maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7182 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin
| Message 57 of 79 08 May 2007 at 3:21am | IP Logged |
Keith wrote:
You know, Jerry Dai says the shortest short-cut in language learning is pronunciation.
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I'll give my take on why I think this is. I think that if you learn to pronounce the language more or less like a native speaker and if you are able to speak it yourself at native speaker speed then your listening skills will come as well. This is because in order to reach this level of pronunciation you have to listen intently over and over to a native speaker saying the sentence for you. You have to listen for the rhythm so you get that right and you have to listen for every single syllable so you get them right. If you just listen without pronouncing you run the risk of getting lazy. This is why you don't get any listening skills worth a damn with Pimsleur Mandarin. Because there isn't a single chinese person who speaks at that ridicioulously slowed down pace.
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Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6776 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 58 of 79 08 June 2007 at 8:41am | IP Logged |
Assimil Chinese with Ease Logbook, Star Date 2007年06月08日
I have 199 star hours logged now. 180 of those hours are from the last three moon cycles (i.e. the last 90 star days).
At this point, comprehension of outside conversations is still unfathomable. Contact with the alien species is not within the realm of current capabilities. Any attempt to enter their world is prohibitive.
It looks like 6 more moons are in order. Must increase power to a sustainable level. Scotty, we need more power!
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Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6893 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 59 of 79 08 June 2007 at 11:55am | IP Logged |
Lol, it was a pleasure to read that, and pretty close to they way I feel myself at my current level. Just keep it up.
Edited by Hencke on 08 June 2007 at 11:56am
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leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 60 of 79 08 June 2007 at 12:37pm | IP Logged |
Keith wrote:
Must increase power to a sustainable level. Scotty, we need more power! |
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Relax. It's a 5 year mission.
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Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6776 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 61 of 79 30 June 2007 at 10:07am | IP Logged |
leosmith wrote:
Relax. It's a 5 year mission. |
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I shall reword your statement to say what I think it really means.
"It's a 5-year mission for those who relax."
Well, it's the end of June and so here's my June Report.
This month, I listened (while very relaxed) to Chinese with Ease for 90.5 (ninety and a half) hours. There were 2 (two) days where I did no listening at all. There were 2 days where I did only 60 minutes of listening and there were 2 days where I did 360 minutes of listening. As of today, I am up to the Eighty-seventh Lesson. I have listened to the First Lesson's dialogue 850 times (in total since I started).
Starting next month (July), my work location changes which means I will have less time at home to do all of this listening. In case I haven't mentioned before, I only listen at home sitting in front of my computer. I know there are many people who prefer not to do their listening in front of the computer. They like to carry around an iPod or something.
So, this many hours in one month will probably not happen again (unless I become unemployed!) My total time with the Assimil program is now 268 hours. I think this puts me about one-third (1/3) of the way there as I try to get 1,000 plays of each dialogue.
6/30/2007 @11:57 PM JST
Edited by Keith on 30 June 2007 at 10:08am
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orion Senior Member United States Joined 7020 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 62 of 79 11 July 2007 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
Does the book contain characters pinyin(or both)? If it has the characters, about how many does it teach?
I admire your determination.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 63 of 79 11 July 2007 at 5:35pm | IP Logged |
It contains both - characters with pinyin below (and English on the right page with word-for-word translation below). I haven't counted the characters, but assuming the two volumes have about the same vocabulary as the other courses, there should be around 1500 words. OK, correction - there are 66 pages with 15-20 words on each, which make 1155 words/compounds (I just had a look at the end of vol 2, which I believe has all the vocabulary).
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lcsr Diglot Newbie Portugal Joined 6416 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin
| Message 64 of 79 11 July 2007 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
I just had a look at the end of vol 2, which I believe has all the vocabulary |
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Actually, it doesn't. It only has the vocabulary from the 2nd volume, at least in the French edition.
There's an additional book ("L'écriture Chinoise") that teaches how to write all the characters in both volumes. They're about 800 in total.
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