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OneEye’s TAC 2013 - Chinese, Japanese, 台語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 17 of 41 09 April 2013 at 8:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Glad you had a good time in Japan, especially Kansai, my neck of the woods. Yes, the cherry blossoms are amazing. Too bad people ruin the scenery by picnicking under the trees and drinking beer, etc.
Sorry if I missed it, but what exactly is the Mass Sentence Method? You mentioned it, but I don't think you explained what it is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 18 of 41 09 April 2013 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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It's a method used by Mike Campbell (Glossika), and explained by him in several Youtube videos. Here's one from
a few years ago, I believe before he started calling it that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAdyAa4oHDA I don't know of any others in English. He has a lot of videos where he talks about it in Chinese (he uses this method with his English students here in Taiwan). I like it for a few reasons. It gets your mouth moving, you're repeating correct, authentic sentences, you learn a lot of vocabulary, etc. I have a book I'm using for this method called 史上最強的英文會話8000, which is essentially a list of 8000 conversational sentences in English and their Chinese equivalents, with an MP3 CD. The sentences are grouped by theme, so there are units on things like The 5 Senses (in which you learn to describe sights, smells, sounds, etc.), Food, Going to Hot Springs, Crime, Natural Disasters, etc. Something like 180 units altogether, full of really useful vocabulary and sentences for daily life. These kinds of books are very popular in Taiwan, and I believe in China too. Unfortunately people tend to use them as lists of vocabulary to be memorized, and hardly pay attention to the sentences. I've found that when I'm using this method consistently, I speak a lot more fluently, with a lot fewer mistakes. Also, I find that I'm able to use a lot of the new vocabulary pretty easily after having reviewed a unit a few times. It just sort of pops out. I really think that if I continue with this sort of work, I'll see really significant improvements in fluency. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 19 of 41 12 April 2013 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK, so checking back in. I got over the cold I had, and then got some food poisoning the same evening. I'm
finally over everything today, but I haven't done much this week. For Japanese, I just reviewed what I've done so far in Assimil. For Chinese, I did some reading, mostly on blogs. I watched Shrek in Chinese, so that was fun. The Donkey speaks some 台語, which was pretty entertaining. I talked with a few friends today, but not for long, and I felt very unfluent, if I may coin a word. That's to be expected I guess, since it's the first time I've had a real conversation in Chinese in two weeks. By the end of the day I was back to thinking in Chinese like I can normally do, so it got better. That's really pretty much everything, unfortunately. It doesn't look like we'll be moving to Japan this fall. We haven't heard anything one way or the other, but at this point, I think we can safely say they're probably not going to get back in touch with us. We haven't heard anything from the schools in Hong Kong yet, but she just sent the application in two days ago, so we'll give it some time. But anyway, we're starting to plan on being here at least another year (which of course was the original plan anyway). If I get accepted to an MA program, I'll defer admission until next year, which will be a very good thing for me anyway, because I'll have time to really get good at Chinese. If my wife finds a job somewhere else (be it Japan, Hong Kong, or maybe even China), we'll go there next fall (2014), and if she gets a good job in Taiwan, we'll stay here and I'll start my MA. If none of the above happens, I don't really know. I'll probably apply to PhD programs back in the US to see what happens and to possibly have that as another option. So during the next year+ here in Taipei, I'll be trying to find some more steady work than I have right now. That could be teaching English or working for a translation company (which would be better, but might not pay as well), or possibly looking to increase my freelance work through a combination of translation, English proofreading, and English tutoring, which I think would be ideal if I could find enough work. We'll see what happens. I have a resident card through my wife's job, so if I can make enough money freelancing, I'll probably go with that. Anyway, now that it's pretty much decided that I won't be starting grad school this fall, priorities are going to be changing. I haven't nailed all that down yet, but I know I'll be focusing less on reading in my field and a bit more on developing broad reading ability through magazines, newspapers, books, novels, etc., as well as maybe a Classical Chinese textbook for native-speaking university students. I also plan to get back into Taiwanese, and continue pushing with Japanese. I think we're both hoping to move to Japan next fall if possible, so I'll probably crank the Japanese up a notch if I can. For the coming week, I'm hoping to: Do 500 new sentences with the Mass Sentence Method Shadow 1 lesson of Thought and Society extensively Finish 中國寓言, an easy reader of Chinese fables with some good vocabulary Watch some TV and/or movies in Chinese Read something fun (a significant amount) Read something "good for me" Read some phonology stuff Work on 尚書 Do "week 4" in Assimil Japanese, and Shadowing Lesson 4 Next lesson in Harvard Taiwanese Look for work 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 20 of 41 22 April 2013 at 7:51am | IP Logged | ||
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A little late on this update, but oh well.
I didn't do 500 new sentences. I don't think I did any sentences, at least not from the book I've been using for that. For the next two weeks, preparing for the TOCFL is more important. I did 3 lessons from Thought and Society, and realized I was going to have to dig in deeper. So I'll be doing some more intensive work with that book in order to brush up. I didn't finish 中國寓言, but I'm almost there. The next book from that series that I'll be doing is 中國歷史故事(一) Stories from Chinese History I. I watched a few movies. 英雄本色 A Better Tomorrow (Mandarin dubbing) and 讓子彈飛, as well as the Taiwan version of Shrek (Donkey even throws in a few phrases of Taiwanese in there). I didn't do much else for Chinese. I will after the test. No Japanese, very little Taiwanese. Again, I'll get back to it after the test, though I will try to do some Japanese this week. As far as finding work, I actually got a lot accomplished. I found two different sources of freelance translation work, plus a possible steady job at a translation firm. The job would only be part-time, 15 hours per week, which would allow time for freelance work (which pays much better but of course is less stable) and language study. I may also be able to pick up a few hours per week of English teaching at one of the more intensive (and hence much better-paying) English schools here in Taipei. So, the majority is translation work, which is what I was hoping for, because I think that will really help my Chinese. So for this week, the goal is to cover a lot of material in the textbooks I'm reviewing in preparation for the TOCFL. I also want to do several lessons in PAVC 5, which I skipped while I was at the Mandarin Training Center, but am now realizing contains a decent amount of vocabulary from the TOCFL list. It's easy for me at this point, so a lesson or two per day is doable. Other than that, I have some catching up to do with 尚書, and of course with Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 21 of 41 22 April 2013 at 8:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, one other thing. I made a discovery last week. Or I should say, something I discovered a long time ago was
reaffirmed by one of my language exchange partners, when she applied it to learning English. That is, the "chorusing method" is an incredibly powerful tool for improving your accent. A while back, I used chorusing fairly extensively, and really felt like it helped. Then a year ago, I used it a bit more to help change my "standard" pronunciation to a more local (yet still very clear) Taiwanese-sounding one. I've also used it more recently to refine my intonation and get a feel for how Taiwanese people elide or link certain sounds. Much like in English when we say "havaseat" for "have a seat," Taiwanese people tend to say things like "wǒ gēnnā jiǎng" for 我跟他講 (wǒ gēn tā jiǎng). Since the last round of chorusing was done using audio from movies and TV shows rather than textbooks (I highly recommend using movies and TV shows), the speech was more natural, as it would be in daily life. This helped my listening ability tremendously, in addition to my pronunciation. I don't know how to describe the effect, other than saying that it was like a wall came down in between my ears and my brain, and I was processing the language itself rather than hearing, thinking of what word it was, and then processing. Listening requires much less brainpower than it used to. I think a common misconception is that "chorusing" and "shadowing" are essentially the same thing. They are similar, but the former is more intensive, and it's simultaneous with the audio material, rather than repeating shortly after it. The way I do it, and the way I taught my friend to do it, is to load an audio file into Audacity, then select one sentence and press shift+play. This puts the selected audio on repeat. Then you just try to say it in perfect unison with the recording. At first it's difficult, but after a few dozen repetitions you should get pretty close. Then you can hear where your pronunciation differs from the recording in real time, and adjust accordingly. A few dozen more repetitions and you should be right on. Then continue for a few minutes, saying the sentence in unison with the recording. IMO, you want to say it right at least as many times as you said it wrong. This is fairly taxing stuff, but I've found it to be tremendously effective. My friend spent a week doing this with a few sentences every day. Now, her English is quite good, but she has a pretty heavy accent. Then last week when we met, she recited one of her practice sentences for me. I was blown away. She sounded like an American. Actually, I thought she sounded like she was from California, and it turns out the person on the recording is from California. Since last week was "Chinese week" for us, I haven't had the chance yet to see if her accent has improved across the board or if it's only on what she has practiced. But I believe that if she sticks with it, the results will be really impressive. I'll update here with any development. I also challenge anyone reading this to try it in whatever language you're learning, and report back here with any results. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 41 23 April 2013 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
Yours is another testimonial to a technique I should be using more than I do. Thanks for the inspiration. However, re. nomenclature: I'd always thought that shadowing is simultaneous with the audio material..? Threads tagged shadowing Forum glossary: link I'm still not certain what "chorusing'" is, having previously thought "chorusing" was repeating after the audio; but the glossary seems to indicate otherwise. - In any case, we're in agreement that repeating at the same time as the audio is a good thing. Edited by songlines on 23 April 2013 at 12:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 41 23 April 2013 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
OneEye, you may be interested to know that, when I Googled "Glossika Mass Sentence Method", your personal blog posts on it were the top two results to appear. - They were really interesting, thanks. And I notice that Mike Campbell himself has posted a message to you, in the comments for the follow up: #2. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 24 of 41 23 April 2013 at 4:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I, and most of the world I think, disagree with Arguelles that shadowing and chorusing are the same.
Shadowing is precisely what the term itself suggests. You repeat the audio, just after you hear it. So you'll be a little behind the recording, like a shadow. It's a technique used extensively by many interpreters. Chorusing, on the other hand, is speaking in chorus with the recording. The goal is to match the speaker perfectly, in pronunciation, intonation, everything. Where shadowing is extensive and can (and should) be used with longer texts and speeches, chorusing is intensive and only works with shorter clips of audio (one sentence or phrase at a time). Idahosa, the owner of the "Mimic Method" website, wrote an article a while back on something he called "flow-verlapping." It's essentially chorusing, but you record yourself and then listen back to the two recordings simultaneously. I think his way takes too much time and effort, and isn't as effective as doing it on repeat in real time and adjusting your pronunciation on the fly (he's trying to sell a service where he corrects your pronunciation and intonation), but at least it's a good demonstration of what you're looking for when you do it. Yeah, the few posts I've done about Glossika's methods have been by far the most popular on my blog. I figured he was bound to come across it at some point or another. I got in touch with him, but since I prefer to stay anonymous, there won't be a ChineseQuest/Glossika video. Instead, he plans on shooting one (maybe with someone that works at his school) doing a Q&A in English about the method, particularly covering things that people are unclear on. I'll be supplying some of the questions. If that video ever comes to fruition, I'll try to remember to post it here. Edited by OneEye on 23 April 2013 at 5:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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