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Ziel HSK 3 - Target Mandarin | ||
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 65 of 84 23 April 2014 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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ooh, I found another good spot to mine for sentences here.
There's so many sites for learning English that it's really not hard to find simple beginner sentences. I'll be incorporating these sentences into my little activation phase. I really need to learn how to say all that stuff before I move further into the HSK 3-level I've even found two minor essays in English with native translations. Really perfect for my reading level. I just google a combination like 我的电脑 and then either the English translation or just the word "english". edit: almost all that stuff. That's quite a bit there! There's enough sentences there to keep me busy for the whole month of May -- woo-hoo! Edited by Sunja on 23 April 2014 at 11:05am 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 66 of 84 30 April 2014 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been going over all those sentences I mined this past week. I count about 130, give or take. I've been repeating them over and over and I've even recorded my voice with a handheld dictation recorder. It's fun so I've been sticking with it.
My problem is vocabulary. I haven't been able to scratch the surface of the 650 words I have in my Anki deck. In the evenings I fall asleep with my phone in my hand and I can barely get through 20 per day, let alone 100. I'm going to have to try a backup approach. I've started listening to Assimil book 2. One day I needed something to listen to and I just grabbed the first CD and started doing it. I'm actually not finished with book 1, yet, but the remaining book 1 lessons 36-49 haven't really peaked my interest enough. The first lessons of book 2 are not bad. The first is a lesson about 才 and 就 and I've been looking for some extra work on that particular bit of grammar and -- well, here it is. So I'm delving into book 2. I used to do 3 lessons per week with book 1, but I'm not sure if I can manage that (the lessons are much longer) so I may try 2 lessons per week to see if that suits me. Then there's the book, Vorbereitung HSK-Prüfung which I just got in the mail today along with my certificate for HSK2. I was a shakey HSK2 when I took the test, and now a month later, I'm a solid HSK2. A peek inside the HSK3 preparation book is quite *ahem* sobering to say the least. No pinyin (⊙︿⊙✿) I think I'd better figure out the best way for me to learn this vocabulary. That's the first and foremost step. Then I can see how I feel about starting the book. I have too much on my plate, as ususal! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 67 of 84 01 May 2014 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||
Basically the context is correct. You can also write 我去看电影 the way you would in English: "I'm going to see a movie". In this case 去 is the substitute for "am going" and 看 "to see" instead of having 去 at the end. The last phrase 看电影去，怎么样？was written like an interjection in English... a phrase that is a command without a subject such as "Let's go to the movies" or more like "How about let's go to the movies". The sentence can be rewritten as 我們去看电影，怎么样？or 我們一起去看电影，怎么样？like the way you have it in the first example with the subject 我們 "We" in the sentence. The second revised version would read "How about we go to the movie together". You can come up with all sorts of combinations to the original phrases. Edited by shk00design on 01 May 2014 at 4:10am 2 persons have 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 68 of 84 01 May 2014 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your help shk00design! I try to come up with as many combinations as I can. It's a good exercise.
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 69 of 84 02 May 2014 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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So after failed attempts to learn HSK 3 vocabulary in March and April I think I've found a way to get this vocabulary into my brain. I'm going to start the book "HSK 3 Vorbereitung HSK-Prüfung". This is a book to prepare for the test and I'm actually supposed to use it to test my level, not raise my level. But I had a look at the first three sections and came to some conclusions:
Listening Section: Listening to these words in context helps. Of course I can't really do the listening section properly because I don't know the vocabulary well enough, but I went over the transcript quite thoroughly. A lot of words I've only seen in lists and flashcards I saw in context for the first time. This should be a no-brainer, but I can't help but think how soo many people, myself included, rely so much on Anki. I can recognize 作业 in Anki just fine, but when listening to a context "认真地检查作业". Of course I miss it, despite the word being at the end :) Long story short, I'm going over the audio transcript first. Reading Section: I really need help with reading ASAP. I'm worse at reading than I am listening. That's not good for the exam because time is of the essence; ie, I have to be able to read fast in order to complete the section on time. I took one look at the reading section and had serious doubts *gulp*. Boy, I've never realized how much I relied on pinyin, I even gave everybody the impression that I didn't need it a few posts ago -- ha! I equate it to being thrown on a bike without training wheels. It's extremely hard to read without it, which means it's probably best that I give it up. After summoning up my nerve to continue the reading section I was confronted with a unique problem: how to look up words? Don't worry, I know now how to look up words. A few minutes with Uncle Google and I found nicku.com. I can now find words by writing them with my touchpad. It takes time but it works. Problem solved. So I can brave the reading section without the pinyin. My only other crutch is that I remain heavily addicted to Google Translate, but that's the least of my problems. Writing Section I'll have to leave this section alone because I'm not good enough to get any of them right, and I don't want to waste the opportunity to test myself later. I would always be able to find additional reading and listening work for the test, but I think it would be hard to find writing practice. Just an example of how the writing section looks: 1. 小鱼 里 这 么 多 河 有 you have to write the sentence in the correct word order. Some of the exercises have 10(!) characters. *gulp²* I love this exercise but like I said, I want to wait until I get better. Edited by Sunja on 02 May 2014 at 10:01am 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 70 of 84 18 May 2014 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been working solely out of the "Vorbereitung HSK3 Prüfung" the past two weeks. It's been very very slow, because I've had other things going on, plus half of the vocabulary is new to me. I'm having to go through each sentence and define at least half of it. It's good that there's no pinyin but looking up characters takes more time.
The first section for listening practice I can't even do without dissecting the transcript first, so I'm not really doing the exercises as they were meant to be done. However, the sentences are packed with vocabulary work and once I go through them and listen to them a few times, my overall comprehension improves. I really look forward to assessing my overall comprehension after I've finished the book! I'm trying not to let it get to me, but I've had some really bad news. I had an operation a year ago to remove endometriosis from my abdomen and I was told at my last routine exam that it has grown back. I have to go back in for a laproscopy in about two weeks. That equals full anesthesia with recovery time added on. Last year I was in the hospital for ten days. Hopefully I won't be in there that long this time. This condition that I've been diagnosed with since since last year really interferes with everything in my life and modern medicine can't seem to do anything to stop it, because it's a hormone-dependant condition; notice I don't use the word "disease". I'm doing my best to be optimistic. I've started doing qi gong to keep my mind off my worries and to keep tension at bay. Over the past year I've gotten in really good shape in my efforts to thwart the endo. I eat 80% fruits and veg, oily fish, no other meat, no sugar, no alco, no gluten. I exercise like nobody's business. As a matter of fact, my main concern is what to do with my weight-training routine during the recovery and how to keep my lean 63 kilos from atrophying. So I'm reading bodybuilding.com as I write.. I don't really have much stressful work going on so it won't be hard to take off. I have to figure out what to say to my clients - don't wanna divulge too much. So with all this going on it's hard to concentrate on my studies. I've been stuck on my Lernheft "Wirtschafts- und Rechtskunde" for almost two months. I really should wrap up this Lehrgang. I don't think I'm going to get much studying done the next two weeks (my daughter has a birthday next week), so I'm trying to concentrate on the post-op time, that is, what I want to achieve and how to move forward. I have to make the best of things as they are -- and I will. I've been in tough spots before. PS (thanks for reading and being patient while I vent out some pent-up frustrations.) Edited by Sunja on 18 May 2014 at 11:52am 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 71 of 84 05 June 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've got a lot of things going on at the moment. Last month was hectic and obviously I was a bit stressed and frustrated about my health. It weighs really heavily on me sometimes but I'll try to keep my problems out of my log. I'm not a big fan of self-indulgence on the Internet but sometimes it's hard to resist the urge to "write it out"
That said, I've received a score for my last Einsendeaufgabe for my German online course. I got a 1.3. I have no idea what the 3 is for but egal. Funny, I had sent part of my Referat into Lang-8 for a correction because I didn't want to have a bunch of mistakes taking points away from my overall score. So I sent it in for a correction before the correction (weird eh?). I waited a week for lang-8 and then went ahead and sent it in to my tutor without the correction because I couldn't wait any longer. A day later lang-8 responded and there were quite a few minor mistakes like endings -- a persistent problem which I can never seem to rid myself of -- but it didn't make much of a difference in the scoring because I still got a 1. I'm happy about that. The next book I have to work on is more Sozial- and Rechtskunde. I hope I can finish part of it this weekend. I'm also doing French again. My oldest daughter needs help with her first year right now, so I'm going to start helping her. This will be a good review for me. We'll watch some films with subtitles and I can help her with her pronunciation. Apparantly her teacher doesn't do much pronunciation work so we'll have to practice together. I'm doing the book, "Vorbereitung HSK 3 Prüfung". I'm able to translate one full transcript page a day. It's extremely slow work and there's not much to report that's interesting. Many of the words are repeated in the sentences so I'll probably learn a lot more vocabulary this way as opposed to using Anki or Memrise, which never really get opened. I'm not into those right now. Edited by Sunja on 05 June 2014 at 10:49pm 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 72 of 84 10 June 2014 at 11:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been working a lot with "if-clauses" this morning. It's a good drill, one thought leads to another.
I started with basic verbs: 吃早饭 骑自行车 刷牙 上班 散步 上床睡觉 去买东西 去游泳 等候公共汽车 坐在交通 坐火车 读一本书 清理厨房 洗车 去锻炼 Then I said what I do first then second: 先吃早饭再刷牙 Then the if-clauses: 如果不上床睡觉，就会觉得困 Rúguǒ bù shàngchuáng shuìjiào, jiù huì juédé kùn 如果不刷牙，就会牙齿得不好 Rúguǒ bù shuāyá, jiù huì yáchǐ dé bù hǎo 如果不去上班，就不会赚钱 Rúguǒ bù qù shàngbān, jiù bù huì zhuànqián 如果不赚钱，就不会买 Rúguǒ bù zhuànqián, jiù bù huì mǎi I try to weed out the mistakes by googling back and forth segments of each sentence, but I probably need to go to lang-8 and get these checked. They probably aren't natural, but it helps me to learn if I make logical connections between all the vocabulary. There's quite a bit at the "basic" level. I haven't decided yet whether I want to get the premium subscription at lang-8 or not. If I had premium, I could add Mandarin to my log. Right now I'm only allowed two languages and those are German and French. I don't want to give up those, because I have a nice group of "friends" that I like reading from. I still need corrections for all languages. It looks like I need to go premium! I'm not quite ready to do that. Maybe I'll wait until the end of the summer. Edited by Sunja on 10 June 2014 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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