It's a good idea to learn vocabulary as it is presented to you by your language program, but if you're learning by yourself or using reference books, you may wonder what you should be learning first. Language programs present vocabulary words in different orders, depending on the way they approach the seriousness of the endeavor.
1. Frequency
The most solid way to learn a language is to learn vocabulary words based on the frequency they occur in printed Chinese. For instance, the words "and" and "the" would be at the top of the list in English, while the word "constituency" would probably be pretty low on the list. This way, you learn that words that are used most often and get around to the less used words later.
The downside to this approach is that you end up learning a lot of grammatical terms very quickly without many nouns to use with them. It's harder to remember the word for "therefore" than it is to remember the word "park". So you need a balance.
2. Complexity
Another way you can rank the words you should learn is in terms of their complexity. Chinese is a language in which the words are all roughly equal in terms of their difficulty to pronounce, so this applies more to writing characters than to spoken language.
Choosing to learn the simple characters first is a good approach. It allows you master the ways that basic radicals are drawn, before you progress on to denser and more difficult characters. Besides, the more complex Chinese characters are really just lots of simpler characters pushed together. However, it can be frustrating to know the pronunciation of many words but be unable to write them. Try to balance learning simple characters, while tackling a few of the more difficult ones that are necessary to build sentences.
Don't let characters dictate the order in which you learn words. Even if you're excited to write in Chinese, speaking should come first. If a word looks difficult to write but is used often in spoken Chinese, learn to write it or move on, but make sure you learn to speak it.
3. Situational
A lot of the text based language programs work this way - by introducing a situation and equipping you with the vocabulary to deal with it. For instance, there might be a chapter or a unit on ordering food from a restaurant. This is a great approach, especially for travelers, because it gives you the practical ability to engage in Chinese very quickly, and gives you a good balance of grammatical words and practical nouns.
The downside to this is that if you learn only the words for situations, than it takes you a very long time to develop your language skills to the point where you can explain anything. Your conversations will be very shallow, and typically directed towards service people. You might learn all the words for buses, trains, hotels, restaurants, airports, beaches, weather, and museums. However, these are phrases you'll repeat, and if you really want to express something to someone, chances are you won't be able to find the words.
Most language programs attempt to integrate these three approaches so that you learn a variety of terms that are useful in constructing sentences, and practical in everyday conversation. If you come across words that you don't think you'll use (like the word for "tractor", or "estuary") then put it aside. However, I've often discovered that words I thought were unimportant show up in places I hadn't expected, especially when you get into compound words later on.
Always make sure you have a good balance of verbs, nouns, and adjectives. And why not let your own impulses decide the words that you should learn? If you work as an engineer, learn the word for engineer. If you like to sail, learn the word for sailboat, ocean, and waves. Learning Chinese should be about expressing yourself in another language, not about ordering friend rice or asking where the bathroom is.
Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.
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