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Mandarin somehow eventually | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 35 12 January 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's my first 2013 status update. Last major check in was October, so I've
got a bit of ground to cover. November was tough, with the holidays and a night shift as well as a post-Thanksgiving vacation messing with my schedule. I maintained a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes daily of input, usually more, but didn't see much progress. I experimented with intermediate material (which I thought I could productively tackle, but which ended up just being too difficult) and native input (TV dramas, VOA China on YouTube). Ultimately this wasn't super productive but maybe I helped develop my ear a bit for natural Mandarin. This continued into early December. In December I realized I wasn't making adequate progress and returned to simpler lessons. These I could comprehend but I became frustrated with the randomness and lack of cohesion in the lessons I was studying. The Rutgers curriculum caught my eye and I've been working on this now since December, again with the holidays, a night shift and a vacation colliding with my study schedule. I'm happy to have a reliable and consistent source of material, with a thoughtful cohesiveness. The way new vocabulary appears and and is reinforced is really helping my retention. I started at the beginning and am now up to lesson 16. As shk00design mentioned, reviewing the basics has helped cement some of the core vocabulary and I think has improved my listening. My study method is still repeated listening to the dialogue, and reading the text. Due to a bug in the LingQ app I've stopped doing flash cards and have been doing a lot more reading instead, which I'm finding more enjoyable but which requires more concentration than zipping through flash cards (which I never took very seriously anyway.) I may not return to flash cards even when the bug is fixed. Reading a lot is really helping my reading (I don't know why I found this surprising.) In addition to reading & listening I've been experimenting with speaking along with the dialogue which I understand is called Shadowing. I'm only doing this when I feel like it, no special schedule, it seems to be improving my fluency if not my pronunciation. I am not overly concerned with production at this point, maybe in 6 months. So that's the update. I'm coming up to 8 months of active study, not quite uninterrupted but almost daily. The Rutgers program is working for me so I'll continue with it for the foreseeable future. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6914 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 35 12 January 2013 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for reminding me about the Rutger site. I know I've visited it a few years ago (even bookmarked it).
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| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 35 25 January 2013 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today is the end of the 8th month in my current attempt to learn Mandarin. Progress feels glacially slow, but my attitude toward this fact changes. Yesterday I was discouraged, today I'm happy that I've been making demonstrable (if slow) progress and have kept at it for 8 full months. Despite the slow pace I do feel like I'm beginning to develop a "Chinese brain".
Currently I'm working on lesson 18 in Rutgers RMCTS. There's a lot of new vocabulary! I've finished my sprint through the easy early lessons that overlapped a lot of my already-known vocabulary, and am completing lessons more slowly. Lessons 17 and 18 have a lot of time of day vocabulary. I've known the number words for many years but I've never used them much beyond counting in numerical order. Hearing a quick sequence of them out of order in a time of day phrase is bewildering. I'm working on it. I like that the Rutgers curriculum keeps reinforcing things over and over across several lessons. My primary study method is still reading & listening with LingQ. Increasing the amount of reading has helped a lot over the past month or so. I'm also doing shadowing occasionally, when I feel like it, which I find helps focus my attention on the audio. I may have sworn off flashcards too soon last update because I've started using them again occasionally as a change of pace. I've dropped Memrise (probably for good) and Happy Chinese (until I can understand a larger proportion of it.) I do still listen to VOAChina's YouTube channel in the background while I'm working on the computer. I only catch a word here and there but it's a good feeling when the word is newly learned vocabulary. January has been a pretty good month, I'm eager to see how next month goes. Edited by dcbaok on 25 January 2013 at 10:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4705 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 35 25 January 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, is there a best way to use that Rutgers site?
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| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 35 25 January 2013 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Well I think the answer for this is going to be different for everyone. I'll comment on how I'm using it and on what's available. I came to this with a background of both classroom and self-study in Mandarin, which gave me familiarity with the language and some existing vocabulary, understanding of pinyin and characters, some pronunciation and writing practice and experience using dictionaries and other resources. Each lesson contains a dialogue and a reading with audio, transcript and translation. I import these resources into LingQ and assign definitions and pinyin to any new vocabulary, then listen to the audio (many, many times) and read the simplified characters transcript (usually between 5 and 10 times, but up to 20) until I can understand it to my satisfaction. Then I move on to the next lesson. I use the English translation and pinyin transcription to assist but don't rely heavily on them. A complete beginner would need to learn pinyin and some basics of character construction to get the most out of the resources on the site, I didn't see anything introducing these fundamentals but I also didn't look too hard for them as I don't need them personally. Each lesson also includes some grammar and speech pattern instruction, a vocab list and exercises. I'm not using any of these but they may be interesting/useful to other learners. I have perused some of them out of curiosity but grammar makes me miserable so I haven't gotten very far with it. At essence the raw material available is a good resource for incorporating into your own self-study practices, something you like to do that you can keep up with for months on end as you work your way through it. Edited by dcbaok on 25 January 2013 at 10:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 35 29 January 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I feel like my Chinese brain is shrinking. It will grow and shrink, the trick will be to keep the average growth rate positive. Also not to worry too much about it.
... I started correcting people on lang-8, reviewed RMCTS lessons 10 through 16 and got very little sleep the past several days. I've started another night shift. Sleep deprivation and crazy schedule. Trying to finish with lesson 18. Started lesson 19 for some variety. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 23 of 35 29 January 2013 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Milestone: 200 "known" words on LingQ.
I may have mentioned before that I am very conservative about marking words as known. Still, I feel 200 words learned in 8 months is glacially slow progress. At this rate by the end of 2013 I'll have around 420 known. There must be a point where things get easier... 一起 （yì qǐ， together) is #200 Edited by dcbaok on 29 January 2013 at 10:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 35 30 January 2013 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I realized that a good portion of the second hundred known words have come since I started the Rutgers curriculum So that makes it around 75 words in 2 months (75/2mo ~= 37 w/mo), giving me a better rate than 200/8mo = 25 w/mo.
Maybe I can keep fastering. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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