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3000 Characters coming up | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 1 of 21 12 June 2012 at 5:07am | IP Logged |
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Hi All,
This'll be the first time I've used an online, publicly-viewable forum to chart my progress. I'm interested to see if it motivates me to study consistently. I've been an "off-and-on" student of Mandarin for quite some time now, and usually the "off" times are longer than the "on" times. I'm fully aware of the importance of working at something every day, even if it's only for a few precious minutes, as opposed to holding binge study sessions once every few weeks, so this is yet another experiment to see if I can make that happen. The Goal: To learn the 3000 most common Chinese characters. I won't put a time limit on, even though I'm aware that's not good "goal-setting technique", mainly because I've tried it already, and I've found that having a deadline, especially a self-imposed one, doesn't motivate me AT ALL. It may work for others, just not for me. The Method: I've tried a lot of different methods already, and I've noticed what works and what doesn't work for me, but the overriding theme is: CONSISTENCY. The details of the methods I've found are incidental: almost anything works, as long as I'm consistent about it. Progress So Far: I'm not coming into this from scratch. I couldn't say how many characters I already know, but it's probably in the region of "several hundred". One trouble is, I started learning Traditional Characters while I was in Taiwan, so now I have to backtrack a bit and relearn the simplified forms. Not too tricky, but every once in a while I see a character and think What on earth is that?, only to look it up and see that it's a really simple character in a different guise. Times like that, I'm glad there's no native Chinese speaker looking over my shoulder. :-) I'll try to post interesting things that I learn (cool mnemonics, interesting associations, etc.), but for the most part, this will probably be a very dry accounting of what I studied on a day-to-day basis. Of course, as determined as I am to make this a daily occurrence, from time to time other things (like life) will get in the way. (Today, for instance, I really ought to be studying for the exam I'll be taking this afternoon, instead of posting introductory remarks on this forum!) Anyway, wish me luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 2 of 21 12 June 2012 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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Since it's been a while since my last "binge", I'm reviewing all characters from the
beginning. Today is reviewing characters 200-300. I downloaded a nice list that has characters, pinyin, and (some) meanings, which I use in a simple flashcard program I hacked together. (Can't remember where I downloaded it from, but if anyone wants a copy, just message me.) Interesting characters I came across: 活 - huó = to live, alive. Etymology is "water" + "tongue". Obvious semantic connection. Love it. 论 - lùn = to discuss. Wow, this is very different from the traditional 論. It's easy to see how they're related, but the simplified doesn't really suggest the traditional to my mind very easily. 队 - duì = team, army, troops. Yet another one that I have to learn on its own merit, as it's sufficiently different to the traditional 隊. ... At the end of review, I think I did more poorly than I thought I would (it really has been a long time since my last attempt to study characters!) Tomorrow, I'll go through 200-300 again, and, depending on how well/quickly I get through them, will go onto 300-400. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 3 of 21 13 June 2012 at 4:57am | IP Logged |
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Reviewed characters #200-#350. Still several wrong on the first pass.
Tomorrow, I'll tweak my program, so that it remembers the easiest (read: lowest numbered) character that I didn't get right, and adjusts so that the next day, it reviews the next 100 characters starting from that one. This'll solve the problem of having me decide when I'm "ready" to go on to the next 100 characters. It's not as "memory efficient" as some other memory-jogging algorithms out there, but like I said, the most important thing is that I just keep at it every day, and I figure this way, I'll get through all 3000 characters as quickly as possible whilst ensuring that I got each character right at least once. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes  Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 4 of 21 13 June 2012 at 7:39pm | IP Logged |
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Where have you got the list of the 3000 most frequently used characters? Also, have you got any knowledge of Mandarin apart from the characters? Are you learning only the meanings or the pronunciations as well?
I wish you luck! 
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 5 of 21 14 June 2012 at 4:07am | IP Logged |
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Hmmm... I seriously can't remember where I got my list from. I know it wasn't
http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html, because that list is incomplete (only has about 2700 characters). I found it quite a while ago. Yes, I have some knowledge of Mandarin already. I can hold conversations, as long as the subject matter stays relatively simple. I wouldn't exactly call myself fluent, but I'd say the gap between where I am now and fluency is largely due to not having a broad enough vocabulary. So I think learning the 3000 will go along way towards bridging that gap, especially since I often look up what words the characters occur in, as an aid to remembering the characters themselves. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 6 of 21 14 June 2012 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
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OK, program is now "tweaked". Now I don't have to keep track of how far I've gotten.
This is a Good Thing, IMHO, because the fewer administrative tasks one gives oneself when trying to study, the better. I even got the program to spit out which characters I got (1) right, (2) half-right (e.g. right pronunciation, wrong tone), and (3) completely wrong, at the end of each "session". Anyway, I ran it today from the top (from character #1 = 的), and have set it to run through 100 characters per session (still in random order, though). Unsurprisingly, all the ones I got completely wrong were simplified characters (着,当,动,么); the only one I don't really have an excuse for is 么, as they use that in Taiwan* occasionally (or so I seem to remember). The ones I got half-right (i.e. got the tone wrong) are: 种,而,理, 样,还,于. It's weird getting the tone wrong for these, because I know how to use all of them properly with the correct tone in everyday speech, but somehow the mental mapping from character to meaning got a bit lost. Anyway, no matter: they'll come up again next time. Next session (I've been informed), I'll be starting at character #36. Won't bother to look up which character it is; I'll just let the program worry about that. In future, my log entries will probably consist of (1) the starting character number for next session; (2) the list of characters I got completely wrong; (3) the list of characters I got half-wrong; and (4) any tidbits about individual characters I find particularly interesting or memorable. Edited by robotopia on 14 June 2012 at 5:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 7 of 21 14 June 2012 at 5:20am | IP Logged |
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*Taiwan: Taiwan is where I learned most of the Mandarin I know so far.
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| robotopia Newbie Australia Joined 4542 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 8 of 21 15 June 2012 at 7:45am | IP Logged |
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Daily 100: #36-#135
Wrong: 已它无间又着把将关与意机发军 Half-right: 同种于情而 Starting character for next time: #36. Wow, didn't progress any today. One of the characters listed above is apparently #36! Seems I did worse today than yesterday---some were stupid mistakes, confusing the character with another similar character; some were genuine unfamiliarity. "关", for instance, looks nothing like its traditional counterpart, "關", which I'm very familiar with, having seen it every time I went into an elevator. So I've had to make a new association. The best I could come up with is to make a picture out of 关: a screwed up face with eyes and mouth tightly shut. I'll find out tomorrow if that works for me or not. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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