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Mandarin: Year 3.7 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5143 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 81 of 111 12 January 2014 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
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Upon a recommendation from another forum, I'm most of the way through the first episode of a reality show called 爸爸去哪儿 (Baba qu nar, i.e., Dad, where are we going?).
Basically it's five semi-famous dads being sent out to go live somewhere in the boonies, each with one small kid in tow. The show itself is kinda meh, but for listening practice - man, this is useful. It's everyday speech, so the sentences are short enough I can actually read the hanzi subtitles in time (and the kids are completely unintelligible, so it's a good thing there's subtitles). And at least one of the dads has a horrendous Taiwan accent. And, looking at episode guides, they'll be going other places so perhaps some other regional accents will come up. So basically tons of short easy sentences, all vocabulary I know, but in muddled mangled crummy audio with tons of background noise and voices that are nearly impossible for me to make out. Perfect practice! If this interests anyone else: Youku link 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 82 of 111 12 January 2014 at 11:43pm | IP Logged |
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A friend of mine also told me that everybody was watching this show but after seeing 10
mins I was so bored I stopped. But I have to admit, you're right when you say that it can be really useful! I might just go back to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5143 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 83 of 111 13 January 2014 at 12:33am | IP Logged |
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The beginning is pretty boring, when they're just waking up and stuff. It gets sort of morbidly funny when the kids start crying, and then picks up a little more when they get to the village and start actually doing stuff. But, yeah, I don't really see the appeal of it to anyone who can understand it all. :)
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| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5143 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 84 of 111 19 January 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged |
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Keeping up an Intermediate Chinesepod lesson a day. Today's is Earthquake Evacuation.
The other recent ones are: Driving in the Snow Building a Snowman First Time in a Recording Studio Antique Appraisal Reality TV Labor Dispute Classical Chinese vs. Modern Chinese Lately they seem to have about 10-15 new words to me each lesson. And virtually all the new words are made of characters I already know... I could probably do two lessons a day from a pure vocabulary-gaining perspective but it does take a while to prep all the sentences and stuff for Anki (probably about 20-30 minutes for a lesson). But two lessons would get me closer to 20 sentences a day, right now there's usually about 9-14. Just need some more time in the day. Anyone have any they can lend me? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 85 of 111 20 January 2014 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
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Everybody have their different ways of learning. Personally I think of learning a foreign language for fun. The last
thing I want to do is to set a routine where I am forcing myself to go through a dictionary, phrase book X number of words a day. Like the way I sit in front of the piano and learn a totally new song. Some days I would be spending a few hours while on other days a lot less. Every day we want some exposure to a language but not necessarily 1 hour between such and such a time. To keep up with my Chinese I've decided 6 months ago to change my video viewing from mostly English to half Chinese. Every week there are certain days I'd watch news broadcasts in English & other days in Chinese. Instead of relying on phrase books most people would listen to the news a few times a week anyway so switching language isn't a big deal. In the beginning fell in love with a comedy series from Singapore "梁细妹 liang xi mei". These are widely available on YouTube. The lead actor is a man playing the role of a mother. The same words & phrases get repeated in different contexts in each half-hour episode. The show is so funny that you soak up all sorts of words in no time like a sponge. And 1 cartoon series from China: 大耳朵图图 also very funny. 2 months ago went to see a foreign film from Singapore: 爸媽不在家 with the English title: Ilo ILo. The director Anthony Chen was raised by a Filipino nanny from that part of the Philippines and decided to use it as the title. Afterwords watched drama series in 20 episodes including: 小子当家 (I'm in Charge), 96°C 咖啡 (96°C Café) and finally: 企鹅爸爸 (Daddy at Home). In the course of 6 months I've compiled over 300 new words & phrases including more than 50 4-character proverbs mostly by listening to news on TV, radio, movies, TV series. According to Luca the Italian polyglot don't get stuck repeating phrase books over and over. Otherwise you'd get so bored after the first lesson you want to quit. Certain # hours per week get into watching videos, listen to radio & TV programs to keep yourself entertained while getting exposure to a language. Right now my focus is improving my French. Instead of letting my Chinese slide, I'm recording each new French word / phrase in a notepad in Chinese instead of English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5143 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 86 of 111 24 January 2014 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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I wish I could watch shows and get it via osmosis but I need the constant, unending Anki apparently. My listening isn't good enough yet to transcribe down audio, I often get zh and j and ch mixed up or not be sure if a g is at the end of a word or not, for example.
Fortunately after doing Anki for so long it's just a part of my life now. Having it on the iPhone as well helps a ton for when you're out and about and just have ten minutes of free time, bam another chunk done. That said, the next five days or so are basically going to be reviews only for me, nothing new added, probably not even any shows watched or books read. A project I've been working on for many, many years is done & out of my hands at last next Wednesday, and there is a final push to get everything ready for the end that is taking about 16 hours a day on this last week. But there's still juuuust enough time for Anki. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5855 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 87 of 111 27 January 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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Depending on where you are, there might not be a pronounced "g" at the end of the word. When i was in 昆明 (Kunming), a lot of people pronounced things like 生 and 身 the same.
Also, with zh and j, you'll only have a long i (eee) or ü sound after it, though 讲 and 长 (zhang3) can sound similar when spoken quickly, so i can see the confusion there. The same holds true for x, there's no xe, xo, or xa (or uu sound, just the ü). Listening to the sounds after it can clear things up. I read through the first couple posts and i think we're on about the same page, though i had the advantage of spending a year and a half in China, albeit amongst English-speaking people. I figured a year or two in China would have me speaking fluently in no time (i've just finished two years studying Chinese) and now i go through periods where i can't believe how little i know after all this time. Then thinking about all the time i've put into it i just can't let it go. I let it fizzle for a while and i think that was the best thing i could've done, as now i've regained my interest in it and am back at it steady (well, sorta). I've also looked through the ChinesePod lessons and i think the real treasure is the Upper Intermediate stuff. I wish there were something in between that and the Intermediate lessons (ie, with less English chat, though i don't mind grammar descriptions/translation in English so much). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5143 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 88 of 111 06 March 2014 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I've been posting in the Team Log lately instead of here, which seemed sort of redundant. But anyway, I did the January 'introduce yourself' challenge and the February 'song lyrics' challenge. For March, it's 100 of something, for which I have chosen 100 pages of reading. I have a ton of books piled that I don't read often enough, so I'm starting counting these pages right where I left off on page 15 of AFTER THE ACCIDENT, one of the second-level Chinese Breezes. And up to page 15 it has been godawful boring hospital visits. Anyway, I read 3 pages of that last night before bed. 97 pages of stuff to go.
In the queue for after AFTER THE ACCIDENT is the Monkey's Paw, another book I read a bit of before wandering off. Realistically some kind of listening/speaking thing task for the March 100 would be more immediately useful for me, but I have so many of these books 'begun' and not finished it would be really nice to finish some of them. Plus I keep telling myself that I learned most of my English by reading (I was a very very early reader), so why wouldn't it work for Chinese? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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