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Towards Mandarin fluency - Team 鹊 TAC’14

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69 messages over 9 pages: 13 4 5 6 7 ... 2 ... 8 9 Next >>
shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4445 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 9 of 69
02 January 2014 at 6:41am | IP Logged 
Personally prefer TV drama series. There are tons of these around. For me anything less than 40 episodes. You
have the same set of characters coming and going and the same words and phrases get repeated in different
context. This is an alternative to a movie which is usually up to 2h long. You watch the first episode usually 40m
excluding commercials or 20m long (for a half-hour show) and decide whether you like the story or not to
continue watching the rest. You make a list of your words & phrases. As always every time you come across
unfamiliar words & phrases, you put it on the list and review it from time to time. Most Chinese shows on TV have
character subtitles. Even without subtitles, you can hear roughly the phonetics and use Pinyin to look up the word
or phrase in a computer dictionary.

You can choose between the ones from Mainland China, Taiwan or Singapore. The ones from Singapore tend to
have more English phrases inserted into their dialog. Besides dialog in Mandarin, sometimes you would hear
Minnan dialect used in Taiwan and similarly Fukinese dialect and some Cantonese in Singapore.
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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4017 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 10 of 69
04 January 2014 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
Today I finished a book called 我读 by Liang Wendao 梁文道, thats 263 pages to my goal of 10000. It's a collection of essays about books. The language is really easy and I really like that he also reviews books by non-chinese authors that I have read, so i can follow his review better. There are two more essay collection and I 'll get them as soon as I can.
I guess 30 pages a day is manageable for me. The next book is 蜗居 by Liu Liu 六六. There's a drama based on that book, which I'll watch later. The language seems pretty accessible, too, but I'm also only 15 pages in. We'll see.

@shk00design
I know what you mean. I also like that you have time to get used to the language used, so that it gets easier. I started recently started watching a series called X女特工, whihc is about a group of female spies in the 30s, I think. It's pretty easy and a little silly so far, so I think I'll keep watching this.
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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4017 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 11 of 69
18 January 2014 at 8:59pm | IP Logged 
So, a small update: I'm still here. January is a stressfull time for me, because it's time for my finals. I expect to participate more when February rolls around.
As for my self-introduction for Team Mandarin, I really hope I don't forget to write one...

I'm still doing my reading challenge and even though I missed some days, it's going pretty well. I'll finish 蜗居 in a few days, but I can already say that I'm not a fan. I'll elaborate a little later, but I don't think I'll read another fiction book by Liu Liu..
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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4017 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 12 of 69
01 February 2014 at 11:04pm | IP Logged 
So, belatedly, here is the lan-8 corrected version of my self-introduction for the Chinese TAC Team:

大家好,我叫Ninibo,来自德国。我二十多岁。
我学了几年中文,但是我学习语言比较马虎, 所以我有的时候是一位很好的学生,有的时候 是一位很懒的学生。。。很可惜。
除了汉 语以外我也想试图改善我的法语阅读理解水平 。
这一年我想要跟你们一起提高我的汉语水平。 去年我的学习方法太被动了,所以今年我打算 进一步提高我的写作会话能力。
我用外语的时候很害羞,有点儿怕犯错。希望 我今年战胜这样的焦虑,习惯跟别人用汉语说 话。
我还有一个目标:今年也是我的【阅读年纪】 。 我没有正式地参加Super Challenge,但是我也想读一万多页的阅读,为了 完成这个挑战,我每天应该读三十页。 今天我把我的第二本书看完了,我感到很自豪 !
总而言之,我的汉语还很差,但是我想努力学 习好好提高水平。

As for my reading, I gave up on Wo Ju. I read two thirds of it and I really didn't like it. The characters were unlikeable, I was bored by the plot and I just didn't care about anyone in this book. Least of all Guo Haizaos lover Song Siming. He was such an ass, I can't think of one redeeming factor. The book lost me pretty much in the beginning with this one almost-rape scene; Song Siming goes to visit Haizao without telling her when she's on a business trip. His face is covered, so she doesn't recognize him when he knocks on her hotel room door. He then forces his way in and starts kissing and undressing her, even though she fights back and says no. He only stops and reveals himself when she starts screaming for help and people come running. Who does that?!
Whatever, I'm going to just count the pages I read and continue after my exams this week with either with Stories of the Sahara 撒哈拉的故事 by San Mao 三毛 or After School 放学后 by Heigashino Keigo 东野圭吾. With this I'm at 452 pages.
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Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6086 days ago

2020 posts - 2295 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 13 of 69
01 February 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged 
Is there any way to read book reviews, like the Kundenrezensionen at Amazon? I would be so annoyed to spend time getting into a book only to end up not liking it. Your into is great! Well, as far as I can judge at the stage I'm at^^
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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4017 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 14 of 69
01 February 2014 at 11:22pm | IP Logged 
Sunja wrote:
Is there any way to read book reviews, like the Kundenrezensionen at Amazon? I would be so annoyed to spend time getting into a book only to end up not liking it. Your into is great! Well, as far as I can judge at the stage I'm at^^


Thank you! ^^

I'm not really sure where I can find reviews. There is Amazon China though. I guess I expected something else from such a popular novel, but it's really incredibly sexist. On the other hand you can read pretty much any chinese book online, so I guess I should start taking a peek before I buy a physical copy..
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Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 15 of 69
01 February 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged 
Ninibo wrote:
On the other hand you can read pretty much any chinese book online, so I guess I should start taking a peek before I buy a physical copy..
That's where a large collection of my Chinese books are from :P I had a nice collection of children's books in China (books there are so cheap!), unfortunately that and all my other stuff got left in China when i was denied a visa back in :/
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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4017 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 16 of 69
06 February 2014 at 9:26pm | IP Logged 
Finally! My exams are over for this semester! I still have some classes during the break and two papers to write, but, that's a lot less than what i had last semester. So now, i can finally devote more time to chinese.
I decided to set some goals for February and if i like it i might do monthly goals for the rest of the year:

-Translate three songs
-read at least 835 pages (thats's the monthly amount needed to reach 10000 pages by december, i'm already a bit behind though)
-do the challenge for the chinese team
-go through ten news articles
-watch ten hours of chinese TV



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