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Mandarin Journal, after 1 year | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 81 of 107 02 October 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged |
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Sooo... it's been a while. I've had a pretty bad summer, but that summer is quickly burying itself in the past. My speaking is definitely rusty; however, I did manage to continue watching the family sitcom 快乐汉语, watch Mandarin movies, and listen to quite a few podcasts. Within the past couple of months, I've probably watched more Mandarin YouTube videos such as the OMG美语 series. Good stuff. I feel like my continued listening really helped keep me involved in the world of Mandarin ... I will recommend that to someone who doesn't have the time to actually put in the work to study :)
This guy's videos inspired me as well :) https://www.youtube.com/user/gaoyoude1 I have done so much listening that I really feel confident to rapidly require the language--I just gotta get myself to speak MORE!!! Anyhoo, I'm going to disregard the fact that I am rusty and just push forward: continue where I left off with FSI and my Gold Lists. The past couple of days I worked through the FSI money module's review tapes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 82 of 107 10 October 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
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While I am slowly getting myself back into the normal routine of ANKI flash cards, FSI
tapes, and soon the Gold Lists ... I am also making it a point to hold one Mandarin conversation every day. This will be a challenge, but it is inspiring me to find more people to talk with. In just a few days I already feel better about this choice. Along with speaking with someone every day, I'm also making it a point to listen actively at some point in the day; however, this time will be separate from a time where I engage in conversation :) 白洁's youtube channel (common phrases for the younger crowd): http://www.youtube.com/user/OMGmeiyu The video that greatly inspired me to talk more :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITzFRlVhMVs A few guys walk around a mall and find people to speak with. A related video with them talks about "laoshu"'s methods for approaching strangers of different languages to talk with. For about the first few minutes people don't seem too excited to talk with them...but the video gets better :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 83 of 107 23 October 2012 at 8:06am | IP Logged |
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I've been doing pretty well with having 1 Mandarin conversation a day :D Sometimes it's a 2 minute conversation, sometimes 10 minutes, and actually I've managed to have some as much as a few hours. Some are in person at a restaurant, some over Skype, some over phone, etc. Finding people who do not speak much English is super helpful. So far I've managed to converse and make new friends just by asking people who appeared Chinese (hehe) simple non-threatening questions, followed by some variation of "Where are you from?"
And I've realized: Wow! I can speak WAYYYY more Mandarin than I thought I could. Holding more and more conversations is also showing me where problems are in my verbal communication. These "problems" present quite an opportunity, and I tell ya: I cannot WAIT to get moving with more FSI--especially the Directions module! Also, a short-term goal of mine is to finish inputting new vocabulary words into ANKI from McGraw-Hill's Chinese Illustrated Dictionary. I really like this book. And later the entries will go into my Gold List :) So lately, as I am very busy with a rough transition in my life, I am still sticking to: ANKI every day, 1 conversation every day, passive listening, and watching Mandarin-speaking youtube videos :) In fact, I've also stopped going to my Sunday mandarin class a few weeks ago because I felt it didn't have speaking opportunities...but actually it does! I must have not been thinking clearly. I shall return to the classes! And I cannot wait to get more FSI in... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4386 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 84 of 107 26 October 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged |
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When I was growing up Pimsleur & Rosetta Stone had not yet come to the market. The past
6 months I've been keeping up with my Mandarin while learning French. It is OK for people who are starting off with a textbook or a piece of software. I think when you get to an advanced level you'd like more than just the standardized greetings & replies like: "Hello, how are you?"... "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" or in Mandarin: "你好嗎?"... "好, 謝謝, 你呢?" It is more common for Chinese to ask for your place of origin: "你從那裡來的" or your 鄉下 (your hometown in China) if you're Chinese. First, how often do you get into a conversation with somebody that begins with a standardized greeting? Not very frequent. The last time I was at the airport in Houston somebody asked me (in Mandarin) about taking the airport shuttle. The conversation started / would have started something like this: "請問你..." or "May I ask you..." The second thing is that you don't want to be translating between languages word-for-word. Otherwise "請問你" would have translated as "Please ask you" in English or the other way around: "May I ask you" as: "可以我問你" which although understandable is a bit incorrect grammatically. And there may be different ways of saying the same things like asking for how much money at a store: "這個要多少錢 / 幾塊錢?" 要 can be substituted for 是 the sentence would still be understandable. I do watch a lot of TV series that are available free online. Only by listening to different ways a language is applied you can push yourself up to the next level. If you find the conversations hard to follow you can start with the children series first or comedies. The vocabulary tend to be simpler and the conversations are not as intense. In a comedy there are pauses in between dialogues for the audience to laugh and at the same time tend not to be boring. I really like the 梁细妹 Liang Xi Mei comedy series from Singapore. There is not a lot of dialogue and each episode is centered on just 1 theme. The other series I like is the cartoon 大耳朵图图 daerduotutu from China. Again each is based on 1 theme. I always keep a dictionary handy or an online one open. When I hear 1 word or phrase I'm not sure I'd look it up... You won't be able to talk to people every day but online videos and DVDs you do have at your finger tips. Without the Chinese drama series I wouldn't be picking up new vocabulary and 4-character phrases as easily. You can find many with Chinese or English subtitles. If there is a spot that isn't clear I'd stop the video and run it over a few times. The other thing I find useful is instead of looking for videos of an English- speaker learning Chinese, I'd find videos of a Chinese-speaker learning English and pick up Chinese phrases that way. Edited by shk00design on 26 October 2012 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 85 of 107 03 December 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged |
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shk00design: thank you for your input.
Recently, well maybe a month ago, I purchased a featured bundle for Pleco, the iOS application. I also purchased an additional dictionary for Pleco--the American Born Chinese (ABC) one. Out of all of the features, I find myself mostly using the Flashcards feature along with the ABC dictionary. This is quite convenient, and VERY useful! For example, today I spoke some mandarin with a sushi chief and he taught me 2 words. Those immediately went into Pleco's flashcard system :) When I get into reading some Chinese books, I can see myself getting more use out of Pleco's optical character reader's flashcard feature. So I feel quite happy about that, and I wanted to spread the word! A lot of people that knew my mandarin level ~3 months ago comment that I sound much more fluent. I think it has been about 6 months since I really buckled down on FSI, and I really need to continue that! But for now, what has REALLY helped has been talking face-to-face with other natives. I have some Chinese buddies that I text or instant-message back-and- forth as well, and to get the most out of this, I will read (out loud) their messages. I furthermore try to formulate my message out loud before typing. Regardless, live communication is king. My current progress: * I'm on page 20 of 150 (about) in the McGraw-Hills vocabulary book...so much vocabulary to learn! That number is about 200 vocabulary words out of the book's total of 1,500. Thankfully this is vocabulary that doesn't require context! * My Pleco flash card statistics show that I have 220 cards total, and have "learned" 130 with an average of 2 per day. * I distilled a couple more Gold Lists. That method never fails to impress me. My main focus: finish the McGraw vocabulary book and develop a study routine/habit again. The only habitual study I have so far is the rather impulsive phone method of ANKI and Pleco flash-cards. This happens ever moment that I have some extra time. Overall, I feel good. However, I do feel unsure and apprehensive about a method to remember how to write Chinese characters. Perhaps this is something I will never acquire--unless I get into writing Chinese more often. With today's technology, I barely even write English! The most writing I have done lately has been for therapeutic reasons...writing about complex matters, and even a touch of poetry :) So I'll have to think about whether the ability to hand-write characters is something I really want to pursue...who knows? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 86 of 107 27 December 2012 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
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I just finished inputting the Chinese family tree into Anki. It was painful. But I do
want to mention that my non-audio flash cards now ALWAYS consist of 3 fields: the English definition, chinese character(s), and associated pinyin. Around when I first created flashcards for the McGraw-Hill's Chinese Illustrated Dictionary I also forced myself to learn how to automatically make "Forward" and reverse flash cards. Basically, when I input a matching definition, character, and pinyin, Anki will automatically create both: 1) "Forward" card: the English definition is the question. The answer is the Chinese character with the pinyin underneath. 2) The reverse card: the Chinese character is the question. The answer is the pinyin followed by the English definition. If you are not doing this with your non-audio Anki flash cards now, I *strongly* suggest you create a test deck and figure out how to do this :D Actually, incase I need to refer to it in the future, here's how you would create such decks if you're still using version 1.x of Anki: 1) Click File -> New (creates a new deck) 2) Name your deck. 3) Click Add Material to start. 4) Enter some text for the "Front" field (this will allow you to perform the next step) 5) Change the card layout by clicking the "Card Layout" button (to the left of the "bold" text format button). 6) Click the "Fields" tab. 7) Click the "Add" button and type "Pinyin" as the field name. This will be the always- available Pinyin information for your Anki answer cards. 8) Click "Close" to return to the card input. 9) On the top-right, click the button that says "Forward" (which is next to the "Cards:" label) 10) Click "Reverse". At this point, no matter what cards you input into Anki, Anki will automatically create a front and back version of that card. Yay! Except wait, we need to define which fields the "front" and "back" card consist of: 1) Click "Card Layout" again. By default, the label "Templates that will be created:" should have the value "Forward". That's fine for now. 2) On the "Answer" field, click your mouse somewhere to the right of "{{Back}}", but make sure you click INSIDE the white text area! 3) Hit the Enter (or Return) key to bring your text cursor to the next line, and type " {{Pinyin}}". Do not type the double quotes! 4) Click "Close". 5) Now this is very important: finish inputting the card fields and then click the "Add" button to create the actual card. You will need to do this so that you can access an important window that will allow you to define the Reverse card. This is a minor flaw with the previous version of Anki...so just follow these instructions if you are using Anki 1-point-something. 6) Click "Close" again to get out of the "Add Items" window. 7) Click the "Browse Items" button. This is the button with the hour-glass icon. 8) Click a card, any card. 9) Click the "Card Layout" button that you clicked much earlier. 10) For the "Templates that will be created:" label, change the value to "Reverse". 11) On the "Answer" field, click your mouse somewhere to the right of "{{Front}}", but make sure you click INSIDE the white text area! 12) Hit the Enter (or Return) key to bring your text cursor to the next line and type " {{Pinyin}}. Do not type the double quotes! 13) Click the "Close" button. 14) Add all the cards you want! 15) When you are done creating cards, close out the Browse Items window and do the normal things you would do :D When you input cards, put the English definition into the "Front" field and the Chinese characters into "Back" field. Of course, input the characters' pinyin into the new "Pinyin" field...and you're done! If you already have many cards, there's a way to generate "Reverse" cards. At this point, I recommend you search the web :) I hope this guide is useful; I know I will enjoy it when the time comes! Anyhoo, back to good information about the Chinese family tree... I used to avoid learning about the Chinese family tree because there is a LOT of different names for family members compared to English. Usually the English definitions of family member titles are things like, "paternal grandfather", "dad's sister's husband", "your cousin on your dad's older brother's side that is your same sex and older than you", etc...you get the point. Here are some things that I just did that I know will really help a lot: "Paternal Grandfather" 爷爷/祖父: instead of referring to this by definition, I decided to make it more personal. To me, these chinese terms no longer mean "paternal grandfather"; instead, they mean "Grandpa Pat", which is the actual title that I call my dad's dad. This allows me to easily associate my "Grandpa Pat" with the chinese terms. "Dad's sister's husband" 姑父: to simplify my understanding, I think of this title as "Aunt Ellie's husband", or "Uncle So-and-so". "Your cousin on your dad's older brother's side that is your same sex and older than you" ... Just a warning: if you are studying the family tree, the following will make sense. If you aren't studying the chinese family tree, or if you have not studied it so far, then this won't make sense because I'm not going to go into a ton of detail! Well, first of all, I already understand "older brother" 哥哥, "younger brother" 弟弟, "older sister" 姐姐, and "younger sister" 妹妹, so this term is somewhat simplified to 哥，弟， 姐，and 妹. So I need to imagine that my cousins are my brothers and sisters; however, their "title" will start with a word that defines what kind of cousin they are: For cousins beloning to any of Dad's brothers, prefix with: 堂 (tang2) For children of Dad's sister or Mother's, prefix with: 表 (biao3) So 表哥 will be a cousin that is my Dad's sister's child, or a child of one of my Mother's siblings! Further more, the suffix “哥” gives the information that the cousin is a male older than I. In summary, figuring out the chinese family tree really needed to be simplified and become more personal. I believe this trick allows me to remember these terms better. Other than that, here's my following progress: * Page 29 of ~150 for the vocabulary book (McGraw-Hill's) * Reading more chinese stories every other day and inputting EVERY unknown word into Pleco's flashcard system. I now have 424 cards, and I plan on inputting these as Gold List entries in the future. Perhaps I should start reading Chinese newspapers soon? * Nearly every day I converse over text and/or phone with a chinese native friend. All unknown words go into Pleco. * During road trips on these recent holidays, I am listening to tapes on the FSI Directions module. * Every night, when I lay down to sleep, I watch and actively listen to movies in Mandarin on my iPad. The following iPad video software is very useful: PPS影音 (PPS ying3yin1), 风行电影 (feng1xing2 dian4ying3), and 千寻影视 (qian1xun2 ying3shi4). 乐视影视 (le4shi4 ying3shi4) used to be my favorite, but I gave up on this because it is restricting me of access because I live in the USA. Grrr. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5095 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 87 of 107 27 December 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
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Ha, I did the same thing you did with the family tree names, calling them by person
instead of position. gufu = Uncle Ted, etc. It's the only way I could keep it straight. So you're not alone! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 88 of 107 04 February 2013 at 9:25am | IP Logged |
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proudft: nice! :) attaching the family tree with my family members really helped...a lot! we need to spread the word and tell people about this.
Within the last month or so, I'm spending most of my time listening to and reading Chinese. My reading skills are boosting heavily, and I attribute this to 2 things: 1) putting EVERY "word" (characters) I don't know into Pleco's SRS flash card system, and 2) Using the Gold List method. I am still a HUGE fan of the Gold List method...it is highly rewarding, and seems extremely efficient. Please remember that I am using the Gold List method to specifically remember how to WRITE (produce) Chinese characters. The method is a great way to learn the characters without arduous, rote learning... I'd like to also mention that during the time it takes me to create a Gold List "head list", or the time to distil a list, I am using this time to also listen passively. So I am continuing to work on boosting my Chinese vocabulary. I am happy with this progress. I also purchased another Chinese picture dictionary...these things are awesome! This one is titled "My Chinese Picture Dictionary 汉语图解词典" (han4yu3 tu2jie3 ci2dian3 - ISBN: 978-7-100-06079-0). The book boasts "...units presented in meaningful contexts", "142 graphic topics covering all aspects of daily life", "more than 4,000 commonly used words..." etc. I AM SO EXCITED @_@ But first I must finish my other vocabulary book, which is also awesome. Here's where I stand today: * Page 43 of ~150 for the vocabulary book (McGraw-Hill's) * Pleco's flashcard system has 677 entries. These will all DEFINITELY be Gold List head lists. * Everyday I converse in Chinese at least via text. I only get the chance to speak about 3-4 times a week. * I usually actively listen to Chinese when I am about to go to sleep. I often hear a new word/phrase that I do not understand, and that immediately goes into Pleco. This is super helpful because Pleco is on my phone...and my phone is usually close to me. * I ordered the 2nd book for New Practical Chinese Reader. I haven't exactly worked through the first book, but honestly it looks way too easy. I'm feeling very good about my reading and writing skills. But soon I will need to really crack down on speaking again. Telling someone directions in Chinese is a great weakness of mine, and I still look forward to the directions module in FSI. *Sigh*, I no longer have access to an Apple computer, but I am running the Ubuntu operating system on a new laptop of mine. Soon I will just have to bite the bullet and create audio flash cards using the Audacity application... I think the only thing holding me back is the fact that I'd rather not be on my computer as much... In closing, I think the only current problem I need to solve for learning Mandarin is how I manage my time and discipline. How will I eventually develop the habit of *practising* and progressing with speaking, listening, reading, and writing every single day? This sounds to be at least 2 hours every day. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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