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Mandarin Chinese Challenge- TAC 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 33 of 39 22 April 2014 at 3:59am | IP Logged | ||
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This weekend I took advantage of some down-time and went through the entire Michel Thomas Foundation course again in 3 days. It was really helpful the second time through. A lot of the concepts were good review and I even picked up quite a few things I missed the first time around. This week I intend to make it through the Advanced course.
I have also been listening to random Chineseclass101.com podcasts in no particular order and I'm really liking them. I can usually pick up one or 2 words or grammar concepts from each one which is a nice relaxing pace. Plus the hosts are pretty entertaining for the most part. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 34 of 39 27 April 2014 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Made it through Michel Thomas Advanced this week. I feel good about the direction my Mandarin has started to take. At this point I'm on the lookout for as much vocabulary as I can get my hands on. I can hold a simple conversation provided the language is fairly simple and the speaker slows down to adjust for my level.
At this rate, I think I will be able to reach my 1 year conversational goal by 1/1/15. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 35 of 39 04 May 2014 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Still plugging away at Mandarin. My best friend started learning Mandarin a couple months ago as well and is through the Michel Thomas courses and moving to Pimsleur. We are able to hold some basic conversations and I am finding that my Mandarin is really improving as I help him. I guess it goes back to the old saying: "You only remember 10% of what you hear, but you remember 90% of what you teach"
I am really focusing now on listening. I'm thinking of taking a page out of Ari's book and piecing together a bunch of Chinesepod or Chineseclass101 dialogs and listening on repeat for awhile to get used to processing conversational speech. Still undecided on the best way to practice listening at my current level... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 36 of 39 04 May 2014 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Have you seen this one (also by Ari)?:
Three rules for improving listening You may find it useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4442 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 37 of 39 05 May 2014 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
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The 1 thing I'm finding in my language learning is that in 6 months of systematic reading newspapers,
listening to the radio, watching TV, I'm still adding new words & phrases to the list of vocabulary in a computer file. And there are all these 4-character proverbs that comes up in normal conversations. I don't know whether or not a typical high school grad in China or Taiwan actually acquire even half the Chinese proverbs (at least a few hundred). The words & phrases I came across recently include: 1. 彩排 cǎipái - a dress rehearsal as something you try out before a wedding. 2. 达人秀 dárénxiù - an English loan word for a talent show as "中国达人秀", the Chinese version of "America's Got Talent" & "Britain's Got Talent". 脱口秀 tuōkǒuxiù - another loan word for "talk show". 3. 轮流 lúnliú - to take turns such as the husband and wife take turns cooking. 4. 迷你 mínǐ - an English loan word for small objects such as a portable phone 迷你手机. 5. 袖珍 xiùzhēn - similar to 迷你. Can refer to people such as 袖珍人 for midgets. A proverb came across recently: 一见钟情 yījiànzhōngqíng for "love at first sight". Literally seeing somebody the first time a loving relationship rings (like a bell). The last TV series watched: 鲁豫有约 (LǔYù yǒuyuē) - a variety show in China from 凤凰电视 (fènghuáng diànshì) Phoenix TV that features guests from all walks of life including a man who carried his wife on his back from their farm to the closest village to the market for many years because she can't walk, a family with quadruplets (四胞 胎). The show title looks a bit odd. I don't know if the first 2 characters 鲁豫 refer to a person or places in China. The last 2 characters: 有约 "have invitation" or in the context of "Invites You". The last thing on the list: Chinese provinces have nicknames / abbreviated names: 1. 宝岛 Bǎodǎo /台Tái : Taiwan as in 宝岛台湾 or 台语 for the Taiwanese (闽南 Minnan) dialect. 2. 鲁 Lǔ: 山 東 Shandong. 2. 蜀: Shǔ: 四川 Sichuan as in 巴蜀人家 Bāshǔ rénjia (people or business from Sichuan). 3. 豫 Yù: 河南 Henan. 4. 粤 Yuè: 广东 Guangdong such as 粤语 for the Cantonese dialect. Learning a language is a voyage of discovery. You are always finding something of interest. Edited by shk00design on 05 May 2014 at 3:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 38 of 39 05 May 2014 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I did see that at the time he posted it, but it was good for me to go back and re-read it. Good stuff there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 39 of 39 16 May 2014 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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As I'm still sick and out of work on disability, I have been dedicating almost all of my day time for the last two weeks to Mandarin study of some kind or another. That's about 8-10 hours a day. Still no burn-out in sight (I'm pretty good at spotting it these days).
So, what do I do? Well, I search for and document (in my notebook) new sentence patterns and vocabulary that I find. I am finding great patterns all over the place including podcasts, textbooks, Youtube videos, and Skype chats with natives. I am coming to the conclusion that Mandarin is substantially more pattern based than German was. Having no genders, noun inflections, or verb conjugations makes for much more straight forward and locked grammar patterns. This is actually kind of cool because every new pattern lets me say a ton of new things. It's only limited by your vocabulary at that point. I have also been working on FSI style drills. These are very handy with putting those patterns in place as well as with new vocabulary (especially in the substitution-type drills). My goal is to get to a point of pattern automaticity with these drills (obviously). My plan is to design drills for the top 20 patterns and run through them with new vocabulary on a daily basis. Once I have those patterns down cold, I would start with the next 20 most important patterns. "Importance" will be decided by me based on my personal opinion. Another thing I have started putting together is a Chineseclass101 "dialog compilation" using Audacity. Basically, I'm working on stringing together all of the Mandarin dialogs (no English) together so that I can have a lengthy audio track to help train my listening a bit. I will probably be out of work for the next couple of weeks so I am hopeful that I can see some real implementation of some of the above plans. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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