much any language. It just takes a brain that amount of time to short-cut and organize all the information in an efficient enough manner.

[james_s_tayler]

>Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time. Memorizing atomized vocabulary words is also relatively ineffective.

Self studied Japanese to fluency that way. AJATT method but largely concentrated on front loading all the grammar in 4 months then built 10k vocab over the following year. Worked like an absolute charm.

[bayesian_horse]

I've heard the idea that somehow "front-loading" doesn't work. For one thing, it does. I have done it, repeatedly. I have rarely heard people have success without devoting a lot of time on "front-loading".

You have to learn the grammar rules somehow. If you want to do it through assimilation, as supposed to somebody telling you how it works, well, that's possible but takes a lot longer and is more error prone.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do "output" exercises. I'm just saying that in order to learn information, you better receive it somehow. And you can receive that information either in an orderly fashion ("front-loading") or in a random incomplete fashion. You can't guess your way through language learning.

[SpicyLemonZest]

That doesn't really pass the smell test for me. Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly taught grammar and vocabulary in school. I could believe the Wikipedia article's weaker claim, that there's an extra step between instinctively remembering "了 is the perfective particle" and being fluent in the perfective aspect. But the idea that explicit instruction is useless, that consciously knowing grammar won't help you acquire it at all, seems obviously wrong.

[jacobolus]

> Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly taught grammar and vocabulary in school

It is not that there’s no value whatsoever in formal study of grammar. It might come in handy if you want to be a linguist, an editor, a high-level writer, a lawyer, or the like. If students want to take a grammar course in high school or college that seems okay with me.

It just doesn’t teach basic language fluency.

Native speakers don’t start studying grammar until they have had 10+ years of full-time experience with the language. And anecdotally, the students who spend a lot of time reading independently don’t really need the grammar lessons (they already have a subconscious understanding of what is or isn’t grammatical, and the typical school grammar lesson is very slow and obvious for them), and the students who don’t spend any time reading independently and regularly speaking with educated adults would get more value out of instead spending the time reading or listening to someone read. YMMV.

[dragonwriter]

> Native speakers don’t start studying grammar until they have had 10+ years of full-time experience with the language.

Untrue; formal grammar instruction begins not later than first grade in many curricula, which is age 6-7, which would require using the language several years before birth to reach 10+ years prior use. Native speakers begin studying grammar about as soon as they have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the concepts associated with grammar.

[jacobolus]

There is little if any formal instruction in grammar in reasonable primary schools. All else equal, students who attend primary schools that don’t teach grammar at all end up speaking and writing just as well as students who attend primary schools that try to teach grammar.

When primary schools try to teach grammar it is boring, stressful, and generally unhelpful to the students.

The dominant factor affecting students’ reading comprehension and writing ability is how much time they spend listening and reading, especially to material which is at an appropriate level to slightly stretch their abilities.

If schools want to spend a relatively small amount of time formally teaching grammar to 12–17 year old students there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s mostly only useful insofar as it attaches names to concepts so that students can have conversations with each-other about what makes communication effective of ineffective, or more explicitly discuss their existing subconscious grammatical knowledge. Formal instruction in grammar (or other kinds of formal analysis) is still no substitute for practice listening and speaking and reading and writing (ideally with effective feedback), which should be the main focus of language arts instruction.

[bayesian_horse]

I can remember being taught about grammar in first grade. And getting it wrong at first.

[SpicyLemonZest]

But I don't follow the basic assumption that the way native speakers become fluent is particularly effective. No matter how much explicit instruction helps, native speakers couldn't learn basic fluency that way, because there's no way to deliver explicit instruction to a baby.

[yorwba]

Agreed, but learning grammar before you can even understand the examples used to illustrate a rule is putting the cart before the horse.

On the other hand, once you know a few specific instances, it's helpful to explicitly point out that they're governed by the same rule and give an abstract statement of how the rule works. That way you can check yourself without relying on a teacher to point out your mistakes.

[bayesian_horse]

I've heard toddlers learn about 7 words a week.

When I'm into a new language I can learn 20-50 words a day, sustainably. Short term more.

[pas]

Grammar for learning a second language is helpful. Helps you to understand how to map what you want to say, and what you heard/read.

That said, brute force practice work reeeeally well for language. And naturally people will build a kind of internal grammar anyway. But knowing what is what can help with that too.

[topmonk]

> Native speakers don’t start studying grammar until they have had 10+ years of full-time experience with the language.

That's by necessity because you can't explain perfect tense to a newborn.

[nilkn]

I think the statement was just phrased too strongly. The proposition isn’t that one shouldn’t study grammar at all, but rather that one shouldn’t front-load grammar and theory too much.

Speaking from experience, I gained basic conversational fluency in Spanish from English in a few months by spending a ton of time with LingQ (essentially reading and listening to untranslated passages and creating digital flash cards), obsessively practicing pronunciation, and listening to lyrics in Spanish music for hours on end. I focused on grammar to the extent that I had to, but no more than that. For instance, I learned only those conjugations I actually needed for simple speech. I compiled the ones I needed to study based on what I actually encountered in real passages.

Now, by no means did that render me fully fluent in the language. But, case in point, I took two years of Spanish instruction in school with lots of grammar front-loaded and I gained more or less no speaking or listening ability at all. For me there was a dramatic difference in efficiency between the two approaches to language learning.

[james_s_tayler]

>Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all

So not true. Maybe depends on the way you study but I focus on listening skills hardcore early on. It's what helps build the natural accent. It's definitely not all or nothing. There are islands of understanding. They tend to grow and grow. It starts out with single words, then grows to two words together then grows to partial sentences and then to full sentences among a paragraph. So on and so forth.

[bayesian_horse]

We may not have the same definition of listening comprehension.

When I start learning a new language, I can totally "listen comprehend" stuff that's close to the material I already studied. But the same isn't true for random content at realistic speed.

And the "island" part is compatible with "all or nothing". Because yes, within those islands, you understand everything, and over time, as your proficiency in the language grows, there are more islands of knowing all the words. But it seems to be a lot easier at first to get told what a word means and how it is used, rather than depending on it to appear in a useful context a couple hundred times.

[james_s_tayler]

You do both at the same time if you want the fastest results. You get structured i+1 input that you can cope with for part of your learning and then you dive deep into the the native content and let your brain compute the statistics necessary to eventually be able to recognize the patterns at natural speed.

My definition is of listening comprehension is any information I can glean from listening. Information being a reduction in uncertainty. Doesn't need to be complete. Progress is directional.

I know my language learning algorithm well and I pound it on repeat until my goal is achieved.

[faitswulff]

The Pimsleur Method inverts those phases and focuses on speaking and listening first. I've found it to be quite effective.

[bayesian_horse]

Hm, I'd say the Pimsleur method is quite good at teaching every-day language. Which is a worthwhile task, but the range of words is quite limited.

I would suspect that in order to get up to HSK4 or even HSK5, just the audio portions of course, you'd need like double or triple the amount of lessons, which would be impractical.

Of course, most people will start speakind and listening, in various forms, in phase 1 and 2. And that is actually necessary. But I think you won't be able to really grok "random" speech before having a good grasp at pretty much all the vocabulary you would encounter.

[DiogenesKynikos]

The range of words you learn with Pimsleur is limited because the method makes sure you actually retain every word it tries to teach you. Having a solid grasp of a small vocabulary (a few hundred words) is an excellent way to start off with a language.

> But I think you won't be able to really grok "random" speech before having a good grasp at pretty much all the vocabulary you would encounter.

But you will be able to grok small conversations about subjects you're familiar with. You can expand from there. When you try to learn a new language, you should be speaking from day one, no matter how limited the range of subjects you can speak about.

[bayesian_horse]

Yes, which is why I say the phases overlap. I still think theory should dominate the first phase of learning a language, followed by mostly reading.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Having learned a few languages with different methodologies, I strongly disagree. The most effective introductory method I've encountered so far is Pimsleur, because of its focus on listening and speaking at the early stages.

I've seen too many students who learn using the traditional theory-heavy approach and who, after years of study, are like deer caught in the headlights when they're confronted with the actual spoken language. They're also often saddled with poor pronunciation forever (which really degrades native speakers' perception of your language proficiency, regardless of how fluent you are).

Some theory is helpful, particularly for languages with lots of grammar (i.e., Indo-European languages with case, gender, agreement, etc.), but like playing an instrument, learning a language is 90% practice.

[thaumasiotes]

> I would suspect that in order to get up to HSK4 or even HSK5, just the audio portions of course, you'd need like double or triple the amount of lessons, which would be impractical.

I have passed HSK4.

I am not competent in Mandarin listening comprehension, or in speaking (to be fair, speaking isn't a part of the test). Those skills aren't necessary to pass. The audio samples for HSK4 are a lot more generous with you than actual speech is.

[bayesian_horse]

I meant more like "HSK-4 vocabulary without characters".

[faitswulff]

I would agree that Pimsleur lessons won't take you to HSK4/5, but they are a great way to get into the language first without all the more academic studies upfront.

[thaumasiotes]

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

The skills you develop are the skills you practice. If you practice listening comprehension, you'll develop it. If not, you won't.

That's all there is to the ordering.

[dmix]

> The second phase is mostly reading

Is that really practical with Mandarin and the crazy amount of Chinese characters?

I always assumed learning to speak/understand Chinese alone would be sufficiently difficult.

[skosch]

There is a huge asymmetry between learning to recognize characters and learning to write them. I've found that learning to read a basic repertoire of Chinese characters is surprisingly doable and a very helpful skill as a learner, to the point where I quickly found it easier to decipher the subtitles than to understand the audio when watching even children's movies. So, to answer your question, yes: it's practical, and a good idea.

Writing, on the other hand, requires truly knowing each character, every little stroke in the right place. Totally different beast. It takes many years to master and constant practice to keep up (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia).

[xvilka]

Learning to writing characters is now largely unnecessary, since most the writing is done in computer/mobile phone/etc, where Pinyin is ubiquitous.

[bayesian_horse]

I think it's necessary. At least my strategy is to memorize the characters and words first. I've used "decipher chinese" to read simple texts, and that is also a great method.

The thing about reading is that it is the fastest way to review and reinforce vocabulary and grammar.

You can read at your own pace and look up anything. You can't do it that easily when listening, speaking or writing. And with a certain minimum level of theory under your belt, reading will be faster than spaced repetition of vocabulary you mostly know already.

Of course, there are different levels of proficiency in Chinese you might want to achieve. If you want to be able to interact while traveling, you wouldn't need the full complement of HSK Level 4.

However, if you want to have more interesting conversations or you want to understand technical texts...

[kilroy_jones]

As a bit of an introvert I learned to read and type Mandarin before speaking. Just didn't talk to people, but absorbed what I saw in the cities I lived in. Reading menus led to signs led to comics led to books. In fact, my reading is still better than my speaking or listening skills.

[dmix]

Have you found much rewarding Chinese content? In terms of tv shows they don’t bother translating for the west and books/literature?

I feel like there are so many great books in English where it probably wouldn’t provide much value to fully commit. But I’m a big fan of China and Chinese. I even watched a stupid Chinese soap opera about rural people moving to Shanghai and was totally fascinated by the lifestyle and growth of the city. But only a few episodes were translated. It was called something like Narrows or living in small quarters.

[ximeng]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Survive is a good movie

[james_s_tayler]

There are some alright dramas that come out of Taiwan.

[dmix]

Yeah from there and Hong Kong there's a lot of more western friendly content (see: translated). But I'm interested in mainland Chinese content that day-to-day people watch there. Like I want to know what their very of "Friends" or even serious stuff like "The Wire" would look like, even if the industry hasn't yet fully matured creatively.

Most of the most popular Chinese sitcoms I've read about seem to be a strange bunch as an outsider. Very much about boy-meeting girl following standard Chinese traditional get a job -> married + boy supporting girl and families. Which I find interesting from a cultural perspective of a maturing middle class economy. That plus a hundred awful period pieces about ancient China, which seems like 50% of their output, especially movie-wise - an easy way to ignore the tough realities of modern China.

But I don't know Chinese and only have a superficial grasp of what they are really like. So I've been interested in learning mandarin.

[tgb]

I've just started learning Mandarin and would say that the characters have been easier than I've expected. Within a week of starting, I could read a dozen characters from Mandarin-language packaging of food items. Learning the characters at the same time as the sounds for words seems to take about the same amount of time as just the sounds for me. And recognizing the characters is easier than recognizing syllables from audio unless the speaker is intentionally speaking clearly and slowly.

[monoideism]

> he first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening.

This is an excellent description of the process I used to learn to speak 3 foreign languages to a level of professional fluency, and 3 others to conversational fluency (this was in my 20s, I now only maintain fluency in 2 languages, although sure I could regain it fairly quickly).

I do think this depends on the individual. Some people successfully use other techniques.

[bayesian_horse]

I don't think it depends on the individual, but rather on goals.

If you want to speak a language in a useful but relatively broken way, as fast as possible (for example as a refugee), you might want to prioritize a smaller amount of theory and more practice early on. But that would actually prolong the time to proficiency.

[jaredklewis]

This hasn't been my experience.

My experience has been that listening is basically a way to learn the language with a minimum of effort. Context and non-verbal communication often make it clear what many unknown words in a sentence mean, making it not only possible to understand speech far above one's vocabulary level, but to actually to increase one's vocabulary through listening. These non-verbal cues and context are mostly absent in written texts.

Your method also seems counter intuitive as children learn languages primarily through listening, as they are for the most part illiterate.

[bayesian_horse]

"Children" take almost 20 years to learn English at high proficiency.

And the context stuff doesn't work for me in audio, not until years into a language. It might be easier with a language close to my native, but otherwise...

[lazyant]

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

Speaking is harder

> The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all.

Disagree; you can make sense of parts of a sentence and infer the rest or get some clues; actually that's the normal state while learning.

Eg: "How do I go to the station?"

"It is XXXX, you YYYY ZZZZ walk there, you need to take a taxi WWWW KKKK Uber"

[bayesian_horse]

In my experience I can have studied a language for a period of time and still only understand gibberish when confronted with truly random sentences by natives.

Your example isn't really random. You already seem to recognize the pattern. But there are a LOT of patterns.

[romaaeterna]

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

Completely backwards, in my experience. Start with simple audiobooks, listen to them a million times, and you will be amazed by how much comprehension and speaking ability it gives you

[topmonk]

Sounds interesting. I've been trying to use movies (something called "substudy"* which converts subtitled movies to a csv file which I then import them as cards into anki), but I find it very difficult.

Could you point me in the direction of some of these simple audio books?

* substudy is here: http://www.randomhacks.net/substudy/

[romaaeterna]

The problem with movies (and TV), I find, is that it is fewer words per minute than a book. Though availability of English language television seems to be a great aid for ESL learners, so it's not wasted time at all.

Conversation practice with a native speaker is probably the ideal, but audiobooks are cheap and available. You can get around the disadvantage of not having a native trying to make themselves understood to you, by using an audiobook that you know well in translation. So I find that knowing the book well in my native language (or another language I know) is the most important initial requirement. Beyond that, it should be in simple language, though not boring. Maybe middle school or high school reading level.

On the first listen of chapter one, I find, I don't pick up more than the characters' names. After one or two dozen listens of chapter one, and I can follow the plot along pretty well (if it's a book I know), and can pick up words from context, and can start listening to the whole book.

Audio versions of the Bible are available in every language, and can be used as a first/last resort, depending on interest. If you can't find an audiobook Bible from the normal web apps, the Jehovah's Witnesses have audio versions in an insane number of languages (translated from their sometimes peculiar English version though). I like Tolkien, which is at about the right level, has audiobooks in many languages, and is familiar to me.

Grammar comes in very slowly using this method, and can use some augmentation using traditional methods. Pronunciation and comprehension, however, are supercharged.

[topmonk]

Ok, but what is your exact technique? Do you periodically pause the tape so you can follow along with it using the book in written form? Or just plain listen?

Also, are you studying Chinese this way or a language more similar to English? With all the different grammar and word order in Chinese, I can't see how I could pick up the meaning without some reference, unless I was extremely familiar with the material.

Edit: Also because there are vocal sounds in English that aren't pronouncable in Chinese, even character names are not the same. “Gandalf” becomes “gan dow foo”, for instance

[romaaeterna]

I've done it or some variation with German, Latin, Japanese, Norwegian, and Russian.

My method is to listen is small chunks (like a paragraph or so), a bunch of times, and gradually expand the length.

> I can't see how I could pick up the meaning without some reference, unless I was extremely familiar with the material.

You would be surprised at how good you are at it. The human brain is built for picking up a language from scratch by listening, and human languages are similarly built for being acquired in this way.

[g_langenderfer]

Does a child know grammar and vocabulary? Understanding and producing the sounds of a language seem to be the elementary units.

[bayesian_horse]

A child knows grammar and vocabulary, most often by being taught explicitly. Yes they pick up stuff, but they are corrected all the time.

And children don't have the level of language skill you normally want to achieve.

[GordonS]

> Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones.

I think this is good advice. When I first started learning mandarin, I really emphasised the tones, I guess because my untrained ear found it difficult to distinguish between them, and also because I thought people might understand me better.

But the first time I went to China, it was immediately obvious that people had a hard time understanding my (then rudimentary) mandarin, which I believe was in large part because of the over-exaggerated way I was using tones.

In the 3 weeks I spent in China, my understanding and usage of the tones came on tremendously - way more than it ever could have if I wasn't immersion in the language. Your ear does need to kind of train before you hear and understand tones at a more intuitive level.

To anyone learning Chinese, my advice would be to get yourself out there, even if it's just for a short time.

[jcampbell1]

I built a little tool to help with tone pairs. There are vocab sets to explore all the combinations and a listening exercise. There is a huge jump from knowing the 4 tones from a pinyin chart and listening to full sentences. Learning the flavor of the 16 (19?) combinations is a great stepping stone.

https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-tones-learn-the-right-way-...

[yomly]

You're the best - I was just thinking that something with live vocab would be useful

[yellow_lead]

I came to say this as well. Especially the third tone, I think is misrepresented in many texts and classes incorrectly. It's taught as a "down then back up" but in real, normal speed conversation, just sounds like a slightly lower pitch. Unless of course you have certain combinations like two third tones in a row.

[jhanschoo]

Yeah, there really isn't time to pronounce a down-then-back-up in casual speech.

[jhanschoo]

I'd like to add that moving from sterile classroom Mandarin to irl Mandarin, you'll notice that

1. You may realize that the tones are realized differently in a variety of ways depending on context, speaker, etc.

2. Just as you can parse a different accent, native speakers can still figure out what you're trying to say if your tones are slightly whack. After all, tonal information in Mandarin is lost when sung.

[drchiu]

I remember the same thing. The tones can be picked up relatively easily when practicing with actual Mandarin speakers. There becomes a "in-use" memory that's easier to recall than trying to remember all those tone strokes.

[bayesian_horse]

I haven't had real-life experience, but I experienced a similar effect from vocabulary drilling in Duolingo and Skritter. Those have audio, and it tends to help with the memorizing.

[natch]

>there are only 4 tones

5

[yomly]

I guess you're right - I don't know if emphasis placed on this has changed over the years but the neutral tone was always a bit of an after thought/edge case when I was taught.

Though I also wouldn't really consider my formal Mandarin education to be particularly rigorous or thorough...