|
 |
Manic Quest for Mandarin - TAC ’14 Team 鹊 | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 52 13 December 2013 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The Quest
After several years of trying to juggle far too many languages at once and often failing spectacularly, I have resolved to focus on one language and only one language until the end of next year. That language is Mandarin. There is a very good chance that I will be teaching English in China from some time early next year. I know Japanese and have learnt a fair amount of Korean, so Japan and Korea might have been better options, but something about China has always been tugging at the bottom of my trousers. After considering my options, I decided to jump in, sign up for a CELTA (teaching English as a second language) course and start looking for jobs in China. Oh yeah, learning Mandarin might not be a bad idea either. It could be a total disaster, of course. But I feel energised, (slightly terrified) and excited. I'm looking forward to it. The Back Story I started learning Mandarin on December 8th, 2013. Before this week, I had gone through a couple of the FSI pronunciation and romanisation tapes and the first couple of lessons of New Practical Chinese Reader, but this was several years ago. That might give me a slight head-start on a total newbie in terms of pronunciation, but apart from that, my level is 零 (zero). I do have a reasonably high level of Japanese, though, so I expect that that will make things a bit easier for me. The Goal Essentially, I plan to study as much as I can without getting burnt out. In the past, I have spent an hour a day on each of four languages, or something ridiculous like that, and either burnt myself out or deeply annoyed my then-girlfriends. This time, I don't want this to happen. So far I've been studying flat-out - several hours a day - but if I study for only 10 minutes one day, that's fine. The important thing is that I am still studying on December 31, 2014. I'll hesistantly say that I hope I can pass the HSK4 in December of next year, but I'm not that interested in quantitative goals. A couple of years ago I set myself the goal of passing the N1 (highest) level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, did so, and then couldn't bring myself to pick up a Japanese book for weeks. Sure, I have a piece of paper, but I don't know how much it did to improve my language skills. Instead, I am aiming for two things. 1. To be able to survive when I get to China without relying on English. 2. To speak enough Mandarin to be able to avoid falling into an English-speaking expat bubble. Not only are these bubbles bad for my language skills, they make me feel unhappy and guilty because I know I should be practising my language skills. The Tools So far, I have these resources: - FSI Chinese - New Practical Chinese Reader book 1 - Assimil Chinois. I am using the French version because, unlike the English version, it is not split in to two volumes and sold for an extortionate amount. I love Assimil courses, but I have my doubts about this one. My French is as rusty as the Titanic, but I shouldn't have too many problems using this. - Anki. I've been getting sentences with audio from FSI and my textbooks and reviewing them in Anki. - Rick Harbaugh's Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary. I plan to use this in a similar way to which I used Remembering the Kanji for Japanese: make Anki flashcards using mnemonics for each character. The dictionary focuses on traditional characters, which I far prefer to the simplified versions, but I'll need to think of a way to learn the simplified characters as well. - The TAC 2014 Chinese team. We can do this. Edited by LangWanderer on 01 March 2014 at 5:45am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 52 14 December 2013 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I've finished Module 1 and the six Pronunciation and Romanisation tapes from the FSI course.
I would wholeheartedly recommend the P&R tapes to any learners of Mandarin, even those who wouldn't normally touch FSI drills with a barge pole. They are incredibly thorough, and in three hours I gained more theoretical and practical knowledge of pronunciation than I expect I could have from any other source. The information on tongue positioning is especially helpful. Now, whenever I say a zh-, ch-, z- or r- sound, I pay special attention to my tongue position and I'm slowly developing better habits. I'm very glad I did this work at the beginning of my studies, rather than later on, because I'm reaping the benefits every time I pronounce a sound carefully. Even though that's three hours I could have spent listening to other audio or learning new phrases, I'm sure it will pay for itself as I slowly improve my pronunciation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 52 14 December 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I think Laozi can help me come to terms with my utter inability to pronounce the word 'rì'.
(I have made no attempt to make this correct Chinese. It's just a joke.) 道可道，非常道。 - 老子 "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." - Laozi 日可发音，非常日。 - 我 "The 'rì' that can be pronounced is not the true 'rì'." - Me Edited by LangWanderer on 14 December 2013 at 3:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6027 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 4 of 52 14 December 2013 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm glad you're using Assimil (I bought the 2-book version and yes, very expensive)! I like it so far. I also have a bit of experience with Japanese kanji, although I never got as far as you have.
As I'm going through the Assimil lessons and I have to look up the traditional characters, because they make more sense to me than the simplified ones. I have Tuttle's "Learning Chinese Characters" but I'm not using it much at all -- I find that it conflicts with what I've learned from "Remembering the Kanji". RTK actually is enough for right now. I'm looking forward to reading your opinion about the Harbaugh-book. Edited by Sunja on 14 December 2013 at 3:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 52 14 December 2013 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I certainly agree that traditional characters make more sense.
I don't know anything about the Tuttle book, but if it's anything like RTK, I think it's safer not to combine the two books. It would be too easy to mix up the mnemonics and end up confusing yourself. Thankfully (in a sense), I slacked off on my reviews after getting through RTK, so I've forgotten all the mnemonics Heisig recommended. My brain is a clean slate for the new mnemonics I will create with the Harbaugh book! I'll let you know if it's useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5591 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 6 of 52 14 December 2013 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The 'ri' sound is hard to make at first and I didn't get it corrected until I started
taking Chinese classes at university. I had always pronounced it as 'ri' would be in Korean and Japanese, and welp.... I agree that people should use the FSI tapes. I wish I had paid more attention to pronunciation early on, but I got it corrected early enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 52 16 December 2013 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
It's definitely unlike anything in Japanese or Korean. After being floored by Korean pronunciation, it's a challenge to have to learn even more sounds for Mandarin! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 52 18 December 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Here is my progress so far:
FSI The drills for FSI Module 2, Unit 3 have totally slayed me. I had been progressing reasonably nicely until I hit those drills. I didn't stand a chance. I think the problem is that they test memorisation as much language knowledge. For example: Speaker: 他有几个姐姐，几个哥哥？ 一，三 (How many older sisters and older brothers does he have? 1, 3) You: 他有一个姐姐，三个哥哥。 (He has one older sister and three older brothers.) Now, I know the vocabulary and the grammar, but by the time I get to the second half of my response, I can't remember whether he has three older brothers, four fathers or 4.65 dogs. Has anyone had this experience with FSI? Did you just keep soldiering on until you could perform the drills perfectly, or did you eventually move on, realising that it was a problem with the drill's format and that you knew the vocabulary and grammar well enough? However, I know that I have improved a lot. Yesterday, as I was listening to a fast, two-minute dialogue (albeit one that uses a small vocabulary) for a comprehension exercise, I remember thinking, "Wow, I can understand this word for word. Ten days ago I didn't know much more than 'ni hao ma'." Win. Assimil After working on FSI pretty intensively, Assimil just seems laughably slow and easy. As I have quite a bit of time until early January, I'm considering going at two lessons per day for as long as I can manage it. I think it will help to be exposed to words that FSI hasn't covered yet, even if the audio is spoken ludicrously slowly. Overall I've been studying for several hours a day, adding audio cards for most new sentences into Anki. I now have 452 cards in Anki - this includes recognition and production cards for each sentence - and I know that I can't keep this pace going for long. I might even have to stop adding new cards completely for a while after I get busy again. But for now, while I have the time, I'm having far too much fun to hold back. Edited by LangWanderer on 18 December 2013 at 9:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
