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Facing Mandarin in Zen mode | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 15 31 December 2013 at 3:57pm | IP Logged |
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Hi all, I open also a log for Mandarin ;)
I won't participate to Total Annihilation Challenge with this language. The reason is simple: Mandarin is a very different beast. It's a really bad idea to face this language being in a hurry and demanding immediate results. I don't want to put any pressure on me but only taking the most fun possible out of this language learning process. So this is my strategy: - finish the Heisig book "Learning simplified Hanzi", both volumes, by learning how to write and the meaning of 3000 characters. I face this study in this way: first, I read the lesson about a certain number of characters (lesson 1 were 15, lesson 2 were 17), with the explanations - there is not any notes about the pronunciation - but it's good. Then I write on my workbook the characters with a small note with the meanings. The day after, In the following page, I fill for each characters a line with its character in order to transfer the knowledge from my head to my body (like playing piano after having took a look at the scores). Than loop, I do something else and later I learn the new characters and so on. - facing the whole FSI mandarin, one lesson per day (if needed, by repeating more times the same lesson). When I will finish doing this work, after some months of work, I think I will start with Assimil Mandarin and with some native resource. At that point I will have two disjointed capabilities that I will have to merge and put active study of grammar on it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 2 of 15 02 January 2014 at 1:08am | IP Logged |
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With today I learnt since now 50 characters.
I feel some trouble in remember all of them. I also started with FSI Chinese. Maybe I was tired but I had some problem in mentally translating from Chinese to English, I was trying to translate into Italian, thing that I want to avoid. If I had a best level in Dutch, probably I used that language (same for French) to do that work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 3 of 15 02 January 2014 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
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I did my homework also today... most of all: Mandarin is freakin' cool :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 4 of 15 05 January 2014 at 4:34pm | IP Logged |
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As I'm going through languages learning, I have to tune up my roadmap.
In this moment I feel overwhelmed by Mandarin (thing that I don't feel with the others). Doing a Heisig lesson per day is not manageable for me, I end up by feeling too much tired and I struggle with remembering all the characters, other than spending much more time than planned. Also, since I decided to put extra effort in Dutch to achieve basic fluency in 6 months, I also decided to postpone the spoken language learning after having finished to learn the 3000 characters of the two Heisig books. My strategy is now to slow up significantly my Mandarin learning pointing the most of reliable recalling. I finish Heisig, I'll do the FSI course and or the DLI one and maybe the Pimsleur while keep revise the 3000 characters and then I will put all together by starting Assimil, and after that I will start with native resources. This is my plan for Mandarin that can change every two days :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5951 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 15 05 January 2014 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
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Unless you have a really good memory for characters, plan on starting to read/skim graded readers or native material at/before hitting 700 characters. And don't stress about not knowing every single character/word. Edited by Snowflake on 05 January 2014 at 9:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 6 of 15 07 January 2014 at 7:12am | IP Logged |
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Hi, thank you very much for the advice.
I'm currently at 100 characters, I think I will take a couple of month to arrive at 700. But then I will know the single character, not an entire word... How can I study words then to be able to read native material? And with 700 characters I assume I can read native material intended for children, right? (sorry for the stupid question, what are graded readers?) EDIT: and then again, I imagine I need to know a little grammar to be able to understand what is going on, or am I wrong? thank you again Edited by tristano on 07 January 2014 at 7:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5951 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 15 07 January 2014 at 9:32pm | IP Logged |
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The "Chinese Breeze" and "Tales and Traditions" series are examples of graded readers. Heisig basically provides building blocks so when reading something you'll use the keyword to understand the content. You'll encounter other keywords/meanings for the character but don't worry about that. That's part of the learning process as is picking up the grammar and pronunciation. For native materials, I'm currently reading mostly childrens books and other things that cross my path (flyers, bookstore advertisements, various websites, etc).
Given the difficulty of the language, most people seem to modify their approach several times. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 8 of 15 11 January 2014 at 12:01am | IP Logged |
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Thank you very much again!
In this moment I have problems to retain a small selection of the 100 characters (I didn't add other characters in these days but I continue to review the ones I studied by using Anki, everyday and also more than once a day. But, if I understood correctly, the basic brick is the single characters, so many words can be formed by only one characters and the words with many characters are compound words? so by dividing the word for each character I can have a precise idea of the word (generally speaking) or can be apparently really random like with the primitives for the characters (eg ancient + mouth = recklessly)? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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