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A newbie sets out: Braving Mandarin. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4703 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 94 13 January 2012 at 5:03am | IP Logged |
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Hi,
I saw this log section and thought I would give it a try! Mostly for selfish reasons. I think if I lay out publicy what I am doing ( whehter anyone reads it or not) then at least feel some obligation to continue! I first got an interest in lanugages at the tender age of 8 when I loaned out a teach yourself Russian tape set from my local library. After that not much happened, we did French at school I was taken off the course as I "have no talent for languages" . For several years I forgot about untill a vietnamise friend at uni introduced my to Anime ( still at that time the preserve of the geek squad) which reignited my interest. Thus I set forth with self teaching as tutors were simple too expensive. That lasted a year, my perception of lack of progress was definatly a factor. Yet the interest was still there I continued to maintain the Japanase that I had aquired and read simple mangas in Japanese as best I could. Now I am in China so I have to study Chinese just to cope! I have been afraid of Chinese due to the tonal system and my old music teacher telling me I am tone deaf. I can not let the words of others discourage me anymore I have to make a push and really see for myself. I am really new to this whole thing not just the language but the very act of studying my toolbox of techniques is small knowedge of what works for me is just as miniscule. Now the overly verbose blurb is done away with here is where I am at with my Mandarin mission to date. - I am using the Assimil text book - I started with the shadowing and scriptorium system I am up to lesson 51 with shadowing and 38 with scriptorium. I currently do this twice a day ( for the same set of lessons) - After a while past items were still fuzzy to me and I decided I need some sort of renforcement so I have begun trying to do two lessons a via the Assimil way. I am at lesson 14 with this. To my delight while there have been some hazy words most of this past stuff is comprehensible to me in written form at least. - I usually have the Chinese TV blaring away, with maybe 30 min a day active listening. Most of the channels broadcast in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles, apparently pass rate for Mandrin among the natives is only somethign like 53%. I have foudn the subtitles to be most helpfull with recognition of the words that I have covered. - I use anki for those sentences that contain words that I find "hazy" I also use it to try and maintain the little Japanese I do have. Now for things I have tried but rejected :- ling- q I can not get a feel for this site, the free account I find to be so restricted it is chocking. While it is a bussiness I find it far to corporate to be compatiable with the claims of it being run by a small guy trying to help others while giving himself a little income. I have also recently discovered the likes of Rhinospike and lang-8 which I feel are an good alternative. Rosetta stone I think it is way overpriced for what it is. Also considering that I am in China that is clearly a far better immersion situation than a hour a day or so with the stone, now I just need to find some kind Chinese person willing to help me with some more controlled immersion. Edited by eggcluck on 01 July 2012 at 8:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5849 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 94 13 January 2012 at 8:21am | IP Logged |
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You should give you log a title which indicates the topic of your log. Therefore I edited the log title a bit.
Fasulye 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6622 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 3 of 94 13 January 2012 at 9:55am | IP Logged |
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Music teachers sometimes say people are tone-deaf when they are just frustrated with them not being able to match a tone. Singing requires that you match a tone exactly. Most people can learn this, but some people learn it more easily than others, and some people require a lot of work to get there.
In any case, Chinese doesn't require you to match a specific tone. All you have to do is to make you voice go up and down in tone. So if you can hear that one tone is higher or lower than another, that should be good enough. Anyway, there are probably plenty of Chinese people that are just as tone-deaf as you are, and they must manage somehow. I don't think signing ability will have any effect on your speaking ability. Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 4 of 94 13 January 2012 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forum eggcluck! Nice post. Let us know if you have any questions.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4703 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 94 13 January 2012 at 3:02pm | IP Logged |
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Well it has been a odd day, I have so far managed to keep to what I condsider my regular study plan, though I am unsure how that came to be.
I have felt somewhat tired as of late, I did not rise out of bed untill 11:00 to me that is 4 hours study time lost. Normally I crank out all my Anki reps within a hour or so but today I started at 12:00 and was still at it come 16:00 , to fit the rest in afterwards I had to really go at it. The lack of food today certainly hampered my already short attention span! I put all my veggies in the fridge to defrost (doh!) I was greeted by a black mushy carrots, mushrooms that were taking grow your own literaly, and peppers and cabbage that resembled some sort play doh. So I ended up dining on a tasty meal of rice with onion and instant noodles, yum! I noticed during shadowing today that I seemed to be comprehending better the later lessons than the earlier ones, given the way Assimil builds up I found it quite the strange occurance. I use Audacity to cut all the pauses in the original audio to try and get it as close to native as I can. I listened through and realised these later lessons where I have been doing better somehow sounded different. Turns out I had encoded them at a slightly higher bit rate (56), I was carefull about my bit rate selection before by going as low as I can before my ear notices distortion, I also did som reasearch that suggested 44kb/s was fine for speech. I never used to be able to tell the difference between 44 and 56 though it nows seems I can. The higher bit rate also appeared to help my study too. Once all the lessons I shadow with are at 56 I will up the bit rate again and see if that results in a further improvement, I tried already and like before my ears could not tell a difference. I have resolved my self to sort out my Anki situation, during the move to China anki reviews fell by the wayside, I was not too concerned about the thousands of due reviews that had piled up, I though I could whittle them down slowly. Yet several month later there is still a huge pile outstands, I think this will take a more concentrated effort, as draining as long Anki sessions can be. Weekends are the worst due to my workweek being compressed into just a weekend I usually do no Anki reviews at weekends and what progress I have made to reduce this pile is undone! So now I have set it to longest interval first to get out all the easier ones first ( hopefully) and a dinfinate resolve to try and kind some done during the weekend somehow. My retention rate has dropped dramtically from 80% to sometimes below 50%, this needs to be resolved before this over due pile hampers everything! During my regular research on how to learn, I read up on the usefulness of having targets, I have never done this before normally I just float by doing what ever. To test out the claimed benifits I will set myself some targets now. By years end I want to be B1 level reading and writing included. On the shorter term I want to clear out this huge anki pile by next weekend. Current Status:- -Assimil - Shadowing lessons 38 - 52 - Scriptorium lessons 34 - 36 - Assimil method lessons 15 and 16 - have up to lesson 14 as background listening Operation save Anki! - 1467 Reviews due/overdue 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4703 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 94 14 January 2012 at 2:51pm | IP Logged |
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I am pretty happy with what I got done today. Although I did one Assimil session and one Shadowing session less that what I previously stated and my daily routine, considering that on the weekends I have 10 hour work days with children I think that I have not done too badly.
I will have no time to do any shopping until Monday so my rotten veg inducing fridge incident no doubt is contributing to the tiredness factor. My plan to try and keep my due Anki cards at a stable level during the weekend has been ok, this Saturday I even managed a small reduction in the size of the pile ( 270 reps, usual during the week is around 500). The percentage correct for mature cards is 62% Which is so surprise considering that many of the cards have been languishing in the due pile since November. Currently majority of the cards are in Japanese. There are around 8000 Japanese cards compared to around 100 so far for Chinese. Anyone that has used Anki will be aware of the community pre made decks that can be downloaded, I used some of them with my Japanese disaster. I have resolved to build my own Deck for Chinese. While it is early days yet I have found The performance on the self made deck is far above that of the downloaded deck ( I also have a self made Japanese deck of 800 cards that also out performs the downloaded decks). I think while the act of making the cards themselves appear to be a valuable part of the learning process that is simply missed when using pre-made decks, even if it does take a considerable amount of time to do a self made deck, especially for me as I use Audio in the cards and cutting out the parts I want takes some time. While I managed today, I think given my heavy workload during the weekends, it may be an idea to have a seperate weekend study plan, to avoid wearing myself out during the weekend. Current Status -Assimil -Shadowing lessons 39-53 -Scriptorium 35-37 -Assimil method up to lesson 17 - up to 14 as background Operation save Anki! - 1428 Reviews due/overdue Edited by eggcluck on 14 January 2012 at 3:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4826 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 7 of 94 14 January 2012 at 5:02pm | IP Logged |
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I'm curious as to why you moved to China, if you don't mind sharing. It seems like a huge step. Also, I myself find
Pimsleur to be very useful, have you considered it? Maybe some libraries have it where you are. And I don't think you're supposed to freeze fresh vegetables, you must boil them for a minute or less before you do... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4703 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 94 15 January 2012 at 1:36pm | IP Logged |
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I moved to China for a number of reasons really, boredom, wanderlust, and unhappy working conditions doing manual labour for various abusive employers in the UK, and a number of other cliché reasons. I also find it particularly useful for learning Chinese! Originally Japan was my first choice, but I never got it.
I have no regrets, I am happy enough here. At this moment in time I am going through the culture shock phase. To get anything done with no Chinese is damn difficult! My mother never had any problems with freezing vegetables and she never boiled them, then again she used them straight away and never left them in the fridge overnight... I have been here for not so long, my local knowledge of things like libraries is non existent. I have asked with co-workers but the concept of street names and such seems alien to them. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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