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Lorinth’s log - 劳伦的博客 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 321 of 408 06 October 2014 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I am reading 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》. I can see why the book has been so popular in Taiwan
and in the mainland in the 70s and in the 80s. It must have been a shock to read about an independent woman loving and living in a faraway country. The style is refreshing and vivid. At times, I'm shocked by the patronizing superiority of the colonists (and the author). Therefore, this book, it turns out, is also an interesting documentary about the end of the colonial era. Currently reading p. 88/259. With WorkAudioBook, these last few days, I have used a BBC podcast about the sentencing of Ilham Tohti to life imprisonment and a Deutsche Welle podcast about the events in Hong Kong. I have also listened to a nice podcast called 时尚玩家. I have not transcript, but the guests tend to speak slowly and clearly. Plus, if I use the "slow down" function of my podcast manager of choice (BeyondPod for Android), it so happens that, for the very first time, I was able to more or less follow significant parts of a podcast about a young girl who spends her time travelling around the world. Not a breakthrough, because I'm far from understanding as much as I'd like. But though. Thanks to chinese-forums.com I found yet another interesting source of audio (news) with transcripts, once again offered by 凤凰卫视 (ifeng). Link Click on one of the links on the left of the TV window to get the transcripts. With an appropriate extension installed for your browser, you can download the original mp4 file and then, with a suitable program, you can extract the audio to mp3 (I use winff for Ubuntu). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 322 of 408 07 October 2014 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I went on reading 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》 but, as my daily diet now includes more active
listening, it's a rather slow process. With WorkAudioBook, I've worked on yet another fantastic resource for podcasts with transcript provided by 凤凰网. The show is called 开卷八分钟 and it consists in an 8-minute discussion about a book. Here's a list of shows/transcripts Yesterday, I worked on part of the show that debunks that famous book about the "tiger mum" Chinese style education. I say "part of the show" because the guy speaks fast and it can take me a good 30 minutes to work on 2 minutes of the show... Link 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 323 of 408 08 October 2014 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm often impressed by the very factual tone of the Chinese press, compared with our
Western media. I've just read an interesting article (http://news.xinhuanet.com/2014- 10/08/c_127070092.htm) about the formation of the new government in my country and it's very informative, and only informative, with just the necessary quantity of background information to (hopefully) make the situation understandable to a Chinese reader. I'm convinced Western journalists would have added a solid dose of political or personal comments, digressions and possibly humour. In a way, I'm happy to read such factual articles, so I can take stock of the bare situation, without comment. On those rare occasions where I did read articles in the Chinese press that expressed an opinion, they looked as if they'd been written under dictation to convey a warning to a certain group of people. All this may seem obvious to China old hands but it never ceases to surprise me. Or, probably, the spectrum of the Chinese media/subjects I usually read is not large enough. I'm still reading 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》(page 101/259). The story I'm reading《死果》and 《荒 山之夜》are my favourite up to now. San Mao can write very scary stuff. She would have made a good horror fiction writer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 324 of 408 13 October 2014 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Over lunch, I read most of an arid article about the commercial relationship between the EU
and China and how they're about to settle a dispute in the field of telecommunications (电 信贸易争端的协议). The interesting thing is: I'm pretty sure that, one year ago, I wouldn't have been able to decipher more than two sentences of such an article in the same time frame. The article I've practiced intensive listening with a podcast of the 时尚玩家 series (《旅行达人小妍》 dated 22 September). Having listened to parts of that podcast once or twice as "background noise", I noticed that, for once, I could understand some of it and that I may benefit from some more intensive listening. So I loaded the podcasts into WorkAudioBook to do my best to increase my level of understanding. Though I did increase my understanding by a small, difficult to quantity, margin, there was no breakthrough. Many many parts remain opaque without transcript. Also, I practiced intensive listening with a Deutche Welle Chinese podcast about the fascinating subject of 政府磋商机制 (governemental consultation mechanism) and how it is implemented by the German government. Audio Transcript Still slowly reading 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》. Now at p. 115/259. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 325 of 408 16 October 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Reading: I read this article about the future of the freedom of movement (or lack thereof)
in Europe. Link Listening: I worked on a slow Chinese (slow-chinese.com) podcast about Chinese anime. I registered on italki and took a trial lesson during which I discussed options to improve my speaking and (mainly) listening comprehension. I intend to take one or two other trial lessons before I choose a teacher. The plan is that I would take lessons during lunch time, in the office cafeteria, where we now have a wifi network. Taking account of the noise, the time constraints, etc., it's not clear whether that will be feasible. We'll see. Still slowly reading 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 326 of 408 20 October 2014 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday, as I had some free time, I did an exercise I had not done for months: copying a
page of 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》 I took that very good idea from Iversen's log. It was useful, as I felt I had a stronger understanding of that particular page. In addition, it was an opportunity to review quite a lot of characters in their natural ecosystem, in context. And finally, it reminded me of something I had forgotten since I almost entirely shifted my focus towards input (listening/reading) rather than output (writing/speaking): writing characters is a pleasure in itself, it is a strangely soothing exercise. As for listening, I listened again to a series of "old" podcasts with which I'd already practiced intensive listening with WorkAudioBook. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4301 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 327 of 408 21 October 2014 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||
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QUANTIFYING THE TIME BARREL
If you don't know what the time barrel is, browse to Hacking Chinese and check this article. As I've already explained in this log, I very seldom have extended periods of time to study Chinese. "Extended" in my case means "one hour". Between my job, my family of six and the rest, studying Chinese is more a matter of filling the time barrel, sticking to a handful of minuscule daily routines and preferring microgoals over grand visions. But I've often wondered how much time these techniques add up to during one of my typical working days. So this Monday, I timed the short bursts of Chinese related activities which I usually try to stuff in one day. And here's the result. For each activity, I'll mention the settings. These parameters are very closely related in my case: practically each place where I happen to be during the day is linked to a typical learning related activity. 1. Morning time slot - Flashcarding at the toilets with Pleco (well, there can be more than one such periods). - Background listening to the Chinese radio (RFI Chinese) while having a shower. - Active listening to a podcast with WorkAudioBook (BBC podcast about the situation in Iraq) while driving to the underground station after dropping the kids at school/kindergarten. - On those days when I take the bus to the underground station, I usually study some more flashcards while waiting for the bus. - Reading (三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》) in the underground -in the morning, there's often a seat available. - Active listening again while walking from the underground station to the office. Timer: 58 minutes. 2. Lunch time slot - Eating time is for the rest of the daily flashcards, if any (with Pleco for words and Skritter for characters). - Usually, I have 30 minutes left or so for reading an article or to continue reading the novel I'm currently reading. Timer: 47 minutes. 3. Working hours slot - During working hours, I sometimes have tasks that are not too intensive, so I can tune in to some Chinese radio station for background listening. - I may also review one flashcard here, two flashcards there, while waiting for a lift for instance. It was not the case today, so timer: 0 minute. 4. Evening time slot - Commuting back, I used WorkAudioBook again to practice some more listening with the BBC podcast and its transcript. - Before going to sleep I read one more page of 三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》. Timer: 48 minutes Grand total: about 2h30. Not one minute of this time is taken from family life or work. However, I have to admit that this is a time I could have spent socializing. One could say that learning languages effectively killed part of my social life, which is kind of paradoxical... Not all of these periods are "quality time". For instance, if I tune in to some Chinese radio station while working, it's mostly background noise, though there certainly are very short periods of time when I do pay attention, when I can understand some bits of whatever it is the radio is talking about. Another interesting point is that almost all of this learning is happening on the go: I almost never use a desk or a computer to study Chinese. Which means that I seldom have the opportunity to do tasks I would like to do more often, such as copying one page of a book, studying some vocab by comparing three dictionaries, preparing subtitle files from podcasts (to use with WorkAudioBook), writing word lists by hand, using certain useful software programmes, etc. As much of my reading happens in buses or the underground, I have to be able to switch to another task on the spot if there's no sitting room. If there is sitting room and if I'm reading from a dead tree book (as I like to do, to wean me from e-readers and their popup dictionaries), I cannot use a paper dictionary at the same time. Of course owning a smart phone has solved most of these problems, as I can use it to read books, articles or comics, to lookup words, to create word lists, to study word lists, to listen to podcasts or music, to chat (in fact I don't, but I could), to download podcasts and transcripts, etc. Another paradox I have often talked about in this log is that I actually have *less* time to study during weekends or holidays, as I'm not commuting and not having lunch at the office cafeteria. By the way, if the 10,000 hour "rule" has any value (which is debatable), and if I wanted to become really truly authentically fluent in Chinese (which I don't) , and if my math is correct (which would come as a surprise), it would take me, well, somewhere between 16 and 17 years (which seems perfectly reasonable to me). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5263 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 328 of 408 21 October 2014 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
Love reading your log. I've picked up lots of tips and source material to use myself. But I've set myself a deadline of 2 years! But it looks like you are understanding a lot of the material and listening to Podcasts and things. I'd be happy with a basic level of speaking I think. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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