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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 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 49 of 181 28 December 2008 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI MOD 6 Unit 3, 657 Characters, Pimsleur 88.
Almost done with Pimsleur...wondering what to do with that 30 mins after...probably add it to my livemocha convo time. Not sure yet. Considering buying "Chinese Reader" to help broaden my vocab from FSI's. It is extremely risky to learn Chinese vocab out of context, which is becoming an issue for me. Still don't have a damn convo partner. Regardless, when I am done with Pimsleur I am thrusting myself on to livemocha for chinese only chat. I had been sick for the past 5 days, worked constantly, and with the insane snow here finally dying down, I can finally be rid of my distractions and get down to business as normal. Studyed a lot today to try to catch up. I am off tomorrow and the next day too, so that should be give me well enough time to catch up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 50 of 181 28 December 2008 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 51 of 181 29 December 2008 at 11:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Pimsleur 89, 680 Characters.
FSI has gotten too dense with new content, so I am doing 1 Unit every 2 days now. MOD 6 is turning out to be pretty steep climb in difficulty. Today something great occured in my mind. Something totally obvious, but great non-the-less. I realized I could edit the mp3s of FSI (or whatever else) with audacity, and put the sounds into my ANKI deck. Yes, I know, it is obvious, but sometimes I am slow..ok!? :) So now, I am putting every target sentence from FSI into ANKI along with their audios. Anyway, this is AWESOME, because I am more of a audio learner for languages (I guess everyone is, really) and this has already drastically improved the speed that I can instantly recall cards and keep them on my tongue. I plan on doing this from now on, with every language I learn. The SRS element essentially makes it a super-Pimsleur. One of the problems with FSI is that there is no enough direct association from Eng --> Chinese. I just remedied this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 52 of 181 31 December 2008 at 9:32am | IP Logged | ||
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695 characters, FSI MOD 6 Unit 4. Pimsleur 90.
Starting to write and chat only in written Chinese, but have not yet had a full convo. When I am done with Pimsleur, in 2 days...I will throw myself in. God help me. My reading comprehension is horrible, about 60% to 70% maybe, and I have to look up every 4th word in the dictionary it seems. I think that Chinese people aren't used to learners actually trying to communicate in written chinese, because they are being brutal with me, using full-on native expressions, vocab, everything. Woe is me, right? Basically reading Chinese is a nightmare at this point. It is hard to tell what the seperate words are, and if I know the word at first glance, because it will have familiar characters but be a different word. Characters on the chat and messages are supersmall and hard to read anyway, on top of the comprehesion. So I have to stare at the damn writing and give myself a pounding headache. I think I need to make my ANKI type smaller... I am memorizing every new word improvisiationally (not prepared writing, which I'm sure contains more rarified expressions) written by a native I come across now, every one. I don't care if it is on a profile, message, chat, anything, I will put it into ANKI. I need to get my comprehension to around 90% as soon as possible so I can be autonomous. On the brightside, I am coming across more words composed of known characters making it possible for me to memorize more words, so I am increasing my daily load to approx 20 to 25 words a day. Memorizing mandarin vocab is another nightmare in itself. Every word has basically about 20 contexts/meanings, some of which are completely different, is every part of speach simultaniously, etc. Mandarin is basically rhe most contextual language ever, and anyone thinking that that makes it easy (compared to "hard grammar", etc) is out of their minds. This makes it super hard to be build vocab, and the only way really is in situations, which is why I need to be autonomous. /rant over 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 53 of 181 04 January 2009 at 9:09am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI MOD 6 Unit 6, 726 characters.
Well, today I had my first full Mandarin conversation online. I can't use Livemocha because I want to copy the characters and study the copy of the chat later for setences and vocab. I did survive, just barely, but thanks to the kingsoft dictionary I can point at a word and get the definition...I never knew those types of dictionaries existed haha! It was exactly what I thought it would be, demoralizing and invigorating at the same time. It is doing exactly what I need it to do, which is to get me into the real world and discover what words and grammar people are actually using... and to give me a massive headache so I know its working. I finally found a RL convo partner, and I am going to be messing around the skype soon. Edited by irrationale on 04 January 2009 at 9:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 54 of 181 09 January 2009 at 7:16am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI Mod 6 Unit 8， 735 characters (although I really don't care about this number anymore, its pretty meaningless).
I met with my RL convo partner and had a reality check. I have basically no conversation ability. Well, I didn't help that I was nervous and it was really loud in that Starbucks. I have all the basic conversation material that I had in Spanish at this point (possibly more) passivly in my mind, but I must think about them and it takes a couple of seconds to say anything. It isn't active, and this is unacceptable. I need to activate it NOW. This is before everything else, I need to have this conversational fluency base. So I am entering basically every sentence in FSI MOD 6, as well as their MP3 clips into ANKI to memorize by heart with instant recall. I ordered NPRC basically only for this purpose, to get more setences and so I can rip the audio. I will imput basically every useful sentence I find, via the 10,000 method. I also need to do a better job with skype, and stop procrastinating with messing with skype (I;ve never done skype before)...I need to TALK to people NOW. The only good news is that I am a somewhat autonomous chatter in Mandarin (since chatting doens't require fluency at all) so I am getting common phrases, words, patterns of speach, and stealing them into ANKI to memorize. I am trying to spend 1 hour everyday chatting or on skype. Hopefully all this along with my nice native parter will get me to conversational fluency sometime relatively soon. I said hopefully. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RedKing'sDream Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5800 days ago 53 posts - 68 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Ukrainian | Message 55 of 181 09 January 2009 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is an interesting log.
So at this point how would you rate Pimsleur Mandarin overall for very basic conversation? Thanks and good luck with your further studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 56 of 181 10 January 2009 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the reply. First I should say that my RL convo partner didn't do a good job with basic conversation, and I had never heard or spoken with someone in Mandarin. He talked at native speed (at first), and asked the question "If I were to get my driver's liscence, where should I go" after I asked for a BASIC (easy to answer AND understand) question. I was thinking something like "Where do your parents live?" I can answer questions like these fluently with Pimsleur. So for me, "conversational fluency" is a a kind of magic point where you have enough words, apsects, fillers, setence structures and tools to glide you through a convo with a native without pausing too much. It would probably be the Advanced Level as rated by language tests. But Pimsleur never claims to get you here, only intermediate. It is a point of contention here, but I would say Pimsleur does get you to the intermediate level, but this isn't the same as "conversational ability". This is being able to ask and answer basic survival and some personal questions without difficulty. Pimsleur Mandarin does this for you. The problem is that, contrary to the popular belief of some new people, Mandarin isn't "like" English. It is WAY different, especially if you want to get to the advanced level. So with just Pimsleur in a language like Mandarin, your mind really can't fill in the gaps and allow you to explore the language on your own. Almost all the constructions in Pimsleur were never explained and some only given one example..you don't really get a chance to figure it out. This leaves you stuck with the intermediate level non-fluid "ask and answer". With Pimsleur Spanish, you mind can manage better and get more out of it. Also this Pimsleur's vocab was well below par, it seemed. Bottom line, after Pimsleur Mandarin expect to be able to ask and answer basic questions, at well below native speed. But this is an important ability to have on the road to fluency, but always weigh the price of the lessons. :) Edited by irrationale on 10 January 2009 at 12:27am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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