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Midlife Mom’s Mandarin Log: TAC Team 唐 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Newty Newbie United States Joined 5044 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Vietnamese | Message 33 of 149 26 January 2011 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Li Fei - Good log so far. It's semi discouraging to me to see that it's been 5-6
months (1-2 hours per day) and it is still hard to converse. That's more than I studied for the CFA. I, of the instant gratification generation, am worried that if I don't see enough progress at that point I won't stick to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5116 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 149 27 January 2011 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||
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@Jimbo: You are so right! Bookstores are a Beijing benefit I hadn't considered; I will definitely stock up. Good
idea to mail stuff home, too. @Newty: I know what you mean. I get discouraged at times by the steep learning curve. But I do see progress and feel myself learning every single day. It's an addictive thing. I have to keep reminding myself that it just takes longer to learn a language like Mandarin. And that French or Spanish will feel like a cakewalk by comparison! I also recommend that you look at Irrationale's Mandarin log. He went from zero to fluent in one year and his log is a great inspiration. So today I had my first Mandarin 2 class. I go in thinking, hey, last semester was pretty easy, and I've been studying on my own for six weeks between sessions, this will be no problem. Right? Ha--the joke's on me. All the slackers from last semester dropped out, leaving me, one other student, and a new student who appears to be a heritage speaker with super strong skills already. The teacher is teaching from China (it's an online course) and wants to conduct the course mostly in Chinese. This situation is TOTALLY AWESOME!!! And terrifying. Basically, I'm online with one other learner, a native speaker, and a near-native speaker for an hour, three times per week, getting my pronunciation corrected and learning the fine points of reading, listening to, and speaking Mandarin from an experienced teacher. It is more like being tutored than taking your average language class. So the upshot is, my conversational ability ought to skyrocket during the next 15 weeks . . . if I survive! Edited by Li Fei on 27 January 2011 at 2:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Newty Newbie United States Joined 5044 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Vietnamese | Message 35 of 149 28 January 2011 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Li Fei - actually it was irrational's log that got me inspired. Greatly inspired.
However he was going at it for something like four hours per day. I have a full time job, an outside business and another business in the making so I don't have that luxury. I'm going at it for about an hour per day. You are very fortunate to have the university resource (although you put in your time to get a PHD and become a professor, then teaching others, so you deserve it). I look forward to see how much you progress during the next 15 weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tomsawyer Senior Member Aruba Joined 5280 days ago 103 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English* Studies: GermanB1, French, Russian | Message 36 of 149 01 February 2011 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
I concur! Good to read that your year is off to a great start. Are you still considering the HSK sometime this year? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5116 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 149 03 February 2011 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi tomsawyer,
Yes, I'm still considering the HSK. I may wait until the end of the year and try for the HSK 3 (supposedly B1 level) instead of doing an HSK 2 (A2) in spring AND the HSK 3 in the fall. Some places don't even give the level 2 exam, plus, since it involves at least a 4-hour drive to get to an HSK center, as well as some expense, I might want to just do it once. There is good news and bad news on the Mandarin front. The good news is that my class is still very cool. Today, we were in the online class at eleven a.m. in the U.S., and it was midnight in China where my teacher is. And, it's Chinese New Year's Eve. So we could hear the fireworks and shouting in the street as everyone celebrated. My teacher's whole extended family was there waiting for her to be done with our class before eating dumplings. It gave me such a sense of wonder! Reading about Chinese New Year in a book is not the same as talking to people who are in the process of celebrating it. Talking in Mandarin! Imagine how I will feel when I'm actually in China in July . . . There are only four of us in the class, and each time so far, only three have attended (yes, I'm the geeky kid with perfect attendance). So there's a lot of opportunity to speak and be corrected. Which has led me to realize that I need to work more on my tones. While I have good pronunciation of many things (especially those covered by Pimsleur), there are too many simple words for which I don't remember the correct tone. I've been lax with myself on tones; for example, if I remember the basic word in my SRS, but get the tone wrong, I count it as a "know it." I have to stop doing that and count words wrong if I get the wrong tone. Which scares me, as it's such a challenge to remember the mandarin pronunciation and the hanzi. But clearly, from what my teacher and a bunch of folks on this forum say, if you don't know the tone, you don't know the word. I have to get tough with myself! Another problem I'm having is that I've been too busy with my teaching, and my Assimil work has been falling by the wayside. I've missed a couple of days of learning a new lesson, and even when I have taken one on, I haven't spent much time on it. I think it's just too much for me to be doing Pimsleur, Assimil, and this online course (which uses the Integrated Chinese textbook). Certainly, I can't keep up with doing an Assimil lesson each day. Soooooo, I think I am going to change the way I work with Assimil. Not abandon it, but slow way down. Rather than trying to do the passive wave each day, I'm going to go back to the beginning and just work through the lessons much more slowly, but more thoroughly. I would really like to type out each lesson in characters AND memorize each dialog. Those are the two things that I have found super helpful so far with Assimil. Oh, and when I memorize . . . I have to memorize the tones, too. What this means is that I probably won't do more than two lessons per week, and maybe I'll only get through book one before our trip, but if that means I know all of those sentences well and can read all of those characters, I think I'll be way ahead of where I would be just rushing through in a half-baked way, as I have been doing now. I'm on Pimsleur 2, Lesson 17. Assimil Lesson 33. Hmmm, when I realize how far along I am in Assimil, I think maybe I should quickly go through the rest of Volume 1 (up to lesson 50) and then go back to the beginning. Should I? But I don't have time to do a lesson per day . . . what if I start my new process now, and go slowly from this point forward, memorizing and typing out each of these later lessons? Aargh, I'm confused! This is when self-study gets tough. I need an expert to tell me exactly what would be best to help me get as fluent as possible, as fast as possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6287 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 38 of 149 03 February 2011 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
Ah, that's it. I was wondering why everyone was getting so excited about Groundhog Day! ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5116 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 149 03 February 2011 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Is that a smirk? We in Pennsylvania take Punxsutawney Phil very seriously . . . especially when he predicts an early
spring! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Whitefish Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5245 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 40 of 149 04 February 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Living in Canada, all I ever hear about is people complain about the snow :) I have a lot of trouble with tones as well, Li Fei. Not as much remembering the tones, but being able to accurately produce them. I'm hoping that continual audial immersion will help me out with that. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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