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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 481 of 740 16 October 2011 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Did a FSI production tape and realized that I should wait until feeling better. Downloaded the course from http://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/products/headstart/chinese.ht ml
and will compare it to what I got from http://jlu.wbtrain.com/sumtotal/jlu2.0/HOME/index.asp. I did not download the pieces from the latter site which for instance are devoted to military dialogs. Also found these podcasts (http://www.worldlanguagespodcasting.com/chinese.php) which seem to be thinly veiled advertisements for moving to Australia. There are associated transcripts which can be purchased. Now my hard drive has less than 2GB free. :-( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 482 of 740 19 October 2011 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
Right now I feel the above sort of describes me. The text goes on to say "Our observed reality in this important respect directly contradicts Krashen's claims." I'm thinking of going back to SAFMEDS for memorizing vocabulary, specifically HSK or TOP, but am balking at creating the flashcards. For speed work, software like Anki is too slow. That may seem odd but imagine trying to get through 50 cards in under 60 seconds. That's what I used to do way back when using paper flashcards for character recognition. My voice is still out of it due to the cold so am using the DLI Headstart2 program (currently doing tone and sound recognition). That material has definite pluses. Update: Just finished Headstart2 Module 1 task 1 and am looking at task 2. It is seriously introducing characters from the get-go, complete with moving diagrams showing stroke order, explanation of radicals and printable writing practice sheets. This material is set up so you must go through it in sequence and successfully do the exercises to proceed forward... you cannot skip ahead. This weekend I started thinking about character work again after downloading 2 readers that evidentally are intended to accompany the FSI material. Edited by Snowflake on 19 October 2011 at 5:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 483 of 740 23 October 2011 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Started back on FSI now that my voice is better. FSI is still my primary focus. I'm basically rebuilding foundation and am trying to pay very careful attention to grammar. As FSI brings up various points, I'm reading equivalent explanations in a grammar reference book and my grammar workbook. While rebuilding I'm drawing back a bit from attending Mandarin speaking group gatherings. Do I regret having to redo things? Only a little. I truly was not ready to do this type of work back when.
My Anki reviews are sliding while thinking through the logistics of doing SAFMEDS for HSK/TOP vocabulary words. I'm going back to SAFMEDS for various reasons. One is that speed is an important part of fluency...using the ABA definition of fluency here. I've generally let the speed criteria slide which is pretty easy to do. SAFMEDS by it's very nature stresses speed. Another reason is related to the mention of sweepdecking in "The 'I Hate Korean' Thread" in the Specific Languages room. When that came up, I passed the sweepdecking description by an friend who is a certified applied behavior analyst. She thought using all the languages the person knows was a higher level of discrimination (ABA definition of discrimination). Anyhow, I suspect that sweepdecking is basically SAFMEDS "on steroids". I'm thinking of using Headstart2 as my "sweeper". The first character presented there is 铁 (tie3, iron). 铁 shows up in 3 words in the new HSK vocabulary. I'd rather not be tied to their order of character work though like the precision of the material. A side note, the pronounciation of xiu there is different than what I remember running into before. But these days I'm listening to more mainland audio material and am running into a few other sounds that I don't remember hearing before. Edited by Snowflake on 23 October 2011 at 4:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 484 of 740 27 October 2011 at 3:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I just discovered counting backward along with the microwave display when warming things up. "Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition" mentions that numbers handling can easily be used to identify non-native speakers. Some of my friends mentioned having difficulty with numbers for a while after getting here. So I'm trying to make numbers more automatic. I'm doing things like reading license plates in traffic while walking to and from the train station, saying addresses of buildings being passed, etc. I expect to be working on these types of things for a pretty long time.
The grammar rules are taking a while to sink in so I'm moving through the FSI material slower than I'd like, never mind the usual schedule issues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5042 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 485 of 740 27 October 2011 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if Mandarin is the language with the easiest pronunciation of numbers since each digit has only one syllable and each number scale adds another one syllable. I know some Chinese born overseas can't speak fluent Mandarin but blurt out mental math in Mandarin.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 486 of 740 28 October 2011 at 2:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the thought though that won't be me. I usually do math on paper. I also sometimes have to repeat FSI tapes which given what's been posted in this forum is somewhat unusual ....and I'm still in the biographic unit which is pretty elementary.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 487 of 740 30 October 2011 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm hesitating about using SAFMEDS for vocabulary due to the tones.
Doing supplemental grammar reading and getting confused and frustrated.... probably because FSI is holding off on introducing other grammar facets for these structures which the books cover. So I took a break and listened to some PopUp Chinese lessons to see how they handle grammar explanations. Noticed that my use of the neutral tone is a bit different than the PopUp Chinese speakers though that hasn't caused problems when I talk with people. I probably use a Taiwanese variation. This came up in todays' chat...the word for butter 黃油 huángyóu (mainland) 奶油 nǎiyóu (Taiwan) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5042 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 488 of 740 31 October 2011 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
It sounds interesting but when I look them up on traditional Chinese websites it seems that people use the same translations across the strait, i.e., 黃油 for butter and 奶油 for cream. 黄 is yellow and 奶 is milk(white). There is no reason to have the opposite translations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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