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A newbie sets out: Braving Mandarin. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| smarg Newbie United States Joined 4798 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 57 of 94 24 February 2012 at 9:29pm | IP Logged |
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yeesh, what a terrible journey so far -- I really hope things turn around quickly for
you! i'm looking forward to hearing about your experience in HK... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 58 of 94 28 February 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged |
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Well it is the day after the return from my Hong Kong hell. I did my best to get back into the swing of the normal study but I just felt so drained and demotivated I could not quite bring myself to get back into it fully. No doubt the revival of the horrid review pile beast had something to do with the matter. Currently on over 1100 overdue cards, not a pretty sight!
At this point I do not particularity care. I will just do reviews nothing more. While this wont be optimal for the SRS system given the so called forgetting index, I will not worry about such things as while I am back from Hong Kong I still have to ride out some rough after shocks caused by it. Namely a huge unexpected depletion of my funds, seems I may be going to spend a few days without food...again. It is strange to say but coming back to see all the mainlanders taxi stealing, pointing, staring, and the pushing in front in their usual boorish manner came as a relief as it was a confirmation I was no longer in Hong Kong. I am sure it is a nice place but I now have a distaste for the place and hope I do not have to go back there for some time. The only saving grace was a random fellow European from Holland that I bumped into, he definitely took pity on me and he became a very welcome sight in my little time of worry. Such people is the one thing I certainly miss about home. China so far appears to among the places I have been the highest concentration of hostile and unhelpful people I have ever come across. The 22nd February to the 27th February 2012 for sure are not going to be days I will forget. Being cold, wet, anxious, with mangled feet certainly has burned a strong image into my head, not that I intended to replicate any of the above for purposes of study. Before it went to c*** I did manage to see a few things and even get cheated by what I now think was a fake monk, or at least the most un-monklike monk I have ever come across. I made a small trip to a monastery on the outlying islands, saw the light show, got to see fog at the peak, went round a few museums, saw shops shops and more shops, talk a stroll through some parks, took a sampan ride, got cheated by the locals and fought off a never ending stream of insistent people trying to sell me massages and tailored suits, as well as experiencing what it is like to sleep on benches in the rain. Instead of listening to pimselur via my laptop speakers as I normally do, I elected to make use of the head phones to my mp3 player. A completly different sound. I think I prefer the headphones, while the voices sound rather strange. The sound was easier for me to listen to and thus the making out of the various madarin utterences contained within were much easier to make out, though I seem to have the perculiar inability to sit still and ended up pacing around while the lesson was playing. I think for a short time at least I will continue with the headphones and see how this goes. Today I planned to start a new experiment for my studies given the past few days however I have decided to post pone it until I can get my regular study back and I am in a more recovered state of mind. It was very telling given my abysmal performance with my SRS reps and total lack of focus with Pimsleur and the shadowing stuff. Annoying that by now I could have been at the beginning of the end, still no worries just keep chipping away a little every day. My strength of will to continue has been tested and I am coming through, I am not ready to pack my bags and run away just yet. It will still take more than being stranded and spat at to make me concede a defeat. In the military I was known as “ the guy that tries like a b******” while a rather long 'nickname' it does sum up my attitude in a rather vulgar manner. Current Status - Assimil - Shadowing lessons 73-88 - Scriptorium 69-71 Pimsleur lesson 22 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 59 of 94 01 March 2012 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
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Today I managed to do a normals day study, of course it will be some days before I can get back into the regular routine properly.
I was amused at my ex-pat co-workers dis-regard to the Hong Kong disaster, so much so before I even had time to take my coat off and ponder my empty fridge, I was getting calls of one wanting me to cover them ( again in a different city) in the evening, no “how are you” there, thanks! I also did the first CD of the Michel Thomas thing. Again I understand at this point it is redundant but it is something I need to try. While I like the premise of the format I do have some issues. Firstly it is slow, really slow. I think Pimsluer would be a better option in that regard, even if I was starting from naught. Secondly the use of live students, while I think it has the potential to be a good asset based upon point out common mistakes that will be a hit or miss based upon the student and I think it could probable be done better by the teacher explaining common errors. That said given it's relaxed attitude it could be beneficial to the new starter. As always I will reserve final opinions until I have gone through it and given it a chance to get going. The current SRS beast is not as feral as the last one and taming it has proven to be much easier, though I still do not like it, but it has not been enough to cause me to un-install the software. That option is still on my mind however. The only reason to date why I persist with it is that it has proven very effective for RTH. It is also time for the monthly looking back so here goes! Assimil While I like assimil I feel some relief as the Shadowing is due to come to a close, this is because I am eager to try other things but I do not want to overload myself so I have been waiting to clear some of my current projects. I am now poised to start the passive wave with the Assimil method too, this will add more time to my current burden and thus as the shadowing portion to wind down I will not be replacing it with anything to counter act the extra time required for the active wave. RTH While I had hoped to have completed it by now this has not been the case, given the speed I was going through it had I had those day lost to Hong Kong to do study I think I would have managed to have completed it. Not much else to say I already completed RTK so I knew the method and is the reason I picked up this book in the first place. Language Exchange partners The little correspondence I have managed to gain from conversation exchange has all but fizzled out. Given that it is dealing with people it is just a case of trying another batch of people and hoping some stick. The problem I face now is that the next batch of people are no longer directly local as I have exhausted that option. Though I have something else in mind to try before I go that far. Gold list As the vocabulary I have been using is being pulled from the assimil indexes it' learning potential is not something I can comment on for the time being. However one thins is certain I do like it and will be trying it out some more with new vocabulary after this batch is done. My concern is the time frame, as I may already have gone over the words many many times in the environment before I get a chance to form an opinion. Less everyday more technical vocabulary may be an option to consider as a solution to this in the future. Sound rate in MP3s This month my experiment will stop. I still do not feel the difference at 64kbs that I did when I jumped from 48 to 56. While 48 is considered an adequate level for speech broadcasts, in my opinion it is not adequate for learning from those programs contained within. So all my speech MP3s ( what little I have) will al be at 64. Observations on traditional and simplified hanzi. After my breif foray into the traditional hanzi-sphere I think it is not such a big deal. Admittedly previous Japanese knowledge may have helped but the Kanji themselves did undergo a process of simplification. There is a marked difference between the two. So why say no big deal? It is the quantity, after also checking the traditional forms to the simplified I know, there is not a relatively large number of 'extra' traditional ones that are in high need, at least not at this point. I certainly could get by and context certainly helped, I would guess this to be even more true for a native simplified user. One thing that did spring to mind was the various people that laughed at my opinion of Mandarin not being a native language for many and only a proportion of people actually knowing it. IN fact my comment of only X amount of people know Mandarin was even decried as stupid. After being with a fluent Mandarin speaker who was never understood by Taxi drivers and the huge number of people in my local area who do not even know 'ni hao'. To those people who would call my comment stupid, I say shut up and come back when you know what you are talking about, and yes there are also illiterate people and I have come across them so you can shut up over that too. Plans for March Aside from the above I intend to make a start with FSI once my schedule has cleared up a bit. I have also heard good things about a book called New Chinese Practical Reader. I will certainly try to acquire a copy and give this a try. Given that it is a common book I hope I can acquire it locally and not have to travel to a larger city. I have also made the decision to use the couch surfing website to contact locals ( there are 5). While strictly no a language learning thing, I feel given the dearth of speakers I have available to me in a less threatening situation this may prove to have some uses. Recently I came across some called binaural beats, the premise of course interests me. Though after some reading up I am not convinced and I am sceptical. However I will endeavour to do some more research and eventually give it a try. After sifting through all the scams and marketing BS I have found a few free resources in this regard. Current Status Assimil - Shadowing lessons 75-90 - Scriptorium lessons 71-73 - Assiml method lessons 47-49 Pimsluer 24 RTH 793 Michel Thomas Foundation CD 1 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 60 of 94 05 March 2012 at 3:56pm | IP Logged |
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And so finishes another weekend. To keep the week on form (and my study stunted) I was late for work, informed of a potential visa problem, and my bird died, oh well start as you mean to go on!
I have decided to put the Michel Thomas course for Chinese into the rejected pile, it is just not for me. I found it to be extremely slow paced, ridiculously so. In that regard I find Pimsler or Assimil to be a better choice both in terms of cost effectiveness and efficiency. There were also several points where I fell asleep. I also have no need for the approach of being relaxing and soothing, I appear to have penchant for throwing myself into difficult uncomfortable situations and have become quite accomplished at it, I have no need to be “eased in”. I also find the format intensely annoying, those two students I think should not be in the recording, another reason I think something like Pimsleur or Assimil is a better choice. They add nothing to the recording at all in my opinion, no use for explaining out common mistakes and having to sit and listen to them spout out garbled sentences is just time wasting, time that could be spent listening to correct material. While I was listening to the old foundation course there were several instances where I accidentally listened to an advanced course CD, I say listened because I never noticed it was not the advanced course and not the foundation, those CDs also sent me to sleep for several hours. I have decided not to try the vocabulary builder. The hunt for an exchange partner continues, it seems I am having very little luck. So many say it is easy to X people on this website yet my endeavours on said websites lead me into barren sands. Currently I am exchanging e-mails with one guy. I did also send a message to everyone in my area on couch surfing, I made no attempt to hide my language motivated intentions. I have had a reply from a couple of locals, I will try to follow forward with this. I also find gold listing so far to not be particularly effective, stories abound of people with plenty of “learned words” to choose from to drop off the list. I find myself in the converse situation with a black hole of comfortable words and instead find myself discarding not words based upon perceived useful rather than words I know well simply because the latter is in such short supply. It is however early days as the bulk of the words have entered the second distillation and so this particular experiment continues. My experiment with binaural beats has also commenced. I am currently making use of the so called theta beats while using RTH, GL, and SRS. I would rather not implant a carrier signal into my audio materials at this point. As a regular mediator I attempted to pair some of these beats with my mediation as I have concluded a short meditation between each study session is very beneficial, at least it is for me. Straight away they have proven more of a hindrance than a help , despite the claims of the pseudo science research it takes way from a meditation session the very aspect traditional meditation aims at. These binaural beats are too unbalanced and are merely a crutch/snake oil for those who lack the patience to try mediation the tried and true way in this aspect. Also at lesson 26 of Pimsleur I find myself needing to repeating a Pimsler lesson for the first time. While in RTH at my current section there is a high concentration of graphics from KTH but with all the keywords changed, annoying nevertheless I will push through. Current Status Assimil - Shadowing lessons 78-93 - Scriptorium 74 - 76 - Assimil method passive 51 active 2 Pimsler lesson 26 RTH 873 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 61 of 94 09 March 2012 at 3:13pm | IP Logged |
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It has been a busy week, but a good one. As par the course it has not been a smooth ride but there was little hindrance to my Language learning endeavours, save for one day where nothing was done.
Wednesday proved very much to be a level up day. Conversation exchange has failed me yet oddly enough couch surfing has come up trumps. While I simply went out to meet a Canadian it proved to be far more valuable than a mere social meet up. After arriving soaking wet ( an hour walk in the rain and in the darkness I could not see the path and ended up stepping straight into a river). Turns out this guy is pretty dedicated to learning Chinese, imagine my surprise to be thrust unprepared into an only Chinese situation among native speakers. Since these locals were not trying to start a fight with the dirty hairy barbarian, steal a taxi, push in front or sell/cheat me with something,stare and point or simply just demand money, I felt more at ease. So I made an effort to manage the best I could. Sadly despite all the listening practice I had almost 0 comprehension and I could only manage a few isolated utterances. It really does highlight the need to try and get myself a conversion partner, though my lack of one is certainly is not from lack of trying. I have searching for several months now, the number of people that claim it is easy to find one no matter where you are has me wondering if there is something wrong with me. On the Thursday I shot myself in the foot, going to the annoying monthly meeting, I dragged myself off to a local pool club for the after meeting pleasantries. Since I was the only one of the group that tried using any Chinese with the staff, they kept coming to me, naturally I understood nothing they said. Though again it did highlight my lack of vocabulary for the simple things such as coat/table etc. After flicking through the Assimil book it became apparent it has very much jumped on the current Chinese language fad. I feel it has a disproportionate amount of lessons and vocabulary all dedicated to business. Once I can free some time I will need to supplement with some more everyday materials or at least compile my own vocabulary lists from some on-line dictionary some where. As always the SRS is behaving badly and I still have an overdue pile that given the coming weekend can only go up. At this point I still couldn’t care less. It will be done when its done as simple as that really. Currently I am adding card with audio from each daily Assimil lesson for reading and then transcribing audio. I am thinking of re-adjusting this to reduce the influx of new cards. I though about just doing the reading then generating the listening card once I reach the that particular lesson in the active wave. I rejected this approach given the need for more listening and it would be be too long a time before the active phase lesson came around. Some sort of compromise is in order. I have put in place a requirement to do at least 50 RTH frames a day ( this is in addition to the spare moment filling, though I yet to have said spare moment), this has worked well so far, while I missed yesterdays due to the meeting I am now past the 1000 mark, only 1800 left to go. Supposedly it will bring me into the 99.5%+ usage area, so I think that getting through them will leave me in a good position all being said and done so I shall continue to claw my way forward. However upon completion I will have spent more time working with it than originally planned. Not that any of my plans have survived to date mind, both in study and otherwise. Current Status Assimil - - Shadowing lessons 81- 96 - Scriptorium lessons 77-74 - Assimil Passive 54 Active 5 Pmsleur 28 RTH 1031 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 62 of 94 14 March 2012 at 3:11pm | IP Logged |
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Hit a milestone and polished off Pimsleur 1. I considered taking a break before wrangling with the second volume but eventually decided to press on with it. While I have not achieved perfection, the quest for perfection is one of diminishing returns and I still have a long way to go, before I would even consider polishing things off.
After months of searching and hour upon hour of pavement beating I finally located a book shop. It made my day. I thought I would be finally able to acquire the books I so sought after including lord of the rings in Chinese and the fabled NPCR. Alas ’twas not to be and one can not always have what one would wish for. Though the selection of Chinese learning books left a lot to be desired there were a few grammar books written in Chinese, may be useful for a later date. After perusing the Chinese learning English section, imagine my delight to find parallel texts of such beauties as Sherlock homes, moby dick and treasure island. Sure they are aimed at native Chinese speakers learning English, but I think I can work with these so I loaded up with Sherlock Holmes, Treasure island and a Children’s book of European fairy tales. While I will not start with them just yet, I browsed and I already the the equivalent of “once upon a time”. It would indeed seem for more substantial stuff however a trip to Shanghai is in order as apparently it is the main book store of the area and has rather limited choice of materials in regards to language learning. Oddly, they have a huge German section, I would be interested in to finding out the reasons about that. The self talk session are flowing a little smoother with the little I can say, just basic utterances using the same simple structures again and again. I have started to note down things I wanted to say but could not in order to have a look at them the next day. As is currently the case may be putting them into the ever growing to do pile. The Chinese cards in the SRS are under control but the pile of overdue Japanese cards is ever growing, they are not a high priority and they will be done when they are done. Speaking opportunities are still frustratingly non existent, not much more I can do other than continue the search and keep my fingers crossed that I eventually get somewhere with it. It is fast starting to look like I will end up as one of those people that can do it all except speak. I really do not want to be in that position. The self talk alleviates the issue a little, but it is not sufficient in of itself, this I know. I have more success with getting speaking practice via couch surfing than conversation exchange despite meeting English speakers. In fact I have had zero success with conversion exchange to date. I am also due to continue with this Gold listing thing, as mentioned before the jury is still out on that one. However by the end of the month most of the lists will be quite mature so we will see then. Current Status - Assimil - Shadowing 85-100 - Scriptorium 81-81 - Assimil method P 56 A 8 Pimsluer 2 lesson 1 RTH Frame 1200 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 63 of 94 21 March 2012 at 4:40pm | IP Logged |
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Finally reached the final lesson of Shadowing. I need to finish the current run ofcourse but I am looking forward to having some time freed up to try something else.
I even managed to do a fat wad of study over the weekend but that gain was undone by an impromptu trip to Shanghai to do some touristy type stuff and once again meet my Hong Kong saviour.. Naturally as par the course nothing went as planned what so ever. I am in need of a short break from study, as this month is a low point for me. It will be the first anniversary of my sisters death and her birthday, among death anniversaries of other family members. After leaving the locale and stepping into Shanghai it did not take too long for it to become apparent that no one understood anything I was trying to say. Whether that is down to some sort of terrible pronunciation or not I have no idea. The few locals of where I am staying that I have managed to speak with are from other areas of China so I think there is little issue with me making the mistake of using local lingo words I may have picked up. It would seem some more pronunciation drills are due at some point, I intend to start FSI as the shadowing winds down so I think I will start at the beginning and do the FSI pronunciation drills. Being in no mood for the antics of the locals I have left a trail of phones taking a bath in the local river, a few ripped coats and I even tore up one particular cue jumpers ticket leaving her stranded at the train station exit gate. As gleeful as revenge is, it is not something I normally indulge in but I find myself becoming more aggressive the longer I am in this country. Though I appear to not be the only one feeling the tension, a few cities have been closed off to new expats and visitors due to regular fighting. I have also met a few back packers that have cut their China trip short on account of poor treatment from the locals. Have a few more lines of enquiry to follow up, created by couch surfing in my never ending search for a language exchange partner. Aa all the others are now obviously a dead end. Conversation exchange is now part of my rejected pile, it has proven to be utterly useless, with a never ending stream of unanswered messages, advertising spam or an abrupt ending to anything I do garner when I answer no, to questions about whether I am female or not. SRS continues to misbehave despite not adding anything new for over two weeks, the daily reviews are still increasing. I am now spending up to 2 hours on 1000+ reviews. I have called a halt to my RTH mission until such time as that blasted SRS beast shuts its hole. I have been using SRS for 4 months now. It is certainly not growing on me and I dislike it more each day. But I have yet to find a more viable alternative that is as effective with RTH type study as SRS. Given the lull in my motivation, I have scaled down the time spent in study some what, no point in forcing myself I would only come to hate it. I can get back into full swing after my mood picks up after some time spent being kind to myself, its a rough ride here I need it for sure. I suspect my current blues also arises from some part in my deciding today is the day that I will stop smoking. I think I will be a tad grouchy for a while yet. Current status: Assimil - Shadowing 90-105 Scriptorium 86-88 Asimil P 60 A 13 Pimsluer 2 lesson 5 RTH 1300 Edited by eggcluck on 22 March 2012 at 7:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 64 of 94 30 March 2012 at 2:31pm | IP Logged |
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I have been somewhat ill recently and as such the amount of study that has been done does not amount to the amount of time I would have liked to have put in, as always!
Since the last writing I have hit a milestone of completing all 1500 of remembering the hanzi. I made the decision to continue with volume 2, of course only to find that I can not get my hands on it and a book hunt in Shanghai is just not feasible as there is “always something” in regards to my current employer that likes to make a mess of what I thought are supposed to be days off. In that light I have decided that I may just redo the 1500 but with the readings. This decision was borne about as given what I have experienced here I think knowing the readings will be useful as opposed to learning the pronunciation as I go via vocabulary. My reasoning for that is based upon shop names, peoples names and of course when it comes to vocabulary I will already know a lot of reading so it will be one less thing to learn. It would also ease the reading of menus etc, while I would not know what the item is I could at least read it out and then find out what it is when when I get it! Though I will not start it just yet as I will need to organise how I am to go about this task. Well we are nearly into April and I have not reached my target of some basic functionality. Though I should not feel down about it as I know more now than what I did when I started! I also understand that a basic functionality in the country is very different to a basic functionality outside the country. Several months have ticked by since I began my search for a conversation partner, that aspect still eludes me. Having had no joy with conversation exchange as previously mentioned it is time to give a whirl of the wheel with shared talk and to see how that pans out. There has got to be someone willing to talk somewhere, I just need to find them. My terrible pronunciation was confirmed by my having to write things down to be understood, though the tones are not an issue since I apparently have them right but I am especially having trouble with the Chinese R sound. I got a few helpful corrections but I still have a long way to go in that regard. After becoming increasingly frustrated with the stupid Microsoft IME system I have since moved onto the sogou input system, which is widely used in China. Naturally installation was a bunch of random clicking hoping for the best while praying I do not get too much spam as a result. While I am not quite sure how to use it well and I am incapable of reading the instructions the basic use I can get out of it has already removed the aspects of the IME that frustrated me. Majority of the gold list items have now reached the final distillation. I have decided not to pursue my Gold list try out any further. I find it to not be particularly effective for me, but it is not being given a pile in my rejection pile. I just think it is not for me at this stage and not particularly suited to Mandarin. In regards to my new task of remembering the readings of hanzi after plundering my mind for what little resources I know, I have elected to use the memory palace method. This is due to my thinking that I can use it in a modular way and simply slot in new hanzi as I go rather than having to do large chunks together such as the movie method. The decision was also borne about due to the large number of homophones, while homophone do lend themselves to the movie method the tone complicates the issue. The next step is to ponder a solution to tones and then do the grunt work of acquiring all the readings, then arranging them into groups firstly of the same pronunciation and then separating them again based on tones. I suspect this will take a while given my current condition. I have recently found the nckiu dictionary, I prefer this dictionary as the example sentences are far more learner friendly. I was using the MDGB online dictionary which is nice but it pulls its example sentences from JUKU which is almost always lengthy and technical in subject. Every time I looked at example sentences it was always some horrible 3 line long sentence on some scientific subject. Damn it if I look up food I do not want to see an example sentence talking about nutrient and protein research! Pimsluer is still chugging along quite nicely though I have had to keep repeating lessons sometimes as much as four times, I am putting it down to my illness and the feelings of loneliness and isolation, though I hope it will improve when I am recovered. This also marks the end of my month foray into binaural beats. I have noticed no improvements, though when tired it appears to help my focus. Though I get the same effect from white noise tracks. The supporters claim it takes a month for you to get used to it before the benefits show. That month is now up and I have decided to give them a chance and continue for another month now I am “used to it”. Sogou inout method - http://pinyin.sogou.com/ Current status:- Assimil - Shadowing lessons 97-105 - Scriptorium lessons 93-95 - Assimil passive 66 active 19 Pimslur 2 lesson 10 1 person has voted this message useful |
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