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Mandarin Chinese Challenge- TAC 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| PointsDotsLines Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4007 days ago 76 posts - 110 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 39 01 January 2014 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
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祝你新年快樂！萬事如意！(traditional characters)
祝你新年快乐！万事如意！(simplified characters) = Happy New Year! May all your wishes come true! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4690 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 10 of 39 07 January 2014 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello. So, the flu hit me on 1/2/14 and hasn't let up. I must confess to no Mandarin study for the last 6 days. I'm going to turn this around and get back in the saddle. I plan to power through MT today and start fresh tomorrow!
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| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4690 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 11 of 39 08 January 2014 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, so I didn't make it through MT like I wanted to. I was able to get through disc 4 and will be listening to disc 5 today. Additionally, I did some ANKI reviews and about an hour of vocab/phrase Pinyin study.
I'm starting to feel like I am in over my head. I feel like I would have progressed leaps and bounds over my present level in almost any other language, but I know it's early and I am determined to persevere! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4690 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 12 of 39 14 January 2014 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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So, at what point does the "veil" begin to lift on Mandarin? I am really starting to get discouraged. I keep looking for that "Ah-ha" moment and it doesn't feel like I'm ever going to find it. Any ideas on how to stay motivated?
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| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 39 14 January 2014 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||
I am sure it depends on the individual, but for me it took a long time and I also felt quite discouraged because of it. However, the little milestones do become huge encouragements, so look for the little things. For me now it's great when I understand a phrase in a TV show, but at first it was just recognising a word, or being able to write a phrase with characters or read a phrase. Maybe it's worth changing the way you study, use a different book/audio or something. Try changing it up a bit. Keep going, it will be worth it in the end (or at least that's what I keep telling myself)! 加油! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| evilado Diglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4007 days ago 64 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 14 of 39 17 January 2014 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
I know you're focusing only on spoken Chinese, but sometimes it helps me to just play with the hanzi. Listening is exhausting sometimes and reading is worse, but just learning a few characters is a nice way to still be studying. Or read a book by Peter Hessler or something about China, whatever keeps you connected and interested. It's a long road any way you look at it, but your goals for this year a reasonable and attainable if you keep at it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 15 of 39 18 January 2014 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
Right now my focus in on French. I did extensive study on Mandarin for 6 months and I am now maintaining a comfortable level on the phone. I started by watching an old TV series from Singapore listed on YouTube under: 梁 細妹, Liang Xi Mei / Gao Xiao Xing Dong. It is It is a half-hour comedy with a lot of common words & phrases repeated so it is easy to follow the dialog involving a man playing the role of a mother. I just finished a TV series in 20 episodes: 企鵝爸爸 with English subtitles. When you find a movie, TV series that looks interesting, you would watch the first few minutes of the video to see if you are comfortable with it. Always keep a list of words and phrases you picked up along the way. I like to do my word lists on computer because I can re-arrange these easily in Pinyin alphabetical order. To date I've compiled over 300 new words & phrases including different ones that mean the same thing as well as over 50 4- character proverbs. To keep my Chinese from falling behind while learning French, I am compiling my own vocabulary list watching videos and entering the comments in Chinese. The bottom-line to language learning is to strike the right balance between learning grammar, words & phrases and making learning enjoyable. Repeating: "Bonjour, 你好, Guten morgen" 100x out of a phrase book would be so boring that you want to quit. You basically find a few nice TV shows & movies online with English subtitles. You would pay attention to what was being said. As soon as you come to a word or phrase you don't know you look it up. What got my motivation up is that I would be looking up a word every few minutes using an online dictionary (with the audio pronunciation button on the side) and 4-character proverbs on Google to see what they mean. Once you found the answer you feel you've accomplished something on your own. The Ah-ha moment will come eventually. When I am learning French, I would have a list of movies with English subtitles such as: La Cage aux Folles. You are doing a lot of learning but at the same time it is also entertainment. Stopping a video every few minutes to repeat a word or phrase isn't actually boring as repeating a word out of a book because you are always looking forward to what is going to happen in the next scene... Edited by shk00design on 18 January 2014 at 12:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5154 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 16 of 39 30 January 2014 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Just keep at it! It just takes a long time. You have to always, always remember that Mandarin has no common link with English. I see under your name there that you speak French and German. Think of how many words are similar between those languages and English. I took three years of Spanish in high school many many years ago, learned very very little, but I can still muddle my way through written Spanish because of the shared roots it has with English. With Chinese you have none of that. Look at this pathetic list: English words of Chinese Origin So basically you're learning a language from scratch with no crutches to fall back on. But you do start to see progress eventually, honest! This graph from John Pasden is encouraging to me when I feel like I'm getting nowhere (especially listening and speaking), and I think it's true. There is just this huge hump you have to get over at the beginning, and it is a really really really big hump, but you can do it if you don't give up. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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