rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 73 of 118 13 January 2015 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
Working my way through Pimsleur II now. I've started the first disk of the course, and I'm trying to get my Anki decks sorted out for this set of disks. I've been watching some Singaporean TV on YouTube mostly foody programs which I quite like.
Still looking for a film I think I could watch a few times and turn into Subs2SRS. Ideally I'd find a TV series. I enjoyed watching cartoons in French, a series called Valérian and Laureline which had about 40 episodes which were based on a comic book. I would like to find something similar, so if anyone knows a series of cartoons or anime in Mandarin about 30 minutes per episode which I can get sub-titles for then please let me know!
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 74 of 118 29 January 2015 at 12:56pm | IP Logged |
My Mandarin studies have tailed off to almost non-existent over the last 2 months. This is mainly because I haven't been commuting and so, not been locked away with not much else to do other than to learn. Now my wife ensures I'm never at a loss for things to do.
My problem it seems, to me at least, is motivation and time. My initial goal of learning Mandarin in 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years is a difficult one to say the least. Once I slipped off the daily target of learning, this goal began to look overwhelming and I've not picked up the baton again. So I've decided to take action. Recently I read a a motivational speaker who advises people not to set a goal of losing weight or getting fit but rather make the goal to do one thing. For example do at least 1 press-up (push-up) each day. The target is to only do at least one press-up, which is easy for most people. But the important thing here isn't developing your muscles, but developing the habit of developing your muscles. If you did at least 1 press-up each day for the year of 2014, then this year you'd have a workout habit, which you can build on.
With this in mind I've decided to outline some steps which will make learning Mandarin a habit this year, and not a hit-and-miss target it has been. I've decided I'll keep this log on a regular basis, like my Thursday posting of my Super Challenge. That log has ensured I haven't slipped off the wagon, because I want to report at least some progress every week. My "build a habit" regime for Mandarin will be to do at least 1 of these things each day.
1 - Read at least 1 page of my graded reader. This book has English, Characters, Pinyin and audio in Mandarin.
2 - Watch at least 15 minutes of some film or TV in Mandarin.
3 - 1 lesson with either Pimsluer, my Mandarin textbook, or Coursera.
4 - 1 session with Anki per day, either Hanzi, Sentences, Pimsleur, or subs2srs
Then I'll post my accomplishments each week to this log. Probably on Mondays. Obviously I'm hoping that if I do at least one thing, I'll continue, so for example if I start watching 15 minutes of a TV show, I might watch the whole thing.
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 75 of 118 29 January 2015 at 6:57pm | IP Logged |
Good luck, keep going rdearman! Which reader are you using now?
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 76 of 118 29 January 2015 at 9:13pm | IP Logged |
I'm reading Graded Chinese Reader 1, which is a selection of six abridged stories.
Titel: Graded Chinese Reader 1 – Selected, Abridged Chinese Contemporary Short Stories
汉语分级阅读 1
ISBN13: 978-7-80200-374-3
More information HERE
Contents
1. People’s Fish (originally written by Su Tong) describes the changes over twenty years of two ordinary Chinese families through happenings related to fish.
2. What Happened in the Park (originally written by Wang Huaiyu) Depicts the Chinese concept of “face” through the story of a fight between two college students.
3. A Spring Evening (originally written by Qiu Shanshan) reflects the current situations of white-collar women through a public relations dinner.
4. Good Morning Beijing (originally written by Xu Kun) is the story of a Beijinger receiving relatives from the countryside reflecting different life concepts.
5. The Beauty of Ice and Snow (originally written by Mo Yan) tells the story of a girl’s tragedy in a small town o f northern China.
6. Love Story (originally written by Yu Hua) is the story of a young couple from the beginning of their strong affection to the domestic feeling of their love.
It might be above my level, but a page a day shouldn't be to hard??
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 77 of 118 29 January 2015 at 9:26pm | IP Logged |
Oh, I see it has texts of famous authors. Also a good source for suggestions of authors then. I'm going to read something by Yu Hua the day I decide to read Chinese authors instead of translated books.
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 78 of 118 30 January 2015 at 10:52pm | IP Logged |
rdearman wrote:
Then I'll post my accomplishments each week to this log. Probably on
Mondays. Obviously I'm hoping that if I do at least one thing, I'll continue, so for
example if I start watching 15 minutes of a TV show, I might watch the whole thing. |
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When I saw a notification from this log yesterday I momentarily thought it was actually
Monday and I was devastated :P
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 79 of 118 02 February 2015 at 2:09pm | IP Logged |
OK, Week one in my quest to make Mandarin learning a habit. I'd almost say it was a failure because of quantity of work. But since the target was at least one of something each day, I'll count it as a success so far. This is only a 1/2 week update since I decided to do last Thursday.
Friday
- Anki Review Hanzi Sentences (3 minutes)
- Watched 7 minute video in Mandarin
Saturday
- Anki Review Hanzi Words (30 minutes)
- 2 sentences read of graded reader, reading "People’s Fish" (this is WAY harder than I thought it would be)
Sunday
- Anki Review Hanzi Words (28 minutes)
I have found some podcasts thanks to various recommendations in another thread. So I'll try to do more of that sort of thing this coming week, and I want to try to watch a film or something. I can't learn a language with an ANKI Deck, so I need to put a bit more time in.
Somethings I've done to help prompt me:
- scheduled blocks of time to do some learning/watching/review/etc in my calendar, so at least I get a daily dose of guilt. :)
- put a couple of avi files on my tablet to watch if an opportunity arises. Luckily because I can have VLC on my android tablet it remembers where I was.
- got a notebook to record my times and activities each day.
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 80 of 118 09 February 2015 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
On going personal problems have left me with very little time for Mandarin study. At the moment I'm just trying to do an Anki review each day for 5 or 10 minutes. This unfortunately is all life will allow right now. I've book marked some of the documentary links in another thread which I hope to come back to when I've gotten a little more time.
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