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A newbie sets out: Braving Mandarin. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 81 of 94 18 September 2012 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||
Going to qualify your statement a bit... accompanied by a native Chinese speaker who is savy in dealing with the tactics used by locals to rip off others. This is one of the reasons my family, including my mother, does not want me to visit the mainland by myself. My overseas Taiwanese chat partner also doesn't like visiting the mainland in part for the reason mentioned... and he is a native Mandarin speaker who can read simplified characters. Stay safe. Edited by Snowflake on 18 September 2012 at 2:07am 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 82 of 94 18 September 2012 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually just having any local with you is a big help as it avoids the special foreigner prices. There was an instance where I was with a chinese person and the bussiness person asked who was going to pay. I asked why that was important and he quite openly said if it is me, then the price will be double, because I am a foreigner. Edited by eggcluck on 18 September 2012 at 7:53am 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 83 of 94 08 November 2012 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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While posts have dried up study efforts have not.
This is inpart now due to the 70 hour work weeks that have been thrust upon me. All study stopped for a while, resulting in yet another need to purge an monster anki review pile. This has now successfully been completed and I am hoping to find time to at least resume some study, yet the work continues to pile up and the dreaded 80 hour mark is looming in the distance. I naturally have a need to prioritise now. It is unlikely I will even make the halfpoint of the Challenge that I have joined, however I have a movie ready to watch after writing this.... My current level of Mandarin is still insufficient and I am unable to hold conversations and still require native speaker help to get daily life things done. After 10 months of searching no conversation partner is in sight but just today I may have finally been able to local a payed for form of conversation practice at a price I can actually afford, so here is hoping! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5211 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 84 of 94 09 November 2012 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||
Hope it goes well, Eggcluck! It's inspiring to hear that you're still studying away despite your incredible work load - it puts my meagre efforts to shame. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 85 of 94 08 February 2013 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Eggcluck, hope things are going better for you. And since Chinese New Year day is this Sun, hope you've already stockpiled food to last for the next few weeks.
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| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5211 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 86 of 94 10 February 2013 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Happy New Year, Eggcluck! - May the Year of the Snake be an auspicious one for your language studies!
Edited by songlines on 10 February 2013 at 3:51am 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 87 of 94 02 May 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Firstly I just want to say thanks for the new year wishes as belated as they may be, I spent it trecking tiger leaping gorge in the beautiful Yunnan province.
Well It has been a long time since I last wrote, it is not that I have given up just that I have had to do some pretty stringent time prioritising, I even went to lengths of adapting my life in general, the net result being that now I can comfortably sleep for a shorter duration. That sounds strange but I was a definite bear sleeping for 10 hours at a time, it is now down to a more reasonable 6-8 hours depending on what my work day was like. Well a conversation partner is still lacking, with so many people here wanting an English-Chinese exchange, who would have thought this would still be the case? I have an inkling it is down to the Chinese part, they want all English, with maybe explaining a few Chinese things to me in English. This is something I am unwilling to do. My most recent monthly review was completed today and some old problems are still lingering. Namely active output practice. It is much more plentiful than the last time I wrote but it is still not enough, again mostly down to my tendencies towards introversion. Some peoples attempt to get my out of that in another baptism of fire type of way back fired and did more harm than good and resulted in me having to spend some time repairing the damage to my confidence that that caused. Needless to say this month will be one focused on trying to pull me yet higher up the confidence ladder. In recent months I have tackled this in leaps and bounds using English in the dreaded ex-pat bars. Bars were never among my favourite places let alone one that is detrimental to getting language practice. Just forcing myself to chat however has proved helpful and while most people do actually move to get away from my socially awkward bumbling attempts at conversation a few have warmed to me and I am feeling all that much better with myself for it. I have also set for myself the task of going to a shop everyday and saying at least one sentence that is not related to the transaction at hand. If I can manage this everyday for a month I will consider it successful. Last month I only managed to say something in half my visits, again due to a confidence hit taken by the various shop keepers reactions to my trying to say something other than "how much?" It was not always a friendly reaction, I was even chased out a shop one time while trying to mention it was nice weather. Most of my time sucked has been sucked up by one guy in particular so I have been resisting him a bit more, he bothers me less now and spends more time chasing girls. Though he is currently licking his wounds after learning the hard way what it means to be a ex-pat manager here. A small celebration is in order as I have now completed Assimil and self talked my way through every lesson in it. I was going to replace it with NCPR1 but after looking through it, it seems far too simple now. Though it does have pronunciation tasks and tone/sound differentiation tasks which I sorely need so I will still go through the book purely for them, though I suspect it wont take too long. The tutor has showed signs of frustration with my apparent inability to remember vocabulary. I tired to explain to her I do not remember because I choose not to remember as I deem them no needed, as they related to business and for the time being I have no interest in that and it is not what I need now. Time will tell if she has taken the hint, though she is proving a valuable avenue for conversation practice in a less intimidating setting and is unlikely to chase my away for trying talking about the weather. I have also started trying to prepare myself for moving more into native materials of the written kind. I have a children's book that with the kind aid of rhino spike users slowly page by page I am turning it into an audio book. Though each page takes a long time to receive a recording as the number of Chinese voice submissions seems to be on the low side. That should no longer be a problem however as I now have found someone willing to sit in my apartment and record themselves reading out a chapter at a time, thus reducing my dependence on rhino spike. This endeavour has been fruitful as looking at the book and listening has resulted in me picking up the pronunciation of several new hanzi without ever looking at the pin yin. Though I still need a dictionary to check the meaning. This is very much an intensive reading exercise though I am stubborn enough not to let it grind me down. Ironically at times I find myself more interested in browsing example sentences and related words than just checking the dictionary and then jumping back to the intensive reading. I am also adopting a more active approach to acquiring hanzi and currently using the leisurely pace of at least 5 a day. What this translates to in reality is picking five hanzi pouring thorough the online dictionary looking for the easiest example sentence and then taking on all the new vocabulary that comes with it. Just 5 hanzi can easily take up an hour of my time. I have been toying with Chinese pod though I will not be subscribing. Simply put, I can not afford it, this entire endeavour has been on a shoe string budget from day one. My one TV/show movie a day thing has been going well. Well I have not managed one everyday in the last month I managed 3 movies and 18 TV episodes. This month this activity is on observe mode as I have doubts about how much benefit I am actually getting from it. I am not sure how much improvement in actual ability I have undergone. several people, tutor included has expressed that I am improving quickly, faster than most. I do not feel this is the case however. I have trouble making myself understood and my co-workers mock me over my pronunciation struggles. I can now rattle off most daily life things, manage a skeleton introduction, read bus timetables for things I need and cope with other such mundane tasks. I can engage in a basic conversation about work etc etc but that is the extent of my abilities. I am well aware of the reason for this failing and hopefully this can be sorted out. I am also aware of progress being artificially slowed by trying things just for the sake of trying them. Regarding this I have no regrets as this is as much about as trying out as many different things as possible figuring out what works for me as it is actually learning a language. I feel this will be time well spent as after exhausting everything that does not work for me I will know what does and will be a great boon to future studies. My rejection list is ever growing but each addition is in of itself a small victory since it is one more thing that does not work removed from that big chaotic cluttered pile of sources, I will bring it all to order. 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 88 of 94 10 May 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Still powering forward as best I can got 263 minutes of visual media under my belt and 221m of podcasts/audio book listening done.
The reading is slow going, 1 page of 350 characters took me the best part of one hour to chew my way threw of which there were 23 new words and 25 new characters. Each one seemingly necessary to the understanding of just what is going on in this page. The book itself despite being a childrens book is proving to be an interesting read and thus has kept me going. Pages I have put on rhino spike over a month ago still remain unfulfilled, it might be time to consider giving up on rhino spike and focusing on alternative options. The search for an exchange partner as ever continues, this time I have turned to italki and have registered today here's hoping after 18 months of searching I would have thought that I would have found someone willing by now, at this point I am not picky anyone will do! Couch surfing has prove to be an absolute failure even when I tried to use for the original purpose of which it was intended. While watching the media while I still do not "get it" it feels like something has finally 'clicked' and I can get the odd thing here and there with subtitles, mostly since all the men talking just sound like hilariously exaggerated deep voiced mumbling curmudgeons to me. Got my first sentence where I learned a word just by watching today too. After pausing it and gleefully dancing round my room with the usual audience of gawpers at my window more slacked jawed that usual. I stopped to quickly put into into my SRS. Something I will never do again, it took more than five minutes just to add it, I decided taking sentences of visual media is just too inefficient a use of time available. Decided to resurrect the FSI zombie time permitting, my plate is already full already but I just have to finish it, but it will be in drips and drabs, hopefully some of it will be really easy now. Estate agent came around today to sign a new contract for the apartment, landlord did not come as he said he had "things". Glad he did not as I do not like him and the agent suggested I find a new place ASAP and he is over charging me with the infamous foreigner prices. While I agree I simply do not have the time to search, so stay put for now I will. My words of discouragement from workers about my Chinese and now there is even active discouragement (short of telling me to stop) of my studies along with the usual laughter and mockery, which to this day still amuses me. Ever forward, I shall not faulter, even as my English slowly slides more and more into a typo infested morass I shall press forward. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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