61–70 of 310 posts
The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be overstated. However I can see how this might be a burden to some when it comes to entering in your own sentences. For this, I highly recommend making use of your OS's dictation (speech to text) feature. You get to practice speaking _and_ enter sentences much quicker.
Spaced repetition system (or maybe software?) for people like me who were not familiar with this acronym.
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No, if anything it is well advised: 1. You are fluent in the langauge. 2. While acquiring fluency, you learn the culture. 3. You will be able to hold your own w/o a local interperter. 4. You can change locals mind and let them see their news/version of events isn't all secular (e.g. laowai adapts culture, learns langauge, not to fit in, but complimentary to living/being in China, etc.) So, I would say for someone tha…
Investment into China by foreign businesses slumped to a 30-year low in 2023 https://qz.com/china-foreign-investment-30-year-low-18512681...
Number of foreign visitors to China in 2023 down more than 60% from pre-pandemic levels https://www.cnn.com/travel/china-foreign-visitor-number-2023...
Remember that as the Chinese economy worsens, the average citizens are going to convert their anger into violence against foreigners.
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Or go teach. Barrier to entry to becoming an ESL teacher particularly in southeast Asia is relatively low, and its the best way to integrate into the culture.
I don't have first hand experience with that, but it seems that might actually be a poor way to learn, because everyone will want to speak English to you. I've had to selfishly refuse to speak English to people many times.
I also bypassed this pretty easily, my extended family / name is Italian, so I would always respond back in Italian, and then we'd revert to Chinese pretty quickly because NOBODY speaks Italian over there.
Further since you're there on a work visa, you can eventually transition into translation work / etc. to really refine your language mastery. 3 months isn't bad, but I'd recommend a solid year. Following my time in Asia, I lived in Russia where I basically didn't use my Chinese for a couple years, but on a quick business trip to Taipei my fluency was there when I needed it.
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> The power of SRS (spaced repetition system) cannot be overstated Speaking as someone who has used Anki the last 5 years, has built and sold Anki decks and is working on implementing various spaced repetition schedulers as we speak... unfortunately its importance can absolutely be overstated. Definitely more language learners should be using an SRS, but there are lots of people who take it way too far (I have way to…
> there are lots of people who take it way too far I wrote in another comment that that’s exactly my issue. I can easily spend hours, days, weeks even just tweaking my card templates due to Anki’s extreme customizability. That stems from a (false!) belief that I can somehow find just the right card format that will impress the language in my head in no time. Took me a long time to reign in the impulse to endlessly tw…
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I don't have first hand experience with that, but it seems that might actually be a poor way to learn, because everyone will want to speak English to you. I've had to selfishly refuse to speak English to people many times.
Everyone in your class of course, but its not like you're wearing a tag that say "English Teacher" when you're just walking around. I also bypassed this pretty easily, my extended family / name is Italian, so I would always respond back in Italian, and then we'd revert to Chinese pretty quickly because NOBODY speaks Italian over there. Further since you're there on a work visa, you can eventually transition into tran…
I'd say to master any language there is no period of time that is sufficient. I've even gotten worse at speaking my native language since I speak Spanish all day.
Like with exercise, or brushing your teeth, once you stop doing it, it will get worse and you will lose "it".
The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be overstated. However I can see how this might be a burden to some when it comes to entering in your own sentences. For this, I highly recommend making use of your OS's dictation (speech to text) feature. You get to practice speaking _and_ enter sentences much quicker.
I'm not sure if I agree with that, as no native speakers need to have an SRS to learn their native languages. No doubt that SRS will allow us to remember words, yet few can really acquire those words intuitively. When starting to learn English in school, we used some kind of SRS system to memorize words and phrases and sentences, and man, the result was abysmal. We spent 10 years learning English (3 years of middle school, 3 years of high school, and 4 years of college), trying to memorize new words every day, passing TOEFL and later GRE through intense SRS, yet few students could understand TV shows, read fictions, or communicate with English speakers. And the learning was arduous, to say the least.
In contrast, I was lucky enough that my mom gave me a set of graded readers compiled by National Geographic, and simply asked me to read them through. And then Sidney Sheldon's books, Friends, etc and etc. So basically I immersed myself into the language, never having to do SRS, and I could easily pass TOEFL and the GRE Verbal years before graduating college. As a bonus, I started to enjoy TV shows and movies early on, and was able to socialize with my classmates and professors without even trying. I also used the method to learn Spanish and Japanese, and the results are similar. No SRS needed but consistent exposure to the languages. In less than two years, I can read books like The Alchemist, If Tomorrow Comes, and Project Hail Mary. Another interesting contrast is that I couldn't understand much conversation in those languages, precisely because I spent most of my spare time in reading.
I don't know Mandarin, but I found this browser extension [1] very useful for quickly translating some words. It doesn't translate sentences unfortunately, but I guess you can use machine translation for that. I'm curious if/how anyone here has integrated LLMs for their language learning process. Also after you learn a certain amount of basic words in any language, I recommend trying to learn that language from insid…
Fwiw, TFA's methods page[1] has a GPT section.
Examples:
Scrolling on the phone?: Basically direct dopamine injected into my brain. Can do indefinitely. Not good.
Programming? Sure I can put a few hours in, or even days if building quick prototypes where the payoff is imminent.
Reading? Can go on indefinitely, depending on the book: it's just continual stream of interesting immersive stuff
Exercise? Well that depends on the activity. Running indoors without any stimulation: absolutely cannot do. Cycling or running or walking outside with an audiobook, or music? Absolutely: constant stimulation plus endorphins.
Learning Piano? Only if I can bang out a few good tunes immediately in the session, then I can allow myself to struggle with the difficult stuff in between. Absolutely cannot and won't do rote deliberate practice. This hinders my progress significantly, but at least I have fun.
Learning a language? Well, unless I can get imminent rewards, or be continually interested and engaged, there's just no way I'll be able to do this. And I feel like rote, deliberate practice is just impossible for me to build a habit out of.
One way I know for a fact that I can learn another language is through necessity to communicate with it. Let's say I'm thrown into an environment where the ONLY way I can get anything done is through having to communicate directly, without the aid of translators or tools. I think this is how babies learn.
I hitchhiked China for 3 months in 2018 after studying Chinese for 2 semesters of college beforehand. Hitchhiking is by far one of the best ways to learn a new language. Long hours with a wide variety of individuals, mostly one-on-one. If you're young, and you're reading this, go hitchhike. It's not as safe as staying home with mom, but it's not as dangerous as people who have never done it say it is. I "achieved int…
> Hitchhiking is by far one of the best ways to learn a new language. Another way is moving to another country. You'll learn quicker than you think, and no need to learn the language beforehand, it'll be great fun to try to understand something completely foreign, and gets a lot easier when you see people's faces and hands :) If you're young, you still have time to move to another country, and move back home if you g…
Sure, if your target language isn't too far from your native one, learning it on the go probably works fine. But you aren't going to get from English to Chinese casually by picking up stuff though, you'll end up knowing a hundred words tops for your daily life and that's it.
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To keep things polite - that's a bit over the top to call it 'ultra-nationalism' and then in nation of 1.5 billion to point out... 2 attacks altogether for last few months? That's like what, a weak school week in US in comparison? If its there, and this is first time hearing about it for me and seemingly for others, please provide some serious proofs for such serious accusations.
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I wonder if any anti-Japanese sentiment has to do with the fact that, to this day, the ruling party/LDP actively denies the numerous war crimes perpetrated against the Chinese in the second world war, including the Nanjing massacre. But I guess it must be all that propaganda. Though the Chinese may need to fine-tune their approach, since per the Newsweek article you linked "Among Japanese respondents, 92.2 percent had an unfavorable opinion of China, up from 87.3 percent in 2022. On the Chinese side, 62.9 percent viewed Japan negatively, about the same as the previous year."