Breakfast Shop Diaries (Part 1)

Walking out of my apartment I head for 吉美早餐 (jí měi zǎo cān), one of my neighborhood's best breakfast shops. As I head across the street to the small corner store I begin to hear loud incomprehensible streams of Taiwanese, as construction workers follow up their breakfast sandwich (三明治: sānmíngzhì) and soy milk (豆浆：dòu jiāng) with a some cigarettes and betel nuts (槟榔: bīn láng). The betel nut dregs cover the sidewalk near the workers, but the true tale signs of use are in the red-toothed smiles I receive from them as I head for one of the 7 seats in the place. Living with the when in Rome maxim I've had my fair share of new experiences and new flavors, but no matter how many times the workers have offered me a taste of betel nut over the past 9 months I've never felt an urge to try a chew. I think it's the idea of giving someone else a crazy red smile that keeps me away.

After finding my seat I raise my pointer finger in agreement with one of the workers, indicating I'll have my usual: a scallion pancake (葱抓饼: cōngzhuābǐng)  and radish cake (萝卜糕：luóbogāo), complete with egg and hot sauce. I reach for one of the newspapers scattered across the tables to get a little reading practice in as I wait for my meal. The construction workers finish their cigarettes and hop onto the back of a baby blue flatbed, saying their goodbyes to the owner. Before the truck motors off I hear the amiable cry of "bye bye laoshi", the title they assigned me when they found out I was studying to be a Chinese teacher, although I secretly think they say it simply because my English name, Jake, is too hard for them to pronounce.

As I enjoy my meal the crowd shifts away from the betel-nut-chewing construction workers to a flurry of middle school and high school kids grabbing a sandwich on the go. Nearly all of them are a part of Taiwan's head-down group (低头族: dī tóu zú), kids that have their faces buried in the cell phones, trying fruitlessly to stay up-to-date on their friends FB pages and Twitter feeds. The glance up from their precious technology just long enough to grab one of the fifty or so pre-made sandwich's off the counter and pay the bill before they're off.

I should be off as well, but not before firing up the Skritter iOS app and burning through some of my reviews with the help of the owner's son Leo, who, on weekends, is just as eager as me to play the "character writing game," or at least watch over my shoulder, asking for translations of the English definitions, and laughing at the strange simplified characters that are mixed into my study decks. After a while I pay my bill, heading back home to get ready to start the rest of my day.

On those rare days I don't make it down to 吉美餐厅, things just feel amiss. They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and while my breakfast shop makes some wicked food, I think it's all the people I meet, and experiences I have that keep me coming back day after day...

End of Part 1

For a list of typical items found at Taiwanese breakfast shops, be sure to check out the Skritter list here.

Learning #Chinese on @Twitter

Why wait till #FollowFriday to find great Chinese language learning resources? Why limit yourself to 140 English characters? Just think about how much you can say in Chinese with 140 characters. This week is a quick look at using microblogs as a study tool.

Microblogging sites like Twitter and China's Weibo are nothing new, and the fact that Twitter is currently the 9th most popular site on the web means it isn't going away anytime soon. Twitter users are always coming up fun and new ways to share their thoughts with the world. Even the 140 character SMS style limit means you can say a heck of a lot when tweeting to friends in a language like Chinese or Japanese. I find microblogs to be a great way to actively use your foreign language. The pressure of writing a lot of information like you would on a blog is reduced to almost nil. People on Twitter don't want an essay, they want a burst of information, maybe a sentence or two at most, which is something even a language newbie can do on their first day.

Practicing your Chinese on Twitter is awesome, but we can take our "study" experience one step further by following users who are serious about teaching the language as well.  So who the heck should we follow? Twitter users who give links to blog posts, or lengthy articles about language learning theory are great, but today I want to focus on five of my favorite users who abide by the theory of "less is more," using those precious 140 characters to give us something new, and more importantly, lots of Chinese.

Here are five Twitter handles worthy of a follow for your daily Chinese fix.

1. @allaboutchinese   As they say in the about section, All About Chinese gives you "cool Chinese stuffs" every single day. I like that they provide both Chinese and English on their tweets, and they keep away from giving you Pinyin for everything, which is great to force reading comprehension. Their tweets are short and sweet, with lots of high frequency vocabulary. 
2. @niuword Looking to learn the latest slang in China, than look no further than Niuword, the Twitter feed for the blog of the same name.  New words have Pinyin, but the rest is just a Chinese explanation. Clicking the link they provide will take you to their website where you can find a sample sentence and more related slang.
3. @FluentFlix While FluentFlix does a lot of re-posting and linking to language learning resources (along with their own website), they also provide tons great idioms, words, and common expressions. The vocabulary is never too tough, with sentences catered toward the language learning crowd; they also update almost daily. 
4. @chinesesentence New Chinese sentences every day, proofed by native speakers, with English and Pinyin provided. No links, no re-tweets, just straight up Chinese! It doesn't get much better than this.
5. ichinesetweets Tweets about love (in Chinese). Great vocab, and great reading practice. Perfect for someone who has crossed the 1500+ character mark.  

There are tons of other resources on Twitter that focus on Chinese learning, but these are the ones I love to see in my feed every day. They keep things simple and to the point.

Got some favorite twitter users of your own, or wanna pick up a few more followers? Please post those @ mentions below.

Sentence Mining Like a Boss

As language learners we are engaged in a constant battle between increasing and maintaining both our active and passive lexicon. Vocabulary lists are generally great for increasing the latter, but they often fail to give us the necessary context for true comprehension. Textbooks, on the other hand, often give us the context necessary for understanding, but the parameters are stacked against us, since the sentences carefully catered to a particular language level or lexical background. As a result, we half-learn new words, lacking the necessary knowledge, or confidence, to use them correctly in "the wild." In order to really learn how to use these words, we must increase our scope of understand, and expose ourselves to countless examples of how these words are really outside of textbooks or the classroom. In short, we need to master the art of sentence mining.

Sentence mining certainly isn't a new concept for many, but doing it effectively is an important part of the process. As Jason Sharp put it on his language blog Beyond Bounds:

"Sentence mining is what it sounds like; you mine for sentences like a miner looks for gold.  The word is your mine, and sentences are your gold.  When you find something new that you need to learn, you don't just dig out the specific word (idiom, grammar point, etc), but you dig out the entire sentence that contains it, then save it into your spaced repetition system."

The ideal way of acquiring new vocabulary is while you're reading a text, watching TV, or chatting with friends. The word is already in context for you, and the sentence is ripe for the picking. But what happens when one sentence isn't enough, or you've learned the word through one of the thousands of vocab lists on the web?

While Google it might be your first thought, there are certainly other ways that can yield even more results. Below are a short list of resources that I use on a daily basis, to ensure that I get a full understand of new vocabulary. In order to highlight the different functions of these resources I use, I've selected the verb 拥有 (yōngyǒu v. possess; have; own) a word that my dictionary claims has a very low usage rate, only 6.1 occurrences per million characters of text.

• Nciku: If you're only going to make one stop on your sentence mining journey, this is the place to go. Apart from giving you the dictionary definition of a term, Nciku provides hundreds of sample sentences and English translations for most. Furthermore, you can access a Chinese-Chinese dictionary to be sure that nothing is lost in translation.

• MDBG: Similar to Nciku, MDBG is another online-dictionary with the option for sentence selection. It lacks a Chinese-Chinese dictionary and doesn't highlight the parts of speech, keeping out of the number one spot for me, but the sample sentence engine, powered by Jukuu is pretty amazing. If you can handle a little more Chinese text on your screen then I would highly recommend that you start there, since you're not only provided with thousands of sentences, but also a linguistic analysis of how the word you're searching for is being used, such as: 释义分布（shìyì fēnxi: meaning distribution), or (in the case of my search) common adverbs that proceed my search word, and common nouns that follow my search word. As an added bonus, MDBG has a quick add function, so that you can quickly add new vocab words to Skritter lists (just click on the Skritter S)!

• Google: It actually really is a great resource for sentence mining, but one needs to focus the parameters a little to really get the most out of it, especially since you don't get translated text like you would on the above mentioned sites. One way to do this is to just search in Google News. Not only is your word highlighted red, but its usage is (hopefully) presented in just about the most formal ways a word can be used, so open up those links and take your pick.

Vocabulary Highlighter in action!

• Vocabulary Highlighter: For any Firefox user, this last tool is a must have for any sentence mining pro. Basically the plug-in highlights vocabulary you've added to the program so that you get constant reinforcement anytime the word appears in your web browser. The concept was first brought to my attention on Dave's wonderful site ChineseHacks, and I've been using it ever since. While this tool isn't very useful for the initial mining process, it is invaluable to focusing your awareness on words you're trying to master. The only downside to the plug-in is that you must individually add the simplified/ traditional characters (if using both). Like starring words on Skritter, the tool is best used on a focused set of vocabulary words.

While there are plenty of other resources on the web, these are the ones that are on the top of my list. They give me a chance to see multiple examples of how words are being used, so that I can pick the best one(s) for my personal SRS deck. Once we posses the tools necessary to acquire and comprehend new vocab, the only thing left to do is go out and use it.

Do you have your own sentence mining process or tips? Please share them with other readers in the comments below.

iOS App in Myanmar

Got another Skritter iOS app tester experience report for you, this time from Marleen De Mol. Marleen has been Skrittering like crazy and making a ton of progress; we last heard from her in the November newsletter, and when I heard about her trip to Myanmar, I knew it was a perfect opportunity for some mobile Skrittering.

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My name is Marleen De Mol; I am Belgian living in Shanghai with my husband and daughter. Very quickly after I started using Skritter, I became a big fan, and in the past 1.5 years I was able, through lots and lots of reviews, to build my Hanzi knowledge from scratch to about 2000.

Skrittering became part of my life, and my family learnt to accept it. When we went traveling I would always carry along the laptop/tablet combo to squeeze in some Skritter time whenever possible. But sadly often I came back from holidays very frustrated because my due list had grown to huge numbers and it would take me sometimes weeks to get back on track.

When we were planning a trip to Myanmar, stressed because I knew the internet connection would be erratic, I thought of the iOS app as a possible solution not to get too far behind, and I asked to be included in the tester group.

I was very excited after the first download, and although back then, when it was basically just writing, tone and definition (none of the other features were in place), I was already blown away by what had been achieved. And not completely to my surprise, I happily discovered that the team had added some brilliant details like for example glowing fireworks when you have a long stretch of correct items. It certainly keeps the spark in your relationship with Skritter!

But, normal for an app in the alpha testing phase there were still lots of issues to be resolved and bugs regularly came up. However this has never stopped me from using it; I'm always excited to test a new version, to find out what has changed, to discover new features! I don't often use the web program anymore, mainly to work on vocabulary lists and to stay in touch with the community through the forum.

The team certainly goes out of its way to build an awesome app; the writing feels very smooth, the design is sleek and it is a lot of fun to use. But for me the biggest advantage is the freedom that comes with Skrittering offline at any location. Before, I was always studying at my desk, and now I can sit anywhere and get the job done. My favourite Skritter session of the day is after breakfast enjoying an extra cup of coffee while the rest of the family is getting ready. I can also make much more use of idle time: I Skritter in cars, trains, planes...

Since I downloaded the app, I've used it at home in Shanghai, on trips to Bangkok and Singapore, in Hong Kong overlooking the harbour, in Myanmar taking a break between temple visits, biting the cold at the Harbin Ice festival--and that in just a few months' time. I have attached some souvenirs of our trip to Myanmar, but being the photographer in the family, I was forced to use my husband and daughter as model!

This app has certainly given me a much more relaxed attitude towards learning Hanzi. It has taken the pressure off, like it is almost not studying anymore. I am grateful to be given the opportunity to test this fantastic tool the Skritter team is developing. It is going to rock the world's Chinese-language-learning community!

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If you haven't already, go check out the Skritter iOS app teaser page and sign up to get an email when we launch the free app. You'll also be entered to win a free iPad to Skritter on.

Language Typology: Principle Branching Directions

Continuing on from my last grammar post, I thought I would share another concept from a grammar class I'm taking in our TCSL program. This time we are looking at how Chinese fits into the bigger picture.

To truly understand a language, we sometimes have to take a step back and understand how it compares to other languages. This is the process of language typology. One key feature that I've found incredibly interesting is a languages principle branching direction, or "how relative clause(s), adverbial subordinate clauses and sentential complementation takes place" (Lust, 1983). Languages therefore, can be broken into two different types: right-branching, and left-branching. English is a largely right-branching language, where as Chinese is a strictly left-branching language, as indicated in the image below.

 

English is a largely right-branching language, where Chinese is a strictly left-branching language.

Let's take a look at a few examples of what this means. In a sentence that contains an adverbial clause, or stative verbs (adjectives) the difference between Chinese and English is quite apparent. For example:

English: I went home early {because I was tired}.

Chinese: {因為我累了}，所以就趕早回家了. {Yīnwèi wǒ lèi le}, suǒyǐ jiù gǎnzǎo huí jiā le.

English: He is the man {whom I met yesterday}.

Chinese: 他就是{我昨天遇到的}那個人. Tā jiù shì {wǒ zuótiān yùdào de} nà gè rén.

We can see that the information modifying the main clause appear in totally opposite directions when comparing Chinese and English. The same applies to modifier or attributive clauses. For example:

Chinese: 圖書館的前面很漂亮

English: The front of the library is pretty.

Chinese: 你面前的樓.

English: The building in front of you. 

Understanding this type of language typology is not only crucial to fixing those pesky mistakes that we as students like to make, but also to understanding why those mistakes are occurring in the first place. It is easy to write things off as being negative-transfer from your native language, but does that really explain why students make those mistakes?

For native speakers of English, our big mistakes occur when dealing with time, and location. Our brain wants to take these clauses and bits of information and put them at the end of the sentence, because it is how our own language works. But when we understand that Chinese works in the opposite way, we no longer have to rely on our "sense" of the language, or a teacher to correct us. Instead, we can quickly adjust how we view these two completely different types of language and proceed accordingly.

We don't need to keep putting 昨天 (zuótiān) at the end of the sentence, or put time and location in strange and unnatural sounding places. Instead we can simply remember that the majority of the time, the branches of these two languages just happen to fall on two different sides of the tree.

(Notes and examples have been adapted and translated from Professor Chen's lectures)

iOS App in Australia

We're working harder than ever to get this iOS app to you! Since our tester pool is full, while you're waiting, we're sharing some stories from those testers who have had a chance to take Skritter out into the world in their pockets. This week we have Ptolemy in Melbourne, Australia, talking of the app's convenience effect.

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As soon as I heard about the iOS version of skritter I knew it was for me. I already use my iPhone as my main dictionary with Pleco and my sentence flash cards, so getting Skritter on it sounded like the perfect plan. But I didn't quite know exactly how much I would enjoy it till it arrived. The first week I split my time pretty much 50/50 between iOS Skritter and PC Skritter. I was using the iphone version any time I wasn't at my computer, but still using the PC version whenever I was home. It was working quite well--I enjoyed the app--but slowly something happened: I stopped using the desktop version all together.

It had already started, but the big change was when work hit. I'm a programmer, and I had a deadline coming up, so a few weeks of late nights came around. When you get home at 10pm after working on your computer all day, you really don't want to turn on your home PC: you're sick of computers, you're tired, and you just want to go bleghh on the couch. But I enjoy the Skritter app; I really like trying to get the sparks going and it doesn't seem to drain me in much the same way that other studying does. Sitting down after a long day and doing 10 minutes while eating or in the ad breaks on TV kept me interested while work was being a pain. I'm certain that had I not had the app I simply would not have Skrittered for most of January at all. I didn't learn a great deal during this month, and my stats are horrible but what the app did do was stop a slide. I didn't come back after a month and have 388748 reviews due, instead I've kept it under 100, which means now that work has calmed down, I'm fine to kick off where I left off with no big drama.

Now I'm sure there is a bit of novelty factor in there. The app is still shiny and new, and it's getting lots of updates, so it's constantly changing and improving. In 6 months or a year's time it certainly won't be as fun as it is now simply because I'll be used to it, however it'll still be cooler than the PC client in my opinion because of the places you can study.

There have been some great photos already on the blog of people using it in exotic locations. And you can see me using it on the beach on Australia day just hanging out. That was pretty cool, but also the glare of the screen outdoors was very annoying and I only lasted about 5 minutes before the heat and the sun glare won and I went swimming instead. The exotic locations offer great photo ops, but what I found far more useful are the locations that do not offer funtastic photos. My favourite is lying in bed. I traditionally read before going to sleep, however dropping in 15 minutes of Skritter while lying down is great. Drawing characters while horizontal is surprisingly hard, so they end up super deformed however it doesn't matter. It's just a great way to get through a bunch of reviews every day in a relaxed setting. Beyond lying in bed, I've started muting the ads on TV and dropping out 3 mins of review during commercial breaks while sitting on the couch. I Skritter while waiting for my computer to boot at work. And let's be honest, I've Skrittered while on the toilet more than once. None of these are cool places to study with super awesome photos, but to me they're what make the Skritter iOS app better than the desktop version. The convenience.

Now to be fair lots of these you could do with a laptop, but I have a laptop and I never do any of them. Laptops take time to boot, they don't fit in my pocket and aren't always within arms reach. It's not so much about "could" you do this with a laptop but "do" you? And for me I don't--it's just too much hassle. When I'm watching something on TV and the ads hit will I get up, get the laptop and boot it up? No, the ads will probably be over before it's even ready. But would I reach into my pocket and instantly start Skrittering without having to move? Probably. It's just so easy I can't help it. Also my wife looks at me weird when I try to take the laptop into the toilet! So even if you live in the most domestic and average of settings I still think you'll get a ton of use out of the Skritter iPhone app. Now all I need to do is find some way to fit a native speaker who constantly wants to practise into my pocket as well and I'll be fluent in no time!

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If you haven't already, go check out the Skritter iOS app teaser page and sign up to get an email when we launch the free app. You'll also be entered to win a free iPad to Skritter on.

An Afternoon with Benny, Part 2

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet up with Benny the Irish Polyglot here in Taipei and talk about his current mission: learning Mandarin Chinese in three months (see the original article here). As a learner of Chinese I was certainly interested in what he was doing here, and how his mission was going. However, it was impossible for me to ignore some of Benny's other language accomplishments, like the fact that he speaks eight languages with an incredibly high level of fluency, and has been learning loads more for nearly a decade.

For many language learners, traveling to (or living in) the country where people speak your target language isn't nearly as easy as packing your bags and booking a flight. Work, school, and all the little (and big) things in life always seem to get in the way. The busier we get, it seems, the less opportunity we have to actually use the language we're studying to interact with others. Since speaking, and social interaction are such a crucial part of Benny's own language mission, I was curious what tricks or tips he had for those language learners who, for one reason or another, can't immerse themselves in the language and culture, but still want to practice speaking with native speakers.

Of course, the Internet, in all its glory, has given rise to a loads of opportunities to speak with people all over the world. Services like italki and LiveMocha instantly come to mind, but for many, these services fail to live up to those real "in the flesh" interactions that we as humans desire. So, what can we do to practice our language of choice? Below are four ways that Benny has maintained, or honed his language chops with native speakers.

• CouchSurfing: 

  Even if you're not going to be traveling soon, CouchSurfing can be a great way to meet people from all over the world. What better way to practice your Chinese, than hosting a native speaker and showing them around your city, or at least swapping travel stories while they crash at your place for a few days? And who knows, your guest might be willing to return the hosting favor when you head to their neck of the woods.  

• MeetUp.com: 

  MeetUp's tagline "Do something. Learn something. Share something. Change something," says just about everything that needs to be said about this site. If you have a passion for learning a language, share it with others. If there isn't already a local language meetup in your area, you could always be the founder. Even if you aren't meeting with native speakers at first, there is no harm in swapping study tips and spending some time practicing with other language students like you.

• Tourist Destinations: 

  This tip is not for the faint of heart, or for someone who lives in the middle of nowhere, but with a little bit of guts and some free time, this can be a great place to way to meet native speakers who are visiting your city. Meeting them could be as easy as eavesdropping on some foreign conversations, or taking that foreign novel you've been dying to read from off the shelf. Once you've made contact it is all up to you to charm them into carrying on a conversation. It if doesn't work the first time, don't give up hope, as Benny reminded me during the interview--Mandarin Chinese does have the largest native speaking population. Just wait for another group of tourists and try again!

• Cultural Hobby:  

  Ever wanted to learn the Chinese Zither, Tai Chi or Calligraphy? These hobbies can be a great way to get connected to the local Chinese community and meet native speakers at the same time. Even going to a local Chinese restaurant can be a great way to practice both your reading a speaking skills, while filling your stomach with deliciousness.

I'm sure there are many more ways to practice speaking with natives, no matter where you are. The most important thing is to just realize that there is always an opportunity to speak the language you are studying. All you have to do is go out and find it.

If you have any other ideas or suggestions be sure to leave them in the comments below.