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Mandarin journey (FSI, Pimsleur, NPCR) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 9 of 181 29 September 2008 at 3:14am | IP Logged |
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Finished lesson 12 without problems.
The main issue now is starting to learn to produce and recognize the Hanzi fluently, which I can clearly tell is going to be a major endeavor. My strategy is this; I have put all the characters for the 50 or so words I have learned, along with pinyin, into Anki. I need to first memorize all these, and be able to produce them at will. Second, from now on I will listen to Pimsleur two times a day. One time will be like normal. The second time will be purely for writing production practice. I will input all the new words for that day into Anki. When Pimsleur prompts me to say something I will do so and write it. This includes sentences, everything, until maybe I feel that it can be written with fluency and quickly. For recognition practice perhaps I will put entire sentences into Anki. This still isn't clear to me at this point, but I really need reading RECOGNITION practice, preferably with the same small characters on the computer. It won't be clear until the point where I reach intermediate level, at which time I think I will buy some type of basic chinese reader, or children's book. As far as writing goes, I can see that this first period may be a nightmare...maybe. I am retaining the characters I have memorized but writing them and recognizing fluently is a different story. What a language! Edited by irrationale on 29 September 2008 at 3:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 10 of 181 30 September 2008 at 3:41am | IP Logged |
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Today I memorized (crammed) about maybe 30 to 40 characters. It wasn't fun...at all. I never want to do that again. My mind is swimming with characters.
At least now I have all the characters for the words that I have learned in Pimsleur memorized, so that when I start again tomarrow, I can learn characters at a normal pace of 5 to 10 a day from now on. Looking forward to getting back into my ruitine of 1 hour Mandarin and 1 hour Spanish; starting to learn chinese has been a rough take-off. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 11 of 181 08 October 2008 at 5:15am | IP Logged |
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Finished Pimsleur 17 and have about 60 to 70 characters in command.
Well Mandarin has calmed down a little bit now that I have memorized the 60 or so characters that I need to express the words I have learned in Pimsluer. Now that I have these, I am starting on my homebrew ruitine of listing to Pimsluer once, and then again while writing down what I say onto paper with characters. I learn all the characters sheerly by sound, pinyin guessing, and using www.yellowbridge.com. Afterwords, I look in Reading and Writing Chinese for info about the radicals and strokes. I have a practice book that is quickly filling up. I am picking up the radicals and pinyin as I go along and it is getting easier as my mind makes the connections in the chaos. I do admit thought that this is taking a LOT longer and is harder than I thought it would be (the written chinese mainly, spoken is quite easy to me). I am now spending about 2 hours a day on mandarin. Plus Spanish, this is about 3.5 to 4 hours a day on languages. Sometimes I wonder if I am insane...haha 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 12 of 181 09 October 2008 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
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Milestone; finally learning some words that use characters I already know!!! Wohoo!
Finished 18, about 80-something characters. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 13 of 181 12 October 2008 at 3:40am | IP Logged |
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Lesson 20 finished with some difficulty for whatever reason, I trying to decide whether to repeat it. I think it is because I'm not used to the 多少 ，几个 division. Its funny because the characters I learned this lesson where actually very easy for once.
I am still trying to intuit the meaning of 了 and 的. I assume that 的 is some sort of possive object indicator, but for 了 I really hope Pimsleur allows my intuition to grasp this particle and doesn't make me consult a grammar book. Somewhere around 90 characters learned. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 14 of 181 15 October 2008 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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Lesson 23 finished. Around 100 characters learned, and under command.
My mind is still at the point where I am thinking of Mandarin in terms of seperate phrases, it it is annoying, because I want to break through to that level and stop feeling like I am just memorizing phrases (FSI talks about this annoying phase). If I remember, the point where Spanish all "came together" in my mind was somewhere in Level 2 of Pimsleur. I wonder if it will be the same or different with Mandarin? Still memorizing all the characters with the words I learn. I think this system is working great, and I am remembering the all characters without much difficulty now, as my mind has adapted (I think), and it gets easier the more characters you know. A few seem to always give me trouble for some reason, for example 块。 What I am going to start doing now is imputting entire sentences into Anki to give me some very basic sentence reading practice, to get used to reading chinese. On the spoken side, I spoke to a native speaker a few sentences and words and she said I had great pronunciation, which is good. I have figured out how to make the difficult sounds that vexed me at the beginning, like the "r" in "ren" 人. Only problem now I can hear is that in long sentences I sometimes get a tone wrong, especially if it is a 3 tone, I will make it into a 4 tone. I will work on this. Also, I have figured out now that 了 is some sort of past particle. Maybe present perfect. I am very curious to see how Mandarin handles time and I can't wait to find out. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 15 of 181 17 October 2008 at 7:02am | IP Logged |
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Lesson 24 finished, had to do over again...quite a difficult lesson with many words for a Pimsluer, new grammar intruduced, etc.
A great developement occurred; I found some kind souls who typed short transcriptes of the lessons with hanzi! This saves me an incredible amount of time looking in the dictionary and guessing for pinyin. I am going to take tomarrow to seriously cram some hanzi, because I added quite a few this time. Now up to 123 hanzi, based on Anki's hanzi counter. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6042 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 16 of 181 18 October 2008 at 6:13am | IP Logged |
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Lesson 25 finished, and 143 Hanzi known.
Relatively easy, but I simply have to take a day's break to catch up with my vocab on both Spanish and Mandarin, because right now I am choking on vocab! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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