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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 25 of 107 24 January 2011 at 9:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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Earlier today I finished Unit 11 of Pimsleur's Level 3 Mandarin. Over the week, I probably spent over 10 hours
creating audio flash cards for Anki. Practicing about 1 hour a day--using the flash cards--is really helping my speaking and listening ability. In fact, my chinese classes started up again saturday morning, and I could definitely understand more of what the teacher was saying. Basically, I felt a less...lost. Hehe. So it felt great to have significantly more clues as to what the class was about. I love the audio flash card method so much....that I am still neglecting FSI, NPCR, and I only created ONE head list for my gold list. Basically...I am now on a mission to figure out how to manage this knowledge and continue down a steady, consistent path. Actually, that really isn't a priority compared to actually drilling and learning the material, but I will need to at least stay consistent and organized. One thing I would like to point out is the drilling I am doing for the flash cards. Sometimes I come across an audio dialog, phrase, or sentence from Chinese Pod that feels a little beyond my level--especially the Intermediate lessons! Once I cut out the audio, put it into Anki, and find out that Anki wants to quiz me on that highly unfamiliar audio card, I then break the mandarin sentence down into small phrases. I drill all of the sentence's small phrases from memory--no looking at any text!!! This helps me better learn all of the different mouth/nasal/whatever movements, combinations, and transitions that are necessary to compose the sentence. These types of drills are noticeably helping me "speak" what I think, rather than thinking about how i'm going to speak. And now I look forward to another week of Pimsleur, phrase drills, flash cards with Anki, and lots of passive listening :D *edit: fixed a typo that may have confused any readers. whenever i edit a previous log, it is for this purpose btw :) Edited by aerozeplyn on 22 March 2011 at 8:29am 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 26 of 107 23 February 2011 at 8:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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alrighty...so it has been almost a month since i last wrote in here. I've had such great progress with my audio flash card drills, and i have been so busy lately, that i have only worked with my audio flash cards and listening to Chinese Pod. Oh ya, and the Chinese language class at my local university. But Nothing else!! So far under Chinese Pod's "manage lessons" section, I have marked 10 newbie lessons, 7 elementary lessons, and 1 intermediate lesson as studied.
And actually, out of these last 4 weeks... about a little more than 2 weeks i actually utilized for study. Lately I've been going through a real tough time....life happens. However, as a result of the horribly tough times, i did get an emotional impact with some Mandarin words/phrases. Hehe :) in fact, there are a few times i caught myself thinking in Mandarin. These thoughts are in the Mandarin language that reflects my level of course, but considering the fact that I've exercised to not "think in English" (but in pictures/animations) over the years, I guess that's cool that I can attach my thoughts with Mandarin words better :) I am also sure that I have had at least a total of 2 dreams in mandarin. I also managed to set aside some time to extract the audio from Pimsleur level 3 lesson 10 into ANKI the other day. While I am extracting audio clips for audio flashcard use, I also find that I am getting more time to practice listening. For the rest of this month and the following month, i'm hoping to... 1) Start distilling some of my Gold Lists. I eventually want to put the character versions of my audio flash cards into my Gold List. I will have to do it at some point...and even thought I may not write chinese characters all the time, the Gold List method really helped my recognition!!! 2) Finish a few more Pimsleur lessons. At this point I feel like I have received the limit of knowledge and skill I can get from the Pimsleur lessons; however, it would still feel good to completely finish Pimsleur :) what a milestone! 3) Create more audio flash cards!!!! I really wanna get through as many of Chinese Pod's "elementary" lessons so that I eventually understand more of the Intermediate lessons. Creating audio flash cards from a Chinese Pod lesson's "Expansion" is my current gold mine for contextual language acquisition. For the record: I really like how Chinese Pod's lesson levels gradually use more and more Mandarin :) Praxis really has a good system going on. their chinesepod.com website's only downfall is teaching a student how to progress their skills based on the Chinese POD methods and contents. This is just lacking when you consider the most efficient learning systems have 1) what to practice, 2) how to practice, 3) how to progress. Also, if Chinese Pod offered ANKI downloads for audio flashcards??? That would be SWEET! In closing...I'll probably write here again in 4-6 weeks. This log is cool and all, and definitely good for me to do, but man I just wish there was more time in my days :) Maybe I should just be only working on erasing that "need more time" greed :) Edited by aerozeplyn on 23 February 2011 at 8:23am 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 27 of 107 22 March 2011 at 8:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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...and YES, having a "need for more time" for studying is definitely a greed. my body needs to sleep sometime, and i shouldn't deprive it of that. especially other things close to me...
so anyways, i recently paused my Chinese Pod account since i won't be focusing on Chinese Pod context lessons this month. Chinese Pod helped a LOT...very very very much; however, I am jumping back to the structured learning of Pimsleur (gotta FINALLY finish that thing--it will just feel good) and FSI. I decided to do this because the more mandarin i am learning and speaking, the more I feel like I need to reinforce some basics. Today I learned a VERY cool trick from a Chinese teacher at the local university. She is from the southern portion of China, and she decided to share this "tonal" trick for me. She told me that many foreigners slack on the tones just enough to make them sound "foreign", even though their other pronunciation may be good. So here's the tone trick--with the initial requirement of a short phrase, sentence, or just a word to say. first you hum the tone--focusing on the muscles of your vocal chords. Then you repeat the phrase as you keep those same vocal muscles in mind. You strive to keep the same feel in your throat for when you hummed the tone as you are (afterwords) speaking the phrase. Maybe I shouldn't quote her on that since this is just my version of what she said; however, this gave me a great realization that i feel immediately helped improve my pronunciation practice. Sooo here's my current study subjects so far: 3/19- went to Chinese class at the university. since the class is focusing on the Zhongwen book (book volume 7), i will follow along with them and study the materials that they are presenting. Right now we are on Chapter 6, and I am already building an ANKI deck out of these materials. unfortunately, I won't have audio to go along with these ANKI flashcards, but i am happy regardless :) 3/20- Pimsleur level 3 unit 12. even though this was a new unit for me, it was surprisingly easy. i also sped up the audio by 25% and put the least familiar terms into ANKI as audio flashcards. 3/21- Met with the Chinese teacher and asked questions regarding ch 6 of the Zhongwen book. More materials put into ANKI!!! Then I studied Pimsleur level 3 unit 13--which was a bit harder. Just now I finished cutting up the "least familiar" phrases from Pimsleur unit 9--putting them into ANKI as audio flash cards afterwords. So I am having fun :) I still have yet to get back to more of the Gold List Method stuff. That was a huge help for retaining what the characters looked like, and I could use that help again right about now :) Since I have put Chinese Pod on hold, there will no longer be a seemingly endless supply of interesting podcasts to listen to...back to work for me on my current materials!! :) Oh last thing, I've been watching 快乐汉语 (kuai4 le4 han4 yu3) at night to help aid in my passive listening. So far i've been ignoring most of the subtitles... but it is quite a helpful sitcom :) For other mandarin learners, I recommend you check out that show on tudou.com or youtube.com. 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 28 of 107 22 April 2011 at 10:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ahhh yes...i'm back. So I am having a fun time learning Mandarin :) I am just enjoying the process at this point.
I am almost 2/3 finished with Pimsleur's Mandarin Level 3. YES...I am still on Level 3. So far this level is pretty fun...it has focused a lot on getting me to make sentences and to understand these sentences in different ways. I am also about half-way done extracting Level 3's audio into audio flash cards. Audio flash cards with ANKI is still my best friend. Even though somedays I find myself a little behind with my ANKI cards, I still don't mind. I will just do what I can do for the day and continue later. Oh ya, and I found myself dreaming in mandarin again--only part of the dream. My listening skills have improved greatly, and I am very excited about this! I can listen to the most basic iMandarinPod's episodes that use ONLY the mandarin language, and I find myself understanding most of the podcast :) Sweet! I believe this is all due to me listening to the audio flash cards a lot, as well as lots of passive listening. Oh ya, watching 快乐汉语 (kuai4 le4 han4 yu3) on youtube is also a big help--especially when I am only glancing at the subtitles every once in a while. So I have a cool routine down (finally) that is making me happy. I am glad to have developed this habit :) 1) Every day I open up ANKI and review my audio flash cards. I am still doing very well with the phrases I extracted from the audio review mp3s at Chinese POD...so this makes me happy with ANKI's scheduling for long-term memory :) Usually I only review in ANKI from between 15 to 35 minutes a day. Sometimes (but rarely) I will use ANKI for a full hour. My ANKI practice translates to about 100-225 audio cards a day. 2) About every day I am doing 1 Pimsleur unit. 3) Sometimes I skip doing the Pimsleur unit for one day, and instead I will extract a few lessons from Pimsleur's audio. I have gotten very used to my procedure for extracting audio... - A) First, I will import the lesson mp3 into Apple Logic and speed up the audio by 25% -- I also set the pitch to remain about the same. (I don't want any chick-munk voices!) - B) quickly listen to the lesson that I imported and "cut out" ALL the phrases that i am not perfect at reciting. When these phrases are cut out, they are moved to an audio track underneath the main mp3 audio track. - C) After that step, I no longer need to listen to the audio to perform the remaining tasks...So now I will put on a saved Chinese Pod lesson, an FSI comprehension tape, or a podcast from iMandarinPodcast. (great site: http://www.imandarinpod.com -- many thanks to Snowflake for this link!) - D) With the audio in the background, I will perform the tedious tasks of "fitting" the audio. By "fitting" the audio, I mean that I am cutting silence from the edges of the audio, or I am making sure I didn't accidentally cut into the middle of the speaker vocalizing a word/phrase. - E) With the audio still in the background for my passive listening, I will then bounce each audio slice individually. This used to take me a while until I assigned Command (Apple) + B to my bounce keyboard shortcut. Hehe. - F) By this point I must turn off the background audio :( Now I must listen to the bounced mp3s and put them into ANKI. 4) Somedays I focus on an FSI course...but not often. These FSI modules are just so helpful really...I long to do more of them! 5) When I go to sleep, I always put on a podcast that only includes the mandarin language. This includes iMandarinPod, a disney movie in mandarin, or the "AWR Mandarin" podcast from iTunes. (The CMNHK_WSVX show.) Even though I do not consider myself a religious person, I do listen to this religious podcast specifically because the individuals voice is very kind. I feel that this relaxes me further and helps me pull more from the language. (I eventually realized they were about Christianity from my studies and passive/active listening practice.) So here is some other good news: For this next week I have dedicated a good portion of my time to finish Pimsleur. And I really mean it this time :) This is because I have been spending a lot of time on this same material because I like feeling nice and comfortable with this information. Basically, I got stuck with just enjoying having a good, solid foundation on this elementary level of speaking. Maybe this is because I am happy with my progress; however, spending time on the forums here under a thread about accelerated improvement has inspired me to bang out some good study time. Not to mention...this saturday will be the last day of my chinese class at the local university. This will be the last time that I am around native chinese speakers in person... some of them who are going back home, and I will miss them greatly. Thankfully there is Skype :D Also, I have decided to hopefully find some time to do my Gold List method with ONLY pinyin. Before I was doing this method with chinese characters, and this worked out very well for the couple (or few?) months that I did it. I really wanted to keep up with it, but due to my desire to just focus on the spoken language, I had to put the "kanji" Gold List aside. Sure, I could probably learn both writing and speaking at the same time...but I really want to focus on my spoken and listening skills for now. Many experienced members have suggested it to other members, and since I am looking to speak with Chinese individuals in-person, I need to keep focus here :) A Gold List using pinyin sounds like a great idea :D As far as really learning the characters, that will later be no problem since I will only have to memorize stroke orders and practice my reading often. I will write about that when I get to that point! :D 再见！ Edited by aerozeplyn on 26 April 2011 at 7:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5090 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 29 of 107 02 May 2011 at 8:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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ONE BIG ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR ME:
(no, i didn't finish pimsleur 3. stop making me feel like you want to know!!!) *caugh* so i have finally caught up with my Pimsleur audio flash cards. As in, i have created audio flash cards (for use with ANKI) for every Pimsleur Mandarin Level 3 track that i have studied. finally. this just makes me very happy because making audio flash cards is a lot of work, but it is GREATLY worth it! in fact, while listening to 2-star difficulty iMandarinPod.com podcasts, recently i found myself understanding a LOT more of the podcast (with the except of the intro/outro, this podcast is entirely in mandarin). i have even learned the meaning of new mandarin words--being described entirely in mandarin! :D this is definitely a first for me...so i'm happy :) so happy that i am very tempted to just drop FSI and Pimsleur and focus on iMandarinPod with my study time--BUT...i'm gunna stick with my plan to finish Pimsleur :) plus i have a little challenge...i need to "beat" Li Fei in the Pimsleur race ;) also, since others have cited FSI as something that has definitely helped them achieve fluency, i don't think i'll ever let myself abandon FSI. Anyhoo, but how did my ability jump to all of a sudden noticing--and feeling excited--about understanding most iMandarinPod 2-star-level podcasts? Being in a "mandarin speaking only" chinese class may have helped, and a lot of passive/active listening may have also helped, but i really think the strongest part that helped was constantly--even now--focusing on just the basics of the mandarin language. Setting up a goal for myself to finish creating audio flashcards for all currently-studied Pimsleur (level 3) units has really strengthened my foundation for these materials, and speeding all lessons up by 25% has helped me work towards listening at a faster pace--requiring me to memorize in order to understand! (maybe having a mindful mindset really helped most here.) creating the audio flash cards caused me to speak a lot for the same information, but also listen even more to that same information. (At this point my Pimsleur 3 deck has 613 cards.) From now on during "personal study time" of audio materials, i will keep my laptop close by, and i will study my audio materials using Logic's audio playback :) this way, i can "extract" audio using Logic as i am listening to the lesson. This extracted audio will just go onto another audio track so that i will know where to find the section of audio later. once i have finished a lesson, i will just go back and bounce (export) all slices of audio in that "extracted" audio track to files and then ANKI :) By the way, i am not sure if i mentioned this earlier, but since April 11th i have been keeping a shortened "Mandarin Progress" excel file. It is helping me focus on my progress using a few study materials. basically, the excel file's table has 4 columns of data now: Date, Pimsleur, FSI, and Short Comments. I will probably add a "mandarin pod" column soon :) Under "Date" i input the date of study, of course. Under the Pimsleur column i will type out a short note to remind myself of what sort of Pimsleur things i studied for that day. For example, "Level 3, unit 10" or "Reviewed unit 17, did unit 18." My FSI column is pretty much the same; it describes what i am studying that relates to FSI's materials. Over the past couple of weeks this has proved pretty useful as a central location to track my progress--especially compared with my previous, HORRIBLE method: writing notes on random pieces of paper in my car, kitchen, etc. As i wrote these random notes, i even then knew it wasn't a good idea for organizing my progress...lol. Another positive side to having a progress log is looking back at the "Short Comments" column. Sometimes, it serves as a reminder to what used to be a weakness in my past. Then i can reflect on that moment, and usually i will think, "ah yes, and now that task is easy." it is a good reminder that i am improving...which is often something easy to forget over a long period of time. Some of my "Short Comments" have ranged from "Ya, this biographic content is easy. I should just breeze thru this throughout the week."; "Workbook tapes are HARD O_O brain hurtz. do again later."; and "Only did ANKI review today. I should limit that shiz to 30 minutes." In case you don't have a centralized progress log, i strongly recommend you do it! (Anyone have any other ideas for tracking progress? besides of course a language learning log at this website.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5065 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 107 02 May 2011 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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hey Aero,
Nice log! I finished Pimsleur 3.15 last week, though not to your level of audio flashcard bliss . . . For me, if the word or phrase isn't in the TrainChinese database, I don't make a flashcard. Anyway, on to Unit 16 today. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5901 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 31 of 107 02 May 2011 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
On your Excel spreadsheet, consider tracking number of days doing say Pimsleur Level 3, FSI module 3, FSI module 4, etc.
Yup, isn't that great! I love it when it's all in Mandarin or the English is severely minimized.
Good luck on that one. I've dropped FSI again in favor of my 99-100% Mandarin CLO material. The amount of English is just too annoying. Sometimes even the beginning announcements in PopUpChinese or ChinesePod dialog only MP3s saying that it's whichever company is irritating. Edited by Snowflake on 03 May 2011 at 12:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Britomartis Groupie United States Joined 5751 days ago 67 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 32 of 107 02 May 2011 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I love CLO. I'm still at the level where they have plenty of English, but I peeked ahead and noticed that it very rapidly reduces English use. And even at the start, it has much less English than other podcasts. There was one I reviewed with just kept rambling in English unnecessarily. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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