This is the eleventh article in this series based on Dr Piotr Wozniaks 20 Rules
for Formulating Knowledge. The
eleventh rule is
“combat interference”.
Let's have a look at the concept of interference, how it can affect your Chinese
learning and what you can do about it.
What is interference?
Interference is Dr Wozniak's term for knowledge that damages or clashes with
other knowledge in your mind. You have no trouble remembering fact A on its own,
but once you learn fact B, you find it's now difficult to remember either of
them. In another form, you learn related items at the same time and confuse them
from the start.
A more common term for this is simply “getting confused”.
For example, it's quite easy to remember that the Northern Song dynasty started
in 960 CE if that's the only dynastic starting date you know (and we're assuming
that there's one simple date for these things). If you then try to learn the
starting dates for the Tang, Southern Song, Liao and Jin dynasties, it gets a
lot harder. You might even be unable to recall that the Northern Song dynasty
started in 960, even though that was easy for you before. This is interference.
It's helpful to have a specific term for this problem that focuses on the
learning aspect, as you can describe it, identify it and find ways to address
it.
Interference is not distraction
It may be worth clarifying here that interference isn't about getting distracted
whilst learning. Distraction also hinders your pace in learning Chinese, but is
more of a discipline issue than a learning phenomenon.
Getting easily distracted is an indicator that you don't have a lot of energy,
or are lacking motivation to study at that moment. At those times it can be
better to find a less-intensive way to improve your Chinese, or to just take a
break. Down-time is an important part of making consistent improvements.
Interference when learning Chinese
Interference comes up a lot in language learning, and will occur for different
people in different ways. This applies to Chinese as much as any other language,
but here are some specific examples to look out for in your own learning.
Vocabulary
Interference in vocabulary learning is probably the kind that language learners
encounter the most. A classic example in Chinese are the words for “honey” and
“bee”. If you learn 蜂蜜 on its own, you probably won't have trouble using it.
Once you learn 蜜蜂, though, there's a good chance you'll find yourself getting
them mixed up.
(As an aside, you might be interested to see other
swap-around words in Chinese.)
This can work in either order, and with practically any pair of similar words.
Which words interfere with each other depends on the individual learner, how and
when the words are learnt and other unpredictable factors. As a result, every
learner will experience inteference with different things.
Characters
Chinese offers learners a special kind of interference to deal with: getting
hanzi mixed up. Because of the way Chinese characters are composed of common
components, the potential to get them confused is huge. Everyone has to deal
with this, including native speakers.
When struggling to remember how to write a character, you most often have a
vague sense that it had a particular component or certain parts next to each
other.
As well as that, Chinese has no shortage of
similar characters that are
especially prone to cause interference in the learner's mind. Have a look at
末 / 未, 土 / 士, and 撒 / 撤. When learning to write those characters, it's
common for them to interfere with each other.
Tones and pronunciation
Interference can mess with a lot of people's pronunciation of Mandarin's tones.
For example, this might occur when you get really good at pronuncing third tone
in different combinations and over-extend it to second tone. Now your second
tone is messed up due to over-confidence with third tone leaking into it.
Similarly, you might struggle with syllables like ju. You focus on that vowel
sound to get it right, but then find yourself inserting it into zhu, which you
previously didn't have problems with. Interference in pronunciation is
interesting because it's at the level of muscle-memory rather than conscious
recall.
This is a general phenomenon with confidence in language learning. As you get
more fluent, it's easier to slip up as you put less conscious effort into things
that you previously would have been quite careful with.
Grammar
Interference could occur in all sorts of ways while you're learning Chinese
grammar. It's common to get similar sounding particles like
的, 地 and 得 mixed up in writing, or
the different reasons to use 了. The
different types of verbal complement are also a source of interfernce for a lot
of people learning Chinese.
In the longer term, it's common to learn a grammar structure that makes it
harder to use the ones you already know. This is a big frustration in language
learning, and it's important to recognise interference at play when it happens.
How to deal with interference
So what can you do about interference when you've recognised its impact on
your studies?
The first and most important step is be aware of the concept and to be wary of
it while you're learning Chinese. Ignoring interference or trying to brute-force
your way through is likely to lead to frustration and a stall in your progress.
One approach to interference is to put off learning one of the difficult items
and focus on one at a time. There are elements of the minimum information
principle and
defeat in detail here.
If you're using Anki or other SRS software, the leeches feature can be helpful
for dealing with interference. This feature automtically detects items you're
struggling with repeatedly, and pauses them until you want to approach them
again. This helps you identify and deal with interference.
Finally, it can be helpful to make mnemonics that focus specifically on the
interference. This could use the items involved, or the topic of the
interference itself.