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Mandarin Journal, after 1 year | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5115 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 49 of 107 26 May 2011 at 12:10pm | IP Logged |
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aaaaah, you beat me! Congratulations on finishing Pimsleur 3; it is a huge accomplishment, and I think your Anki
method has made the most of it. Good for you! Thanks for the competition, too; your progress motivated me to continue Pimsleur 3 at a decent pace, and with only two more lessons to do, I know I can get 'er done. I will be watching to see what you do next, now that you've reached this major milestone. If you discover new ways to practice speaking, or to find speaking partners, please write about it here. Good luck with the new job as well! May it afford you new opportunities to practice Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 50 of 107 06 June 2011 at 6:35am | IP Logged |
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thanks Li Fei :) it was a good challenge.
I haven't practiced Mandarin in a week... ugh ;( for one, i started a new job, and i am VERY happy about that! :) but other than that, something pretty bad has happened. i am a software developer, so i understand this logic. if you are using ANKI with Dropbox....BEWARE! i setup another computer to use ANKI--my work laptop. however, for some reason ANKI is overly complex and offers no simple solution to just tell ANKI where your decks will remain located. So instead i just did the normal "open deck feature". once i opened my BEAUTIFUL pimsleur 3 deck, ANKI erased the media folder!!!!!!!!!!! and since i was using Dropbox, dropbox synced and deleted all of the files. This was very annoying, and by the time i realized i could use Dropbox's "undelete" feature, and hour had already gone by, so i was unable to use Dropbox's undelete. I am pretty sad, and this has made me not want to practice =[ i DID have a backup of some mp3 files for my pimsleur 3 media deck; however, only about 1/5 of the audio deck is backed up :( However, throughout the week i also convinced myself that this is a good thing: i should just move forward with other lessons and other audio decks. Honestly, i've been struggling with this...it made me a little depressed. but what am i to do? i just need to move forward. From now on, I will always keep a back up of my ANKI media library :( So my next goal is to finish up FSI's Standard Chinese while I take Skype lessons twice a week. i eventually need to start learning how to write and recognize all of these characters. tentatively, i am planning on learning the characters with a combination of just writing down new characters i come across in ANKI, as well as using the regimen from New Practical Chinese Reader. Btw, a while ago i came across this site: http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html While looking through the "3000 most common chinese characters", i realized that i knew a LOT more characters than i thought i did. That felt pretty good :) Here are my current skills with recognizing characters according to that list: * I know the first 100 characters VERY well. (there were only 2 characters that i didn't know) * For characters 101-200, i know roughly 80-90% of these characters. * after 201 characters, i would say 66-75% is a good estimate of how well i recognize the characters. * and after 301 characters, maybe 40-50%. * at >600 characters, i only recognize about 5-10% of the characters that i run into. (and how did i calculate this? my page currently fits only 20 characters per page... and for each page there are 1-2 characters i know.) * after >1000 characters, i maybe understand 5% of characters that I run into. So i DEFINITELY recognize 350 characters, and i'm pretty confident that i recognize a little more than 400. I used to read the Chinese books given to elementary students in China while i was in the kids/teenage Chinese program at the local university. I believe attending these classes--combined with some writing drills i used to do--most likely got me where i am now. I don't see what else would have done this :) Anyhoo, picking up more characters shouldn't be too hard :) I'll give an update at the end of this month. I have a bit of moving to do to complete my relocation for my job, but the weekdays will be my study time >D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 51 of 107 18 August 2011 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
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wow, it has been over 2 months already. the weekdays have not become my study time as i originally intended,
but the good news is that my moving and my "adjusting" to the new job has been positive. oh wait.. more great news: I HAVE MY ENTIRE ANKI LIBRARY!!! it turned out i did not lose everything like i thought; in fact, i lost nothing :) so i am quite happy. as far as practice for the past 2.5 months, i have done very little speaking practice. i have practiced "thinking" in Mandarin, but the great core of my practice has been ONLY listening--podcasts and movies. after completing the pimsleur series and doing over 1200 "audio flash cards", further practicing my listening skills is REALLY worth it. For example, I can now listen to fast-talking movies and understand a great deal of the conversation. Context helps a lot :) When i listen to disney's "Tarzan" on my iphone in mandarin, i can follow a great deal of the language. i even learn new phrases as i listen. i think this is because my listening skills have greatly sharpened; even though i cannot write the chinese characters of a phrase, being able to write just the pinyin allows me to later look up the phrase (or word's) meaning using an online dictionary. When i listen to the "house of flying daggers" movie on my iphone, i can also follow a good deal of the language. I'm really happy about this because i remember thinking, "wow, the speaking is way too fast and mumbled...how will i ever understand?" apparently, practicing "listening" is what really helps! :D my life is still pretty busy, and my struggle now is free-ing up time and dedicating time to mandarin. until i get that together, i will continue listening to mandarin movies and podcasts like crazy--especially while i sleep or lay down to sleep :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5115 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 52 of 107 16 September 2011 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
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How are your mandarin studies going? Are you learning characters as you hoped? If you look at my log,
you'll see that I am having a major struggle with characters in my uni class. We should do another challenge together soon--who can learn 100 new characters first, or some such. I'm really impressed that your listening comprehension is improving so rapidly, and would like to hear more about how you did that. Do you actually just listen on your iPhone or watch too? Are these movies you already know well? Anyway, good luck with it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 53 of 107 17 October 2011 at 8:38am | IP Logged |
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my mandarin studies are going alright; thank you for inquiring :) since my last post about 2 months ago, i have continued to spend a lot of time listening. i really enjoy it. however, i have reached a point where more listening isn't really helping me absorb more of the language. at the same time, it is fun to have phrases stuck in my head--these phrases i often repeat a lot, and maybe it is the only way to get the phrase out of my head?
I never really planned to have this much improvement in my listening comprehension; however, of course at some point i did want to achieve this anyways. To help with the listening comprehension, I have the following materials on my iphone: 1) For 6 movies that i really enjoy, i have just the audio. details on how i ripped this are found in previous journal entries. The movies are a few mandarin movies that i really like, and the others are disney movies with mandarin translations. a lot of disney movies have a very positive, G-rated message. i am a strong believer that the body readily absorbs things spoken with positive intentions, and since i want my body to readily absorb mandarin, then my best sources are positive ones! 2) i listen to the podcasts at imandarinpod.com -- i really, REALLY like the format. i especially like how the 1-star ("easiest") podcasts have a lot of native spoken mandarin. 2-star and above podcasts are seriously 99.9-100% mandarin. it is great because at that level they not only use simplified language, but they also have a kind tone to their voices. it has been my experience over nearly the last decade that the body is more willing to learn kind information. 3) there's a "AWR Mandarin" podcast i got from itunes. the show's code name is "CMNHK_WSVX"...keep in mind that there are MANY "AWR Mandarin" podcast shows. the "WSVX" part is what helps me distinguish and remember which AWR mandarin podcast is the show i like. I'm pretty sure this is a christian story podcast, and even though i am not christian, i would prefer to listen to this type of podcast because of the same reasoning behind me listening to kind, positive podcasts. great for learning, and at this (still) elementary stage of learning, i need as positive of an environment as i can get :) Keep in mind that while listening, i barely did any watching. in fact, i almost never "watched". Sometimes the audio would be in the background, and often times i was actively listening. Most of my active listening was before i would go to sleep. other than listening, lately i started actually STUDYING mandarin again...and i am so happy about that! :) it has been nearly 5 months since i've put a lot of effort into study. here is my progress within the last few days... *Fri Oct 14: i had a skype lesson with a mandarin teacher that i really like :) we spoke entirely in mandarin--on my level of course. within the hour lesson, i understood around 90% (maybe more) of what she said. i only had to ask her a couple times to speak a little slower, which her speaking pace was pretty good for my level either way. there were brief moments here and there where we used English to help my understanding of new vocabulary. I remember that around 55 minutes of the lesson I started using more English hehe...my brain was getting fried! *Sat Oct 15: i printed out the text portion of my skype lesson. this text portion mainly consisted of words and phrases that were less familiar to me. so i made flash cards based on this material. *Sun Oct 16: i finished making flash cards out of the printed portion of my skype lesson. I strongly look forward to making audio flash cards out of the podcast material that the teacher and i are studying--and of course the good ol' FSI material. Audio flash cards have been, by far, the biggest help for language learning. Speaking of audio flash cards, today i also continued some of my Pimsleur 3 ANKI deck. About a month ago there were 1000 cards due. That's a lot, but instead of feeling like i need to finish ALL cards, i still limited myself to 10-20 minutes of ANKI practice. Today I have 761 cards due...and maybe within the next month i will have 0 cards due on my Pimsleur 3 deck :) i have not yet loaded my chinese pod audio flash cards, but i'm sure there are a few hundred cards ready to be studied again, hehe. Anyhoo, Li Fei mentioned something interesting about us challenging each other again: "who can learn 100 new characters first." I am going to San Fransisco in less than 3 weeks, so my goal right now is to beef up my speaking skills and continue to improve my listening ability. However, when i return... i will definitely whip out my Gold Lists and continue mild character study. I'm really not sure if i ever wrote about my Gold List success with characters. soon i will re-read through my learning log--i know this will be inspiring :) however, after i read through my log, if i have determined that i haven't said enough about the Gold List then i will say more. For now... i'd like to mention... ...the Gold List method is AWESOME. while my goal is still to reach around 2500 entries, the last time i wrote into my Gold List was when i completed a list of 600 vocab words and small phrase--all in chinese characters. I'm not sure how many distillations I did, but definitely a good portion. At around this point, my reading ability EXPLODED. and the difference was highly noticeable and very rewarding. i did also mix the Gold List with my character writing method...probably mentioned earlier in my logs. As a side note, i must also add that i have a high understanding of the Gold List, as a good portion of "why it is believed to work" is based on my current teaching / learning tools and philosophies. If the Gold List is not working for you, these 2 things are your only hope to reaping the rewards of the Gold List method: 1) you need patience. you need to exercise it more. therefore, if you think you're a patient person, then you are probably correct; however, you then need to deepen your level of patience. remember: an impatient mind is a stressed mind, and you will have a hard time absorbing new information at this state. how to be patient? take the time to clear your mind and relax. if it's not that easy, then learn techniques to relax your mind. i use pangu shengong -- http://www.pangu.org 2) you need a better understanding of the Gold List method. try watching more youtube videos that describe this method, or read more about the method. some of the information might be hard to follow, so try writing an ordered list for "the procedures of the gold list method" as you figure out how to make one. it is worth your time :) so why did i stop performing the Gold List method? simply because my goal was (and still is) to improve my speaking and listening skills! at my current mandarin ability level, the Gold List method will not help me with this. the time it takes to create Gold Lists is not yet worth the speaking rewards. however, if my priority were to improve my chinese READING skills, then i would definitely continue doing the Gold List method. i predict that i will resume the gold list method when i have reached around the upper B2 level (CEPH*) of mandarin proficiency...and maybe that will be by summer 2012? :) * about CEPH: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Re ference_for_Languages does anyone have any other good references for determining your language level? especially for mandarin? well, i guess the HSK (or sample HSK) is really the reference to use...) Finally, to reply to Li Fei's suggestion, try out the Gold List method (along with my writing method) for learning new characters. And thank you for the challenge, i appreciate it, as well i do appreciate you asking about my progress :) Personally, it is not yet my priority to learn more characters; however, a challenge would be nice... PM me? :) or if anyone wants to PM me, i would gladly give you my Skype. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 54 of 107 21 October 2011 at 9:06am | IP Logged |
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Down to 671 ANKI audio cards remaining for Pimsleur 3. That is still a high number of "due" cards, but it is surely
better than the 1000+ that were due sometime last month. As I am getting these cards covered slowly, I am also amazed at some of the things I remember. Other phrases and sentences I was bound to forget... :) I am now extracting audio from some iMandarin podcasts in order to get myself speaking more. Of course my Skype lessons will get me talking more. This will all be fun! However, I need to find a way to stuff FSI material in with my study plan. After all...I seem to remember every time that I worked with FSI I ended up blown away by its thoroughness and awesomeness. FSI almost always manages to make my brain hurt; a good indication that I have a lot of room to grow and learn! I would sure like to expand my abilities a little more before going to San Francisco :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 55 of 107 28 October 2011 at 7:00am | IP Logged |
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My progress so far:
* 550 audio flash cards remaining with Pimsleur 3. this is good for re-using things that i never used previously :) * i am listening to all of the Comprehension FSI tapes for the biographical module. (These are the "C" tapes.) * There are 3 podcasts I am studying using ANKI--both regular and audio flash cards. Also, these podcasts are the 2-star level podcasts. I am definitely absorbing a lot.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 56 of 107 03 November 2011 at 4:48am | IP Logged |
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As i listen to an FSI comprehension tape, i am realizing even more reasons why FSI is great. Months ago--while
splitting FSI audio in the Logic program--i realized that the audio tapes also have another track of audio playing in the background. This other audio track is the same as the main vocal tracks; however, they are at a much lower volume, and they come slightly before (maybe sometimes slightly after?) the start of the main audio vocal track. So i thought: is it possible that after listening to an FSI tape once, i am actually listening to it twice? One would be actively listening and another would be subliminal. Sometimes, i can swear that there are actually 3 audio tracks. So i just realized another interesting thing, and i thought i would mention it here. The FSI audio material--as compared to Pimsleur or some other audio method--has uncompressed audio. By uncompressed i mean the speaking volume is not altered and compressed in the recording studio. (If you think i mean "uncompressed" as in the audio isn't digitally compressed into a smaller size, this is absolutely not what i mean). So what advantage is the "uncompressed" vocal tracks? Well, a compressed vocal track has a more consistent speaking volume. These FSI tracks do not have a consistent speaking volume; they have a very, very organic volume. So why is this a very good thing? Well, this is exactly how you hear people in the real world: the volume in their voice is very dynamic, with volumes constantly changing. Ok supposedly your ears do adjust the perceived volume of your environment, but if anyone reading this forum has knowledge of psycho-accoustics and would like to say something about this topic...please do :) This thought makes me re-consider the time i spend actively watching mandarin TV shows or listening to mandarin podcasts. Of course, I believe this is very good....but wouldn't my time be better spent talking with someone in person, in the real, un-digitized world? I believe so, and this is surely obvious. However, this is why I really, really like FSI; the voice is recorded in a very natural way, and i believe it will service me more as a practice environment for preparing myself in the real world. Anyhoo, i'd love to write more, but i am dying to get back to my comprehension tape and audio splitting :) i am coming up with a study plan with FSI, so hopefully i won't forget about that next time so that i may share it with anyone else reading :) Edited by aerozeplyn on 04 November 2011 at 5:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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