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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 5140 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 89 of 107 05 February 2013 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
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I spoke a good amount of Chinese today. But honestly...I text sooo much more Chinese! In the past, I never formally asked a Chinese if he or she would like to be a language exchange partner. Actually, I did, but only at first. Recently, the Chinese individuals that I talk with are actually people that I simply "just talked to" in the past. I asked them of no agenda； I did not ask them to become language exchange partners. But I did ask them for their phone number, and we became friends instead....and this is really paying off because they seem to want to talk with me more, instead of spend a lot of time explaining the language. Maybe this only worked because I am in the USA. I might get a lot of weird looks if I am asking complete strangers (in China) for their phone number, eh? :)
I received New Practical Chinese Reader (NPCR) volume 2 in the mail today. I am excited! And the REAL reason I signed on here is to give you all this link on "Uncle Davey" giving a lecture on the Gold List Method in Moscow. This is a really, really interesting lecture. Perhaps one day I will make a youtube video about how I use the Gold List Method for studying characters? It has helped me so much. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuLH7cGrHPs 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 90 of 107 02 March 2013 at 11:59am | IP Logged |
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* NPCR: at first I read through the final lesson just to see if Book 2 might be too
easy for me. I've worked through the first lesson (15), and yup: Book 2 is definitely too easy for my level. I plan on going through this book rather quickly once I figure out how to study it. Once again, irrationale's Mandarin log will be referenced! * Gold List Method: I now have about 4 matured lists...sweet! I still have many lists to distill, and many, MANY more head lists to create. I am slowly forming a habit to get myself to work on the Gold Lists, and so far that habit involves the weekends, coffee, and different environments (home, coffee shop, Italian eatery, etc). I also created a 4-video series called "Gold List Method for Mandarin Chinese". I might add more videos to this later, but the video shows how I now distill my head lists. In the past I wrote up some processes (the workflow diagrams referenced in previous logs) and over time I abandoned some conventions, added another process after distillations, etc. This is all exposed in the videos located on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/robertgenito * ANKI / Pleco: ** I'm now 1/3 through the McGraw Hill's illustrated dictionary. I cannot wait to scour my new 4000+ word picture dictionary! ** I have 784 entries in my Pleco SRS flash card system. One day the rest of these will become head lists for my Gold List books. However, I am getting to the point where context is becoming more and more important.... ** As for the Directions module of FSI, I found out how I will continue to make audio flash cards on my new system setup, which is the Linux operating system with the Audacity sound editing software, rather than Mac OSX with Logic software. I greatly miss OSX and Logic already! I REALLY need to practice language drills more, because even my pronunciation has slipped. I must get the pronunciation muscles back in shape! Furthermore ... I really need to continue challenging myself! Getting through the massive illustrated dictionaries AND FSI's Directions materials is that challenge. I fear that if I do not learn and drill newer structures of speaking, then I will have less chances to use the new vocabulary.... Edited by aerozeplyn on 02 March 2013 at 11:59am 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 91 of 107 30 March 2013 at 3:57am | IP Logged |
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Welp, I am sad... FSI Language Courses.org's website hasn't been working for almost a
week :( There's gotta be a copy of FSI's Mandarin course somewhere online... Throughout the last few weeks, I work with ANKI and Pleco SRS flash cards about 20 minutes a day. Maybe 30 minutes. I'd say on average I'll sit down and spend 1 hour on inputting vocabulary into ANKI (from McGraw Hill's book), and another hour on distilling head lists for my Gold List book. Of course, I'm still looking at Chinese writings online (Facebook, QQ, iOS apps, etc), and I hold a Mandarin conversation whenever the opportunity arises. I came here to say that I have definitely hit an amazing point in my learning, and I have to say: my reading and writing skills have truly sky-rocketed. Those skills have exploded, and I definitely attribute it to the Gold List and working with a categorized, illustrated dictionary. The illustrated dictionary really helped me relate characters to one another. I can now "see" more "associative" meanings to these many radicals. This is awesome. The Gold List method has especially proven awesome. Seriously, I barely spend 30 minutes a day studying, and I do it in a very scattered fashion. Once a week I sit down and focus...and my results have still been awesome! I feel sorry for people spending hours and hours doing ANKI flash cards their whole life, or people who use SRS flash cards for learning characters. Honestly, I feel like a slacker, but I also feel happy, productive, and it's working. The Gold List method is seriously where it's at. I now completely understand, and agree with, what a former teacher said: "You only need to mindfully write a character 3 times to memorize it for life." Of course, I still have a lifetime to test out this idea, but honestly, I might modify that to say you only need to mindfully write a character 3-6 times in order to remember it long-term. Some characters are just harder to get into your long-term memory...and that just happens :) Anyways, when I sat down to write some simple thoughts (or a grocery list), it is quite amazing to watch the characters come out of my hand. It's weird because I never consciously forced myself to write these characters, so basically: I feel possessed by a demon or something :) I'm on page 68/150 for the McGraw Hill's book, and I'm still distilling Gold Lists. Soon I'll be making more and more head-lists, and of course searching for more ways to speak Mandarin with others. I now tell people that I speak Mandarin. Because well....I speak it. Not proficiently, but proficiency is finally in the near distance! Passive listening, using iMandarinPod.com, and watching the TV series 汉语快乐 will continue in my past time as well! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4512 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 92 of 107 30 March 2013 at 5:01am | IP Logged |
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It is so encouraging to read your log! I am very interested in how much success you are having with characters
through the Goldlist method. If you could do a video explaining how you use it to learn characters, or even just a written break down, that would be awesome. I have looked over your log and I am going to try following the flow lists you gave. Excited to see if this method works for me! 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 93 of 107 30 March 2013 at 10:19am | IP Logged |
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Thanks JS :) try searching google on a video for how to use the gold list method. I posted a link somewhere
within a few pages ago. Expect to sit down for about an hour of lecture to learn how to do it, and how it will help. It's not a complex method, but it is a little awkward to explain with words. The time you invest in learning it will be very, very rewarding! And my recent videos about using this method with Mandarin will make much more sense :) good luck! 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 94 of 107 19 August 2013 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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A few months ago I finally caved-in and bought a new macbook. And then I caved-in (earlier today) and bought
Logic Pro ... FINALLY I have Logic again! For those of you who use Audacity because it's free... the amount of time you save with Logic is worth every penny. Here are some keyboard shortcuts that I constantly use, and they save me a ton of time! * hold Command: Marquee Tool * hold Control after clicking/dragging to use Marquee tool or any other tool: Selection no longer snaps to grid * Click selection after using Marquee Tool: creates a new audio region (for editing) * Double click audio region: opens audio editor * Control + P (in audio editor): adjust the "speed" of the audio. For FSI, I typically speed up audio by 25%. To do this, change "Destination" value to 25%, and click "Process and Paste" (Pre-listen doesn't work). * Arrow keys left/right (arrange window): move between audio regions * Shift + ENTER: move the audio cursor to the beginning of the selected audio region * SPACE: play/stop audio playback * Control + B: bounce the selected region to disc. I should seriously make a video about this....I bet it'd be way more helpful than text -.- So I am very happy that I got Logic again. And I finally created new audio flash cards, resuming from FSI Module 4 (Directions). Wow! It has been soooo long since I've done this. Ever since I didn't have a mac (and Logic Pro), I didn't even feel like using FSI...knowing that I wouldn't get as much out of FSI as opposed to having audio flash cards for supplement. However, last week I did work with FSI's directions module while I was in the car on a mini road trip. Although the lack of writing the past nearly 6 months, I did manage to use/practice Mandarin at least once a day. Last month I went to (and stayed in) Flushing, NY twice. Flushing seems much more like a little China. When comparing to China town in NYC, NYC's China town is almost like Disney's Epcot center...it just doesn't feel real and organic. Other things I did to keep my Mandarin from fading are... * Using ANKI. * Listening to RFA chinese podcasts. I really like this "妇幼 _ _ " show. It sounds happy. * More "learn" chinese youtube channels * Reading Chinese friends' Facebook pages. This is literally a gold mine @_@ Oh yes, and from going to Flushing, I've made it a point to spend more time looking at traditional characters. Most characters in Flushing were ALL traditional...I rarely saw simplified. I'm really not sure which I would've started with: simplified or traditional. Other than that, I am once again motivated to learn more Mandarin! It's time to finish FSI Module 4 and the first Chinese Vocab book, which has given me significant character recognition and vocabulary usage. 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 95 of 107 29 August 2013 at 12:19pm | IP Logged |
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I distilled a couple Gold Lists. In fact, my YouTube channel now has a documented example of going through a
mature head list, and distilling it into an even-more-distilled list :) I'm uploading the final video now... http://youtube.com/robertgenito Examining Facebook Chinese posts is working out well...I'm feeling like a stalker, too. FSI directions module 4 is going well, I'm more than half-way through the module, and I'm enjoying Logic's help to make audio flash cards quickly :) I gotta admit, it really takes discipline for me to go through FSI. I'm sure any of my log readers could tell. On another note, even as I write today, FSI has truly been a great help. Nearly anything that I can say, hear, or express in a "fluent" manner stems from FSI. I'm happy that I'm not stubborn about which way is the way *I* learn languages, because if I were, I think I would've greatly missed out on everything FSI has given me. I've just heard too many people say variations of "oh I don't like FSI" or "that's not how I learn languages". Well, to be frank to them: who cares if you don't like it? who cares if you don't learn languages that way? Isn't your goal to learn a language? And wouldn't you rather not waste time? The reward of rapid improvement feels awesome and is completely worth it, so suck it up and use FSI :) I'm now on page 76/150 for the McGraw Hill's book. Going through this illustrated dictionary has been AWESOME for my reading and general understanding. Even though I saw it before, now I'm starting to REALLY see why Chinese is called a very logical language. I also figured out a way that I like to go through New Practical Chinese Reader: I simply just read through it (out loud...EVERYTHING!) and add things I don't know to my "reading material" ANKI deck. When I reach the Drill section, I do just that: practice the drills about a dozen times just to really get my muscle memory going. As for the ANKI deck, I have a "reading material" deck for NPCR (and other books) that has 4 fields: English Definition, Chinese example sentence (the key word is replaced with "~"), Chinese Key word characters, Pinyin. Card 1 has English Definition and Chinese example sentence on the front, and Chinese key word character and Pinyin on the back. Card 2 has Chinese key word character and example sentence on the front; Pinyin and the English Definition on the back. This is working out excellent. I'm listening to 旺福 (Wang4 Fu2) right now. They're also known as "Wonfu"; I believe it's the English community that uses this name. I LOVE this band @_@ 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 96 of 107 19 September 2013 at 7:39am | IP Logged |
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My reading and writing skills are doing awesome. For example, while reading some NPCR, many things "clicked" and
I found more understanding when reviewing readings that I had read previously. As for my speaking skills, they need more work of course. But now I *really* need to work on my listening skills. My listening skills seemed much better before (last year and the year before), and I believe that is because I... 1) established a solid "feel" for the language with passive listening. (however, i'll admit this has little impact on active listening) 2) I was constantly creating audio flash cards (I do this about half as much now) 3) I was actively working on FSI's listening tapes (the C1 and C2 tapes). I believe the hardest part about FSI's "drill tapes" is probably related to my listening. Overall, I plan on working on all of these skills at once, but my additional strategy to overcome my lacking listening skills are: 1) Talk with natives more often. I've been super lazy with this since some of my Chinese friends moved away...but for a start, I signed up to take 1 hour Chinese lessons twice a week. My first lesson was today, and I stayed pretty strict in telling my teacher to not write/type ANYTHING (unless I ask). That and I ask her to repeat what she's said....a LOT. Unless I understand 100%, I ask her to repeat. 2) I'm almost done with FSI's Module 4 ... I just need to hammer out those drill tapes and listening tapes. These's help. 3) Every day that I don't do one of the FSI modules, I'll give myself 30-60 minutes for listening to podcasts or TV shows and write down the pinyin for everything I hear. I hope this will be a good practice ... does anyone have any advice on this? I'm gunna go listen to a podcast at iMandarinPod.com right now :) ...if my brain doesn't hurt, then it's too easy for my current level!!! Gotta push myself... Edited by aerozeplyn on 19 September 2013 at 7:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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