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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log

  Tags: Mandarin
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 73 of 740
20 December 2008 at 9:47pm | IP Logged 
I'm still doing SAFMEDS work. When I started with traditional characters, my flash cards were converted or so I thought. Working through the book, I'm discovering that a number of simplified characters were left in my decks. In case anyone is curious, the characters are kept in decks of 50. I keep stats per deck. When characters are retired, that's noted in the records since the timings and numbers (wrong out of 50) will fluctuate. Characters that are retired, get replaced with a newly introduced character. The characters are reviewed in sets of decks. Eg, this day review this set of decks, the next time review the next set of decks, etc. This week I found myself preferring to read rather than review decks. The readings are going slower as I've hit a saturation point in terms of new characters and new vocabulary. The listening work (DVDs and radio) never stops; it just slows down from time to time. Since I'm reading a text, I do less sentence mining though am starting to memorize sentences through listening repetition (movies and TV series). I suppose that could be considered mental sentence mining.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 74 of 740
28 December 2008 at 5:07pm | IP Logged 
It's been a wierd week, language-wise. I logged 40+ hours on a project, at work, before Thur Christmas day. I was pretty shot and didn't read during that time. To be safe, when restarting I dropped back a few chapters. I'm currently working through the chapter that I left off on. For relaxation I've been watching one of the online Taiwan TV dramas, trying to ignore the subtitles.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 75 of 740
30 December 2008 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
Was talking to the woman from Beijing today and mentioned that I was considering buying a specific TV drama for the Chinese subtitles. The one at http://www.mysoju.com/ has English that overlays the Chinese characters. I find the main character in the program extremely annoying, but did a lot of verbal sentence mining....new vocabulary plus saying the same thing or variations on the same thing many different ways. She suggested looking at http://www.tudou.com/. And yes the TV series is on that site!
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RyanC.
Newbie
Joined 5753 days ago

13 posts - 13 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Khmer

 
 Message 76 of 740
30 December 2008 at 6:12pm | IP Logged 
Snowflake wrote:
The Harbaugh book arrived yesterday. I'm planning on learning the
182 "radicals" first.


I ordered the book from Barnes and Nobles last week, and even though I paid express
shipping it hasn't arrived yet. I am really looking forward to getting it so I can
start my Chinese studies. Do you like it so far?
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 77 of 740
31 December 2008 at 8:14pm | IP Logged 
RyanC. wrote:
I am really looking forward to getting it so I can
start my Chinese studies. Do you like it so far?


I like the Harbaugh book well enough though wish the type was larger. This is neither here nor there, though getting it I found that the Heisig and Tuttle books do use some of the etymology in their stories.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 78 of 740
31 December 2008 at 8:15pm | IP Logged 
I was reading yesterday and found myself smiling at one of the brief stories where someone was walking home in the dark and found himself in the river. What’s so exciting about that?   I was smiling about walking into the river without translating into English. It’s another reminder for me to, at all possible, read every single day. I hope to start second reader this weekend.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 79 of 740
02 January 2009 at 1:22pm | IP Logged 
Heavily hit the characters, via SAFMEDS, yesterday and will do the same today. I want those numbers to be better before going much further.   My character recognition is better during reading since that’s within a context. I have one more chapter that introduces new characters and then the final chapter which appears to be a review. I really do not remember ever having gone thru most of this material before, even though my hand written notes appear through out the book. These days I am least motivated to do SAFMEDS work…..can see someone saying that’s why I SHOULD do it. The numbers keep me honest so it’s important to do. I am also doing a decent amount of listening comprehension, mining sentences.   This year I’ll probably visit overseas, in the fall, so here the “rubber meets the road”.

Update; Changing my mind on the reading. If I stop then a source of vocabulary and grammar patterns is no longer available (source of input).   Is it better to keep the input coming even though things are falling out of my head? I’m thinking yes, because the audios reinforce things that otherwise I have no (mental) hook for. Or in other words, certain things fall out of my head but other things still get in. I'll have to reassess this decision, probably in several weeks.

Edited by Snowflake on 03 January 2009 at 8:23pm

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 80 of 740
03 January 2009 at 8:22pm | IP Logged 
I now have chapter 20, the review, left in the reading text. We were going through things and found more books from this reading series. Included was "The Lady in the Painting" which uses the characters in volume 1 plus a few extra. Again I don't remember reading that book though when opened, out fell some notes with my hand writing. After finishing volume 1, I will read "The Lady in the Painting" with the hope that it will strengthen my character recognition. Then I'll start volume 2.


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