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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 377 of 740 31 March 2011 at 4:55am | IP Logged |
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Am "finished" with echoing this CLO level yet I don't feel ready to move on. So now I've started echoing the regular dialogs which are spoken closer to normal speed. IOW, I'm not using the ones which were purposely created for echo work. Edited by Snowflake on 01 April 2011 at 2:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dragonfly Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6477 days ago 204 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, Mandarin | Message 378 of 740 31 March 2011 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, Snowflake! Following your example, I also try echoing the CLO dialogues, but I'm only at level two. It seems a good exercise. Thanks for sharing your experience!
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 379 of 740 01 April 2011 at 2:24am | IP Logged |
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Hi Dragonfly, thanks! You will probably soon out pace me in working the CLO levels. My mind seems to be a sieve and the job is not helping....sigh. Edited by Snowflake on 01 April 2011 at 2:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 380 of 740 02 April 2011 at 9:32pm | IP Logged |
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I was in a conference call meeting this week with a native Mandarin speaker with whom my only prior contact was through email. In case anyone is wondering why I think he is a native speaker, he has a pinyin name. Anyhow, I found his English cadence/rhythm a bit odd. His speech was also relatively sing-song like he wanted to use tones. Most of what he said had to be rephrased by a native English speaker. It gave me a sense of the extent to which Americans have problems with Mandarin tones, albeit in reverse.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 381 of 740 04 April 2011 at 12:33am | IP Logged |
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OK, figured out another way to get more echoing in. Work the echo material for the CLO level that I just "finished" while driving and walking around. DUH! It's called generalization. It's helping things to stick better. There are moments when the phrases just pop into my head. I'm also a little less hesitant to speak Mandarin now when talking with someone one-on-one. Now am wondering when using my laptop, should I continue with the same material at "closer to normal spoken speed" or go to the next level? I want to avoid drilling the same material to the point that it becomes loathsome, but there are certain places where I still stumble. But by the 80-20% rule, I should go onto the next level. Maybe I'll start the next level and see how things are after a few days.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 382 of 740 06 April 2011 at 4:28am | IP Logged |
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In the prior CLO level I concentrated on the dialogs and not the lessons so as to avoid hearing English while working the material. And I thought that the dialogs would contain all the vocabulary. Well in starting the next level I decided to listen to the lesson to find how much English there is and heard only one word translations for the new vocabulary. The other thing I discovered is that the lessons use vocabulary which is not necessarily represented in the dialogs, which I do not already know. For the first lesson it was maybe 4-5 words. While that is not much, the usage was interesting enough that I'm considering echoing some of the lessons. I'm still on the first lesson as we had power outages the last few nights. And given the Professor's comment, "Depending on the difficulty of the lesson, I might have to listen to the tapes hundreds of times, and likewise repeatedly review the book."* I'm unconcerned about how long it will take to get through the material. The weather is warming up so I will probably start shadowing this month. Rereading the Professor's use of Assimil makes me eager to try. And I feel that shadowing is personally necessary....got corrected Sun when I automatically used Toishanese tones on 两个.
* "Assimil" thread in "Language Programs, Books & Tapes" room, Message 1 which was posted 18 January 2005 at 11:55am. Edited by Snowflake on 07 April 2011 at 2:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 383 of 740 07 April 2011 at 2:31am | IP Logged |
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I have a coffee press at work. Today on the way back to my desk, after washing it, I stopped at the Malaysian fellows' desk who made a comment about the contraption. The coffee press tends to draw comments....it's not typical. Here's a photo of the thing http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/30/ aeropress-fast-porta.ht ml.
Anyhow, I called it 机器 (jīqì) since it's a manual machine. He said I could not call it a machine as it needs some sort of engine to be a 机器. He then tried to come up with a word. He thought of ka1fei1 hu2 and dismissed that. He ended up saying that that he'd work on the term. Later he came by my desk. He had asked 3 other Mandarin speakers and no one knew what the right term was. So that was 4 speakers who didn't know what to call the thing. Then Mandarin speaker #5 walked by and he asked her. She wasn't sure. Then the three of us went to the desk of native speaker #6. She also mentioned ka1fei1 hu2. She thought about calling it a cappucino machine, but the Malaysian fellow felt that wasn't appropriate. She came up with 滴漏咖啡机 (dīlòukāfēijī). The other two thought that would work. On the way back to our desks, the Malaysian fellow stopped Mandarin speaker #7 who was walking down the aisle. Do you know what a 滴漏咖啡机 is? No. What is it? So he was shown the contraption and there was more discussion. It's getting to the point where I think this sort of "don't know what to call it" is going to be a common enough occurence. Update; have been trying to get rid of the space between ht and ml (in the URL) but nothing seems to help. So be aware that there's a space in the URL which needs to be deleted to be able to look at a photo of the coffee press. Edited by Snowflake on 25 June 2011 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 384 of 740 10 April 2011 at 12:20am | IP Logged |
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Things have gotten more intense at the job so I've decided it is more important to cover as much ground right now as feasible. So I am leaving echoing the lessons for later and am echoing the dialogs. Edited by Snowflake on 10 April 2011 at 6:41am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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