#i can parse some meaning from sentences with basic/intermediate level vocab it’s just.

[monsterhugger]

shoutout to anyone who’s successfully learned Japanese as a second language I’ve been at this for over a year and still couldn’t form a fucking sentence if you put a gun to my head

[rigelmejo]

Unrelated completely, regarding listening reading method:

I am genuinely so excited to test the listening reading method out wholeheartedly. When I looked up the method, few people were trying it with Chinese, and of the people I saw a lot were beginners with less vocabulary than I have which I think both made the task harder for them and made their progress look different than I imagine mine will.

For example, in my first attempts using listening reading method, I noticed I picked up a TON of words I could already read, and a TON of phrases I could already read but didn’t properly “chunk” until I heard them aloud. Whereas the beginners tended to document picking up entirely new words, and not understanding much of any paragraph for the first several chapters. Whereas again, because I had more vocabulary, my first chapters I listening reading method did I heard a TON of individual words/followed the main gist, and it took several chapters for me to start finally understanding full phrase chunks and sentence chunks together. I 100% think the listening reading method can work with mandarin, I just think since few people have tried it and shared the experience, I’m going to find out how much it can improve someone’s mandarin myself...

I saw people who did listening reading method with german, and Dutch, who like the creator of the method ended up going from 0 to B1-B2 listening and sometimes-reading* skill in 3-5 months (reading skill tended to depend on how much they focused on the actual text during target language audio/target language text portion). The people with the most success usually already had a foundation of several hundred or a couple thousand common words, and had seen some grammar summarized beforehand (both of which I have already done with mandarin). I’m extremely curious how far the listening reading method can take my reading skills specifically - since the method mainly improves listening, and reading is simply affected a bit as a consequence of picking up new words/reading target language text along with the audio during one of the steps. With Chinese I suspect I’ll have to do more Hanzi learning, and reading-only work like intensive reading, to supplement my reading skills. However I already do a lot of intensive reading, so maybe that will keep the skills relatively even.

I do know that only couple dozen hours of listening reading method already boosted my listening skills a TON. So listening reading method definitely improves listening skills, as it is intended to. The actual method suggests learners listen read through an entire novel in a week or two, then do another novel etc, at least 3 novels though potentially more - and redoing some novels again from the start if desired. For my kind of novels - like Guardian by Priest, that means 106+ chapters, 800+ pages, 30 minutes audio a chapter (53 hours for the English text-chinese audio portion, another 53 hours for the Chinese text-chinese audio portion, and lets say half as many hours to read it in English 26.5 hours). So that is 132.5+ hours to listen read to Guardian. The listening reading method assumes you do a few books, so let’s say around 3 books, 396 hours (roughly 400 hours). Well... no wonder people saw such improvements! 400 hours of listening to comprehensible input in a European language will get an English speaker quite far into learning. Most European languages according to FSI take around 600-750 hours for an English native speaker to learn. Listening reading method would fill a huge chunk of those hours, and if you focus on the reading portion too, then that should definitely at least be a solid foundation into B1 I can imagine.

Listening reading methods creator also tends to do these in 6-12 hour reading bursts per day - which I absolutely never do because I’m lazy and unable to focus on things for too long usually without switching things up. But like I’ve mentioned, even me just doing maybe 12 hours of listening reading method so far, in small 30 minute to 2 hour chunks, has been enough to make noticeable improvement in my listening comprehension. If someone is already intermediate and just wants to improve their listening skill, I think they’d see fast results like I have regarding their listening skill dragging up closer to their reading skill level.

When I read the listening reading method creators website, they sounded like 10 hours was about how long it took (for beginners in a language) to start parsing individual words and recognizing them, 30 hours to start hearing word chunks and phrases they could understand, and 60-100 hours to start comprehending a majority of the words.

I am therefore very curious what my rate of improvement will be. I do feel chinese study using the listening reading method at least for listening skills will see similar levels of improvement. I’m wondering if my listening skills will improve a bit faster, since I’m already past the “progress at 30 hours” mark expectations wise - I can hear many individual words, can hear many sentence chunks/phrases, and just struggle to follow some full sentences and catch brand new words until I’ve heard them several times. I do very much want to completely go through Guardian with this method - for many reasons lol. 1. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in english and I’ll have a chance to use that for study which is cool, 2. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in chinese and this makes it doable/more comprehensible for my current skill level (aka following along to the audiobook I will read at a less slow pace/comprehend more since the English will be fresh in my mind, compared to if I just read it extensively on its own), 3. Avenuex made a beautiful audiobook I adore and I’ll have an excuse to listen to it while actually comprehending everything since I’ll have the English and Chinese novel to look at while o read! So... once I’m through Guardian, I’ll be able to answer for myself what over 100 hours of progress doing the listening reading method produce, how well it works when using a book with a more complicated/high vocab style - which is sort of priest, reading challenge wise, and the kind of novel the listening reading method creator recommends using. Also, I’ll have read Guardian! ovo)/ and I will have read a full priest novel, so I’ll have picked up words by my favorite author that will hopefully make other priest novels easier to read (the same reason Tian Ya Ke may be helpful).

———-

Another thing people who have tried the listening reading method suggest doing first (particularly if studying a language much different than your native language, but for any language tbh). The creator of the method suggested: knowing a few hundred to a few thousand common words, and having looked at a grammar guide or overview prior. That’s something anyone who’s already a bit of a beginner, to low intermediate, probably has done or is doing. In addition, some people who have done this method suggested using something like sentence audio flashcards (in English and target language audio) and listening to them a few times, repeating them, until one felt comfortable with them. Generally common word/grammar ones, and you could do “listening reading” with those sentences too (reading them while listening to the audio). This would serve as a primer to learn the basics comfortably before going into listening reading novels. They suggested doing yjis would make the method work better - they got to B2 in Dutch in a handful of months of intensive listening reading by doing this beforehand and they think it helped a lot. While I think it’s not necessary, I do think of listening reading is hard, then getting a basis beforehand as a beginner and/or covering a easier basics common language material first will help. I use the Chinese SpoonFed Audio files which basically amounts to the same thing but no reading (if I used the flashcards still, it would include reading). So I do have some sentences/phrases/words I have a good listening foundation for already. Also, as mentioned, I do read, so for many common words and Hanzi I already can read them. I do think this advice is very good for beginners though, if they want to see noticable results sooner (versus 30-50 hours into listening reading before they start learning significant amounts - basically it just means they’d do 30-50 hours prestudy instead of basic common words/grammar, to make the listening reading initially less difficult). A total beginner could dive right into listening reading (just like my chaotic self first started to try to read Chinese knowing 500 words and brute forcing mdzs and guardian a few paragraphs at a time), it just means it’ll feel more difficult at first for a while, and they’ll be mostly learning basics for a while first before they build enough of a basis to comprehend more. Which is fine. It all just comes down to how much incompréhensibilty can you personally tolerate without giving up. The creator of the method? Can tolerate a TON. Me? I can tolerate a brutally large amount, surprisingly, but usually I need to comprehend had least the main idea and that’s a minimum of like 40-60% depending on which parts I’m comprehending. Most people will feel it’s unbearable until they can comprehend at least 80-90% (and I certainly PREFER material I comprehend that much of). And most people ideally are comfortable once they understand 95-98% (think reading a book in your native language with some unknown words you can figure out easily from context, or graded readers made to feel this easy with around this many unknown words for you to figure out in context, or maybe manhua/manga/comics once you’re a pretty decent intemediate level in a language etc).

[rigelmejo]

If you happen to learn like me (I guess try it out, see if it helps), then I cannot emphasize this enough: read.

Read early. Read immediately. Read when you know 10-50 words in the language, even that early. 

It will motivate you to learn more words - then read as you learn more words. And get you used to a few things immediately: you’ll see grammar immediately, often, and if you read a grammar guide then all those grammar points will be constantly reinforced as you read and see them again. And 2: you’ll be training the skill OF reading from the very beginning.

There’s multiple parts to reading. One part, is having the actual knowledge necessary to read something - do you even know the words in the text (or have the ability to look them up), do you even recognize the grammar enough to identify what it’s function is meant to be (or at least enough to look it up)? This is one part. 

The other part is how you parse through that information. How used you are to seeing the grammar - so that you can recognize what you’ve previously studied, so that you’re used to how it works and can read through it without pausing to think about it. So that you can recognize when words are being used as nouns or adjectives or verbs, recognize proper nouns, recognize what are key points versus details. Whether you need a dictionary for some words/a grammar reference, or you already ‘know’ enough to read without reference - the ability to process what you read will still be weak if you have not practiced it. But if you’ve been practicing it, then like everything else, it gradually gets better. 

When you do both parts at the same time - then when your knowledge of grammar/words is weak, you can rely on your ability to ‘process’ to help make the text easier to figure out. If your ability to process something is low (maybe its difficult), you can rely on your knowledge of grammar/words to help you figure out the text. If you work on both, then you can have them both supporting each other as you improve reading. 

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In theory, maybe you could ‘only’ practice the processing, and rely on word/grammar lookups constantly until it got easier - a difficult road though, probably. Likewise, many people wait until they know X amount of words before trying to read - and as a result they have zero practice ‘processing’ this language reading material, and sentences they know every word for still don’t make sense and feel difficult. Doing both is difficult at first - just like doing one alone would be. But if they’re done together, then they also improve together, and so the middle stages of reading skill feel much easier than they might otherwise. 

If you know 2000 words but have no idea how to process text, even graded readers are going to feel painful at first. If you’ve been making yourself practice processing text, even back when you only knew 500 words? Then by the time you get to 2000, processing is also at a relative intermediate stage. And the biggest difficulty is generally just lack of vocabulary - which is easy to lookup with a dictionary. Whereas, you can’t ‘look up’ anything to improve processing skill. You can lookup knowledge you lack. But the only way to improve processing skill, is TO read, and to keep practicing reading. 

I remember how difficult reading used to be. It’s still not ‘easy’ like french is easy yet, but its happily following the same trajectory reading french (or I imagine even english when I was young) did. I rememeber the first few months, grammar absolutely anihilated me. Even though I’d ‘studied’ it recently. I sort of knew all these grammar points in theory, I just had no idea how to process them in practice. I could look up words all I wanted, to fill in my gaps in knowledge. But I couldn’t improve my processing except by reading. And just over time... grammar got so much easier. It just clicked, a few points making sense at a time. Then those points getting easier for me to recognize faster, then those points getting intuitively understood. Etc, as it happened with more.

Likewise - I could learn words, but it was hard to process all the ways they were used, until I practiced processing them more. Even if I looked words up, even in sentences with grammar I could process, some words just did not make sense to me in their context. Then just over time, more and more made sense. I used to be very confused by ‘weile’ and ‘zhexie/zhege/zheshi’ as some basic examples. Or later words like ‘kanqilai’ and ‘qilai’ and ‘yihou’ ‘yiqian’ ‘dao’ etc. Eventually they made more sense, and then more did in more context, etc. All just from reading practice. I couldn’t read a definition to get these words to make more sense, I just had to read more.

I’m still noticing these areas of processing getting better over time. But I do remember, back when I tried reading 3 paragraphs of the MoDaoZuShi intro in like month 5? I looked up all the words, recognized the grammar, and understood nothing. Then in like month 8? I read the prologue with no dictionary and guessed at the unknown words, and knew enough to understand the gist and most of the details. Mostly, because those things I knew before just ‘processed’ better in month 8.

over time, subtitles got easier to ‘process’ so now I don’t have to pause them as often to figure out what they mean (parse through the sentence for meaning).

Now most novels don’t hit me with any sentence that I can’t at least figure out with a dictionary. I’m still stumbling over some things, but now since I can process overall a lot of things better - I have more surrounding understanding to help me figure out the more confusing parts. Like right now, I’m really struggling with PRECISELY how ‘yu’ and ‘you’ get used. As in ‘yu’ by/with/at/for, ‘you’ - by/done by etc. I roughly understand these words - I know their definitions, and I can roughly guess their meaning in sentences and follow the plot. But because they do mean slightly different things in various contexts, I clearly just need to see them more and more in examples before they’ll ‘click’ and be easier to process too. I have to say though... its way easier to focus on these words/grammar points, since I have so much surrounding understanding. If I had just waited for X words learned before starting reading? Then I’d be learning ALL the processing skills from point 0. That would be... discouraging.

In a way, I already waited to long to start reading as much as I sort of WISH I had. I read about once every 2 weeks, until month 8. It was only in month 8, that I started reading roughly a few times a week - and reading full chapters per sitting, instead of just several paragraphs. As a result, it WAS brutal at first. Because my processing skills were clearly lower than my vocab. I tried graded readers, and even though I knew all the words, they were a struggle to read. So, as my typical silly self, I picked a webnovel instead - with even MORE unknown words, even Harder. I read 15 chapters of it. Which was hard... but clearly helped. Then I went back to the graded readers, and they were a breeze - so I’d clearly built up some processing skills.

After that, I again brutally myself, decided to try reading a harder print novel I owned. That was... again, brutal. Then I went back to the webnovel? And the webnovel was notably easier! Again, those processing skills had built up some more, and I’d probably picked up some more vocabulary as well. 

And its basically been repeating since then - a much quicker rate of progress, where it seems a significant amount easier every 2 months or so. I feel like I’m at like - the reading level I had in 4th grade in english? I was in one of those accelerated reading programs, so we’d read some middle-school level books by looking up like 20 words before each chapter and then having to read X amount a week. A bit challenging, definitely compared to whatever the 4th grade reading level was supposed to be (I remember liking Catwings and Bunnicula a lot which I think was my 4th grade level, and I feel like chinese graded readers I’ve been picking up feel like Bunnicula in difficulty). But also, back when I was that young sometimes I’d pick up my dad’s big huge Mitchner novels like ALASKA or his Sherlock books, and I’d read a few pages - they’d be super difficult to understand, a little painful, so I’d only read a few pages. But I’d usually understand the gist. And I’d pick up some of my moms books on Aliens and supernatural stuff, and mostly read the captions on the pictures, maybe a paragraph or two. I feel like my chinese reading level is around this right now. I can pick up adult novels and it hurts, but I can follow whats going on without a dictionary roughly. And with a dictionary, decently. I can pick up ‘teen’ level books and follow them easier, but need a dictionary for total understanding of all details. And I can pick up graded readers and they’re basically extended reading, if they’re at a low enough level (like HSK 4 vocabulary wise, to maybe 2000 words - after 2k words, I run into more and more I need a dictionary for if I want to follow details). 

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anyway yeah. I remember in french I started reading at 50 words, then 100, then 500, and just kept reading. And it just ‘magically’ got easier. And I sort of did that with chinese, and am so glad I did. I wish i’d done it even more. I’m doing it more now. 

It felt so good last night, to be able to just binge a few chapters of a fanfic in chinese, without feeling drained. It felt so good to be at the reading level where I can look up words I need to fast enough to not slow me down enough that I lose interest. 

don’t wait until you’ve ‘prepared’ enough. don’t wait years. i waited years in japanese to read, and it was the biggest thing holding me back. i didn’t wait in chinese, and in part reading MOTIVATED me to study what i needed FASTER. It certainly helped my processing skills. And when processing skills are higher, reading overall is just less painful. A dictionary can lessen the pain of not knowing enough vocabulary. But only reading practice can lessen the pain of processing skills being weak. And - if you start to read later, it’s fine. Its okay if it seems ridiculously difficult at first, that will pass. Its just you working on the processing skills, and as those develop reading will go up to feeling mostly only as difficult as the vocabulary.