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Mandarin journey (FSI, Pimsleur, NPCR) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 81 of 181 17 March 2009 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Middle way through Unit 6. Starting Lesson 34 NPCR.
Same comments as last entry, except a "landmark" of sorts; due to missing two days of review, I did somewhere over 800 flashcards in one sitting, which is a personal record I don't want to top. I am realizing now that I soon may be in the strange situation of having spoken fluency without listening fluency, since the former ability is developing faster. I can not let this happen. I don't know what else I have to do besides just listen to spoken mandarin whenever I can, which I am doing through podcasts. I listen to about 1 hour of mandarin a day, at least, not counting my lessons. People aren't exactly helping either. When I talk, people automatically respond in native speed, which I mostly can't understand. They then either 1) respond in (mostly broken) English or 2) speak incredibly slow baby speed, neither of which helps my hearing ability. It is interesting that it is hard for most people to simply speak a little slower...this is nothing against Chinese people, perhaps this is a factor in all cultures. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 82 of 181 18 March 2009 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Many people are unaware of their speaking speed unless they've been through some sort of training, like Toastmasters.
Listening comprehension takes time. My native Mandarin speaker friends, who are here in the US, generally mention more than a year before they were somewhat comfortable understanding American speakers. For one friend, it was several years. I personally comprehend more Mandarin than I can speak. Here are some ideas that should help.... 1...listen to as much native audio as possible, regardless of whether it's understandable. And I really mean as much as possible. Listen to Mandarin while you drive, pop into a store, brush your teeth, etc. The number of listening hours cannot be over done and not all of it needs to be active listening. For material, talk radio would work well. News and announcements are often at what seems to be break neck speed; interviews generally are at a slower pace. Music has it's own set of concerns since the tones are omitted, though rap might be an exception. I personally do most of my listening using an iPod (rip the audio from movies/TV shows). Next to movies/TV, the most frequent thing I listen to is probably Beijing radio. I heard that most podcasts are spoken at slower than normal speed and purposely avoid those. 2...since you're using FSI, increase the speed to about 1.3x or 1.4x. At 1.5x it starts to sound like chipmunks talking. 3...watch movies/TV series with matching subtitles. The ones I've run into which have matching subtitles (with the exception of uh's, stuttering and the like) are TV series produced in the mainland, Mandarin dubbed Korean TV series and TV series produced in Taiwan. The Taiwan produced ones use traditional characters so that won't work as well if you are learning simplified. The Korean TV series, I've run into, have subtitles in both simplified and traditional. The traditional ones match the dialog so I assume the simplified subtitles do also. The mainland series I've seen have only simplified characters. 4...work through something like "Across the Straits" (http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/across_straits). Hope some of this helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 83 of 181 20 March 2009 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the advice Snowflake. Across the Straits... thanks for this! This kind of thing is perfect. Speed up FSI, are you sure? FSI is native speed isn't it? I can make out most of the convos on tape 2 but it takes a lot of focus. Right now I am listening to 老百姓的声音, and Listener's Hotline on radio free asia's podcasts. They are talk radio. My reasoning is that talk radio is unique in that it is unprepared and with the average person, so the vocab distribution, speed, and talk patterns should be about right. Also the audio quality is bad, which is actually what I want to help replicate real world conditions. I honestly don't know exactly what the problem is at this point. I'm not sure if it is the fact that every Chinese speaker seems to have their own style and word choices, for example someone used a word for "friend" the other day that I have never heard before. Or that some people have strange pronunciation habits, perhaps aren't native Mandarin speakers, etc. All in all of course, there is no excuse; my listening ability isn't good enough. Then again, I find listening to NPCR's audio very easy (this definitely could be sped up), so I feel sorry for anyone in class thinking that real world Chinese is going to sound like this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 84 of 181 21 March 2009 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I used FSI for a while. At one point, I listened to Beijing radio (FM1006 at http://listen.bjradio.com.cn/) while neglecting FSI. Going back to FSI, I was astonished at the slow pace. I'm thinking of using FSI again though it probably will be a little sped up and I won't be saying my answer in the silent portion the way it was designed to be used.
I got frustrated this week when a native speaker at work wanted to ask a question, about English, using Mandarin. He talks naturally fast and used vocabulary that I'm unfamiliar with. It's like listening to my friend from Taiwan use du2 shu1 (trad 讀書, simp 读书) when I learned nian4 shu1 (trad 念書, simp 念书). Then I picked up a first grade reader and du2 shu1 was in the first 5 pages. 加油! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 85 of 181 24 March 2009 at 9:06am | IP Logged | ||
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读书 haha... I know. This was in NPCR. How many words for studying can there possibly be, right?
Lesson 35 NPCR, Unit 7 MOD 7. I now have tons of Chinese people to talk to. Anyone looking for quite natives, here is what I did. 1)Went to the local community college and volunteered to be an ESL tutor. Shazaam. Instant natives. Furthermore, they know little English, which forces me to talk in Chinese when I am not teaching. Also, I have of course made some new Chinese friends. 2)Also check out conversation exchange . com. (or something like this). This will hook you up with people looking to practice their convo skills. Different set of people with different set of benefits. The great majority know your L1 very well, so less forcing you to speak L2, but the good part is more translations, elaborations, etc in L1. Edited by irrationale on 24 March 2009 at 9:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 86 of 181 31 March 2009 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Basically done with NPCR 3, on to Level 4. Done with MOD 7, just need to go through some example sentences and need to throughly memorize all the reference sentences well before moving on. A large pile of cards is building up, and I simply need to go through them all. Luckily I finally have some days off to do this.
It is funny that they tell me at the end of text 3, ""you can now express your ideas on daily life and some social topics... level 4 will guide you to the intermediate level of Chinese". Huh? Expressing your ideas about daily life plus some social topics isn't even intermediate to the NPCR authors? What is considered "advanced chinese" I wonder? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 87 of 181 08 April 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Moving to MOD 8 (TRAVEL).
..it seems not too hard to me. I don't see a change in difficulty. They seem to be focusing more on the usage of words now than before, and less of grammar, which is fine, because that is one of my major problems. The narrowness of the topics/vocab may be a downfall, but since I am traveling to China perhaps quite soon, it doesn't bother me. On lesson 41 of NPCR. Lessons changed to include much more reading than before, it is appropriately challenging, not too hard or easy. NPCR has become far and away my main source of vocab/context, although it is useless for speaking and almost for listening; the audio is still at a silly classroom pace, and over pronounced. You would think at this level they would cut that out. Over all, I am still very pleased, but would never want this to be my sole resource in a 3 year university class sequence, worth who knows how much money not including the books. What a joke. Anyway, I am on the verge of saying "I speak Chinese", what is holding me back mainly is word usage/context, vocab amount (these are related of course), activating new sentence forms, which seem to never end. In any case, I can circumlocute until I activate a more efficient sentence form. Accent has never been a problem, and my listening ability has really improved by listening to so much mandarin radio and convos. I don't really have a problem listening to a standard accent fluent speech anymore. Of course, not everyone has standard accents now do they? But no one mentions this when you learn Chinese. One of my convo partners I found extremely difficult to understand at fluent speech...then I found out she has a "fu jian" accent with no retroflex sounds at all! There is no equivalent to that in English but a serious speech impediment. But no excuses, right? Oh yeah for future reference sake , 2093 words, 1293 characters. (Due to the lack of new characters as time goes by, I am increasing to 30 words a day from 25. Of course, the bad side is that I am learning less characters. Words are more important in any case.) Edited by irrationale on 08 April 2009 at 2:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 吕明扬 Newbie United States Joined 6058 days ago 30 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 88 of 181 09 April 2009 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||
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你们都学得那么厉害啊！如果我有你们的努力 的话，我才会说普通话。 I've found that the farther you get into this particular language, the more grammar starts to fall to the wayside, that vocab accumulation and native material exposure become the most important parts to progress.
Out of curiosity what does retroflex sound mean? Is it the case how some accents blend together the "Gang" and "Gan" sounds. Or more like "Shi" and "Si"? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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