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Lorinth’s log - 劳伦的博客 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 377 of 408 30 March 2015 at 10:47am | IP Logged |
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More routine work, i.e.:
- Reading: I've kept on reading the novel 盗墓笔记 1 . Now in chapter 31, page 208/274. - Listening: I'm seeing the end of the 锵锵三人行 show about photoshopping. In fact I've already listened to and studied the whole show. Now, I'm revising difficult sentences, plugging holes and ironing wrinkles. Overal, it was fun (in spite of the invitable and innumerable repetitions) and, hopefully, useful. I'm impatient to start another show. Maybe I should wait until I've reviewed at least once all the sentences I've extracted into Anki with Audacity. - I'm studying lesson 2 of Rouzer's primer of ancient Chinese. - I'm finding it very hard to find a time slot for iTalki lessons. I haven't taken any lesson for weeks. More wanderlust: I should *not* have installed nethack on my phone. Repeat: I must delete that game from my phone. On the other hand, I've been playing another RPG, alone and with the kids, called Storyleaves. As you have to create your own characters, and then your own story, it would be perfect for creating tomb raider tales in Chinese with characters borrowed from 盗墓笔记 and 鬼吹灯... Creating stories in Chinese may be beyond my grasp, not counting I would probably write a majority of 100% incorrect sentences. Maybe Lang-8 could help. And that would be a fun way to combine studying and playing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 378 of 408 31 March 2015 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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In the next three weeks, I will have less time than usual to devote to language learning (family visiting us
and us visiting family), so it's time I stopped adding words to my different lists, so I can try to at least clear up my SRS queues every day. I have more or less finished the episode of 锵锵三人行 about photoshopping. The good news is that my level of understanding of this particular show has vastly improved. The less good news is that, for the majority of the dialogues, I still have to stop and repeat (or even loop through) sentences to gain a decent understanding. Anyway, I'm not bored with this show and obviously it will take more than 20 minutes of 锵锵三人行 to make a noticeable difference in my listening comprehension, so as soon as this round of family visits is over, I'll certainly start another episode. What's the best strategy? Try to listen to the show "cold" at first, or read the transcript beforehand, or read the transcript *and* understand it (vocab and all) beforehand? I don’t know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5168 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 379 of 408 14 April 2015 at 8:17pm | IP Logged |
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I hate spoilers, so I'd rather not read the script beforehand, though I am aware it can help building some important bridges through comprehension at the intermediate stage. It's more or less what I do with double subtitles, since I read the English subtitles at a glance.
I really should give 锵锵三人行 a try sooner or later, I might be oversingaporizing my Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 380 of 408 21 April 2015 at 12:33pm | IP Logged |
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As expected, I've just experienced a period of dead quiet with real life taking about 100% of
my time, forcing me to resort to the ultraemergency, last hope, dire straits, desperate routine I've devised over the years for such circumstances, i.e. stop doing anything but daily vocab reviews. Basically, for three weeks, I had no time to read, no time to listen, no time to study new words. I just struggled to review words in Pleco, Anki and Skritter, and barely managed to do it. So I'm slowly starting again from where I stopped, i.e.: - I continue reading 盗墓笔记 (now in chapter 41/46). It's taking me longer than expected, even allowing for that 3-week forced vacation period. Maybe I'm suffering from some fatigue after so much wandering in claustrophobic tomb corridors. But, hey, I've almost finished now. - I've started working on another 锵锵三人行 episode called "国人省吃俭用出国购奢侈品 给领导送礼" It's on Youtube if anyone's interested - I've gently restarted adding cards (characters, words, sentences, audio) to my different vocab learning apps. @Expugnator: In such a show, there's no plot, so no spoiler :) In addition, I will have to loop maaaany times through most sentences and all parts of the show long before I fully understand it. And last, unfortunately, I've found again that, at the present stage, there's now way I can understand (let alone enjoy) the show if I don't study the transcript in parallel. So in parallel it will be. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 381 of 408 22 April 2015 at 12:38pm | IP Logged |
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Yet another way to use Pleco. When reviewing cards, I now draw the tones on the screen (enable the drawing board by tapping on the brush),
right on the characters, like that: 
Only then do I reveal the rest of the card: 
I believe that actually writing the tones forces me to check whether I *really* know the tones (quite a few characters I thought I knew where in fact incorrect) while helping me to anchor them into my memory. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 382 of 408 23 April 2015 at 2:31pm | IP Logged |
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While browsing the TuneIn Radio Android app directories, I came across an interesting radio
station called 对外汉语教学网络电台. This morning, they had the news. The vocab did not strike me as particularly easy but the news were read in a veeeeery slooooow and clear voice, so for the very first time I could actually understand what was going on. After that, they played a song, then played each line while explaining the vocab with synonyms and more simple words. So, it definitely seems interesting. On the other hand, I could not find a web site corresponding to that station (I'd hoped to find schedules, maybe transcripts…). TuneIn provides a link (http://www.hanyu.com.cn/) but it seems it's dead. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 383 of 408 28 April 2015 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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I've finally reached page 274/274 of 盗墓笔记. It took me slightly over 2 months, a bit more than what I expected, as I had started fairly rapidly. Overal, a good book, with some very good claustrophobic atmosphere, unlikely monsters and at least two interesting characters (not the narrator). The difficulty level was variable: there were pages I could read without a dictionary, and others (e.g. descriptions, digressions about ancient Chinese history...) that were much more challenging. Some plot details were lost on me, first because this book is written in friggin CHINESE, and second because even when I do understand what's happening, it requires sustained levels of concentration that tend to make me stick to the words and the meaning of each sentence in isolation, to the expense of the general meaning of the narrative.
And now the usual question is... what's next on my reading list? I have several books waiting on my shelf: - I could go on with 中国民间故事, which I'd started in January and left unfinished - 盗墓笔记 vol. II? Hm... no, I need some change. - 鬼吹灯 vol. II? Hm... why not? Yes, it's yet another tomb raiding story, but this series tends to be more wacky and funny. - I have the classic 家, of which I read an abridged version last year (or was it the year before?) - I also have 平凡的世界, but with three volumes and almost 1000 pages, it's a behemoth. In addition, I've ran the first few pages through Chinese Text Analyser and it's probably more difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4276 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 384 of 408 06 May 2015 at 2:23pm | IP Logged |
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More tips for using Pleco. Here's a long-winded explanation for a very simple trick.
I've been using the same basic setting for studying Chinese words for many months now: each day, I use Pleco to look up words and I add a small quantity of new words (it used to be 25/day; for now I'm down to 10) in a list named after the day of the month (1, 2, 3… to 31). When reviewing words, I use simple flashcards (no SRS) to study the lists of the day before (X-1), three days before (X-3) and six days before (X-6). Then the words in list X-7 are moved to an SRS queue (another list called SRS) that I also study each day. Now, as I try to have as much input as possible, I come across much more than 10 new words daily. So, among these unknown words, how do I choose those I want to study? I have no set rule, but I tend to add those words that are made from characters I already know but that I did not readily understand, either because I'd forgotten the meaning or the pronunciation of the characters, or because the meaning of the word is not immediately obvious, even when the characters are known. Another trick I use is this: after I've added 10-15 words to my list of the day, instead of just looking up another new word and forgetting it immediately, I add it to a list called "temp": with Pleco it's as easy as tapping the + (plus) sign on the screen. Now, suppose that, a few days or weeks later, I come across the same word and still don't remember its meaning. Pleco will warn me about that: the + (plus) sign above the screen will be placed inside a square (circled in red in the screenshot), which means I've already seen that word and I should definitely add it to today's "real" list for studying. 
In other news, I've started reading 鬼吹灯 vol. II. Up to now the first chapter is fun and interesting. Not sure whether I'll go on though. I've kept on working (too slowly) on the second show of 锵锵三人行. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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