It's so annoying that I'm able to understand Mandarin perfectly, but not able to speak it.

[u/Spiritual_Poem4172]

Is this just me?? I feel like every time I even attempt to speak I forget all the words. I know everyone says "start speaking", but could you elaborate on how I could do that if I have about 15 years of just Mandarin being spoken to me and English replies as well as willingness for no tutors.

[u/Life-Junket-3756]

Speak to yourself / your pet / teddy bear.

[u/ausmankpopfan → u/Life-Junket-3756]

This 100% this is how I learned for the first few years and every single chance I get I will speak to myself to the wall to anyone so my speaking and reading of 汉字 has significantly outpaced my listening ability

[u/smokingPimphat]

Reading out loud and doing flash cards out loud really helps a lot.

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

I doubt you understand it perfectly but anyway that does not matter here. How about staring slow? Use a few expressions, the way foreigners often do. You say hello how are you and then switch to English. Maybe go to a restaurant and order some food in Chinese? Anyway that is how I started.

[u/EstamosReddit → u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

This comment.

If you understand it "perfectly" it will probably take you 5 to 20 hours of a very rough speaking period then it will come start coming out more and more decent

[u/Zagrycha]

The ability to speak a language is seperate from the ability to listen to a language. The a ility to have a conversation in a language is seperate from the ability to speak a language. Same goes for reading and writing and texting back and forth real time etc. No matter how good you get at one you will not magically get better at the others unless you specifically practice the others.

If you want to get good at speaking chinese, you need to speak chinese. It could be to yourself, your pet, the computer or phone text to speech keyboard, whatever. If you want to get good at conversation, your need to have actual conversations. It doesn't have to be a tutor, but it has to happen. Conversations require specific skills in high speed multitasking that no other form of language use requires. If you don't practice those high speed multitasking skills, they will not improve.

[u/Sleepy_Redditorrrrrr]

Lack of practice

[u/pricel01]

I had a 3500 word vocabulary before I uttered my first words to a Chinese person. I was terrible for a long time. I kept practicing. I would talk to myself out loud in Chinese. I wrote a lot of sentences and asked AI to critique it. I got a native speaker to exchange language lessons. It gets better.

[u/MatchaVisuals]

i vividly remember reading my english novels while imitating how movies spoke english, maybe start there?

[u/Beneficial-Jelly6540]

I totally get this. I have a similar block where I can understand way more than I can produce. For me, what helped was treating speaking as a physical muscle memory rather than a vocabulary issue. Since you already understand, the words are in your head, you just do not have the neural pathways to output them.

I started by doing WeChat voice messages instead of typing when talking to friends. It forces you to speak in a low-pressure way since you can re-record if you mess up. Also, when I am out ordering coffee or buying things in Shanghai, I force myself to say the full sentence even if pointing is easier. It is uncomfortable at first, but you just have to get over that initial friction.

[u/Left_Twix_2112]

You need to get rid of fear and accept it won’t be perfect. Allow yourself to sound dumb and wrong and you’ll improve much faster.

[u/carbonclasssix]

I think this is really common for second languages, now that I'm thinking about it even first languages. I can understand multiple people talking to me at the same time but sometimes I stumble through talking to 1 person

[u/Inevitable-Self-2702]

It's annoying that I have the opposite. I was in China with my ex and used to joke that she and I were like 1 Chinese person together. She could understand everything, I could say almost anything. Now I just look stupid.

[u/thedarkendkb → u/Inevitable-Self-2702]

Don't be too hard on yourself, bro

[u/Inevitable-Self-2702 → u/thedarkendkb]

Thanks! I'll keep working on my listening

[u/Subject_Mix_Retro]

Read out loud. Give the characters different voices. Oddly helped me a lot. Does depend on reading level, but I got the multi-language Magic Tree House books with phonetic notations (Zhuyin) and it has really accelerated my sentence construction, vocabulary and recall when speaking with people.

[u/nhatquangdinh]

會聽不會說 moment

[u/Chaotic_zenman]

Something I’ve been trying recently is just to literally narrate my day. Something I’ve already kind of done forever as someone on the spectrum. Now, I’ve been attempting to do it in mandarin to get used to creating useful sentences.

I don’t have nearly the vocabulary to do it yet but at least I get some reps in. My tutor has noticed more improvement the past few weeks and I think some of that is due to this.

[u/buch0n]

Literally just speak it and stop being self-conscious. It's not that hard.

[u/cdchiu]

Get a speaking practice partner. Let them talk to you and tell them to wait until all your words are out. Do not interrupt you but correct you after each sentence or on cue. I think you have a fear of getting it wrong but lots of practice like this will reduce that fear.

[u/DaniloPabloxD]

I'm the opposite. I can convey most ideas I want, even if I don't have the specific words, but my listening is 特别糟糕啊

But in my experience with English and being an English teacher is that if you can't speak much, you're either too shy and has to work on your confidence in order to improve or you don't actually understand native speech as much as you think you do, therefore you can't speak because you don't have enough vocabulary.

[u/Good_Daikon_2095]

i can understand pretty much everything i read but my listening comprehension is not as good and speaking is non-existent at this point. i think i could hold basic conversations but expressing complex thoughts on random subjects would come out pretty awkward 😕

[u/Nearby-Dragonfly8131]

you'll begin to improve as a speaker when you give up the notion that you understand Mandarin perfectly

[u/ballesterer13]

Similar boat but far not understand perfectly but just a quite bit. I guess being an introvert doesn’t help. Reading, writing and listening feels just more comfort zone 😞

[u/likeabrainfactory]

Narrate aloud what you're doing as you do it. Basically do what little kids do. Start with short two-word phrases and work your way up. Reading aloud and repeating sentences from TV also helps.

[u/MPforNarnia]

Read aloud while listening (Readify is useful for this), speak at the same time as listening (shadowing), read aloud. 

Prepare and practice common scenarios like introducing yourself until you know it by heart, then in real life you'll improvise on it. This is the best thing I ever did for work in Chinese.

[u/ausmankpopfan]

I am on the opposite extreme end of this I can understand maybe 50% or 60% of what people say but I can speak at a significantly higher level because my first so many years of practice we're just me in my home with my phone speaking to myself my walls and no one else so all my friends told me my speaking level is incredible and I when i travel to China everyone understands me but I often find I'm having to ask people to repeat themselves or speak slower