In a previous post, I discussed why language proficiency tests are largely a waste of time as they distract you from working towards your real goals.
Most learners dream of having free-flowing conversations in Mandarin, not answering multiple-choice questions at lightning speed.
Speaking fluently and passing tests are two separate skills, both of which require entirely separate approaches.
Yet Chinese proficiency tests like the HSK continue to have an oversized influence shaping the way Mandarin is studied. Even learners who aren’t preparing for the test often memorise vocabulary lists.
This may make sense at a beginner level, where vocab lists include the most common words, like 你好 and 再见 that everybody needs to know.
But from around HSK 4 onwards, once you’ve learned the most common 500-1000 Mandarin words, you’ll reach a fork in the road with two options.
Either continue memorising the ever-rarer vocabulary on the official lists or start mining vocabulary and phrases that relate to your interests and personal circumstances.
The choice you make will have a monumental impact on your rate of progress. Take it from someone who initially chose the wrong path!
I continued memorising vocab lists way beyond an intermediate level. In fact, at one point I had memorised all the words for the highest Chinese proficiency level (HSK 6.)
That’s a lot of words. But the trouble was half of them would never appear in my daily life or in the content I was listening to.
The lists included a mixture of formal, informal and technical vocabulary, much of it very obscure and not relevant to topics I was interested in.
Not surprisingly, this proved to be a highly inefficient strategy.
There were tonnes of super useful words which I didn’t memorise since they weren’t on the list and I frequently found myself in situations where I didn’t know how to express the things I wanted to say.
I knew how to say “to levy taxes” but not “to tie my shoelace.”
And as I started meeting more Chinese learners I spoted a pattern. The learners who invested most of their time cramming vocabulary in order to pass tests couldn’t speak Chinese very well.
Meanwhile, the learners who progressed most quickly and spoke the best Chinese ditched the lists early on and structured their learning around their interests and daily activities.
Once they’d learned the most common vocabulary they began mining sentences from Chinese content and conversations with native speakers and crammed those instead.
When I started doing this myself it made a huge difference and my speaking skills saw rapid progress.
There are two main reasons why this works so well.
- Your energy is no longer wasted trying to memorise words you will never use.
- You’re more likely to encounter and use words if they are relevant to your interests, thus enabling them to enter your long-term memory.
Learning irrelevant vocabulary is one of the most common mistakes learners make and one of the easiest to correct, especially if you don’t need to pass a Chinese test!
So if you’re at an intermediate level and find yourself continuing to cram vocab lists created by other people, consider making this adjustment to your learning routine and start prioritising vocabulary that is relevant to you instead.
If you’re not sure how, I wrote a post about how to go about sentence mining here.
How about you?
Do you rely on exam vocabulary lists to learn Chinese?
Let me know in the comments.