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Ziel HSK 3 - Target Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 57 of 84 06 April 2014 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
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I've decided that Sundays are good days to work on flashcards.
I've moved over to my laptop (it's new and doesn't have the annoying problems my old computer has). I don't even like to come here on my lappi, because I can't help think that the ads will only follow me! ;) For my new lappi, I've switched to Chrome and Zhongwen Pop-up, and am a bit dismayed that it doesn't work within Google Translate. When I'm in Firefox I can mouse over Google Translate and the Firefox-Add-on dict. gives me all the necessary word information. It's important to have a pop-up in GT because as we all know, GT is really bad. I'm trying to stop using it now that my sentences are evolving beyond the most basic level, but it's hard to find anything that is as convenient as GT. To compensate for GT and its horrible translations, I've been cross-referencing online and I think I've discovered a way out of my GT dependency! Now, I know everybody has their favorite online dictionary they like to use, but dict.cn looks really nice so far. I started using it to give me another context for patterns I can't recognize. I hope this is going to be my new place to mine for sentences. Then I can drop Google Translate completely. 他再也没有来过。 he never came again (after something) zai ye is "not any more" 怎么了？出了什么事儿吗？what's the matter? is there something wrong? 一天比一天。 every day 我们已经喜欢上了这座房子，不想搬家。 We'd already grown fond of the house and didn't want to move. 他就会 He will/get/become 开始的时候 Initially, in the beginning I've long since stopped using ANKI but know that I can't really learn this language without some sort of SRS, so I've made myself a flashcard template in Word and I just copy and past sentences into the template. I print them out on card stock. It works pretty fast. I did about 40 cards this morning and the best thing is, they fit in my back pocket and I don't have to charge, connect, or sync them :) The problem is finding the time to review them. I'm on the last chapter of my book and 方新 and 谢红 have broken up. It actually says 离婚，but I didn't even catch that they were married. After all, she's been in the US the whole time -- ah, doesn't matter. I've liked the story so much that I'm jumping ahead to "Secrets of a Computer Company" which is the second story to this little series from 中关村. Now 方新 is leaving his friend's company and wants to start his own, and I think the book deals with software piracy so this looks better than "Two Children Seeking the Joy Bridge". I'll leave that one for later. Edited by Sunja on 06 April 2014 at 1:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 58 of 84 06 April 2014 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
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One quick note for the week: I'm still keeping up with my HSK3 list. I really need to delve a little deeper into the characters since I have to know how to write them eventually. Actually I have to complete sentences by writing the correct word. That kind of scares me. Nevertheless, I'll just keep reading and the passive wave for the vocabulary will take care of itself, and then I think I can go deeper into the characters later on.
So for the second week of April I'll start my new book "Secrets of a Computer Company" (Hello 500-word-level!) and I'll review those flashcards I just went on about. For the book it's important that I keep shadowing because that's my listening comprehension. The last book left me out of breath so I'll have to see how it is at the 500-word-level. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 59 of 84 13 April 2014 at 5:17pm | IP Logged |
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"Secrets of a Computer Company"
The grammar is really not a problem. The sentences are a tad bit longer than in the 300-level, but they've been simplified considerably. The amount of new vocabulary is standard HSK 3, but it's nice that there are a lot of phrases (constructions like "go dancing", "he was wearing", "play football") that are definitely part of HSK 2. I get a nice mix of repeated phrases along with a few new words. It doesn't get any better than that. It takes me the better portion of a day to go through each sentence, break it down and understand it. I make notes in the margin regarding usage and sometimes I'll compare words like 进 and 近. I'm really happy with the speed at which the story is read. It's slower than the last book, which really picked up speed once I got to the last chapter. Slower is much better for me, since I can shadow the story on my morning walk without gasping for breath. The speakers enunciate each syllable so clearly and well, slowly, that I don't have any problem. My listening comprehension can't keep up, though. I can understand 2, maybe three sentences at once, but if the speaker rattles on I become lost and start grasping for familiar words in order to try to patch together some meaning. I'll have to get used to being left behind in the dust if I continue with the Chinese Breeze series. Despite my lagging comprehension, I'm convinced that these little books are far better than what I'd be gaining if I were to only use Assimil. I'm still reading Assimil but I don't pick up the book regulary. I still want to finish the first book by April -- that's one of my goals. I'm thankful to Assimil for one thing. A lot of the "new" words I'm coming across in the 500-word-level I've already had in earlier Assimil lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 60 of 84 15 April 2014 at 10:39am | IP Logged |
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I got my HSK 2 scores today: 141 out of 200! 120 is passing so I wasn't exactly at the top score portion of my group ;) But I'd only started studying for the HSK 2 one and a half months before the exam, so I guess I should have expected as much. 6 months of studying Assimil (lessons 1-35) did not prepare me for the HSK 2. If anything I learned a bit about syntax and thanks to the shadowing, I did fairly well on listening, but vocabularies between those 35 lessons and HSK 2 are definitely different.
breakdown: listening 86/100, reading 55/100, Yeah. Check out that reading score. I did so well on the practice tests too! So I need to be aware that the actual test is harder. I think I need to aim for HSK 4 if I want to clear the reading section of HSK 3. Edited by Sunja on 15 April 2014 at 10:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| SomeGuy Groupie Germany Joined 5103 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: German* Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 61 of 84 15 April 2014 at 11:12am | IP Logged |
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Congratulation for passing the HSK 2 Exam.
Do you aim right at the next one ? And how many hours per day do you study? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 62 of 84 15 April 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged |
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Hi SomeGuy and thanks!
I was hoping for a better score but at least I know where to go from here! I'll try to aim high for HSK 4, but since I would have to double the vocabulary of HSK3 (HSK 4 = 1200) I probably won't actually take that exam (⊙.☉)7 so my goal is HSK3 which I can take November 8, I think. I'm not sure if the testing center has received the dates from the chinesetest.cn yet but it will be somewhere around that time. I'm really glad I live relatively close to a testing center and since it's always on a Sun or Sat, it doesn't conflict with work -- yea! As for study time, the only real regular study are my early morning walks. I listen and/or shadow for about 20-30 min every day. I've been pretty consistent with that over the past 7 months, which is why my listening score was better than my reading score. if I can I try to read, study vocabulary or work on grammar for at least an additional 10-15 min per day, but that's not always possible Weekends I probably study 1-2 hours per day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 63 of 84 21 April 2014 at 8:07pm | IP Logged |
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Ah, it looks like we're back in business after HTLAL went down for a tune-up, or whatever was needed.
I was juust about ready to go over to "polydog", which seems like a nice alternative. I had my wallpaper picked out and everything -- I was ready to move. But HTLAL is back and here we are again! That was fast. Like the forum I've also been down for maintenance. I lost focus this past week. I've been spending a lot of time outdoors doing next to nothing and that has helped a lot. So I'm ready to get back on track and I'm in the process of finishing this book "Secrets of a Computer Company". I want to start another book, but my test results are the proverbial splash of cold water in the face. Instead of dreaming of the higher heights of HSK 4, books with 750 words, 1000 words..., I need to stop and learn. No more books after this one. I plan to focus only on HSK3 vocabulary. I've got c. 650 cards and I'm working my way through. Edited by Sunja on 21 April 2014 at 8:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 64 of 84 23 April 2014 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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I didn't realize how difficult it is getting through 650+ words. I've barely scratched the surface and I start working more in May. (Goodbye break, hello crunch-time.) Making the deck was the easy part. For the completely unknowns, I have to break them down into their radicals and that takes more time than just flipping through the deck. Luckily, I've done quite a bit of work with radicals over the years using Heisig's book, so sometimes all I have to do is recall the keywords and craft out a story. This works for the ones whose keywords match the character's actual meaning. If they're unrelated then it takes a bit of time to work out a memory aid. I have the most trouble remembering the particles, but frequent usage should take care of that problem.
While I'm doing that I've had to slow down on my book, "Secrets of a Computer Company". I'm on a very long chapter and it doesn't look like I'll finish before May and I don't want to push it -- just because I have a personal-set deadline doesn't mean I have to rush learning, right? Then there's another thing I'm doing, which I've mentioned before in my log but I've neglected, and that's my activation at the HSK 1-level. It's obvious that I love these HSK-tests! So convenient! They provide a built-in means of measuring one's progress in the language. Practice tests are all over the Internet. I've found 1-2 HSK 1 practice tests so far, and I'm mining the sentences out of them, copying them to a Word doc (no pinyin) and translating them from English to Mandarin. This is actually kind of fun. Sometimes I improvise the sentences: I take 看电影， from the HSK 1 test and improvise the following on paper first, 我们看电影去。 let's see a movie 我不喜欢看电影。 I don't/didn't care for the movie 他不大看电影去。 he doesn't go to the movies/cinema 看电影去，怎么样？ How about going to the movies? Then I make two columns in my word.doc (Mandarin/English), fold the paper in half lengthwise, so that the Mandarin side is hidden and then translate from the English side throughout the day. I make up personal sentences too, but then I have to check for accuracy and that takes double the time. The HSK 1 exam makes it so easy because the stuff I'm supposed to know is already written down for me. Edited by Sunja on 23 April 2014 at 11:06am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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