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Mandarin journey (FSI, Pimsleur, NPCR) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 73 of 181 06 February 2009 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My routine is running along smoothly, added two more things recently;
I need to be hearing more native Mandarin, so everyday at work now I listen to at least 1 hour of Mandarin talk radio. I wanted specifically talk radio because it is native speed, spoken freely and unprepared (which differs greatly from prepared speech such as news and music), and has normal people. I listen to Radio Free Asia; Voices of People, and Listeners hotline, for anyone wanting to check them out (on Itunes) Also checked out Living Language Ultimate Mandarin for the hell of it. As a stand alone it is very inadequate, but it has some good conversations to listen to and study if I need something more to do. So now my ruitine consists of; 1）FSI Unit (every 4 or 5 days) 2) NPCR (about every 2 days) 3) Conversations, convo phrases (sporadically, whenever I can) 4) 1 Hour of listening at least (daily) 5) Living Language lesson (when I have time left) I also have an interesting plan to get a successful convo partner, will explain if it succeeds. Edited by irrationale on 06 February 2009 at 3:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 74 of 181 18 February 2009 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I have to admit I have been slacking a little lately with the reps and some days was in a permanent review mode. Also my sleep is horrible some nights and makes it sort of hard to do 300, 400 reps. However today and yesterday I whipped myself up back into shape.
About to finish Unit 3 of FSI Mod 7, and Lesson 23 of NPCR. I ordered and received level 3 of NPCR and will start that soon. I am now meeting with 2 natives a week for exchange. I have learned how to do these things, and be demanding in what I want, because most have no idea how to go about it. I simply demand to only converse in Chinese for the first 20 or so minutes. No English, unless absolutely needed. It has to be this way for me, because these natives speak fluent English, so it is tempting to switch back. But meetings with natives are going much better than before, I can actually have simple convos now. I'm just getting used to speaking the language more, and getting less nervous than before. Someone remarked that my accent was "really really good". Listening skills have improved but still need a LOT of work. Hopefully listening to the the radio will contribute. I can chat in chatrooms now without any difficulties, just need my pop up dictionary. Edited by irrationale on 18 February 2009 at 3:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 75 of 181 23 February 2009 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Things are progressing along nicely.
Done with Mod 7 Unit 3, going over tape 2 and giving myself a day to internalize the target sentences. Almost done with NPCR Book 2, should move on to Book 3 in 2 days or so. It is still basically review for me, although encountering so many words in-context is a tremendous boon. I'm sure I'll start to encounter unknown grammar fairly soon. My conversation ability is finally showing itself. Besides being able to hold a basic convo, a few sings this is happening are; my having some dreams in mandarin, and forgettng English during mandarin convos and having trouble remembering "in English" during convos. This last sign happened a bit before a attained fluency in Spanish, I suppose it means something is going on in my brain to connect all the mandarin words/situations together into a coherent whole, not dependent on English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 76 of 181 01 March 2009 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Things are going well, at lesson 28 NPCR Unit 4 MOD 7 FSI. For future reference sake, I know about 1030 characters, 1500 to 1600 words.
My spoken chinese continues to improve. Whether this is due to FSI's much longer and tougher target sentences or my spoken conversation practice, or both is unclear, but probably due to both. I still need more conversation, I only get about 30min to 1 hour a week, but its totally in chinese now. NPCR 3 is somewhat more difficult and no longer review for me. I have thus tweaked my ruitine with NPCR, and am memorizing more things such as the key sentences and their audio.
This obviously didn't happen, no way. There are simply too many sentence forms and ways to use words. For ex, how many different ways can you use 再,把，就 for god's sake? I underestimated the sheer amount of combinations of sentence forms; this is what is keeping me from the advanced level, or being fully conversational. That's fine, it makes it more interesting and fun at least. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| arbigelow Tetraglot Groupie Canada Joined 5880 days ago 89 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1, German, Spanish | Message 77 of 181 01 March 2009 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Irrationale, how are you using NPCR? Do you use the workbook or just the reader?
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| zack Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 122 posts - 127 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 78 of 181 01 March 2009 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for your inspiring log with all the pointers to great resources. That is really helping me to get my Chinese studies back on track. Keep it up (both the study and the log)!
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 79 of 181 02 March 2009 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I use only the reader and the audio CDs. My routine for a lesson is as follows; 0)Rip the audio of the words off of the CD using Audacity. I also now take the audio of the key sentences. (whats more, I will have a huge bank of pinyin sounds for future use) 1）Memorize all words and their characters, putting them into Anki using the audio. Some very specialized words I do recognition only (for now). Put the "Notes" sentences into Anki (recognition). 2) Read the lesson with audio, then out loud to myself without audio, then listen only. 3) Translate the key sentences and put them into Anki with their audio, (recognition). 4) Make a brief overview, read the passage, and the lesson again, etc. I don't do anything with the "exercises", drills, etc, just read them. I don't do anything with the "Master the following phrases", nor read the section about the characters. 5）If I deem the grammar to be hard/important enough, I translate all of the example grammar sentences in the grammar section and put them into Anki.
Thank you! Good luck with your studies :) Edited by irrationale on 02 March 2009 at 2:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 80 of 181 10 March 2009 at 6:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Middle way through unit 5 mod 7 and Lesson 31 NPCR.
Conversation is going quite well, I just need some basic pieces of language like how to use "happen", all the words for "change/become" and more idiomatic conversation expressions, etc. For example, I just now learned "in order to" 为了 which obviously reduces circumlocution. It is surprising how long the material is waiting to teach these basic things, but I must say I am pleased with the conversational expressions in NPCR. Finally found a good expression for the topic changing "anyway..", and the topic starting "anyway.." or "so..". Had a problem in my mind where when I was relating an account, I would sometimes say the Spanish "y" for what happened next...will replace that with 然后。 Decreased my font size in Anki sentence deck to a smaller size, completing a graduation reduction from normal size at the beginning. I think it is now at normal small webpage font. Listening to an hour at least of Mandarin everyday for a month or so has really improved my listening ability already, but not enough to where I can easily understand native speech in the situation. Oh well... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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