Mandarin journey (FSI, Pimsleur, NPCR) (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Mandarin journey (FSI, Pimsleur, NPCR)
Tags: Pimsleur \| FSI \| Mandarin
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181 messages over 23 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 21 ... 22 23 Next >>

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 161 of 181

20 February 2011 at 7:11am | IP Logged

Micoh wrote:

Wow, irrationale, what an inspirational log! It was really impressive to see the progress
that you made throughout all your studies. I just had a few questions for you though.
Seeing as hindsight's always 20/20, I was wondering what you thought the most useful
resources or methodology were for you? Or if you could go back to the beginning, would
you have changed anything?

I'm trying to come up with a good approach for my own studies and it's always good to see
how someone else has already done it!

Hey, thanks for the kind words! Do you mean best resource overall, or just to get me to fluency? If overall, besides native speakers of course, I would simply say one thing. www.iciba.com . This single website/dictionary provided me with thousands of sentences, chinese to chinese definitions, and translations gathered from the web. It is simply an invaluable resource. For bringing me to fluency, I would say FSI.

I would have done a few things differently. I would have started watching Chinese TV from the very beginning instead of waiting, what was it, 7 months? That was a dumb move. Same with talk radio, should've been straight from the beginning. Other than that, more sentences from the beginning. I guess what I am talking about is more input right from the beginning, comprehensible or not.

Good luck with your studies! I don't check this log often so if you have a more specific question feel free to PM　me.

Edited by irrationale on 20 February 2011 at 7:19am
2 persons have 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 162 of 181

20 February 2011 at 7:19am | IP Logged

Carolyn1 wrote:

hi irrationale, i saw that you studies Tagalog, are you currently working on that? do you still learn mandarin?

Well, I am just reviewing how to write the characters mainly. I review for 30 min a day on my ANKI deck. I am not too sure what you mean "learn mandarin". I am reviewing what I need to (characters), but I stopped actively learning new grammar (for example) a long time ago. My lifestyle involves a lot of things Chinese, so it is more of a part of me now that grows over time, and less something I am learning actively. Of course, if you mean, encounter and learn new things, well I am always doing that, including English. I hope that answers.

About Tagalog, that is a whole other story. I am almost to basic fluency, but yes, I am intensely studying Tagalog at this point. The process has been rife with difficulties, quite different from Chinese however. I have thought about putting up a log, but it is sort of late for that. What do you think?
1 person has voted this message useful

liddytime
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
mainlymagyar.wordpre
Joined 6231 days ago
693 posts - 1328 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician
Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)

Message 163 of 181

22 March 2011 at 1:08pm | IP Logged

irrationale,

Is this still the method you would advise for learning Mandarin from scratch?

Or, since you are a ways out now, would you tweak anything?

irrationale wrote:

MY　METHOD

0 months   1)STEP 1 Pimsleur for 1.5 months

-I went through Pimsleur a day like normal.

-From the beginning, I memorized every word I learned in Pimsleur and their characters using a 3 field ANKI
card deck, using no method besides strokes from "how to write Chinese characters". All were reproduction and
production.

-I never studied tones, pinyin or grammar. I used pinyin in the cards, but that was all. A short time later, you
will spontaneously associate the pinyin and read it with no issue.

1.5 months    1)STEP 2 FSI for 1.5 months，continuing Pimsleur

This is about the time when Pimsleur's effectiveness starts declining, so I started FSI here. I could have started it
a little earlier perhaps.

-I started FSI from MOD 1, skipping the introduction. I did one unit a day. Memorized every word using ANKI.

3-4 months   1)STEP 3Finished Pimsleur and FSI mods 1 to 6, start FSI MOD 7 and NPCR, start conversing
with natives, start listening to talk radio.

Around this time, I hit MOD 7 of FSI, which is substantially harder, and has very different content. I also started
book 2 of NPCR with audio. In this stage I changed my tactic and did the following;

1) I used Audacity to import all the reference sentences from FSI into anki. I typed them out into 2 field cards,
both production and recognition, with English writing/audio on one side, and chinese writing/audio on the other.

2) I put every single example sentence in FSI booklet into ANKI with chinese characters, but only recognition, 10K
sentences style.

(this is how I avoided FSI's downfall of not having characters)

3) browse the booklet for that section, listen to tape 2 at your leisure.

I did about one unit every week.

with NPCR

1) rip the words' audio from the CD into ANKI and put it with the corresponding word. I memorized every word
in NPCR, all with their audio.

2) memorize the key sentences in ANKI with their audio (recognition only)

3) read all the passages.

I did approximately 1 lesson every 2 or 3 days.

I stopped caring about listening to NPCR's audio of the passages because it is too slow and classroom style,
basically a waste of time in my opinion.

Native speaker

I searched conversation exchange . com and found 2 natives. I had about 2 convos a week from then on. I
learned a substantial amount of usages, phrases, and words from this that I use now...this is critical. Later, I also
mixed it up with a tutoring program from a local community college.

Talk radio

I recommend talk radio, not music. There are no tones in music, and lots of rare words, as well as other obvious
factors. Talk radio will contain core vocab, unprepared speech, and very fast talking. This will allow you to learn
the pause fillers, interjections, and the general speech manner. The radio distortion helps simulate real life
distortion and noise.

8-9 months 1)STEP 4 Finished NPCR, start reading novels, watching TV, and 5000 word freq dictionary,
change ANKI routine.

This is where I am now. I watch 我的青春，谁做主 on tudou. I am reading 2 novels at the moment, both casual
style. I am about done going through the 5000 most common word freq dictionary (search amazon), basically
just filling out the core vocab and getting any straggling words that were somehow missed in all my lessons
(there were quite a few).

ANKI routine change; Word usage has become such an issue that I changed all my cards in the word deck to 5
fields; chinese, English, pinyin, chinese example sentence, English example sentence. In this way, I can memorize
two very similar, but different words by including example sentences to distinguish them, in either English or
chinese or both.

If the word does not exist in English, and/or is not in my active English vocab, it goes to recognition with
example sentence.

Thanks for reading ;)

Thanks!!
2 persons have voted this message useful

JasonUK
Triglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
learnalanguagein1yea
Joined 5258 days ago
29 posts - 38 votes
Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French
Studies: Thai, Spanish

Message 164 of 181

22 March 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged

That's a great summary. irrationale has been able to learn so fast.

for me. i've been learning for 10 months so far.
Until now i've -

-Listened to all the pimsleur lessons 3 times.
-done modules 1-5 of FSI 2 times
-Listened to all the micheal thomas lessons
-also completed level two of rosetta stone.
-Half way through an Assimil book
-I also complete a lessons from chinese almost everyday
-Also i spend about 6-7 mins using anki everyday.

that's to date.

1 person has voted this message useful

Akao
aka FailArtist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5338 days ago
315 posts - 347 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona

Message 165 of 181

12 May 2011 at 2:38am | IP Logged

It's great that you've learned so much in a short time when many say it takes 6 years to
reach a level of 6 months of Spanish.
1 person has voted this message useful

dbag
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5024 days ago
605 posts - 1046 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 166 of 181

18 May 2011 at 12:22am | IP Logged

Irationale wrote:
"I have thought about putting up a log, but it is sort of late for that. What do you think?"

I would love to see your study logs for other languages. They are incredibly useful and inspiring for beginners like me to read.

What I like, in both your Spanish and Mandarin logs, is that in your first post, you state your goals, (which are ambitious to say the least" and you go all the way and actually achieve these goals.

I havent seen many logs like that, and it proves to people that it is possible to reach a high standard in a language.

I would be intersested to see how you are tackling Japanese, as there is no complete FSI for the language, as there is for the others you have studied.

Edited by dbag on 18 May 2011 at 12:25am
1 person has voted this message useful

Li Fei
Pro Member
United States
Joined 5125 days ago
147 posts - 182 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin
Personal Language Map

Message 167 of 181

18 May 2011 at 1:34am | IP Logged

Second the motion, Irrationale. I would love to see your log for Japanese or any other language. Why don't
you start one up again?
1 person has voted this message useful

JayR9
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4702 days ago
155 posts - 162 votes

Speaks: English*

Message 168 of 181

13 January 2012 at 3:24am | IP Logged

What a brilliant log. I am new to this site as I am looking for as much Info and resources as possible to start me on my way to learning Mandarin and I have read every single page today (Well it is now 2.20am haha).

Very Inspirational, Thank you.

I can't find your Anki cards or any other things you uploaded so It looks like I will have to do it myself but, Again, well done and continue the great work.

1 person has voted this message useful

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