Here's an interesting study on the effects of passive reinforcement.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/how-much-should-we-practice/

It suggests that you may be able to study more efficiently by combining active study with subsequent passive reinforcement. Fascinating...

James

I'd say it definitely works for spoken Chinese. I try to remember to play some when I'm washing-up, cooking, driving or weeding, and though obviously I don't make progress as much as when I'm studying, bits do sink in. I reckon it helps even when I haven't previously studied the texts. The most telling example though is my children's recall of Muzzy (Mandarin chinese DVD course for children). They have (actively) watched the DVD about half a dozen times, but they (passively) hear the audio of it frequently in the car, and they seem to know it pretty well.

Where there is a lot of memory involved the idea makes sense. For example, if you watch 100 people run a canoe slalom course you can learn from their mistakes without exhausting your own muscles. If you need to learn an instumental part, then getting the tune in your head by passive listening first will mean you can concentrate on the mechanics more easily.

It's a bit hard to imagine what "relevant stimuli" might be for writing hanzi. Maybe if you lived in China and were constantly seeing characters everywhere that might count.

Any ideas?

Rachael.

The task they were learning was specifically an auditory discrimination task, so it's not super surprising that hearing the stimulus in the background would help later. What's surprising is that they found that hearing the stimulus in the background was as helpful as continuing to practice.

That suggests that, if you are practicing your listening skills, you might start by doing dictation (listen to some Chinese, write the pinyin or characters) or some other kind of active listening practice. Then put the same recording on in the background while you do something else.

My own experience has been that I can hear a song a million times and still not know the lyrics - and that's in my native language! So passive exposure by itself is clearly not enough.

James

I know a few people who have been trying to learn Chinese for years by passively listening to the radio and watching television shows while doing other activities. I've always thought it was a waste of electricity.

I use background stimulus all the time, but if I haven't learned it first it doesn't help at all.

@Thomas - Very good point, passive practice is much more effective as reinforcement than as an introduction of new material. I don't doubt that some people can learn a language, or parts of it, passively, but most of us require active acquisition before what we've learned is really useful to us. Also, I think the closer the passive practice is to what we already know, the more likely we are to get something out of it - if I passively heard a lecture on marine biology, I would be much less likely to gain anything from it than if I passively heard a children's story being read, since the children's story is both simpler and closer to what I hear on a daily basis as a kindergarten teacher in Wuhan.

completely agree. Active then passive is the way to go. It seems that strictly passive learnings works for other languages though. I have heard of people living in Spain and simply learning Spanish through Osmosis. Doesn't seem to work for Chinese though...

Native speakers of Romantic languages or English have enough of a foundation to build their Spanish on to learn somewhat by 'osmosis'. It takes a long time for a native English speaker to build that kind of foundation for Chinese learning, since the underlying and apparent similarities between English and Chinese don't exist like they do between English and Spanish.

Just looking at the vocabulary I have learned in Chinese, it is interesting what sinks and what doesn't. By far the most solid words in my language are things I heard 10-15 times, didn't know what they meant, and suddenly used it, and properly. I didn't quite know what I said, but I pronounced it right and used it at the proper time. A way to speed this process up I found is, once I hear a word a few times, yet don't know the meaning, ask someone. The retention of these words is incredibly higher than when I ask someone how to translate a word from English.

As far as the least retention rate of new vocab, my worst words are ones I tried to memorize from a book. Though, I have been shocked at how well I memorize list vocabulary after I practice writing(even before I can write it) it on Skritter, even though I'm focusing on writing it. I have even gone back to books and seen words in Chapters I have studied, and yet have no clue what the word means. That was using traditional methods.

Writing thus is the passive learning for vocab memorization for me. Reading may be a good passive learning for writing.

From the number of times I've seen Chinese people unable to write a character they know how to read (easily) I'd say that reading isn't great practice for writing but the other way around is very much true. Copying (i.e. taking notes in class, writing down an address, shopping list, etc.) I find is decent passive practice for writing (well, depending on if it fits your definition of passive - I'm not trying to learn Chinese when I do these things....)

To be a little technical about it, copying is in fact active because you are moving your hand and writing characters. Reading and listening are passive, writing and speaking are active.

@dfoxworthy I have had similar experiences. My strongest memories seem to be those that are formed in real interactions with human beings, ideally with some kind of strong emotion involved. I still remember with fondness my first argument in Spanish; it was about a light bulb, which I will never forget is called "la bombilla" in Guatemala.

James

A bit off-topic, how would one go about actively increasing their listening ability? I find that it is definitely what is holding me back the most.

Well, conversation practice is ideal. If you can't find the right person to talk with in person or on Skype, you can also try the following:

Find some audio for which you also have the transcript and a reasonable translation (if you can't understand it already). Don't look at the transcript or translation in too much detail.

Listen to the sample at full speed, then read and study the transcript and then listen to it again at full speed. Slow down any troublesome parts with an audio editor. Audacity works fine;
http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software.asp?id=57 is also particularly helpful .
Listen to the troublesome parts repeatedly. You can also try shadowing:

http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowing

which is to say, repeat the audio as you hear it.

Once you've studied the sample enough, you should be able to listen to the whole thing at full speed and understand everything, even repeat parts of it. Then move on to a more difficult sample.

James