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Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 9 of 230 22 March 2013 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Weekly Progress Entry 1
22.3.2013 Ok, so I will update this log at minimum once a week with a review of what I have availed myself upon the prior seven days. The "weekly Progress entry" (WPE) will be the most detailed post. I will also use "unit completion entry" (UCE), i.e., whenever I complete an actual lesson, unit, or section as designated by my materials, I will briefly log it here. Such posts will not have any further details on what was covered. Of course, if there is some exceptional event, achievement, or hurdle that I feel should receive special attention or recognition, I will post that in a special entry. So... I started last Friday, and I have been doing nothing but reviewing material already studied. This material is from my Basic Spoken Chinese by Kubler. It is the Orientation reading, the suggestive tips section, and the pronunciation section (which is quite extensive thankfully). I already had practiced the sounds of Chinese, the pronunciation of tones, and the spelling rules as applied with Pinyin transcription with this same material twice before in the last 6-8 months very thoroughly. Thus I felt confident that my pronunciation while obviously nowhere near native-like, should be pretty solid in its foundations. Last Monday I met my possible tutor, a very nice lady and from the looks of it a very professional teacher. I had a free session to see how I felt about the class. She was extremely impressed with my pronunciation, so obviously that has given me a moral boost. She clearly hinted that progress could be much faster since she would not have to be correcting my speech nowhere as often as with many of her past or current students. So, I will likely meet with her once a week once I can begin paying for her services (hopefully soon). So the rest of this week I have reviewed and drilled Chinese pronunciation even more, and I was surprised that very early on sounds that had given me trouble in the last run I did ("c" vs "t" most notoriously), this time around didn't; I could tell them apart fairly well. That is very encouraging. Of course, this is mostly sounds in isolation and not in real-time speech, so I'm expecting many more challenges when I get up to speed. But at least I know I can make the sounds apart, which means I will be able to do so later in more rapid speech too. In writing, I have been reviewing my 100 Chinese characters book, and also am encouraged about how "fast" everything is coming back. I hadn't touched the material in at least six months. My character writing skills are coming back too, still not as good as back then, but obviously given a week or two I'll be back to where I was. I have been memorizing some of the phrases suggested in both books, very basic greetings, sayings, and class expressions. And that's that. This next week I hope I can continue pronunciation drilling, but I'll cut down the time spend on that as I will begin formally with Unit 1 of the book, and the companion workbook. I will continue to review my 100 characters and hopefully by the end of this week I will have all 100 back under my command. From there I will get another book to study the most common 800 characters, at a pace of a bout 7-10 characters a day if possible. Till the next WPE on 3.29.13! 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 10 of 230 29 March 2013 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 1
Unit 1 Lesson 1 Basic Spoken Chinese 27.3.2013 Edited by outcast on 29 March 2013 at 7:46pm 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 11 of 230 29 March 2013 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Weekly Progress Entry 2
29.3.2013 As I had set out to do, this week I began the lessons proper. I have completed Lesson 1, and am almost done with Lesson 2. Began Lesson 3 today. I have found that giving an initial read to a following lesson's grammar helps me to "seed" my head of the upcoming structures and patters I will need to study. The learning of Chinese and especially the Chinese grammar given my background deserves a one-time, detailed excursive. I had mentioned in the past once that I had decided to learn German, French, and Portuguese first, before Chinese, as I thought the order would help me. While it is perfectly fine and doable to learn Chinese first, I think that for a self-learner like myself, the order I chose is proving early on invaluable. Two main reasons: 1. When I started listening to the phrases and the lessons proper, the dialogues obviously just completely flew by me. Even after 5-10 listens they still went way too fast, the strange words, the tones, the grammar structure, etc. While I'm not a person to give up easily, being faced with this circumstance may have deflated my enthusiasm, and not in a good "sobering" way. It may have planted a seed of doubt in me that perhaps this challenge maybe one bridge too far. But I didn't panic one bit, not even a shred of concern. Why? I already had the experience with French and German. At first, they also flew by my head. And back then it deflated me a bit, but I just soldiered on. And now here I am, I can understand now 90% of French or German television at full speed, no subtitles, and probably 60-70% when I'm not even paying attention. And sure enough... With patience, practicing the words and phrases, saying them out loud, listening again and again, even memorizing them, by the end of this first week the language has finally began the famous "slow down". Of course, any new phrase still is gibberish, but the tones themselves are slowly starting to become discernible in speech, albeit only in familiar words. 2. I made a huge effort in learning the other languages to understand to a fundamental level their grammar, in an anal way that I think many here would not even approve of (for the sake of learning a language). I delved into linguistics itself, learned all about word classes, tenses, moods, verbal alignment, aspects, perfective/imperfective, inflection, inclusive/exclusive pronouns, valency, and on and on and on and on and on. That is paying off big time now. So far, all the topics discussed in the lessons are not new grammatical concepts. Whether learning about "stative verbs" (roughly corresponding with the predicate nominative in German), or aspect particles (corresponding somewhat to French/Portuguese perfect/imperfect aspects), I have no problem grasping why and how to use them (at least in the areas the book suggest them to be used). This is a HUGE advantage, as with a language like Chinese you already have your hands full with the completely different vocabulary, the tones, and the writing system. Thus not having to really "study" the grammar at the fundamental level, having that ability to intuitively know what Chinese grammar concepts are about, is a big boost. This would not be the case had I started with this language fist. Everything would be new to me, and my learning would be far slower. Anyway... so yes, in terms of grammar the usual suspects to those that are further ahead in studying Chinese, know Chinese, or have looked into learning textbooks: greeting patterns, the most basic ending-sentence particles, the basic ways of forming questions with "ma", negative/affirmative choice, question words; subject pronouns, topic/comment intro, surnames and how to say them, the first bunch of verbs, and lots of very useful cultural notes on the vocabulary, how to use it, and most importantly when and where not to use certain expressions. I am still reviewing my 100 characters book and expect to be done by Monday. Then I will begin with my Written portion of the Chinese course, which has 300 Hanzi in it's basic part. That is a small number given the size of the book, but what is great about the series is that it has tons of useful cultural and historical background about the characters. I like this "holding by the hand" approach at the very beginning. Afterwards, I can begin learning more independently from other sources the remaining characters to reach reading literacy. For the record, I will learn the 4,000 most common characters from two lists, PLUS the simplified and traditional versions. That means that it maybe in fact 6.000 characters total. Yes, that is a super-daunting number, because most people only learn 2,000 or 3,000 and just from one list and either simplified or traditional. But the way I see it, if I really want to learn Chinese all the way, then might as well. Furthermore, learning thousands of characters is challenging enough whether 2K or 4K. It really makes no difference expect it will take me longer, but in for a penny in for a pound. That's it. My goals next week is to wrap up the first unit of the book, finish the 100 characters and begin the Writing lessons, and perhaps take out the Chinese Pimsleur from the library and begin practicing through that too. There is plenty of practice in the audio workbook in the Basic Chinese series, but as we know to learn from another source tends to plug holes and keeps you on your toes. Language learning is like body training, you have to mix it up to challenge your brain/body. Till the next WPE on 4.5.13! Edited by outcast on 01 April 2013 at 12:39am 4 persons have 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 12 of 230 01 April 2013 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 2
Unit 1 Lesson 2 Basic Spoken Chinese 30.3.2013 Edited by outcast on 01 April 2013 at 12:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5893 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 13 of 230 01 April 2013 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||
Hi, outcast. I'm planning to start "Basic Spoken Chinese" when I'm finished with Michel Thomas. What are your first impressions about it? I've been studying its pronunciation material along with other stuff, but this of course cannot tell me anything about the course itself. 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 14 of 230 01 April 2013 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is generally quite thorough in the things it covers. What I like thus far is how it
really goes out of its way to explain when to use certain vocabulary and when not to use it: in terms of register, and even regarding different situations such as geography, politics, and location. Example: how 再见 (see you again!) may be best avoided in places that people would not want to be in (as in if you are at the hospital because you are sick), but rather 保重 (take care). Stuff like that which I love because I have a weakness for proper language decor. The grammar thus far is more than I thought I would see, which is good. But what I mean is that I thought because the book is so "detailed" that it would sacrifice a bit in amount of content. If I have only one minor complaint is that at least one of the dialogues the voices sounded a bit far away, in other words, there is a slight inconsistency in the level of volume from one lesson to the other. But I'm only through 3 of the 40 lessons so I think it is safe to say that both my praise and my criticism is base on very slim experience. But so far, I find it very enjoyable because it is engaging on many levels and not just "dry" grammar and vocabulary lists, so it keeps you interested (not that I would have needed that, but it's a plus). Best of luck, I just took a look at your journal and it is very thorough, more than mine actually so I admire that. Interesting read about the Pinyin. The good thing is that the Basic Spoken Chinese pronunciation, as you probably know, makes it clear that a couple of the diphthongs do not spell out entirely the sound ("un" and "o" and "ui"). Good thing for me is that I have great hearing for that so I have an ability to reproduce sounds just by hearing them and not needing a written transcription. Best of luck! I'm sure we will cross often since we are on a similar road. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5893 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 15 of 230 02 April 2013 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for sharing your views.
One of the good things about Mandarin is that there are so many options and so many people learning it, that it should be easy to find a way that better fits your preferences. It seems that I'll enjoy "Basic Spoken Chinese". Studying grammar is often one of my favourite activities, which unfortunately doesn't mean that I learn it perfectly. 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 16 of 230 04 April 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 3
Unit 1 Lesson 3 Basic Spoken Chinese 4.4.2013 1 person has voted this message useful |
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