Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy
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Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log

230 messages over 29 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 23 ... 28 29 Next >>

outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 177 of 230 14 April 2015 at 6:10am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 68 Unit 11 Lesson 2 Intermediate Spoken Chinese 4.13.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 178 of 230 15 April 2015 at 3:12am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 69 Cycle Three (Lessons 27-50) Book 3 Lesson 27 New Practical Chinese Reader 4.14.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 179 of 230 15 April 2015 at 3:24am \| IP Logged
	I certainly have had bad times in this journey, which I have detailed here (especially late 2013, and of course my hiatus from February to July 2014), and now I am in an opposite phase: I'm at an acme of progress in this project. It's like the stars are aligned at the moment: I am "eating" through lessons, the grammar comes easily like butter, the new vocabulary words are "sticking" without much effort (lets see if they stick long term); I am fully energized with only 4-5 hours of sleep a night right now (I go through such periods, it catches up later); I have the motivation adrenaline from starting two new volumes of books, and everything is smooth sailing in my personal and professional life, so that I have a clear mind and plenty of time to study. With this zenith, I am making rapid progress. I have had my first "light bulb" moment in this language. People that are experienced learning languages know what I mean, that moment when something clicks and you don't know why it clicked at the particular point in time it did. My listening comprehension has made such a sudden jump, I am hearing sentences far more clearly, even texts I have never read or heard before (which would have been incomprehensible before), now I get the jist from the first listen. I am only talking about textbook material from both courses, but still it is a major moment for me. My reading came very easy last few days, and I can suddenly "spew" a correct Chinese sentence or two in succession. I also wrote to my tutor a 6-8 sentence explanation about something, and she only did "minor" corrections, instead of re-writing whole sentences in some other arrangement. So to sum up, I'm in a major "zone" right now (have had these a couple of times each in my other languages). I will need a dozen or more of these zones to really get a grasp on Chinese! 5 persons have voted this message useful
Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5161 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian	Message 180 of 230 15 April 2015 at 6:32pm \| IP Logged
	I'm proud of you! Keep up the good work. This is a really encouraging moment, and even more so when it happens with a different language as Mandarin (I still haven't had this sort of good vibe in Chinese myself, for the record). 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 181 of 230 16 April 2015 at 5:39am \| IP Logged
	Thank you so much. But, maybe what is a good vibe for me isn't for you? I think that is all very subjective about this. Yesterday with my tutor, we did nothing but review NPCR book two, she would talk to me sentences and I had to quickly translate, or ask me a question and then answer. The first 40 minutes were great, I only had to ask for a repeat of the statement one in four times (as opposed to every other time or sometimes almost every time as was the case even a couple of weeks ago, it has been that sudden, I can't explain it really). But after 40 minutes I simply crashed, my brain went on strike and just was exhausted and she had to repeat again every other sentence. So apparently my limit right now is 30-40 of non-stop Mandarin (in familiar situations at my very low level of A1+), before I crumble. I have however put a string of 5 months now where I have done nothing but Mandarin, so please remember this. And lately I have done a LOT of listening, I have had to write a two minute speech, taken three lengthy assessment tests with lots of reading and listening, watched hours of cartoons, used every 'dead time' moment to put on ears and listen to dialogues, done TONS of drills... and my vocabulary is now accumulating some weight. So I think the cumulative practice is starting to manifest results. Edited by outcast on 16 April 2015 at 5:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 182 of 230 16 April 2015 at 9:29pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 70 Cycle Three (Lessons 27-50) Book 3 Lesson 28 New Practical Chinese Reader 4.16.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 183 of 230 16 April 2015 at 9:43pm \| IP Logged
	I am not quite getting completely the whole use of 哪儿 / 哪兒 or 怎么 / 怎麽 when expressing disbelief or disagreement. I do understand that it seems to be a bit like the Spanish use of "¿Cómo?" or "¿donde?" to express the same general idea (“¿Cómo que no es un día especial?"). With 怎么 the NPCR always uses 会/會 after it. Thus: A：我担心你们忘了出发的时间。（我擔心你� �忘了出發的時間。） B: 昨天刚刚告诉我们，怎么会忘了呢？（昨天剛剛告诉我們，怎麽會忘了呢？） I'm guessing that it means something like "how could we forget?" (lit: "how will/would be forget?") But I get the main idea. 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 184 of 230 18 April 2015 at 7:17am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 71 Unit 11 Lesson 3 Intermediate Spoken Chinese 4.17.2015 1 person has voted this message useful

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outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 177 of 230 14 April 2015 at 6:10am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 68 Unit 11 Lesson 2 Intermediate Spoken Chinese 4.13.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 178 of 230 15 April 2015 at 3:12am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 69 Cycle Three (Lessons 27-50) Book 3 Lesson 27 New Practical Chinese Reader 4.14.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 179 of 230 15 April 2015 at 3:24am \| IP Logged
	I certainly have had bad times in this journey, which I have detailed here (especially late 2013, and of course my hiatus from February to July 2014), and now I am in an opposite phase: I'm at an acme of progress in this project. It's like the stars are aligned at the moment: I am "eating" through lessons, the grammar comes easily like butter, the new vocabulary words are "sticking" without much effort (lets see if they stick long term); I am fully energized with only 4-5 hours of sleep a night right now (I go through such periods, it catches up later); I have the motivation adrenaline from starting two new volumes of books, and everything is smooth sailing in my personal and professional life, so that I have a clear mind and plenty of time to study. With this zenith, I am making rapid progress. I have had my first "light bulb" moment in this language. People that are experienced learning languages know what I mean, that moment when something clicks and you don't know why it clicked at the particular point in time it did. My listening comprehension has made such a sudden jump, I am hearing sentences far more clearly, even texts I have never read or heard before (which would have been incomprehensible before), now I get the jist from the first listen. I am only talking about textbook material from both courses, but still it is a major moment for me. My reading came very easy last few days, and I can suddenly "spew" a correct Chinese sentence or two in succession. I also wrote to my tutor a 6-8 sentence explanation about something, and she only did "minor" corrections, instead of re-writing whole sentences in some other arrangement. So to sum up, I'm in a major "zone" right now (have had these a couple of times each in my other languages). I will need a dozen or more of these zones to really get a grasp on Chinese! 5 persons have voted this message useful
Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5161 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian	Message 180 of 230 15 April 2015 at 6:32pm \| IP Logged
	I'm proud of you! Keep up the good work. This is a really encouraging moment, and even more so when it happens with a different language as Mandarin (I still haven't had this sort of good vibe in Chinese myself, for the record). 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 181 of 230 16 April 2015 at 5:39am \| IP Logged
	Thank you so much. But, maybe what is a good vibe for me isn't for you? I think that is all very subjective about this. Yesterday with my tutor, we did nothing but review NPCR book two, she would talk to me sentences and I had to quickly translate, or ask me a question and then answer. The first 40 minutes were great, I only had to ask for a repeat of the statement one in four times (as opposed to every other time or sometimes almost every time as was the case even a couple of weeks ago, it has been that sudden, I can't explain it really). But after 40 minutes I simply crashed, my brain went on strike and just was exhausted and she had to repeat again every other sentence. So apparently my limit right now is 30-40 of non-stop Mandarin (in familiar situations at my very low level of A1+), before I crumble. I have however put a string of 5 months now where I have done nothing but Mandarin, so please remember this. And lately I have done a LOT of listening, I have had to write a two minute speech, taken three lengthy assessment tests with lots of reading and listening, watched hours of cartoons, used every 'dead time' moment to put on ears and listen to dialogues, done TONS of drills... and my vocabulary is now accumulating some weight. So I think the cumulative practice is starting to manifest results. Edited by outcast on 16 April 2015 at 5:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 182 of 230 16 April 2015 at 9:29pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 70 Cycle Three (Lessons 27-50) Book 3 Lesson 28 New Practical Chinese Reader 4.16.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 183 of 230 16 April 2015 at 9:43pm \| IP Logged
	I am not quite getting completely the whole use of 哪儿 / 哪兒 or 怎么 / 怎麽 when expressing disbelief or disagreement. I do understand that it seems to be a bit like the Spanish use of "¿Cómo?" or "¿donde?" to express the same general idea (“¿Cómo que no es un día especial?"). With 怎么 the NPCR always uses 会/會 after it. Thus: A：我担心你们忘了出发的时间。（我擔心你� �忘了出發的時間。） B: 昨天刚刚告诉我们，怎么会忘了呢？（昨天剛剛告诉我們，怎麽會忘了呢？） I'm guessing that it means something like "how could we forget?" (lit: "how will/would be forget?") But I get the main idea. 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4944 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 184 of 230 18 April 2015 at 7:17am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 71 Unit 11 Lesson 3 Intermediate Spoken Chinese 4.17.2015 1 person has voted this message useful