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Tackling difficult passages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 14 20 September 2012 at 1:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah I think it's better to choose on your own:) Be the master of your learning, decide for yourself whether an article or book is boring... Life is too short to waste it on boring materials in the big languages :-)
See this: http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Strategies_for_Readin g_Books reading the way you do is intensive reading. Even at a high level it should only be reserved for small passages. The articles were not just too difficult - they were too long. If you find a long article that seems interesting, "scan" it first (not with a scanner but with your eyes, heh)... Try to identify the important parts (usually the beginning, the end and something in the middle) and read them intensively, with attention to details. Then some time later (maybe next day or in the evening if your first session was in the morning) reread those part you read intensively and read another part in detail. Especially in such a difficult language, it's absolutely OK if it takes you a few days to read an entire article. Edited by Serpent on 20 September 2012 at 1:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ajelsma Newbie United States Joined 4610 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes | Message 10 of 14 20 September 2012 at 9:14am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry about that, characters maybe approaching 1500? My native language is English and of course I try to use that as little as possible but I of course must use it. Most of my things are in Chinese (internet browser, qq, etc.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ajelsma Newbie United States Joined 4610 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes | Message 11 of 14 20 September 2012 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
The teacher just gave me something from a book and she really likes me. I go to a private college so the teachers will get to know you well. She wants to see me succeed. Actually the self study route is very interesting. I felt that I would feel more required to do the work that is why I asked for the materials. Normally I would self study but because I am in college and free time is very very limited I felt I could simply tell myself it is like homework I must do. I will try GLOSS when I have time to self study. I think I have seen it before and never really used it but thank you for the recommendation I will try to find time for it :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ajelsma Newbie United States Joined 4610 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes | Message 12 of 14 20 September 2012 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for these kind words. I have read this article before but now that I face this issue maybe I will understand it's meaning better. The articles were not that hard or long but I just felt like it was a ton of work and just asked for some tips on how to attack it better and not get weighed down by it. Thank you again for your nice words :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 14 20 September 2012 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
So with 1500 characters (and presumably their most common associated vocabulary), you find the articles in question "a ton of work" and feel "weighed down". I would infer that you do not have nearly enough characters and vocabulary to efficiently utilize these types of materials. Your choices are to either stick with this approach of using material where you don't have enough character/vocabulary coverage, and experience the same results, or to ask instead for additional reading material appropriately graded for your current level (appropriately = slightly above your current level). Why not check out the NPCR or Boya readers and start with the level where there is unknown material. Doing this in parallel with your university course should accelerate your learning past that of other students. An additional problem with continuing your current approach is that it seems highly unlikely that it is frequency graded, i.e. you are learning much less common characters and vocabulary before more common ones. This is why in a previous post I mentioned HSK levels. You can find decks online and drill characters and vocabulary one level at at time in addition to working with readers. Don't feel shy in admitting to your professor that the current approach is too hard and time consuming. The bottom line is that if each page contains a ton of characters and vocabulary that you don't know, there is no shortcut to laboriously looking each of them up. The shortcut is to use graded material until you reach close to 3000 characters. While going from the chart here it would look like 1500 characters gives you 94% coverage, note that the 5.2% unknown ones to get to 99.2% consist of the same number of characters, i.e. about 1500. You will necessarily be encountering them in a haphazard order. It seems to me that drilling HSK decks is more efficient even without graded readers. A poster named Linguamor in talking about comprehensible input raised the threshold to 98% from the previous 95% mark given by her and others for extensive reading. I would think this goes doubly for Chinese, and that that few percent makes all the difference. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4932 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 14 of 14 20 September 2012 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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It seems like you have the goal to master the language rather than just to dabble it. Then you should make extensive vocabulary growth your number one goal.
The following method is one option. 1) Find native materials which really interest you. The subject in not important at this point. You can switch the subject when you please, but try to grind similar topics for a while. Wide range of themes have highly repetitive core vocabulary. 2) Translate the texts 3) Learn the words you do not know. At the beginning it is probably better to choose the most useful words to learn. Ie. based on HSK levels. But your ultimate goal should be learning practically every word. 4) Make or copy Anki cards of the new words you have learned and add them to your Anki dack. (Copying is often useful in Chinese because characters and pronunciation do not match.) Grind your Anki. It prevents you from forgetting them. 5) Do this practically every day. Anki reviews, reading interesting texts and finding new vocabulary, learning new words, putting learned words to Anki. 6) Do not give up. Edited by petteri on 20 September 2012 at 1:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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