11.28.09
On the benefits of learning Chinese from television shows (Part 1)
In the last few posts, I’ve been focusing on several of my own personal beliefs and opinions in regards to Chinese learning. By now most of you are probably quite familiar with my various stances on the topic. A few weeks ago I suggested 10 ways to study Chinese which are more useful than going to class. Of the 10, 9 were based primarily on personal experience. However, one of the methods, ironically the one which I believe provides the best path to advanced language mastery, I admittedly haven’t given much effort toward over the years. And this method would be…the power watching Chinese of television and movies.
So after all the discourse on Chinese learning, I decided to give Chinese television another shot. The most formidable hurdle with Chinese television…I’m not really sure how to put it nicely is…well, a severe lack in quality programming. While Chinese students lap up shows American shows to the point where I am no longer surprised when Chinese acquaintances ask me “Your last name is Ross, like Ross Geller?” or “If you date a Chinese girl, would you like her to be like Carrie or Miranda?” there has yet to be a Chinese show which has so captivated foreign audiences.
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This has been my obstacle as well, and I owe a big “thank you” to Peter Jeziorek for suggesting I watch 奋斗 (Struggle). 奋斗 originally aired in 2007 and is one of the first shows to focus on the 八零后 generation, those born between 1980 and 1989, the first generation to grow up entirely during the years following the Reform and Opening Up. The main characters of the show are a group of friends who have recently graduated from college, and are dealing with the typical struggles which face young adults in China such as finding a job, love and marriage, and the looming burden of caring for one’s parents.
奋斗 is not the greatest show I have ever watched. The acting is fair. The story grows excessively corny at points. And the plotlines are predictable. But the characters are well-developed and it tackles enough realistic issues of Chinese society to make it both interesting and educational. So far, I’ve completed five episodes, and I am shooting to watch all 32, for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a much needed Chinese workout. Secondly, from a pedagogical perspective, I am curious what specific effects watching Chinese television will have on my language skills. If all goes well, expect more blogging as I get deeper into the project. But first I wanted to provide a few random observations and thoughts I’ve had up to this point.
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1) I call it “power watching,” because you don’t just sit back, relax, and watch a show all the way through. The method I have been employing entails watching each episode three times, pausing throughout to look up unfamiliar words, and replaying words and phrases which need to be added to my repertoire. I am quite convinced that had I been watching each episode only once, and without pausing and rewinding, the linguistic benefit would have been minimal.
2) For any method of language study to be efficient, it needs to be done every day. Therefore I have been spending 1-2 hrs per day, every day, in front of the screen, “studying.”
3) Often, I find instances where I am familiar with a phrase, but realize my inflection has been totally off, or a word for which I have been pronouncing the tone incorrectly. In these cases, I rewind several times and repeat the entire phrase out loud. This has served to both call attention to, and rectify, several long-ingrained mistakes and malapropisms.
4) Television shows have two major pedagogical advantages over movies. Firstly, watching, digesting, re-watching, and comprehending a thirty or forty minute shows is much more manageable (and practical) than doing so with a movie which could last two hours. Secondly, there is a certain sense of linguistic continuity that goes along with following the same characters episode to episode, which would not apply to movies, where each new film contains entirely new characters and concepts.
5) Certain aspects of the Chinese language cannot be taught or explained in words. They have to be felt. The example which comes to mind constantly as I watch 奋斗 is particles. There are no set rules for when you say 啊，嘛，呗，呀 or the multitude of other particle words which have no explicit meaning in Chinese. And for most of us laowai, we cope with this dilemma the easy way: we omit them. Although I still have a long way to go, I am starting to feel where and when I should throw a 呀 or a 哇 at into a sentence. It adds an entire new dimension to the tone of speech, and I’m going to pay special attention to this as I continue through 奋斗.
6) I suspect that the cultural benefits of watching a show based in modern times starring people roughly my age (I still have 2 more weeks of my 20s) are going to be significant. As a foreigner in China, you always affect a situation in a different way than you would had you been Chinese, especially those situations which involve yourself directly. Watching Chinese people interact with one another (albeit fictional Chinese people) has already provided me with cultural insight that probably would have been of considerable value in say…dealing with ex-girlfriends or professional endeavors.
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Between work and Chinese friends, the days in Chicago when I use Chinese generally outnumber those where I do not, so I’m already having ample opportunity to test out what I have learned. Roughly a week into this project, I’ve noticed expressions from 奋斗 have begun creeping into my idiolect (along with an 儿化音 taboot). But more importantly, I’m noticing subtle influence on my patterns of speech, specifically in regards to accent and delivery. It’s as if the voices of the characters are trapped inside my head and are providing an active template for my syntax and pronunciation.
Although it’s still early in the game, I would already say that hour for hour, watching 奋斗 has been the most efficient Chinese studying I’ve done in years. It wouldn’t have done much good at the early stages of my language study, but at this point I feel like it is going to be the absolute best way to continue to improve. If all goes as planned, I should be able to finish the show by the end of the year, and will hopefully have more observations in the weeks to come.
Colin Jacobs
said,
November 28, 2009 at 6:19 am
I like this recommendation and thanks for delving deeper into this area. I’d love to be able to practice Chinese in this way – 北京人在纽约 didn’t manage to grab me. I’ll try 奋斗.
Besides the lack of quality TV, or because of it, it seems there’s another big asymmetry for the English speaker learning Chinese – the Chinese content won’t be subtitled into English, whereas I’m sure Friends and Sex & The City can be found with Chinese subtitles. This makes it much less accessible for beginning and intermediate learners as a learning tool. Ideally I’d like to watch a couple of times with subtitles and then continue without, so I know what’s going on but can then rely on and focus on the spoken language for further review.
Alec
said,
November 28, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I’m a big fan of watching TV dramas to learn languages. When I started watching Japanese dramas without subtitles, my Japanese rocketed. And yes, there is a lack of quality Chinese programming. There are some good Taiwanese shows, but they have strong accents and speak Taiwanese sometimes. So how do I deal? I watch Korean dramas that are of really high quality and always dubbed into Mandarin with optional Mandarin subtitles, and a lot of the time also come with optional English subtitles!
Benjamin Ross
said,
November 28, 2009 at 10:12 pm
@Colin
Subtitles are an interesting topic, and you’re definitely right, any of those popular English shows can be found with Chinese subtitles. The thing is, and I would love to hear some others’ opinions on this, I don’t think watching Chinese shows with English subtitles is the best way to do it. For starters, from my own personal experience, I’ve found that watching shows for the sake of learning Chinese was not very effective when I was at a beginner or intermediate level. There was just too much I didn’t know for me to piece it all together in a pedagogically efficient fashion.
Part of the benefit of learning from a show is creating an immersion environment. If you’re going to cheat with subtitles, it’s best to do it in Chinese, so that your mind is still operating outside the realm of English.
Usually when I watch, I try my best to listen and understand the audio. If I don’t catch something (and even sometimes when I do) I rewind and look at the subtitles. I there is a word I don’t know, I look it up in google translate, but try to refrain from looking up entire sentences.
It is my belief that there are certain cognitive process which happen when one is forced to figure out the meaning of a phrase or utterance without the aide of a direct translation. (As a side note, this is also why I think electric translators are big impediment to language learning). Thus, I think using the Chinese subtitles as a crutch is a nice compromise between using the English and just going straight from the audio. If anybody else has any experience with this, please share, as I’m really only going on my own personal experience here.
chriswaugh_bj
said,
November 29, 2009 at 5:01 am
I’m not sure I fully agree on the lack of quality Chinese TV. First of all, for me, TV, Chinese or otherwise, is the medium that most spectacularly failed to achieve its potential. There simply isn’t much quality TV out there even before you start divvying it up along national and cultural borders. Secondly, and perhaps this is a benefit of China’s size, there is plenty of TV worth watching. I recommend any of Zhao Benshan’s various sitcoms (乡村爱情 springs to mind), and there have in recent years been TV series versions of 铁道游击队 and 小兵张嘎 which, despite dealing with the War, are actually very watchable. 小兵张嘎 in particular is a lot of fun. Also, the skits/小品 from the various craptaculars, the CCTV 1 Spring Festival Gala in particular, are repeated in various collections of “greatest hits” style shows throughout the year. They’re good, fun, bite-sized doses of Chinese. I’ve also been surprised at how accessible two styles of Chinese opera – 黄梅戏 and 豫剧 – are. 二人转 can also be good.
Of course, with many of my suggestions you have to be careful of learning a bit of colloquial Dongbeihua with which to pepper your speech.
I do, however, fully agree with using Chinese subtitles. My experience with Chinese subtitles matches Ben’s. Incidentally, I also find using French or German subtitles when watching French or German films to be immensely beneficial.
Jeff
said,
November 29, 2009 at 7:23 pm
It’s great that you touched on this and recommended a show to watch. I started to watch my first Chinese drama for the sole purpose of seeing my friend who had acted in it. Then, even after he wasn’t in it anymore, i kept watching. I experienced the same phenomenon you describe. I found myself using phrases that the characters often used. The show was incredibly cheesy and almost painful to watch at times, but I think it was very beneficial. Other shows that I’ve looked into are the following:
案发现场 – The Chinese version of CSI. Entertaining, but I’m not sure if it’s very useful for practical study though. There is a ton of special vocab (like bullet trajectory, remains, chemical names, etc.) Interesting if you can chug through it.
新上海滩 – A remake of the classic drama starring Chow Yun Fat. It’s more produced and from what I can’t tell it’s not extremely corny.
Has anyone watched 《士兵突击》？ It’s more produced and it’s quite popular among Chinese.
Brenton
said,
December 1, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I’m not nearly as far along as you in my Chinese studies but one video series that I’ve found useful is 快乐汉语 on CCTV. You can even find them on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/chinesecivilization. They are so corny it hurts.
They are subtitled in Chinese and English and are short enough to watch over and over again. Honestly, I would prefer to find a decent podcast since I find them more convenient (I’m in front of the computer enough already with my job). One thing I’ve considered doing is just downloading the flash movies for the episodes I’ve watched and ripping the audio to mp3.
–Brenton
Benjamin Ross
said,
December 1, 2009 at 11:00 pm
@Brenton
Check out ChinesePod. John Pasden from Sinsplice does their intermediate level podcasts. Good stuff.
Justin
said,
January 24, 2010 at 4:44 am
Once you finish Struggle, you might find this useful:
http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_10409.htm
Justin
said,
January 24, 2010 at 4:45 am
Oops! Sorry, meant to post a link to the CHINESE (not Japanese) thread
Here it is:
http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15829
Anna
said,
November 6, 2011 at 4:00 am
I watched 士兵突击
It takes a few episodes to really get into but for a military drama, it is pretty good. The characters are likable and the episodes, for the most part, can be watched independently but are enhanced by watching them from start to finish.
I\’ve seen several Chinese TV shows. Most of them I have had to force myself to watch. The quality of Chinese tv shows is pretty hard to adjust oneself to, but that show is worth the time, at least in my opinion.