The importance of understanding

October 23, 2020

I'm not sure if many people have experienced this before, but lately I've noticed that I always have the attitude of ignoring something I can't fully understand, or trying to get around it. In Chinese, this has been particularly significant- in this post I'll explain why:

When I'm reading something in Chinese, the main words (and mainly the ones I can understand) are the ones that stand out to me. In HSK 1, if you have a basic idea of grammar in Chinese, you shouldn't have a problem understanding the texts since they're short and only really include the key words they want you to know.

Now that I've moved on to level three, and going to four in a few days, I have increasingly noted the importance of making you understand EVERY WORD, why it's there, and what it means. It's automatic to assume single-character particles that "don't mean anything" aren't significant. By HSK 3, you'll find that is not true at all, and if you take level 6 with such a mindset, not to mention living in China/Taiwan, you will do BAD.

These particles, whether they affect the whole sentence (which oftentimes they do), are always important to note. If you don't know why something is where it is, ASK. I used to stress more over things like word order, thinking that it was the solution to understanding everything, but it's not at all. In fact, a friend of mine from China even said that as long as you have the vocabulary, you can speak (basically that it doesn't matter at all). I would agree for the most part, but soon you'll see why it's a little more complicated than you think:

Don't judge a particle by it's listed definition. That is my rule of thumb when it comes to getting grammar. Most grammar points come from these particles! An example: The official definition listed for 了， a very common particle: (completed action marker); (modal particle intensifying preceding clause). First of all, chances are you don't even know what that definition means. It's easy to memorize that definition, but that definition doesn't tell you where it's used (or many other of the meanings). Here's a chart I found at DigMandarin which just summarizes the many ways this particle can be used:

Yeah. If you're someone that gets thrown off by grammar in this way, I highly suggest you check out the HSK grammar points. They provide examples and points with all the grammar concepts you need to know for each level. If not, and you learn better by having more exposure to these concepts, the HSK Standard Course textbooks are a very valuable resource. The HSK 3 book has 80 dialogues!

If this whole post confused you, and you don't know what a particle is at all, then stay tune for the early November release of the new season of Upgrade Your Chinese. It's a totally free conversational Chinese course with all of the resources you need included! Particles included.