JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4693 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 73 of 107 17 May 2012 at 1:58pm | IP Logged |
Well done on the progress and with the video.
Keep up the good work.
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BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin
| Message 74 of 107 20 May 2012 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
Thanks JayR9.
I'm on lesson 10 of Linguaphone now and I'm 100% just listening and reading, no shadowing
at all. After completing the entire book, I'm going to return to lesson 1 spend one day
an each successive lesson drilling the new grammar constructions for that lesson. I
think this should give me the output I want to make my language more fluid, at least in
theory.
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BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin
| Message 75 of 107 29 June 2012 at 8:47am | IP Logged |
I am on lesson 29 of 30, but started revising lessons so I am on revision lesson 3. the
last few weeks i've been doubting Steve Kaufmann's input heavy way, since that's mostly
been what i'm doing. So I figured that what I'm doing to do is drill the grammar on my
revision. Well... I've noticed that it seems to be less about the drills and more about
the re-exposure. Just seeing the stuff again is making it stick, the sentence
constructions seem kind of redundant but they are fun so i'll keep them up. Translating
from L1 to L2 is helping, but i think it helps most when I check my translation and see
that I left out some of the naunces and more intricate way of saying the same thing.
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LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4531 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 76 of 107 29 June 2012 at 9:09am | IP Logged |
I've just received my copy of the first volume of Assimil Chinese. I'm not planning on starting it just yet, but I'll follow your log with interest, especially as I bought the old Linguaphone course last year. I browsed through the Linguaphone book a bit and it seemed extremely hard, with far to much content to get through a lesson a day. Six months for the book looked more realistic. How have you found it?
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BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin
| Message 77 of 107 13 July 2012 at 10:01pm | IP Logged |
LangWanderer, I have found that indeed doing an entire lesson is too much. With
Assimil behind me I have been able to do it, but with a greater loss of time than I
have hoped for.
I am on lesson 15 of my second pass of linguaphone and just started using native
material to study. Namely Mao Zedong's biography as I have found both the audio and
the written word online.
The time expense of an entire Linguaphone lesson and also using native material is too
great, so starting today I am going to do the Linguaphone lesson by the individual
parts. I believe this is the way they recommend using the book anyway. That is how I
would recommend doing it too.
The issue isn't the vocabulary, sometimes being 80 words per lesson. That is even
manageable. The issue is that the dialogues are 4-6 minutes long and not very
interesting. Listening for an hour only gives me 10-15 repetitions of the material. I
could listen for multiple days like I did on my first pass, but the dialogues are too
boring. I think from now on I am going to do a mixture of the parts of the lessons and
native material on the daily to get a review of the basics as well as glean the new
vocab from native stuff.
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5159 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 78 of 107 13 July 2012 at 11:00pm | IP Logged |
Well done, BobbyE. I've been through the whole of Assimil Chinese, then Méthode 90, Basic Chinese: a Grammar and Workbook and I still think I can't use native material (first of all, there should be pinyin or at least editable text on screen so I could copy/paste it to a dicionary). Now I started over with Colloquial Chinese, the old edition by T'ung/Pollard, and it will work as my review. Besides, grammar explanations on it are very detailed. I don't think I'd try Linguaphone for Chinese because lessons are long and populated with vocabulary and those are two issues that pull me back. I'd try it for other languages where I could acquire vocabulary easier, though.
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BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin
| Message 79 of 107 14 July 2012 at 7:14am | IP Logged |
Thanks Expugnator, and that sounds like it makes sense, your approach I mean. For
native material I do require pinyin and a dictionary. I understand less than half of
the vocab really, after reading it a bunch with the definitions and listening about 30
times I become familiar and comfortable with the plot and story. I am basically deep
sea diving for vocabulary. The grammar structures are still beyond my active ability.
I am thinking about making an on-screen video of my process of listening/reading online
for free. LingQ style but free.
I find an audiobook on pingshu8. Google for the written book somewhere online. My
google Chrome plugin automatically translates the characters to traditional for me.
Then I copy and paste it into MandarinSpot. Using Audacity I will chop the audio into 1
or 2 minute segments. Viola, I have an entire book at my disposal, definitions and
audio at hand at a convenient length, Google translate if I really get stuck. After I
already have the audiobook downloaded and the written book favorited on my browser, it
takes me less than 5 minutes to cut my next 1-2 minute lesson off of the whole audio
book and start working on understanding it. That includes reading along with the audio
and the text just to know where to cut it off and export to mp3.
I think doing this is simple and makes native material accessible to a beginner like
me.
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BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin
| Message 80 of 107 18 July 2012 at 6:41am | IP Logged |
I just wanted to make an update that I have given up on my 2nd pass through linguaphone
and instead am just focusing on 毛澤東傳 (Mao Zedong's Biography), to be found at
http://vip.book.sina.com.cn/book/index_40074.html. The audiobook is on pingshu8.
I am taking it in 1 minute sections,using audacity to cut it up. Doing 1-2 minutes per
day.
I will revisit Linguaphone, Assimil, and Hippocrene's Intermediate Chinese intermittently
through my long-term usage of native material.
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