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Ezy Ryder’s endeavor (TAC’14-15 旅立ち、鵲、東亞)

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Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 73 of 144
21 July 2014 at 4:15pm | IP Logged 
JP: 中国語-3000語 学んでる語数-1899, 察した語数-1101。 正直に言えば、 継続的に30日で勉強しなかったが、 いずれにせよ勉強してるんで、 TACのチームに帰りたいよ。 モチベーションが高いから。 一緒に話せる中国人を見つけたし、 多分来年台湾で入学 ことは絶対不可能じゃないし、 官話が日本語よりもっと易しいし。 台湾の留学のことにおいて、 二つ選択肢がある。 僕のRentaを続けようとする、 それとも奨学金。 Rentaはもっと有り得そうだ。 でももっと低い。 Rentaは、僕の国に毎月貰った支持。 アスペルガー症候群だから。 寮を持ってる大学を見つけたり、生活費を安 くしたりすれば、 たぶん足りる。 それより、 少なくともTOCFL3を合格しなきゃ。 今年ポーランドで四月で行われた、 すると9ヶ月が残る。 最悪な問題は、 台湾のある大学に受け入られるのや薬の処方 だ。

EN: Chinese-3000 words. Young+mature-1899, guessed-1101. To be honest, I haven’t studied for 30 consecutive days as I wanted to, but I still want to return to the TAC Team anyway. And that’s because I’ve got a lot of motivation. Like, having found a Chinese with whom I can practice, a possibility of studying in Taiwan next year, and Chinese being easier than Japanese. As for study in Taiwan, there are two options. I can either try to apply for Renta again, or for scholarship. Renta seems more likely, but it’s lower than a scholarship. Renta, is the support I get from my country every month, because of my Asperger’s. If I found a college with a dormitory, and had low enough life expenses, it could be just enough. Other than that, I’d have to pass TOCFL 3 or higher. This year, it took place in April, in Poland, so I have about 9 months to prepare. The biggest problems will be getting accepted to a college in Taiwan, and getting prescriptions for my medications there.
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 74 of 144
03 August 2014 at 12:37pm | IP Logged 
Chinese: 4000 words. Words/character ratio: 2.34. Mature+young cards: 2644. Guessed/known: 1497. Recently I’ve made a big change to my studying – I’ve read about someone doing 900+ cards in ~30 minutes, so I’ve decided to further lower my time per card. It’s been set to show me the answer after 4 seconds since… March, I think? So yesterday I’ve set it to 3s, but didn’t feel challenged enough, so now it’s at 2s. Today I’ve had 424 reviews, I’ve done them in about 20-something minutes, and my correct rate still seems OK. We’ll see how it’ll develop in a couple weeks. And since I’ve accelerated my learning again (hopefully), I’ve decided to add a 100 new unguessable words a day from now on. Doubling the number of new cards will probably also double the number of reviews, but I’ve almost doubled my speed, so there shouldn’t be too big of a net difference. Also, making faster progress should be motivating, right? Hope I can sustain it long enough.
I’ve also switched to writing in Chinese with my Chinese pen-pal, so now most of the time we use Chinese only. When I write an incomprehensible sentence, I’ll explain what I tried to say in Japanese, and sometimes when I don’t understand her sentences, she’ll translate them to English for me. It’s quite fun seeing her use words I’ve learnt recently, in practice. Kind of a free review.
I’m not sure whether to write another update after finishing the TOCFL4, since it’ll be a difference of only 392 words... Also, I’ll need to sit down and seriously study some grammar. I’m still neglecting it… So far I’ve made an Anki deck with B1+B2 patterns/structures on front, and example sentence and title of its article on Chinese Grammar Wiki on the back of cards. Chinese Grammar Wiki seems to still be a work in progress, and they say their C1 patterns list isn’t quite complete yet. Moreover, I think they may be basing them on HSK levels, and HSK5 was only about B1 IIRC. So I might need to have to look for some other grammar resources once I finish with this one.

In general. It’s too early to say for sure, but I think I might’ve solved my problem with getting up in the morning. Shortly after starting to take SSRI, I’ve started having problems with getting up earlier than about 11AM. I’ve tried going to bed earlier, using an alarm clock, lowering the dose of my medications, and it didn’t work. But for the last few days, I’ve been able to get up as early as 7:20AM. When I was trying to use an alarm clock, I’d just turn it off, and get right back to sleep, even if I had to get up and walk to the other side of the room to do so. So this time, I’ve set three alarm clocks. One wakes me up at 7:00, I get up and turn it off just to go back to bed. Five minutes later the next one wakes me up again, and I turn it of and go to bed again. Another five minutes later the last one wakes me up, I click the snooze button, and lie down for the last 10 minutes. By the time the snooze goes on, I’m conscious enough not to go to bed after turning it off. I’m still quite tired for the next half an hour or so, but I manage to get done with Anki by noon. And it’s just wonderful, having those “free” afternoons. Having finished my “duties” I’m able to just slack off, or I can study something a bit if I feel like it.
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 75 of 144
11 August 2014 at 5:36pm | IP Logged 
Mandarin: 5000 words. 1094 mature, 2248 young+unlearnt and 1712 guessed+known cards. 2.52 words/character ratio. I’ve surpassed this milestone yesterday. It was shortly before the next one in Japanese, that I’ve stopped studying premade wordlists. Right now, I still don’t really mind using the TOCFL wordlists (currently doing level 5, the last one). The only annoying thing is the number of duplicates and “near duplicates.” Though, looking on the bright side, that means there’re fewer words left :) At the current pace, I think I should be done with them before school starts. Which means, I could start learning vocab from novels. I’ve read some users here use some software to automagically make Anki decks from e-books, so I’ll have to look into that. And probably find something for machine Simplified->Traditional translation (transliteration?). Still not studying grammar. I’m learning a bit from chatting with my pen-pal, but… I think I should actually sit down and just study. I’m considering SRS’ing grammar points, but maybe I could do just fine without it. And it’s not even that I don’t like studying grammar. Quite the opposite.

Japanese: I’ve decided to drop extensive reading for now. I guessed wrongly 腰が軽そう and 幹事, at which point I’ve thought “that’s enough. I need some more vocab.” And so, I’ve downloaded a frequency dictionary based on novels, and I plan to go through it using ヨミちゃん, until I get to a satisfying level. Still not sure whether I want to make a daily minimum number of new words… Maybe once I get past mainly known sections.
Oh, and I’ve been able to figure out one word thanks to Chinese: 暫く. It’s usually spelled しばらく, which I didn’t guess, but at least I understood what it meant.
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 76 of 144
20 August 2014 at 10:18am | IP Logged 
To get your attention before I start with the probably interesting-only-to-me statistics; yesterday I spoke to someone in Japanese for the first time. But first:

Chinese: 6000 words. Young+Mature=4060, Guessed+Known=1940, Word/Hanzi ratio=2.68. Recently I’ve had a bit of a problem with my correct answer rate, which dropped below 80%, but everything’s back to normal now, so perhaps those were just regular fluctuations.
As always, after reaching another “milestone,” I’ve tried to read a bit. And despite some slightly-less-useful-at-my-level words starting to appear in my deck (such as 核子, or 殖民), I think my comprehension is still improving fairly well (although at one point I wasn’t quite sure whether someone was cleaning a sword, or stabbing someone with it :) Though probably continuing to read would provide enough context to figure it out).

And now the most awaited part of this post: my first time speaking Japanese to someone. I was chatting with my Chinese pen-pal, and all of a sudden she said she wouldn’t mind doing some voice chatting. So I presumed I misunderstood what she said, and asked if that’s what she meant. Apparently I got it right. I was all どきどき (hope it's the right word) and stressed. But I checked whether my microphone works, and initiated the call. At first we tried to speak in Chinese. The problem was, I couldn’t keep up with her native pace, and she couldn’t understand my mispronounced tones. I would get a word or two in every sentence she said, but processing them would make me miss all the rest. Trying Iversen’s bloodhound listening also didn’t work quickly enough. As for my tones, I think I usually remember the tones of most words, it’s just that I haven’t listened much to Chinese, so I can’t really pronounce them too well. Also, I said some Japanese words, with Chinese pronunciation (like 話題 instead of 議題). Then she’s said “你的日語說得怎麼樣,” so I switched to Japanese. If I understood her correctly, she’s said she actually understood me this time, and that my Japanese is better than my Chinese. I actually was kinda surprised myself; sometimes I’d mumble something a bit quick (for my Japanese) and think it was unintelligible, but she’d understand anyway. I had to type down what I’ve (tried to) say only a handful of times (particularly, compared to when trying to speak Chinese). Then she asked me about my English, so I switched to English awhile, but quickly got back to Japanese. Sometimes I dindn't know a word in Japanese, so I said it in Chinese or English. It was quite fun, I was on the edge of my sit the whole time, but I enjoyed it.
I’ve got to give her props for her patience. I don’t know how many people would make it through an hour with me, half the time speaking broken Japanese, and the other half being silent because of not knowing what to talk about (I seriously gotta prepare some conversation topics beforehand next time… if there’ll be a next time :) ). Not only that, but she also typed most of what she’s said (she mainly spoke in Chinese the whole time).

Edited by Ezy Ryder on 20 August 2014 at 10:18am

1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 77 of 144
31 August 2014 at 12:49pm | IP Logged 
Chinese: 7000 words. 1849 Mature, 3005 Young, 2148 Guessed+Known. Words/character ratio: 2.87.
This was one of the worse thousands. There was a day I haven’t done Anki at all, a couple days I haven’t added new words, and a day I’ve added very few words. So, I’ve tried to make up for it a couple times, by adding more words than usual. There were a couple days I’ve added 200 words (not counting guessed/known), and yesterday I’ve added ~150 words to get to the next milestone. But I think I’m gonna get back to doing just a 100 a day now, so that the reviews don’t rise too much. Also, I’ve made a little “timer” for timeboxing. It beeps once a second for the last 15 seconds of every five minutes, last beep being longer, to signal the end of that part. Those 15 seconds seem to be just enough to pause whatever I’m doing during the break, turn on some music, minimalize every window, and prepare Anki. Speaking of music, I’ve done a little experiment, I measured my speed (cards/minute) with nothing in the background, with just music, with binaural beats (you can make them yourself with Audacity :) ), and with both music and binaural beats. The conclusion – no significant difference. Oh, and I’ve measured my speed during 10 minute sessions (~15 cards/minute), and during 5 minute sessions, which turned out to be better (~18 cards/minute), so now I’m doing just 5 minute sessions.
As for actual progress besides statistics, as always after hitting a milestone, I tried to read a bit. And my comprehension seems to keep increasing. Furthermore, my Chinese pen-pal seems to reply 什麼意思 a bit less frequently then she used to before, so that’s nice. Now, I’ve got just ~350 words left in the TOCFL, so I should get done with it in about 3 days (of work). Allegedly it should be around C1, but for some reason I doubt that the remaining words will make such a difference. As for where I’ll take the next words from; I’ve been thinking about the two Witcher books I have. They probably have some obscure vocabulary, too, but I’d like to one day be able to read something like this, so… why not now? Also, a bit of reading probably would make me understand the language better, consolidate and/or activate some vocabulary, make me write more naturally, improve my listening comprehension, and provide additional motivation. Now I just have to figure out a way to extract unknown words in order of frequency to a tab-separated file (or other type recognized by Anki). The easiest way could be Imron’s “Chinese text analyzer,” but it costs money (not much though)… Perhaps I could find an open-source tokenizer, and use my extremely-poor-despite-having-it-as-a-subject-at-school programming skills to sort the words by frequency, and Anki can detect and ignore duplicates by itself… Has anyone here had any experience with this?

Edited by Ezy Ryder on 02 September 2014 at 1:36pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 78 of 144
12 September 2014 at 11:56am | IP Logged 
Chinese: 8000 words. Young+Mature: 5574. Guessed+Known: 2464. Words/Character ratio: 3.06.

I guess I’ve reached my TAC’14 goal for Mandarin this Wednesday :) My next goal – 20.000 words in total before 2015 (well, if I finish after midnight, but before I go to sleep, I’ll count that, too). I think that might be possible with my current pace; increase of 4390 words in 41 days (including days I haven’t added new words), times 111 days left, plus 8220 words already seen in the deck = 20.105. Maybe a bit 奢望, but, oh well...

I’ve tried reading a bit - it might be improving (it better!), but still not good enough. I just picked a random page from “The Witcher: The last wish” and didn’t understand about thirteen words out of ~339 (so, ~95% text coverage). Just like with Japanese, I got the gist (Geralt explaining his profession to the queen of Cintra, as she mistook him for a hired goon. He says he “solves people’s problems with his two swords, but isn’t killing people in exchange for money”). I think I’ll study some grammar (I’ve lost count how many times I’ve said that by now…).
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 79 of 144
18 September 2014 at 3:02pm | IP Logged 
Chinese: 9.000 words. Mature: 2706; Young: 3565; Guessed+Known: 2874; words/character ratio: 3.29. Soon my Chinese vocabulary should surpass my Japanese :)

This time around, after getting past another milestone yesterday, instead of trying to read the Witcher, I’ve read an excerpt from a Wikipedia article about Marathon races, training for them in particular. I timed the reading, and then estimated how many words it contained. The reading speed turned out to be 33.5WPM. After that, I’ve calculated the text coverage (not counting numbers and words written directly in other languages) – 97.0%, or 295 out of 304 words. Encountered an interesting English loanword, 配速, presumably from the word „pace,” just to make sure, I’ve checked it in a dictionary, the definition was: „在马拉松运动的训练中常使用的一个概念, 配速是速度的一种, 是每公里所需要的时间。 ” (繁體字: 在馬拉松運動的訓練中常使用的一個概念, 配速是速度的一種, 是每公里所需要的時間).
Before my free trial of the Chinese Text Analyser runs out, I’ve decided to prepare some more words, for after finishing the 半月1-4 wordlists. I’ve chosen the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of unique unknown words. Only ~3k, compared to the 7k of 半月1-4. I hope that means that the words I’m learning are useful, and will occur also in different contexts.
So, maybe I’ll think about learning Simplified characters, since I own the aforementioned trilogy in 簡體字... Could anyone here offer some advice on learning to read Simplified “after” Traditional?
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4348 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 80 of 144
24 September 2014 at 5:54pm | IP Logged 
Chinese: 10 000 words. Mature: 2903, Young: 3929, Guessed+Known: 3168, Words/Character ratio: 3.45. I haven’t been spending this much time in Anki for a while now, my daily reviews rose to about a thousand recently, and it takes me 1:40-1:55h to get through all of them and the new words.

So, 10k, a five-digit number. That might mean my Chinese vocabulary has now overtaken my Japanese one. Some time last year I’ve taken a test estimating my English passive vocabulary at 12,300 lemmas. I’ve just taken it again, and the result was 15,700. At my current pace, I should surpass it in Chinese, in about seven weeks’ time.

I’ve tried reading a bit of the Witcher again, and it seems somewhat comprehensible. Perhaps enough to start reading. I’m tempted by intensive reading, as I’m kinda doubtful about extensive reading quite yet, but it can get a bit tedious. However this impression of comprehensibility might be simply caused by not understanding much a few months ago, which could mean reading could end up the way it did with Japanese.

As for my Chinese pen-pal; my recent family problems made things a bit harder. Currently I visit my mother in the hospital, usually around the time my Chinese pen-pal gets online, from Thursday to Sunday. As for Monday-Wednesday, she seems to 先下線 fairly quickly.


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