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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7173 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 1 of 11 23 October 2005 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I just thought i'd start a thread about my progress in Chinese. Hopefully, people who have progressed further than me will be able to give me advice on what I should do through my journey.
Well, some may have read about my earlier problem of being able to understand more than I can say. This has now, thankfully, been remedied. I feel that i've recently reached a learning milestone and this is the one where I'm having regular conversations with people and they're just using chinese to explain words I don't know. Also, I've just learned all the radicals from the modern radical chart from Reading and Writing Chinese by McNaughton and Li Ying. I used the peg memory system so not only do I recognise the character I can also write it and recall it by its exact number in the chart. Hopefully knowing these basic elements will allow me to learn 1000 to 2000 further hanzi very quickly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7368 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 11 23 October 2005 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Congratulations, Keith!
It is definitely a major milestone to be able to learn new words with all-Chinese definitions or explanations. Could you just briefly tell those of us who are not students of Chinese what the 'peg method' is? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wetnose Groupie United States Joined 6970 days ago 90 posts - 98 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 11 23 October 2005 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh! let us know how those are going...
I personally don't like using memory methods [peg], as they seem so unnatural, but I probably should. I've got hopes for spaced repetition though... Reading and Writing Chinese is very well laid out. I've got a different set of books, but they're old and out of print, I believe [Rita May-Choi]. The biggest problem at this point is to learn vocabulary, and make your speaking/listening 'fluent' with it. It seems like you have to achieve that first to be able to learn and use those written characters naturally. Unfortunately, I'm stuck here too, and have no idea how to proceed. You're well on your way. Next up: feel more comfortable reading [common] characters at regular speed, as opposed to the pinyin, or whatever pronounciation system you use. 加油！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6941 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 4 of 11 21 November 2005 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
I'm a student of Chinese and I don't know what it is either. Please enlighten us! I am able to recognize characters very easily, but I can't write them unless I've spent the time teaching myself how to write that specific character with the right stroke order, etc. So I can definitely appreciate your accomplishment of memorizing all the radicals. Hopefully there's some method out there that could help me with this! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 11 27 December 2005 at 6:28am | IP Logged | ||
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The peg system is common mnemonic method made public by Harry Lorayne. It's based on a phonetic alphabet, with consonant sounds coupled with numbers. T is 1 (imagine ONE vertical line), N/n is 2 (TWO lines), M/m is 3 (THREE lines...), R is 4 (fouR) and the list goes on up to 10 (or rather 0). Your bank account number 123424 could thus be "changed" into the sounds T, N, M, R, N and R. Feel free to find out some words that fit these sounds. For instance: TiNy MaRiNeR. Imagine a tiny mariner (perhaps a little toy soldier) putting your money in the bank.
How this can be used to remember Chinese characters is something I can't see. Anyway: "He can remember fifty digit numbers. The order of a full deck of cards in under a minute. Chinese ideograms. All his appointments for the next year. The names of everybody in one of those thick Russian novels. Everything important in a textbook. Anything. Anything at all." http://www.ricgerace.com/memory.htm A Study on the Learning and Teaching of Hanzi - Chinese Characters (PDF) Enjoy! Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 03 March 2006 at 2:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7173 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 6 of 11 03 March 2006 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Took some time off studying characters after mastering the radicals and spent a good month and a half just thinking about the best technique to learn characters for myself. This definately paid off. I thought I would only be able to master 5 niew characters a day but i'm doing 10 a day and then taking a break at the weekend. So it's 50 a week.
So far i've managed to learn 500+ characters. Maybe I know about 600 now, it's hard to say exactly, but I definately know well over 500. I can write most of them too. The trouble is knowing the various meanings of each character and how they all fit together (when writing that is). However, with more reading i should start to pick out the common combinations of words and this will aid my writing. Though I can write i'm not actively pursuing it yet as I really believe that my time is best spent reading. I'm really just writing out the characters for memorization purposes, though sometimes I write small sentences. Knowing 500 doesn't get you much. However, I can read Children's stories, though I find that there's usually about 30-50 new characters in each story. Still, reading is a great way to reinforce new characters. I should think that in 3 months I should know 1000 +. Also my listening has really come on. I'm starting to understand more of the TV and the local dialect of Nanjing is suddenly not sounding quite so alien. My speaking and tones really need to be improved, though I'm finding that reading out loud helps with this. I've paid a student to come round ten hours a week so hopefully this will help improve speaking and listening. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6857 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 11 26 April 2006 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | ||
A good find :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6769 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 23 August 2008 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, delectric.
I'd really like to hear an update on your Chinese progress. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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