Easy to learn:

Many people believe that learning a new language is a difficult and boring task. We make it doable and fun. We provide you with the right teachers, the right materials and the right programs. We have thirty years experience helping people learn.

Fast:

We understand how to structure our programs so you can learn efficiently and fast. All you need to do is apply and enjoy yourself.

Cost-effective

We want to make it feasible for anyone to learn: students, business people, travelers, children. Our rates are always reasonable.

Customized programs:

We realize that everyone has different needs. We provide the right program, the right approach and the right schedule for you.

Excellence:

We constantly strive to find the best methods and the best resources to provide the best language programs possible. We also provide you with great support materials.

To set up a course:

Email us  at jps@focuslanguage.com

*or Call anytime*

in Chicago: (630) 338 1144

in Phoenix: (602) 954 0465

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Learn the Characters. It may seem a daunting tasks to learn several thousand characters.( Why don’t they use an alphabet like us? )

But, if you want to progress in the language, you need to be able to read. End of story.  Pinyin is a great tool to get you started and to teach you the pronunciation of new words. But the characters contain the essence of the Chinese language.  How else can you go on the internet to read Chinese websites or books?

Many systems teach you a few dozen characters. Useless. What if you only knew 8 letters of the Roman alphabet? Useless, right?

So how do we do it? We roll up our sleeves and we get professor James Heisig’s book “Remembering the Hanzi”.  We simply follow the wonderful method he outlines and in a few months we have our first 1,500 characters down.  Heisig has a fantastically simple and effective way of leading you through the characters.  Then you can take a breath. You will be able to read over 95% of Chinese texts you encounter.  By then, you will have developed the ability to memorize and remember characters really efficiently.  You will want to keep learning the most common characters until you reach 3,000.  Heisig’s second volume with the second 1,500 characters is due for publication any time. Meanwhile there are other good books  you can use, because you know how to absorb characters efficiently. After that point it is just a matter of beginning to read regularly.  You will keep learning new ones automatically.

Chinese children know 2,000 when they graduate from grade school, and 6,000 by the end of High School. Japan (uses Chinese characters) Taiwan and China have incredibly high literacy rates: far higher than ours in the West.

So, we get motivated, and we get through it. After a few months we are literate. Our knowledge of Chinese will now expand exponentially because we can read and write. We have access to the entire culture without any restrictions.

I hope I have inspired you to take the plunge. A few months of solid – and fun – work will establish you in the language forever.

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Mandarin has four tones and a neutral tone.  My best advice to anyone wanting to speak this language is to learn how to say the tones comfortably.  You need to hear them first without preconceived idea.  Once you are able to hear –  ”Oh yes, this sound rises. This one falls” – practice reproducing what you have heard. Although it may seem strange, it is essential.

Tones are not an optional luxury. Without them you will not be understood. At all!  There are many words which sound exactly the same in Mandarin except for one thing: their tones.

You can practice making them mechanically, but the best way is to imitate. Listen – hear – imitate! Do your best. You will not be perfect. But it will make a world of difference when it comes to being understood.

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Pinyin makes it possible to pronounce Chinese fairly accurately very fast.  You want to be learning how to read and write characters at the same time, but Pinyin will really help you penetrate into the language.

Another fantastic thing it does is it tells you exactly how to pronounce the tones on every word. I will get back to tones in another post, but realize that you must pronounce the tones of Mandarin or you will not be understood when you speak.  At all.!  The Chinese characters do not show you how to pronounce the tones: Pinyin does.

You can learn how to read Pinyin in 30 minutes. You won’t be perfectly accurate, but you will be able to read, learn vocabulary and use correct tones. It is really an indispensable tool.  Yes qi = chi might be a little strange, but you can quickly get used to it.

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Language is sound.  Arrgh! … Oops! … Wow! …  Oh noooo! …  Various combinations of sound  communicate our meaning.  As you approach Mandarin as your new language, get acquainted with its sounds. The better you hear, the easier it will be to understand natives. The better you sound when you speak, the easier your communication will be.

Falling in love

My advice is always to learn a language that you are attracted to. It is much easier to spend time with something you enjoy. If you need to learn for an external reason ( work, family matters), you should at least feel neutral toward the new language. Aversion is never a good place to start.  Strange, unusual even alien are OK.

Get into that crib

Remember when you were living in your crib and you spoke no English? You spent hours listening to Mom and Dad talking and making faces at you. It worked, didn’t it? Remember! It’s never too late to have a happy childhood in Mandarin.

Input: make it so.

So you’ve decided to learn Mandarin. Do you know what it sounds like? To many, Chinese sounds like ping tong ping.  Well it’s time to get on your computer and take a little tour.  Where do you go? Anywhere Mandarin is spoken. YouTube is a good place to start. Movies are another. Internet radio and television are everywhere. Cartoons or songs in Chinese  are fantastic. Listen! Without judging or rejecting. Stay relaxed, breathe and move around. Some speakers will have voices you enjoy. Others may not. Explore! For a few days.

Next time we will talk about specific Mandarin sounds and how to approach them.  But today, go out and listen to your new language. This is not a mental exercise. Go and land your ship on planet Zhongguo and find out what you can about its inhabitants: directly. What do you actually hear? How does its vibration  feel inside your body? Find good-looking actors or actresses being interviewed. They tend to have good voices and they are fun to look at.

The only assignment is to expose yourself to as much enjoyable Mandarin as possible.

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Whatever  system you choose, there are two fundamental ways to approach the language.  Output and input based.

1. Output

This is the traditional approach. We are immediately asked to memorize and use an increasing amount of vocabulary and grammar. We are also asked to produce spoken and written language almost right away. This is the output-based method. It works well for people who do well at learning systems and rules. It can be more frustrating for intuitive or kinesthetic learners. The great challenge of this approach is  always integration. Can you really  use what you have learned? Do you understand native speakers? When you succeed learning through this approach, you will have a solid knowledge of your new language.  Later articles will show you how to shine if you take this path. It is very effective if it shored up and facilitated by the massive input method.

2. Input

These days, there is a language learning movement – largely internet-based – which advocates learning through massive input first.  Listen, listen, listen!  Watch, absorb, fill yourself with your new language! Don’t worry about speaking until you can hear and understand.  It works very well and eliminates the frustration of trying to speak before you are ready. This is naturally the input-based approach.  This is what happens naturally in early childhood or when you move to a foreign country.  Nowadays, it is easily possible to follow this approach while staying in your home country. How? Incredible internet resources – many of them absolutely free. We will cover some of the greatest ones in future posts. We will also advise you on how to use the input approach efficiently.

Input and Output

You don’t need to choose one or the other of these two paths. Choose both, of course! Initially focus on input. Let the language become familiar. Let it automatically ring in your head. Enjoy the impact of the new culture. Simultaneously, find your way around the grammar and vocabulary. Be curious and inquisitive. Find out how the language works.  See if you can express yourself. Learn some simple expressions.

Next article will get you started practically on your Mandarin journey.

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In many ways, learning Mandarin is no different than studying French, Spanish or German. You need to learn new sounds, to get a feel for how natives say things. There are words and expressions to be learned. It naturally takes motivation and time. But there also are different things to absorb. If you approach them smartly, they become very enjoyable.
Initial Exploration

I’d like  to give you a window onto the world of Mandarin.

When you begin a new language, it is very useful to understand where you will be going, and what you will need to learn.  So! What are the important features of Mandarin?

1. New sounds.

All the sounds of mandarin are quite learnable.  They all exist in some form in English. You will simply have to learn a few new distinctions. Chinese syllables are also  more staccato than those of English. Chop, chop, chop!

2. Tones

Chinese speakers actually  ”sing” all the words of their language.  There are 4 tones or notes  in Mandarin. Your first job is to begin to hear them and to start reproducing them. We as Westerners are not used to this.  The tones are not difficult to hear or to speak, but they take a while  getting accustomed to.

3. Characters

Chinese characters are an incredible writing system, but they require quite a bit of memorization. Take your time learning them, but begin to study them immediately. You will need to know them to be literate. Fortunately, there is a much simpler way  to read Chinese initially.  It is called …….. Pinyin.

4. Pinyin

Pinyin is a way of writing Chinese that uses our own Roman alphabet. It is very systematic and easy to learn. It allows you to read and write words in Chinese immediately. It also tells you where to pronounce the tones. Pinyin is your best friend.

5. Vocabulary

Yes, you have to learn words. The best way is to hear and see a lot of the language.  And actually, the more characters you know, the easier it is to absorb vocabulary. More on that later.

6. Grammar

Chinese grammar is  easier to learn than that of a  new Western language.  It has no verb tenses or conjugations; no singular or plural; and no declensions (like Russian or German). Simply stated, the words do not change in any way.  Remember those French irregular verbs? and the German der die das? Throw them out. They are not needed here. Chinese does have some new concepts, but they are easily grasped.

7. Word order

Chinese word order is different from ours. Simply listen and model what you hear. The expression “Long time no see” actually comes from Chinese. Easier to say  than “it’s been a long time since I have last seen you”, isn’t it?

These are all the things you need to consider initially: the “What ” of Mandarin. The next part in this series will begin to deal with the “How”.

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Whenever you learn a language, the great limitation is vocabulary – in speaking and also in understanding. Trying to increase my own fluency, I just created the following technique for  practice.

I was listening to a guided meditation in English and was trying my best to translate what I was hearing into Chinese.  I was vitally hampered by my lack of vocabulary.  I played with my English-Chinese dictionary and then my Chinese English one for a while. (The great danger in using a dictionary – paper or electronic – is that it may give you a completely different or inappropriate translation. That’s why you should always translate  in both directions.)

Led by my curiosity, I went on my computer and started using the Google Translate Tool to test my own knowledge and learn new words.  I usually find the tool’s results are remarkable, especially when translating  European languages – close linguistic relatives.  With Chinese, the accuracy is more limited but still useful.  I started typing sentences in English and reading the Chinese translation.  I would then take the Chinese translation and plug it back into the tool to retranslate into English.  (This catches many gross mistakes.)

This taught me a lot of useful expressions and vocabulary. The next step will be to run them by a native, to see if I found the right words and how natives would use them. Fortunately I love being laughed at.

The important thing to remember –  if you decide to play with this technique – is to use very short and non-ambiguous sentences.  ”The woman laughed at the dog” is much safer than “Although he feared the elevator had begun to malfunction, he rushed out to the street in search of a new diagram.”  The more complex the grammar, the more likely an incorrect, hilarious translation.

If you use this system with care and a big grain of salt, you can test your capacity to generate sentences while learning new vocabulary.  It is a fast and fun way to develop your capacity to express yourself. It is definitely not 100% or even 80% accurate but it is still amazing. The next step is to check with a native of course.

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So how do we resume study seamlessly?

The first part is mental. Remind yourself it is normal to take breaks. Even after years of not using a language, we can relearn what we had learned  ten or twenty  times faster than when we started out. Vocabulary fades really fast if we don’t use it – even in our mother tongue.  But we can easily relearn words we used to know. I always found that grammar stayed in place dormant and was pretty easy to reactivate.  It’s the same thing with pronunciation. Your mouth and your ears remember.

The best way to reawaken a language is to reconnect with the familiar. Find your old recordings and podcasts and just start listening. Be passive. You are recreating an echo. It is useful to have the written texts as well.  Refresh your eyes as well as your ears.

The other best way is to find brand new fun materials that attract you. The internet language tools available keep multiplying: movies, videos, tubes, games… There is an endless wealth of language resources.

The third best way is to connect or reconnect with the culture of the language you want to learn. Find meetup groups on the internet and go play with natives and other people who want to learn. There is no substitute for being involved with other people.

So in with the old and in with the new. Within a week or two you will be amazed how much you have recovered of your previous knowledge.

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I have a student from China who is learning English. She studied English for 10 years but initially could not understand much.  She had just arrived from Sichuan and was quite  frustrated.  After 6 weeks of daily practice, she is able to understand and we can now enjoy interesting and humorous conversations together.  It is not that she has learned that many more words or that much more grammar; it is simply that her body is actually beginning to hear and compute the English language.

I also remember coming to the US as a 13 year old.  I had studied English in France – for 4 years – but my initial experience was of an incomprehensible wall of sound. Aaargh!  So you who are learning may occasionally feel discouraged: “I really can’t understand anything! What’s wrong with me?”  Nothing! Your body and your psyche have just not yet begun to take over the comprehension of the language.  Remember that it is not the conscious mind which actually creates and comprehends language. It is a subconscious function out of your actual control. All you can do is expose yourself to that wall of sound and hang in there.  Keep studying grammar, learning words, etc!   It can be very uncomfortable, but know that when the click takes place, you will begin to track and know what is being said to you.  Forever!

This is a very exciting place to be.  It is much easier to accomplish this process if you are having real interactions with natives.  Fortunately, these days, natives can be found everywhere with online video calls. The internet can instantly transport you to the country of your choice. In my days, we had to practice speaking uphill and in the snow.

So hang tough in that incomprehensible wall of sound; and know that understanding will come.

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