owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6914 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 49 of 79 12 April 2007 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
Keith,
Have you tried listening to anything besides Assimil? Like going to a chinese restaurant or watching a dvd? If so, could you understand any of it?
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Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6805 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 50 of 79 13 April 2007 at 7:28am | IP Logged |
Nope, I haven't tried anything else.
Are you just curious?
I don't think I could process the information fast enough to be able to understand much more than a couple of words here and there. I'm only at 96 hours with the course. I just started my massive listening program a month ago (March 12th) and since then I have put in 77 hours.
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owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6914 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 51 of 79 13 April 2007 at 8:57pm | IP Logged |
I was just curious to see if you had tried applying any of your acquire listening ability to anything besides assimil.
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lcsr Diglot Newbie Portugal Joined 6445 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin
| Message 52 of 79 01 May 2007 at 12:28pm | IP Logged |
I have used "Le Chinois Sans Peine" (the French version) in conjunction with Assimil's "L'écriture chinoise" (in order to learn how to write) and I liked it a lot.
Unlike Keith, though, I only spent about 15-30 minutes on each lesson, and I think it's more than enough IMHO. Long intensive study sessions never really worked for me. I prefer to study just for a while but everyday, and I believe that's how Assimil books are supposed to be used...
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Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6805 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 53 of 79 01 May 2007 at 7:57pm | IP Logged |
Icsr, thank you for your post. I, as well as others, sure would appreciate it if we could hear you in a Chinese conversation.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6937 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 54 of 79 02 May 2007 at 3:39am | IP Logged |
I don't spend much more than 20-30 minutes on a lesson. Will I get a native accent from that? Probably not. Will I be able to use the Chinese I've learnt? Probably yes.
There are loads of people who have spent just the recommended amount of time (in other languages though) and become semi-fluent in a couple of months. I believe them.
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owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6914 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 55 of 79 03 May 2007 at 1:42pm | IP Logged |
I'm pretty impressed with the time keith is putting in to Chinese with Ease. Hope his experiment with this method pays off.
I don't know exactly how much time I spend on each chinese with ease lesson. I spend roughly about an hour listening, chorusing, doing the exercises and reading the notes before I go on to the next lesson. However, that does not count the time I spend reviewing them at later dates. And my study time varies. Some times I study for an hour in a row, other days I do 20 to 30 minutes by studying a few minutes at a time throughout the day.
I'm curious to see how high Keith's comprehension level is when he finishes both Chinese with Ease volumes. Will he be able to listen to a movie and understand some of the dialogue? If he starts a different course after assimil, how much of the knowledge he acquired from assimil will transfer to the new course with different speakers, dialogues, etc.
Edited by owshawng on 03 May 2007 at 5:04pm
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6937 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 56 of 79 04 May 2007 at 6:47am | IP Logged |
I don't think it's a bad idea combining methods and/or courses, and in Keith's case it's Assimil+"Automatic Language Growth". Perhaps he's putting to much faith in ALG. Kind of a strange combination by the way. People get semi-fluent after a couple of months (60+ hours) with Assimil (the fastest method around?), while it (at 2,5 hours per day) would take 240 days to get the 600 hours of listening.
I'm with Ari here, predicting that Keith will get great pronounciation, but little comprehension and speaking skills.
For variation, I try different materials, movies et.c. I would prefer a working knowledge of the language over perfect pronunciation (the major "risk" is that people around think you're a native speaker while you may understand only a fraction of what's said due to limited input).
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