Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy
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Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log

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outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 137 of 230 06 February 2015 at 3:00pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 43 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 15 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.5.2015 - - - - - - - I have completed Unit 5 of BSC, I am now into Unit 6. Next week I have a week off from work so I would have extra time to practice and finish this unit and finally get back to the level reached before my hiatus, Unit 7. Finally I am signing up for HSK testing in late March. It is not expensive at all, I will take Levels 2 and 3, but I am studying as if I was taking level 4, which is estimated to be a solid A2 level. Edited by outcast on 06 February 2015 at 3:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 138 of 230 11 February 2015 at 7:01am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 44 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 16 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.10.2015 - - - - - - - Finishing Unit 6 BSC in the next 24-48 hours. Beginning Unit 7 by Friday or Saturday. 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 139 of 230 12 February 2015 at 3:22pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 45 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 17 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.12.2015 Edited by outcast on 12 February 2015 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 140 of 230 18 February 2015 at 8:43am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 46 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 18 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.17.2015 - - - - I am up to Lesson 2 of Unit 7 BSC. Well, right now I am entering what would for most people be the first major plateau. That is, the initial huge boost of speaking nearly nothing to forming rudimentary sentences is waning and now I'm entering the jungle of increasing vocabulary and sentence complexity. There is so much one can say with sentences that contain less then 4 words... I know it is not a plateau however, just a new period of somewhat slower (but more substantive) language progress. The mileposts start getting farther apart, and thus more effort is involved, but I've been here three times before and there is no scare or despair anymore. One must just stay the course, making small adjustments to fit the new reality. But discipline right now is paramount. So now I am trying to string together more complex sentences that have subjects and objects (those containing attributives), adverbs, and a much wider range of tense/aspect structures to work with. I am proud to say I have a very high 90% degree... of failure. And the 10% of the time I actually do string a coherent "longer" sentence together, the usage is all wrong for that situation. But that's what Chinese study is all about right? Being wrong most of the time, for a long time. So this is no doubt my biggest language challenge to date, and I knew it would be a long road, even if the initial progress got me a little giddy. Now it is time to put the hard hat on and go head on... work harder at school, at home, with the tutor, put in extra activities, and make sure that when I head to China I have some respectable basic skills that will be invaluable to be able to make the most of the time there and advance my language skills at a much faster rate than if I landed there as a total beginner. I am shooting for being 50% of the time grammatically/vocabulary/idiomatically right when speaking output of everyday life by the time I head to China, which would be in about 6 months time. I guess that would be a high A2 very awful and low end B1. My goal is to go to China at a bare B1 level, and there work up to a solid B2, though not even close to scratching C1 even after a year in China. I don't know if this is either too ambitious or too conservative, so I guess it must be feasible with hard work, total immersion, and my experience and aptitude to learn languages. Edited by outcast on 18 February 2015 at 8:46am 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 141 of 230 20 February 2015 at 2:53am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 47 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 19 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.19.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 142 of 230 21 February 2015 at 9:11pm \| IP Logged
	Major Milestone 6 I have to my full satisfaction finally completed Unit 7 of Tuttle's Basic Spoken Chinese by Kubler. I am now onto new material in this course as well, I will begin Unit 8 Part 1 tomorrow morning. At my current pace, I expect to finish Basic Spoken Chinese in the first week of April or so. Then I will do a nice review of the material (two weeks or so), then begin Intermediate Spoken Chinese. On NPCR, I am half-way done with book 2, and expect to be done with this volume late March. After a review of the material there, to begin book 3 by April 1st. My medium-range plan is to finish Book 3, and up to Unit 14 of Intermediate Spoken Chinese. At that point I will intercalate new lessons with a review of the older lessons by reviewing the material already done and ADDING the written component. That is to say: I will perform the textbook material once again of NPCR and BSC (though obviously much faster and less involved since it is learned and internalized material and vocabulary), but ALSO add the NPCR workbook material and the volume of Written Spoken Chinese as "homework". The extra practice of old material via "new material" I have always found very effective, thus I purposefully left the workbooks of NPCR and Written Spoken Chinese untouched for when I wanted to go back to review. Both have interesting extra vocabulary, cultural notes, as well as tips on writing in Chinese including punctuation conventions and the like. They also have extra-reading material which never hurts. I look forward to that time! After a pause of almost four months, I have also started learning a new batch of characters (I had stopped at 3,000 and since then only reviewed and consolidated those). The pace of new characters will be significantly slower for the next 1,000 characters maybe 5 a day or so. I should be completing this tranche in about 6-7 months time. Upon reaching 4,000 total characters (counting both simplified and traditional), I should be around the magic "3K" threshold of official literacy in the Chinese language, and technically be able to read most native material without searching for every other character. Thus I am trailblazing on all fronts. I am fully 100% back on track...! Edited by outcast on 21 February 2015 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 143 of 230 23 February 2015 at 2:31pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 48 Unit 8 Lesson 1 Basic Spoken Chinese 2.23.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 144 of 230 25 February 2015 at 3:33am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 49 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 20 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.24.2015 - - - - I will review first half of book 2 NPCR for the rest of this week. I must recycle the vocabulary constantly (with some smartly played spaced repetition) in order for it to stick longterm. It is the ONLY way. 1 person has voted this message useful

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outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 137 of 230 06 February 2015 at 3:00pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 43 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 15 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.5.2015 - - - - - - - I have completed Unit 5 of BSC, I am now into Unit 6. Next week I have a week off from work so I would have extra time to practice and finish this unit and finally get back to the level reached before my hiatus, Unit 7. Finally I am signing up for HSK testing in late March. It is not expensive at all, I will take Levels 2 and 3, but I am studying as if I was taking level 4, which is estimated to be a solid A2 level. Edited by outcast on 06 February 2015 at 3:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 138 of 230 11 February 2015 at 7:01am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 44 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 16 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.10.2015 - - - - - - - Finishing Unit 6 BSC in the next 24-48 hours. Beginning Unit 7 by Friday or Saturday. 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 139 of 230 12 February 2015 at 3:22pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 45 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 17 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.12.2015 Edited by outcast on 12 February 2015 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 140 of 230 18 February 2015 at 8:43am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 46 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 18 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.17.2015 - - - - I am up to Lesson 2 of Unit 7 BSC. Well, right now I am entering what would for most people be the first major plateau. That is, the initial huge boost of speaking nearly nothing to forming rudimentary sentences is waning and now I'm entering the jungle of increasing vocabulary and sentence complexity. There is so much one can say with sentences that contain less then 4 words... I know it is not a plateau however, just a new period of somewhat slower (but more substantive) language progress. The mileposts start getting farther apart, and thus more effort is involved, but I've been here three times before and there is no scare or despair anymore. One must just stay the course, making small adjustments to fit the new reality. But discipline right now is paramount. So now I am trying to string together more complex sentences that have subjects and objects (those containing attributives), adverbs, and a much wider range of tense/aspect structures to work with. I am proud to say I have a very high 90% degree... of failure. And the 10% of the time I actually do string a coherent "longer" sentence together, the usage is all wrong for that situation. But that's what Chinese study is all about right? Being wrong most of the time, for a long time. So this is no doubt my biggest language challenge to date, and I knew it would be a long road, even if the initial progress got me a little giddy. Now it is time to put the hard hat on and go head on... work harder at school, at home, with the tutor, put in extra activities, and make sure that when I head to China I have some respectable basic skills that will be invaluable to be able to make the most of the time there and advance my language skills at a much faster rate than if I landed there as a total beginner. I am shooting for being 50% of the time grammatically/vocabulary/idiomatically right when speaking output of everyday life by the time I head to China, which would be in about 6 months time. I guess that would be a high A2 very awful and low end B1. My goal is to go to China at a bare B1 level, and there work up to a solid B2, though not even close to scratching C1 even after a year in China. I don't know if this is either too ambitious or too conservative, so I guess it must be feasible with hard work, total immersion, and my experience and aptitude to learn languages. Edited by outcast on 18 February 2015 at 8:46am 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 141 of 230 20 February 2015 at 2:53am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 47 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 19 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.19.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 142 of 230 21 February 2015 at 9:11pm \| IP Logged
	Major Milestone 6 I have to my full satisfaction finally completed Unit 7 of Tuttle's Basic Spoken Chinese by Kubler. I am now onto new material in this course as well, I will begin Unit 8 Part 1 tomorrow morning. At my current pace, I expect to finish Basic Spoken Chinese in the first week of April or so. Then I will do a nice review of the material (two weeks or so), then begin Intermediate Spoken Chinese. On NPCR, I am half-way done with book 2, and expect to be done with this volume late March. After a review of the material there, to begin book 3 by April 1st. My medium-range plan is to finish Book 3, and up to Unit 14 of Intermediate Spoken Chinese. At that point I will intercalate new lessons with a review of the older lessons by reviewing the material already done and ADDING the written component. That is to say: I will perform the textbook material once again of NPCR and BSC (though obviously much faster and less involved since it is learned and internalized material and vocabulary), but ALSO add the NPCR workbook material and the volume of Written Spoken Chinese as "homework". The extra practice of old material via "new material" I have always found very effective, thus I purposefully left the workbooks of NPCR and Written Spoken Chinese untouched for when I wanted to go back to review. Both have interesting extra vocabulary, cultural notes, as well as tips on writing in Chinese including punctuation conventions and the like. They also have extra-reading material which never hurts. I look forward to that time! After a pause of almost four months, I have also started learning a new batch of characters (I had stopped at 3,000 and since then only reviewed and consolidated those). The pace of new characters will be significantly slower for the next 1,000 characters maybe 5 a day or so. I should be completing this tranche in about 6-7 months time. Upon reaching 4,000 total characters (counting both simplified and traditional), I should be around the magic "3K" threshold of official literacy in the Chinese language, and technically be able to read most native material without searching for every other character. Thus I am trailblazing on all fronts. I am fully 100% back on track...! Edited by outcast on 21 February 2015 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 143 of 230 23 February 2015 at 2:31pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 48 Unit 8 Lesson 1 Basic Spoken Chinese 2.23.2015 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 144 of 230 25 February 2015 at 3:33am \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 49 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 20 New Practical Chinese Reader 2.24.2015 - - - - I will review first half of book 2 NPCR for the rest of this week. I must recycle the vocabulary constantly (with some smartly played spaced repetition) in order for it to stick longterm. It is the ONLY way. 1 person has voted this message useful