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Mandarin somehow eventually | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4525 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes  Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 25 of 35 30 January 2013 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
How do you determine that you 'know' a word? Being able to read/write the hanzi and use the word correctly in context? Well done for reaching a new milestone! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 26 of 35 30 January 2013 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||
I actually discuss this in an earlier update on this thread, #5 on the first page, where I said that when I can read a character with proper pronunciation (I know the pinyin), and know the meaning in context, and can easily produce both of the above while reading, then I consider the character known (status 4 on LingQ). In addition to this I also expect I can hear and understand the word when listening to the dialogues. When I'm satisfied with the above, I mark the word known. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 27 of 35 15 February 2013 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I've had a nagging feeling over the past couple of days that it's been a long time since I updated this log, but I see now that I've logged in that it's only been a couple of weeks.
I'm still doing my thing, reading, listening, occasional flash cards, and occasional shadowing. I'm up to lesson 20 in the Rutgers curriculum. It's the end of the first section of the beginner material, so once I'm finished with lesson 20 I'll have a milestone to post about. Study time has been 30 minutes to an hour each day on average. I have slowed down after an intense several weeks in January. I think after lesson 20 I'll take a break for a couple of days. Edited by dcbaok on 15 February 2013 at 5:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 28 of 35 02 March 2013 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I made another silly comic strip, this one is also a commentary on insipid beginner dialogues.
Alien greeting For reference, here's the first one: Are you busy? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 29 of 35 07 March 2013 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's an update on my Mandarin...
I'm still working on the passive read/listen thing at LingQ. I reached a milestone in "finishing" Part 1 of Level 1 (Lessons 1 through 20) of the Rutgers RMCTS course. I've read and listened to the dialogues enough times to have internalized the majority of the vocabulary, I can read the text farily easily, and can comprehend 75-100% of each audio file. As I had planned I took a little break from LingQ/Rutgers. It happens that I took my break before finishing lesson 20, rather than afterwards. Not according to plan but I needed it. However, I did continue with other Mandarin activities during the break. I watched a couple of movies in Mandarin with English subtitles, continued my semi-regular VOA China YouTube listening, watched some TV shows (including several episodes of shows I mentioned in this thread), worked on flash cards, chatted online, and listened to miscellaneous dialogues I have on my phone. I had a crisis of confidence and got annoyed with my slow progress, then got over it. I got really frustrated and bored with the material I was working with, and decided to scrap it all and find some new lessons, and then decided not to. I complained to my friends and in chatrooms. All is well now, these periodic bouts of frustration are becoming predictable. My "Known Word" count on LingQ is 222 which I could interpret as a milestone. There's probably 50 to 100 more words I could mark known but I haven't been interested in going through the list or in reviewing old lessons. My study method remains focused around my commute. Since my realization that I should be reading more, I've been trying to spend the morning commute just reading, and use the trip home to listen to dialogues. I am not strict about it. (I'm not strict about anything.) This is working well enough but I need to spend some other time listening to make up for the lost hour. So I am listening during housework or other activities when I can. Also doing weak shadowing when I feel like it (simply repeating after the audio as the speaker speaks...) I've also been using flash cards again regularly. I'm now using the Pleco app on my phone, which has a flashcard function and includes HSK vocabulary cards. I have set this up for 10 card sessions and use them when I have a small amount of time which would be unproductive to use reading or listening. 10 cards is pretty perfect for elevator trips, standing in line, etc. I seem to know most of the 150 HSK 1 and many of the HSK 2 cards. I haven't looked at HSK 3 or further yet. I've also, as mentioned, been listening to native materials in the form of movies and television. At home I watch shows on Hulu and YouTube. At work I listen to VOA China's YouTube channel, I don't understand what they're saying so it doesn't distract me (much) but I do catch occasional words and phrases. One resource I haven't mentioned here before is online chat, which I've been using to talk with other learners as well as interested native speakers in a chatroom called #mandarin on the Freenode IRC network. I'm on IRC a lot anyway so just added it to my channel list and talk when there are people around. I'm trying to pick up the pace a bit as you may have inferred from my expanded list of activities. I've decided to set... not goals, not a schedule, but I suppose some guidelines, that I'd like to finish at least 2 lessons per week from RMCTS Level 1 Part 2. We'll see how this goes. I'm working on Lessons 21 and 22 this week. This post got very long, here's some tl;dr Goals: have fun , don't drive yourself crazy, keep learning Milestones: Finished RMCTS Level 1 Part 1, reached 222 known words on LingQ Resources/Learning activities: Reading & listening on LingQ; weak shadowing; Pleco flash cards HSK 1 and 2 (10 cards per session); passive listening to VOA Chinese YouTube; watching native TV and movies; IRC chat. Edited by dcbaok on 07 March 2013 at 4:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 30 of 35 27 March 2013 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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学习不好。上个星期不好、这个星期不好、下 个星期也不好。
The last couple of weeks have been bad for studying. I don't like my lessons and have been avoiding them. I've tried several new sources for lessons and haven't found anything that holds my interest. Starting a week of night shift on Friday so next week isn't looking promising. Experience has taught me that these bad periods are temporary. I'll keep trying. Edited by dcbaok on 27 March 2013 at 7:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 31 of 35 10 April 2013 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Happily I'm on track again. I've stopped using the Rutgers RMCTS curriculum, I had lost interest in it and the lessons were becoming problematic to import into LingQ due to the traditional characters that were being mixed in to the lessons in the second half of the beginner level.
I borrowed New Practical Chinese Reader 1 and 2 with disks and workbooks from the library and am using these as my source for dialogues. My goal with this is to finish book 1 by the end of April, and to try to get through book 2 in 2 months. The first 8 lessons of book 1 contain little new vocabulary for me so I've run through them very quickly. I'll start working on lesson 9 tomorrow. I finished my 10th month of active study a couple of weeks ago and didn't notice to comment here, so I'm commenting. It's been quite a long time for me and I'm very pleased with my perseverance. My ability in the language is definitely beyond anything I've ever accomplished before. My study method is evolving slowly. This month I begin to incorporate some pronunciation practice into my routine, unfortunately the subway isn't the ideal venue for speaking practice. Hopefully I don't look too crazy mumbling to myself as I squint at my phone on the train. What I've been doing is reading a phrase or sentence from the lesson, unpausing the audio and listening to the phrase, listening for mistakes in my pronunciation then pause again and repeating after the speaker, attempting to match the cadence and inflection. I do this through the whole dialogue and then start again from the beginning, time permitting. I do this in the mornings. On the commute home in the evening I just listen and repeat (mumbling) without pausing, "weak shadowing" as I've been calling it. As spring weather permits, I'll also be getting off the train at an earlier stop to spend some time walking home, so I can speak audibly without bothering people. I continue to listen to several hours of VOA China news every day, inattentively in the background. I've been watching Chinese movies, TV and videos on YouTube and Hulu and wherever else I can find them. I'm learning interesting vocabulary from all the kung fu movies: 杀 - kill, 血 - blood, 妖 demon ... Haven't seen these in my lessons yet! Been keeping mental notes of interesting characters, including a list of tricky look-alikes 为办 问间同 我找 因医 午年手 If I were smart I would write all this down, I'm sure I've forgotten some. Also trying to keep track of common sound-alikes that have been confusing me like 名 and 明. Also realized recently that 可爱 kě'ài, cute is "can love" or "able to love" or "loveable/adorable", and also that this was the origin of the Japanese "kawaii". Finally I've begun to think about starting to practice character writing. I need to pick up some good square papers to practice with. Edited by dcbaok on 10 April 2013 at 5:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4487 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 32 of 35 18 April 2013 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's an update, it's been a week. Feeling good today about my progress, slow as it still seems.
I'm currently studying lesson 12 in NPCR, looks like I'm on track to complete the dialogues in Book 1 by the end of the month (14 total). The plan for book 2 is to finish the dialogues in 2 months. The library has books 3 and 4 as well so I have no lack of material to work on. I've been continuing to listen to the VOA China YouTube channel in the background when I'm at the computer, around 4 or 5 hours each workday. My ear for the language is getting quite good, I can easily pick out American accents and am starting to be able to hear individual words very clearly, albeit with little comprehension. I've begun to look up words I hear that catch my interest, to start to attach some meaning to what I'm hearing. I'm more and more confident that this passive and almost completely effortless listening to incomprehensible input has definite benefits. I also watched several Chinese movies and TV shows (with English subtitles) last weekend. In a little more than a week I'll begin the 12th month of my current effort, so I'm beginning to think about how to incorporate speaking and writing practice into my routine. For writing, I've started a Goldlist book. I'm following the method for Chinese character writing explained at some length in 4 YouTube videos by robertgenito here. For some background on the Goldlist method I also read Uncle Davey's article and watched his Goldlist YouTube videos. I wrote my first headlist today, and will be using the book "Reading and Writing Chinese" by William McNaughton and Li Ying as my source for characters. This is the 1999 "Revised Edition", an older version, with traditional characters. Ive been learning with simplified but want to know both systems. This book provides 1062 characters and radicals with stroke order diagrams, and a further 1000ish without, for a total of around 2000 characters, which is perfect for a Goldlist. For speaking, I haven't done much yet beyond the "weak shadowing" I've mentioned. I'm considering attending a local Chinese language Meetup group and/or getting a Skype language partner. There's also an app called SharedTalk I've been meaning to look into. I'm not confident yet in speaking but I will push myself to get started before the end of month 12. Edited by dcbaok on 18 April 2013 at 5:42am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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