I hope it's ok to post something related to Chinese in a forum about studying Japanese.

Recently I've experienced a lack of motivation to study Chinese, and I thought that it would help to open myself up and get feedback from other learners about how they have handled periods of low motivation.

Background:

I'm currently a sophomore at a U.S. state university. As a high-school senior I studied abroad in Taiwan which was a blast, and is what caused me to want to learn Chinese in the first place. Since my characters were so poor at the time, and I was bored with the textbooks I was learning from, halfway through my exchange I decided to study RTH, which I finished while I was in Taiwan. After I finished RTH, I decided to keep learning from Harbaugh's zhongwen.com book.

At the same time, I also discovered ajatt.com (probably from this website - I came to RevTK often for hanzi stories). Although I was already pretty well immersed in my Taiwanese life, I took the time to put Chinese music on my iPod, and I often rented movies and cartoons to watch in Chinese.

After I came back from Taiwan and enrolled in university, I still managed to find time for Chinese. I started as an open major, but right from the beginning I decided study Chinese (and I tested into second year). I made a lot of new friends from the surprisingly high number of Chinese speaking people on campus, and I also kept up with characters and immersion; during my freshman year I listened to Chinese music in between classes, read translated manga, and learned about 1000 new characters from Harbaugh's book. To me it was frustrating not being able to devote as much time to learning as I had before, and I disagreed with a lot of the methods used at the university to teach Chinese, but I kept on going, and at the end of the year I decided to declare my major as Chinese.

Over this past summer I decided to go on my university's 2 month group study program to a university in China. It was kind of annoying to be grouped with other foreigners, but I quickly branched out and managed to make acquaintances with the locals. I also made progress on my characters (the coursework was easy), and had a lot of fun exploring the music scene in China.

Demotivation:

My lack of motivation hit right after I got back from China. There was a period of 2 weeks between when I got back and when school started where I didn't do Anki reviews at all. Also, because Chinese had improved after 2 months in China, I managed to convince my teacher to let me take 4th and 5th year Chinese concurrently. However, although I don't find the courses that difficult to follow, I think that my ambition might have also let to demotivation; the coursework from those two courses, plus three other unrelated courses might be too much for me. Another annoying factor is that I still don't think that I'm learning very much from my Chinese courses; I think that I could do a lot better on my own.

If I put a bit of effort into my university studies, I'm sure that I would have plenty of time to study on my own, but right now I'll often just browse the internet (in English) instead of studying. In other words, it's hard for me to justify working on my Chinese hobby when my important university work is unfinished, but my work remains unfinished because of massive procrastination.

I have a Chinese girlfriend, which is where most of my exposure to the language comes from nowadays (I'm always happy to hang out with her!) My roommate is also Chinese, but I think that my relationship with him is actually hurting my Chinese. He only ever speaks to me in English (if he speaks at all), and is very sensitive to any kind of sound, making it impossible to use my speakers (last year a good portion of my exposure came from simply leaving Chinese music playing in the background while I was studying).

All of these factors have made stuff like Anki reviews a chore for me. Although it's been two years, I still haven't finished learning the characters (in fact I've had to fail and reschedule a few hundred because of the huge break I took at the beginning of this semester), and I've barely started with the sentences portion of AJATT. On top of that, it's incredibly annoying to start listening to something in my room at the lowest volume possible only to have my roommate insist that I mute it because it bothers him.

TL;DR - I learned Chinese in a Taiwanese high school. I continued in my freshman year of college. During my sophomore year I lost motivation perhaps due to a combination of a heavy course load, procrastination, and an unagreeable roommate.

Thanks for your patience if you read through all of that (and if you didn't, it's ok - I still love you). I'm still young, and somewhat inexperienced with this. Any comments or advice are welcome! I'd love to get myself back on the right track.

Considering all the time you spent abroad, your chinese should be fairly good. Find stuff in chinese that you can do for fun, as you need to keep using the language so you don't lose it. You don't even need to use anki or study anything, just read a book or watch a show. My roommate doesn't speak Japanese, but I'm still able to learn it. (I only use headphones too)
Though, if you're in your school dormitory, you can just ask for a new roommate.

nice story. Although I'm learning japanese(my passion), chinese will be my next language to learn. It seems to me that you are having trouble finding how to study(i.e. not enough time, difficult situation,etc). In my experience, you just gotta doing something, anything if you get the chance.

I do follow AJATT and plus I've been learning japanese for 1 year+ now. My progress has been awesome, so I'm pretty sure you can do the same with chinese. You have more knowledge, due to spending time in china. P.S. sounds like you need a new roomate lol.

Anyhow just try to time manage. For me, japanese is pretty much my media. What I read,write,listen,play games in,immersion,etc. And lastly srs reps(anki). So it all plays out pretty well. I used to be so hardcore in the beginning phases but as I kept going, the need decreased as I kept getting better and better. Until now I just need to find more ways of learning more and getting better in japanese.

My motivation is still very strong as well as my reps(the amount for anki). Even at my stage of the game, I still get demotivated at times. I don't get burned out though, as I have gotten so used to anki and japanese. I recommend setting goals. I.e. do you want to be able to read chinese text?, speak it?, write it? or just understand it? If you want complete fluency(all skills). Aim for small steps for reach skill. It's a way to measure your progress. I.e. can read the main kanji( or hanzi in chinese). Can you speak basic stuff/convos?. Write basic stuff in the language?. Things like these should be set as mini goals. A main goal would be reading smoothly,speaking and etc.

Overall just keep going.

I would blame travel fatigue if it were me and I needed something stupid to blame everything on. Everything else may have dominoed from that. This is probably an issue that I shouldn't be giving advice on since I'm so horrible with it myself, but I'd suggest trying to focus on positive things, as well as thinking about why you're learning Chinese. If you feel bad about it, you'll do bad and feel even worse. Also, keep in mind that there's nothing forcing you to study Chinese hardcore. Thinking, "I should be doing this, even though I don't want to," is going to stress you out. If you really don't want to do something, don't beat yourself up about it. Do what you're comfortable with and then look for motivation. Oh yeah, and be proud of what you've accomplished! There might be over a billion people who speak Chinese, but it's something you've worked at. Don't downplay the value of your time and effort.

You're not satisfied with your classes, but they still count as credits toward a degree. And while they might not be optimal, you're still learning something, or at least getting some practice, right? So maybe think of your classes as a separate goal that just happens to help a bit with your hobby of learning Chinese.

Most of my advice may be nonsense, but my point is to keep positive. Burnout, demotivation, and procrastination are all things I'm too familiar with (in general, not just with Japanese), so I'm sympathetic. Venting about it on a forum is a lot better than keeping it to yourself and falling into destructive routines. Not to mention that a lot of people around here know a bit about studying a foreign language and can probably give good tips for getting through it.

Thank you for your responses everybody! I'm glad that I posted this here. Sometimes it's hard to really see the nature of your frustrations unless you get them written down (and even venting may have helped). Here are my responses to everyone in order:

Quincy:
I am living in the dorms still, and I think that I might go ahead and ask for a new roommate. I have other problems with my roommate than just the sound issue. We don't get along at all really - we don't interact or anything. So yeah, I think that a roommate switch would be a really good idea.

ta12121:
Maybe I'm at the point where I don't need to be as hardcore. I've become pretty comfortable operating in Chinese. My character gap really makes me want to become hardcore again though. I just can't stand reading and every minute or so coming across a character that I have absolutely no memory of at all.

I think your advice about setting goals is really good. I think that at this point my goal is probably to read smoothly. I can already carry on basic conversations and internet chats fairly smoothly. Maybe a good mini-goal could be to get my characters to the point where I can read a news article/paragraph of a book without encountering any unfamiliar characters. After that I could work on doing the same thing, but without encountering any unfamiliar words.

Kramden:
It's really hard for me to keep my Chinese classes separate from my Chinese hobby, especially when I realize that the time I put into my hobby helps with my classes immensely. It makes me feel guilty when I slack on doing my 'personal' Chinese.

Kramden Wrote:Also, keep in mind that there's nothing forcing you to study Chinese hardcore. Thinking, "I should be doing this, even though I don't want to," is going to stress you out.

I think that this is the most difficult thing to avoid.

You're right that I should be praising myself. What I really need to learn is a way to lower my expectations and 'hardcore-ness'. Then self-praise should come naturally.

You should try remembering the hanzi books(Simplified+traditional). It contains 1500 characters. If you use it with anki, you can gain the ability to recongize/write hanzi out smoothly and well. But this is just the beginning phase for gaining literacy in terms of writing. Reading is a different phase. For me I did remembering the kanji books and I used anki. I got up to 3007 characters(kanji). I can pretty much recongize/understand every kanji I come by even if I can't read it properly/forgot how to read it in context or that particular kanji.

Yea, the goals is a good thing to set. My goal for japanese is fluency in all skills. But in terms of reading I want to read a vast amount, ranging from manga,novels,newspapers,new sites,articles,etc(I can pretty read these but there are still occasional words I don't know, which is normal). That's the nature of it though, you can't know everything. There are always words I don't know yet in japanese and in english as well.

Set set goals for each skill and ever time you reach them, you will feel a huge accomplishment. Then just keep setting more and more until you reach your main goals. And eventually "ultimate goals" like native-level fluency and such.

Here's my opinion
1) heavy course load: you seem to be in Chinese classes so focus on them and keep your own self study a hobby

2)procrastination: I find Pro. comes from having to high of expectations ie: the mountain is to high to climb so instead of trying I am going to do something that is simple and gives me instant grat. (your English internet reading). So lower your expectations and you will see your Proc. disappear. Also making things a habit crushes Proc.

3) unagreeable roommate: there are a couple of things you can do to fix this problem. One is talking to your R.M about your ajatt method and maybe you can convince him to speak Chinese to you or you can just speak Chinese to his English and that might force him to respond in Chinese. Another thing is you can do is simply move out. Last thing you could do is instead of background chinese, just listen to your Mp3 player all the time with some sweet headphones.

good luck on your Chinese journey.

Just throwing out some ideas. Be sure to tell me if anything actually works (or fails horribly) for future reference.

When I went back to RTK after avoiding it for around a month, I started doing like what wulfgar said and gave myself small goals that I knew I could complete each day instead of just trying to do as much as possible and getting frustrated. As long as I complete a minimal goal, I try to congratulate myself and don't get down about everything else I could have done. At first I'd just spend 30 minutes reviewing a day, but gradually built up as I became comfortable doing more. I've only been at it for a few weeks now, so we'll see how it goes, but I like the results so far.

I'm personally impressed by all that you've managed to do and learn by your age! As annoying as your classes may be, finishing college successfully should be your priority, since you are there already. As far as the problems with the roommate, until you can get a new roommate, are there places on campus you can use? My school had small study cells in the library for just one person, and the student union had meeting rooms that people studied in all the time.

And you may have to get used to studying w/ headphones on, no matter how cool or understanding your new roommate is. Listening to non-stop music/shows/etc on speakers is really only possible if you live by yourself.

good luck with your studies and your Chinese "hobby"

Probably you should do something about your roommate first. This isn't a problem of your Chinese learning. You can try to get along with him better, find a new roommate or maybe move to a new apartment.

Dempf Wrote:I've become pretty comfortable operating in Chinese.

Procrastinate in Chinese then. I'm a professional procrastinator. Deadlines are my archenemies. Actually I'm procrastinating right now posting in this thread when I'm supposed to be working on my papers. But this has been the most important part of my language learning (if it counts as learning).

TV, youtube, ripped DVDs, random conversations, forums, Wikipedia, TV Tropes, scanlations, and many other addictive stuff have greatly improved my English at an amazing rate when they shouldn't. They are not the most productive activities in the world. They can hurt my career in some way. But, being a student majoring in Chinese, you can't go wrong with procrastination as long as you do at least the minimum amount of course work to pass important classes (or to get a good GPA if it's important to you). You're in an ideal situation for a compulsive procrastinator if you ask me.

I know studying your target language with Anki or whatever is faster than just slacking off in the language. But if it saps your motivation, then ditch them. If you're too afraid of throwing away your systematic learning method, think of procrastination as less optimally SRS'd learning; the more important words/phrases/grammar points/whatever are, the more frequently you come across them when procrastinating for obvious reasons.

Of course, the kind of language important to your life isn't always the same as the language used in what you're into. But your university courses will cover most of the formal stuff. Besides, mastering advanced Chinese can wait until you become totally comfortable with basic stuff (Here "basic" means "more frequent in real life," so they can be quite different from "basic grammar points" listed in your textbook.).

If you don't follow your own "efficient" learning method, what's the point of sticking to that? Procrastination will improve your Chinese way faster than your combination of a tiny amount of optimized learning and browsing the internet in English. If you're a hardcore believer of systematic learning, you can always get back to your system when you get motivated again too.

First of all, congratulations to your great progress.

A question you may want to ask yourself is: Why are you studying Chinese? You had a blast in Taiwan, so maybe you want to live there? If that's your goal, try to visualize it and imagine what it's gonna be like. Motivation doesn't come from nothing, it's always tied to a specific, emotional goal. The more specific your goal, the better.

On the other hand, you may also change your mind about studying Chinese. If you have found other things in your life that you would like to do, it's perfectly fine to procrastinate, or even put your studies on hold.

I don't know much about you or your life, so take the following with a grain of salt:
Are you sure you want to major in Chinese? I know it's your passion, but you can learn Chinese outside of university, possibly even in a more effective way. After you graduate, you won't have many opportunities with a degree in Chinese. I mean, there are millions of Chinese people who can speak English just fine. An American who speaks Chinese might be a little rarer, but not necessarily better off. All I can think of you could do is go to China/Taiwan and teach English, but you could do that with any other degree as well. That's the whole reason I'm not a big fan of majoring in languages (minoring is fine). Just something to think about, especially if you are losing your motivation for Chinese. Maybe you want to focus your university studies on something else and make Chinese a hobby instead?

Hi all. Thanks a lot for your responses. I'm sorry that I haven't said anything for over a week - I've been a bit busy lately (finals week sucks). I talked to the R.A. in my dorm about swapping rooms, and he suggested that I talk to my current roommate, which I still haven't gotten around to doing. Maybe my R.A. just managed to talk me out of it, but looking at it now, I'm not sure if this is going to end up being as big of an issue as I thought that it was going to be. I might not bring it up with him, especially since I'm moving out after next semester.

I've been checking this thread, and I've started to act on some of the suggestions you guys had. Megamo, I think you had an awesome post. Procrastinating in Chinese is definitely the way to go. I also lowered my daily new cards to 12, which still gives me a good sense of accomplishment when I'm done reviewing (thanks Kramden!)

Although haven't really had much motivation to do anything this semester, last week I was studying for a test, and I started to think about studying in terms of the way that I used to play World of Warcraft. I used to be really into WoW, and whenever there was a boss that needed to be killed I wouldn't give up until it was dead. It might sound a bit cheesy, but I started thinking about my test that way, and it helped me to focus on studying. Since that was so effective, I also decided to install the AnkiWarrior and Unreal Anki plugins. I also decided to install the Taiwanese WoW client because hey, if I'm going to procrastinate in Chinese WoW is probably one of the best ways to do it.

All these ideas may all have been similar to what I'd read on AJATT, but I think that you guys helped me to realize some of them.

ThomasB Wrote:Are you sure you want to major in Chinese? I know it's your passion, but you can learn Chinese outside of university, possibly even in a more effective way. After you graduate, you won't have many opportunities with a degree in Chinese. I mean, there are millions of Chinese people who can speak English just fine. An American who speaks Chinese might be a little rarer, but not necessarily better off. All I can think of you could do is go to China/Taiwan and teach English, but you could do that with any other degree as well. That's the whole reason I'm not a big fan of majoring in languages (minoring is fine).

I realize all of that, but the reason that I'm majoring in Chinese is that, well...I started as an open major, but, since I was interested in Chinese, I took a lot of GEs that were related to China/Chinese. I also took Chinese language classes as an open major. Eventually I looked at the Chinese major requirements and, since I was starting to fulfill almost all of them, decided to declare the major officially. Now I basically just need to finish one more semester of language, plus 2 other requirements and I'm done. I've already got enough momentum on my Chinese degree that I think not finishing it would not be too smart.

But I've been thinking that, since I'm only a sophomore, I should probably double major - I have an appointment with a computer science academic advisor on Friday to maybe figure out a schedule to start that degree with. Maybe once I start working on computer science the problems I've been having with Chinese will work themselves out.

The basis for learning are more connected to motivation than study routine.
Study is curiously more easy a thousand times than standing in a linear serie of study.
Hey,my friend,there always something to motivate.spend time planning your studies and stuff like that.spend your time finding vicious things to do that you like and the motivation will come soon. Confront the study like a game, or do your lunch time same time you study. Making connection with things that does pleasure make this a easiest way. What a bunch off the videos from Steve Kaufman.I KNOW they will work in something in your mind. Spend time searching approaches to learn. Army yourself with some weapons that you cant escape from.
Experiencing methods and finding what works for you will bring you again to chinese.

For me watching videos for example dont work so much; but, playing games, do.
Find your way first and youll dont will fall in this trap again. By my own experience.