Slang: Don't release my dove!

Tweet

No matter what language your speaking, being stood up is never fun. But at least the Chinese slang for being stood up is easy to remember. For one reason or another "release my dove" or 放我鴿子／放我鸽子 (fàng wǒ gē zi) has taken on this meaning.

Here in Taiwan, I often hear the phrase 别放我鴿子 used as a joking phrase used among friends who are going to meet up later. However, if someone actually does stand you up it can be used as well.

Regardless of the origin this slang certainly beats saying 爽約/爽约 (shuǎng yuē ) the more literary term of breaking an appointment.

Some members of the Baidu also say the term describes someone who simply doesn't respect promises, but I still reckon that 90% of the time I've seen or heard it used among friends, in the media, or in books, it is talking about someone skipping out on a meeting/ date.

Next time you're making a date with a friend, be sure to remind them not to release your dove!

Writing Assignment: Week 1 （新年願望）

Tweet

As mentioned in my previous post, I've decide to turn my goals into a plan of action. Since one of my plans was to write a weekly journal entry, my first post reflects on that idea and trys to capture some of my thoughts in Chinese. Any comments or criticisms are welcome, the purpose of these posts are keep my goals (and plan) public, while also improving my Chinese writing over the course of the year. In the interest of keeping this blog dedicated to learning Chinese, I've also included a selected vocabulary list below. 

Enjoy!

新年伊始，許多人就迫不及待地宣布自己的新年願望。有的人宣布為了減肥要天天運動，有的人要開始學習一門新外語，有的人要戒煙，但是一旦遇到困難，他們就會放棄。就這些人而言，這些新年願望，只是口頭上說說而已，並不是一種真的可以實現的願望。如果有人對我說這種崇高的願望，就對他所說的感到有些疑惑。經驗告訴我，這些願望太高遠，而很有虛偽的意味。宣布者之所以不知道如何達到願望，是因為他們實際上沒什麼計劃。對此，我深有體會。今年我的新年願望和往常一 樣，但我沒有採取實際的計劃與行動。因此，我們得淘汰這些空白的願望，只有穩定的計劃，才能達到我們所要的願望。

怎麼樣的計劃呢？這些計劃應該循序漸進，應該漸漸的呈現。要讓自己每天都有成就感，而不是挫敗感。如果我們真的要減肥，那我們冰箱裡所有的東西應該對身體 健康。此外要對自己每天，每個月有明顯的計劃。我們這樣才不會⎡無所謂⎦地過日子。我現在對自己不能接受失敗，因為我今後制訂了一個計劃，這樣我所有的進步都會從比較出來的。

你自己擁有的到底是個願望還是一個計劃呢？這兩個之間的差別可很大，而且只有一個會讓你成功。

1. 伊始 (yīshǐ n. 〈wr.〉 ①beginning ②from this time forth)

2. 迫不及待 (pòbùjídài f.e. ①too impatient to wait ②urgent)

3. 願望 (yuànwàng* n. desire; wish; aspiration)

4. 崇高 (chónggāo s.v. lofty; sublime)

5. 疑惑 (yíhuò* n./v. ①be perplexed/uncertain ②doubt)

6. 虛偽 (xūwěi* s.v. sham; false; hypocritical)

7. 循序漸進 (xúnxù jiànjìn v.p. proceed step by step)

8. 呈現 (chéngxiàn* v. present; appear; emerge)

9. 擁有 (yōngyǒu v. possess; have; own)

Goals for 2012, both the long-term and short-term

Tweet With 2012 well underway I suppose it is time to solidify a few of my goals for the year and make them public. For those of you who don't know, I am currently doing a degree in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan. The program is very demanding on my time, which means I really need to spend my time outside of studying for my degree very wisely.

Many of my personal goals for Chinese this year are associated with teaching Chinese, so here are my teaching goals for the year.

1. Find one more student to teach at least once a week, bring my total teaching hours to 6 hours a week outside of school.
2. Review three grammar points a week from Jianhua Bai's Chinese Grammar Made Easy: 對外漢語語言點教學150例 and be able to comfortably teach all these grammar points to my students.
3. Finish "studying" 今日台灣, writing one complete lesson plan a month that incorporates a minimum of three teaching methods, two large activities, and a comprehensive way to assess student performance (one lesson completed so far). 
4. Publish one academic article (or academic review) in the field of CALL research. My research study and first draft should be completed before September 1st.
5. Start an online Mandarin corner (still a bit fuzzy on how I want to proceed with this goal).

In addition to my goals as a teacher, my overall goal in Chinese is to pass the TOP 流利級 before the end of the year. However I need to have a plan for how to achieve that goal, so here are my goals broken down by the four aspects of language study.

• Writing: This section is realistically broken into two large sections for me, those being: written Chinese (Chinese characters), and improving my Chinese writing as a whole. I'm a massive user of Skritter and this year I would like to break the 5000 individual Character mark. I plan on doing this by spending a minimum of 20 minutes a day on Skritter and a maximum of one hour on any given day. I'm currently at 3000 characters so I think that this goal should be very achievable. As for improving my Chinese writing this section is divided into literary Chinese and everyday Chinese. My literary Chinese goals are taken care of by school, with weekly reports and summaries of readings. As for everyday Chinese I started the year by telling myself that I would spend 15 minutes a day writing a Chinese journal that I post on my other blog, and also on ChinesePod, but after one month I only completed 15 posts. I've realized that writing about what I did that day is not interesting to me (at all) and I need to focus my efforts. Therefore, much like iLearnMandarn my goal instead is to complete one focused journal entry a week, either following things I'm learning in school, articles I'm reading, or telling a story in as much detail as possible. Given the amount of writing I do for school I'm going to limit this goal to one hour a week of solid writing, and then as many hours as it takes to edit and review my writing as necessary. 

• Reading: Again school keeps me quite busy on this front. Using last semester as an indicator, on average, I read around 200 pages of academic writing a week. But I need something more in my life, something that feels a little more real and authentic. My long term goals are to read 20 articles pertaining to Computer Assisted Chinese Language Learning (for personal pleasure and not for homework), I've read one so far this year so only 19 to go. My current short-term goals are as follows:

1. Finish 《安德的遊戲》by March 1st. I'm simply reading for pleasure, so I'm not checking a dictionary, and simply reading for general meaning and gaining understanding through context. As of right now I have 300 pages to go, which means I have to read 10 pages a day... very doable. 
2. Finish 《大小雞婆》by March 1st. I have 55 pages left in this book, but my process in a little different. For this book I read a single chapter a day (around 5 pages) and look up every word that I don't understand (after an initial reading). This vocabulary is then added to a Skritter study deck with the purpose of committing everything to long-term retention. Once I've completed the entire study deck on Skritter I will re-read the book dictionary free at an undetermined time before year's end. 
3. Complete 《讀報學華語（一）》by September 1st. Averaging two lessons a month.

•  Listening: Listening is my strongest skill in Chinese, and my understanding of formal Chinese (in an academic setting) is actually better than my daily listening skills. Therefore, this year is about increasing my input of daily spoken Chinese. I'll be supplementing this process with 5 ChinesePod lessons a week (2 Intermediate, 1 Upper-Intermediate, 1 Advanced and 1 Media). I plan on fully studying the Upper-Intermediate and Advanced lessons, and using the Intermediate and Media lessons simply for listening practices. With all lessons I will be adding them into my Skritter study sessions (but not making them a focus). Whenever I have completed a particular lesson I will use that as a reminder to go back and review the audio once more to test how much I understand. When time permits I also watch the news and watch movies, but being a student this is often the last thing I'm able to do during any given week.

• Speaking: To be honest I don't have any particular goals for increasing my speaking. I feel that the amount of interaction I have on any given day with my friends (most of which are Taiwanese) and my classmates is enough to further develop my Chinese speaking skills. When I am away from my computer, I very rarely speak English and I have no intention of changing that in the near future. 

Those are my goals for now. As an attempt to keep myself on task I'll be updating and checking in once a month.

The massive input strategy

Tweet For many students (myself included), the study of Chinese is largely facilitated through textbooks, podcasts, and other learning materials. We work on one lesson until we grasp the material and then move onto the next.This is how I have spent nearly 5 years studying Chinese and I've learned a lot about the language in the process. However, when I was sitting in my Computer Assisted Chinese Language Learning class a few weeks ago, my teacher brought up a different strategy, which I'll call massive input.

What is the massive input strategy?

 

Massive input/output is essential opening the floodgates of a language and letting the information wash over you. It is not studying in the traditional sense-- no flashcards, textbooks or fancy iPhone Apps necessary. Massive input is about increasing exposure to a language during your daily routine and giving you a better feel for that language. It doesn't matter if you don't understand everything that you are hearing, the point is that your brain is still  subconsciously processing some of the information.

This means trying to expose yourself to more of the language in its natural form. Music is, I think, the most obvious way to use this strategy, but we should really be using the same tactics with other materials as well: books, poems, movies, TV shows, radio broadcasts and blogs are all great ways increase your exposure to the language. By understanding that you are not going to understand everything from the beginning, it makes it easier to just let the language flood over you. Don't understand a word, a sentence, a paragraph... who cares cause you're not going to look it up anyway (at least not yet). 

The reward doesn't come from "learning" new things, rather, massive input is about linking together everything  you already know to estimate, guess, and predict the meaning of what you are being exposed to. 

As my teacher metaphorically described, massive input is about building a skyscraper not a house. Massive input helps us build the "skyscraper" by stacking a ton of information higher and higher. Traditionally, studying and the material to study from is very controlled. Vocabulary and grammar patterns are presented systematically, which is good for building a foundation for a language (or a two story house), but there is nothing natural about it. However, it is also something that we should not, and cannot, ignore, it helps fills the gaps of information that are missing for our skyscraper... it is the cement in our metaphorical language building. 

My own experience with massive input

Ever since that lesson I've been trying to apply this strategy to my own life to better understand what my teacher was saying. On top of reading a an article from a Chinese newspaper every morning during breakfast, and watching the news or movies when I have some time, I'm also currently reading two books in Chinese:《安德的遊戲》,a translated copy of Ender's Game , and《大小雞婆》.  Since Ender's Game is a book I have read quite a few times in English I'm not looking anything up... ever. I'll probably go back through once I'm done to start and cement the gaps in the language, but right now I'm just reading for pleasure. It was frustrating at first, but after a while I started to get a feel for the text and the translation a way that looking up every other word cannot provide. 

With  《大小雞婆》, a book originally written in Chinese, I'm reading it chapter by chapter. Instead of stopping to look up words that I don't know I'm just highlighting them and making guesses about the meaning based on context. Once I'm done with the chapter I will go back and check the dictionary for every word that I highlighted. I've found that this process takes about an hour a day. 

More than anything I've found that my reading comprehension is increasing at a very rapid pace. I'm beginning to notice how certain nuances contained in grammar patterns, simply because I'm seeing them in a space that isn't controlled by a textbook. Since I don't worry (as much) about individual characters or phrases, I'm able to focus on the overall meaning of a text without too much effort. Hopefully this should pay off greatly when reading academic articles or taking any kind of standard test in Chinese. 

Do any of you use a similar strategy with your language learning process? If so please leave a comment below. 

Reaction: Benny's video two weeks into the challenge.

Tweet Last night Benny put his first video attempt in Mandarin on the web for the world to see... or to use a Chinese phrase I learned yesterday (在眾目睽睽下Benny開口了說出國語)

After speaking Chinese for just two weeks, it is clear that tones are a big focus for him. As well they should be. It will allow him to be understood while speaking to a native speaker who is not a Chinese teacher. I'll talk more about this in another post, but for now I'll just say I think we should all start learning Chinese this way. Don't wait a month or a year to learn tones. Learn them and use them from day one. 

This video has a very raw quality to it. For nearly 10 minutes we watch Benny struggle for every word, trying his best to get the tones right. As he states on his website the video is scripted, translated by his Chinese teacher. No doubt that during the process he also learned everything that we hear him say into the camera, so no need for monkey jokes. 

My big question, however, is how we as language learners (or teachers) should feel about how the video was made. There is no doubt that he is speaking Chinese, and I can understand just about everything he said, but he didn't write the script. In his words: 

"So with that in mind, a couple of days ago I asked my Chinese teacher (I’ve getting private lessons for now) to translate a script with everything I would say if I was giving a tour of my home in a language I speak fluently. I wanted to explain complex things, like that I replaced my laptop with a desktop, that I don’t really use my fridge etc., and she wrote it up for me in Chinese (which I used for the captions) and in pinyin, which I was studying to learn all the new vocabulary, and memorising the lines themselves since then."

For some this is blasphemy, "he is using a teacher, or  "he didn't write the script" they say, but negativity never seemed like a very good way to learn anything, so instead I want to discuss what we might learn from his video.

When we open a text book we are presented with new material. There is a dialogue or maybe even a short essay. After the essay we get a nice word bank (with further examples if we are lucky) and a section on grammar. Some of us memorize that material.  That is essential what Benny did, he memorized the textbook, only he also helped write the textbook... or script rather. While this video may not be his own words (or at least the Chinese) yet he now has a pretty good understanding of how to talk about: time, location, distance, direction etc. He can also tell people why he can or can't do something (因為....所以).

Okay, now for my point. Sometimes when learning a language we need to memorize things. We can't do it passively, cause that is a huge waste of time, but we should do it actively, taking sentences or phrases and committing them to memory. However, we can't stop there. Once we have the phrase (or sentence) we need to make it our own, by swapping out nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. to create new strings of communication, sort of like what I did at the start of this blog. The phrase 眾目睽睽 isn't my own, but through the active process of studying it, understanding it, and committing it to memory, I learned how to use it.

I'm sure that Benny will be a lot more comfortable "in the wild" now that he understands everything he said in the video. Even if he can't create sentences of his own using some of the grammatical phrases (yet), he will be able to understand them in reading and listening when they come up.

This  in Chinese is called 語言定式教學法, a sort of formulaic speech teaching method and I find it quite effective. I've wrote roughly about how it works in a classroom setting in a past entry called Stuff the Duck.

I would love to hear all your thoughts, so please post them below.