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Lorinth’s log - 劳伦的博客 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 201 of 408 20 December 2013 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
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I watched episode 1 of a series called 母子情仇. A few days ago, as I was playing CCTV in the background while working, an episode of this series caught my attention because the dialogues were very slow and clear. And, oh, it was interesting as well. I checked Youtube and the series is available there. The first episode was very good, it's set, I would say, during the first republic, at a time when the ancient society looked like a zombie, bandits roamed the mountains and policemen looked like modern policemen. On the other hand the dialogues, it turns out, were not that easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 202 of 408 22 December 2013 at 1:36pm | IP Logged |
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I've finished reading 《蓝莲花》 (The Blue Lotus). It's incredible to think that Hergé's prior work was inspired, mainly, by silly cliches about Russia, the US and Africa, while this work is based on well-researched material and evidence. Even more incredible is the fact that, while Europe in the 1930s knew next to nothing about China, except what it could plunder from it, and tended to side with Japan, Hergé dared to take side with the oppressed against the aggressors. Kudos. By the way, lots of Chinese books indicate the number of characters on the back cover. I didn't expect it with a comic like 《蓝莲花》. But here it is: 字数:21千字。 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 203 of 408 28 December 2013 at 10:48am | IP Logged |
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As expected, Christmas time is good for family life but awful for language learning. Most of my time is spent having fun, drinking and eating with family and friends and playing with the kids - which leaves next to no time for studying. So, now that I can enjoy 15 minutes of computer time, what was have I been able to *do* up to now? As I had to drive quite a lot, I listened again to all the SlowChinese podcasts I had studied up to now. I've also listened to two new podcasts: one about the Shanghai world expo (not exactly recent news...) and another about the talk show 锵锵三人行。 I've started work on a new ChinesePod podcast about the dreaded 红色炸弹。 I could read a few pages of 《鬼吹灯》 but not much, as I'm often too tired to read Chinese at night. I sometimes read bits of short news in the online Chinese press, one sentence here, one paragraph there. Today, on 知乎日报 I was able to read a short article about 通假字, i.e. characters used for other characters because they have the same pronunciation. Link I could review my vocab daily, because I can do that anywhere in small chunks, using my phone. However, I added very few new words. I had no time for Anki at all and I had only three opportunities to review some characters with Skritter. I expect the same diet for the coming week. Edited by lorinth on 28 December 2013 at 10:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 204 of 408 28 December 2013 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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MY 2014 TAC OBJECTIVES: 10 NOVELS over the year + 10 HOURS OF AUDIO/WEEK over the
year [This post is more or less copied/pasted from chinese-forums.com, where I'm called laurenth, except that I added the part about Tadoku.] First what I *won't* try to do: Speaking, writing, preparing for HSK 5, studying grammar, etc. and studying/maintaining other languages than Mandarin. These are non-priorities. I may do some work in these areas if/when it turns out I have more time than I thought (unlikely) and I'm in the mood to do so. What I *will* try to do every day: Reading, listening, study vocab. More specifically: - READING: I will try to read 10 novels in 2014, or about 2 million characters. But I will cheat in a number of ways. For example, I could consider that a short 150,000 character novel is a novel, even if the average seems to be 250,000 to 300,000 chars. My stats will also include the texts I tend to read at lunch time (press articles, transcripts of podcasts or shows, etc.). I could also re-read novels I've already read. I could read, say, four episodes of a comic, and consider that it amounts to a novel. I'm sure I can find other tricks. EDIT: Since I've written the above, I've registered for the Tadoku challenge (I hope I'll be able to understand the technicalities...). I set an objective of 300 pages in January, i.e. about 10 pages/day or about 120,000 characters over the month. Tadoku: http://readmod.com/ - LISTENING: I will try to log 10 hours of listening per week. Again, I will be cheating in a number of ways. For example, I could consider that background listening while working is listening. Of course, "listening" should preferably cover the more active part of the spectrum, i.e. watching movies, watching movies with pause and rewind, listening to podcasts, actively working on podcasts, etc. - VOCAB: my current setup seems to be working fine, so I have no reason to change. Mainly, I use Skritter to study characters and I add 15-25 new words/day to Pleco lists named after the day of the month (from 01 to 31). As I explained elsewhere, I use Pleco daily to review the vocab of days X -1, X-3, X-6 (simple flashcards, no SRS). Words of day X -7 are moved to an SRS queue that I study with Pleco as well and that I delete every time it gets too long (i.e. as soon as I have 80-100 reps on any given day). In Skritter, I regularly add characters from Patrick Zein's frequency list taken backwards, i.e. I started from char #3000. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 205 of 408 06 January 2014 at 9:45am | IP Logged |
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Time to restart logging my activities after a very busy (and language learning unfriendly) Xmas period. At the end of 2013, I registered for the Tadoku challenge at a rate of 300 pages for January. Then, on 31st Dec. I thought that that was way too much, so I downgraded to 200 pages. Two hundred a month is still equivalent to 10 novels/year, as this is the objective I stated in the above post. Now, after 5 days, I believe that this was a reasonable move. I'm still reading 《鬼吹灯》 and enjoying it a lot (BTW, I took my older kids to watch the Hobbit/The Desolation of Smaug yesterday, and there were many underground scenes with monster infested caves that are quite similar to what I'm reading in 《鬼吹灯》 right now). I'm now reading e-page 176. BTW, for the Tadoku challenge, I consider that 2 e-pages = 1 page, because they are shorter. Apart from reading, I could not do much these last few days. I revised my Pleco lists daily, I could not use my Anki audio deck and I could not open Skritter, so I have a backlog of several hundred characters. I could listen to a few Slow-chinese and ChinesePod podcasts, but that was low intensity work, to say the least. And finally, the Xmas gifts! Although my wife often grumbles that I spend too much time studying Chinese, she offered a ChinesePod subscription for my birthday and a stack of Chinese DVDs for Xmas. So sweet. So we've already watched a wonderfully simple Chinese movie called 我的父亲母亲 ("The Road Home" in English, which is also a fitting title) set in Northern China, nowadays (in black and white) and 50 years ago (in colours). Wikipedia 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 206 of 408 07 January 2014 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
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I've just noticed that there are only 35 persons registered for the Tadoku challenge in Chinese. My personal stats suddenly look less depressing :-) I read a short article about saying that 英国政府将阻止欧盟成员国公民自由入境 (UK government to prevent [certain] EU citizens from entering the country freely). I also read the Chinese Wikipedia page about 鬼吹灯 (what is the Tadoku tag for non-fiction?). I went on reading 《鬼吹灯》 (I'm now at e-page 182, chap. 13/47). I started work on a new Chinesepod podcast about 租男友. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 207 of 408 08 January 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged |
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I wrote a write-up about 鬼吹灯 for chinese-forums.com, and read some more of it (now in chap. 14/47). I reviewed my vocab in Pleco and attacked the mountain of my Skritter backlog. But I slowed down on purpose, having noticed that I was falling in the trap of rote learning, without taking the time to think about while I fail certain characters repeatedly. It turns out that there's a lot of confusion in my head concerning series like: 桌: 掉 罩 悼 踔 莫: 幕 墓 慕 募; 摸 模 漠 膜 / : 将 奖 蒋 浆 酱 壮: 装 丬: 状 妆 兆 : 跳 挑 眺 桃 逃 夸 : 跨 垮 挎 佥 : 脸 剑 检 捡 俭 验 签 险 辟 : 壁 臂 譬 劈 避 僻 None of these characters is rare (frequency ranking < 3000 according to Patrick Zein's list) and I see them over and over again while reading, so it's important to know them without hesitation. After having analysed their components more carefully, I have created a Pleco SRS list. I hope I can find the time to go though this list daily as long as necessary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4213 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 208 of 408 09 January 2014 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
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Apart from reading 鬼吹灯, studying my vocab and trying to clear my Skritter queue, I've watched several episodes of 快乐汉语 - with varying degrees of attention, from just background listening to a more useful sequence consisting in:
- watching part of the episode with sound turned off, and pausing to read the subtitles in Chinese and, where necessary, in English - then watching the same part with sound turned on while reading the subtitles - then watching while trying not to look at the subtitles - after that, I should make an mp3 out of the episode, so I could listen to it repeatedly whenever I can. OK, up to now, that's a rather theoretical process, because I haven't done it much, but it could be useful as (1) the series is interesting enough that I wouldn't get too bored, (2) the vocab is fairly easy, so (3) the whole exercise can be focussed on improving my listening comprehension. Bonus points: each episode is quite short, at about 13-14' and there are bilingual subtitles. Now if only I could find a transcript... By the way, it seems there are two 快乐汉语 series offered by CCTV. There's one that I find quite artificial and boring, with (IMO) poor acting, and another which, again IMO, is much better and lively, with two young persons (one of several Chinese boys and one of several foreign girls) visiting different parts of China, talking with people and having fun. Here's the link 1 person has voted this message useful |
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