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Learning Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6829 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 19 29 April 2007 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today i started lesson 50, the first lesson in the active phase of chinese with ease 2. I will not make any predictions for the amount of time it will take to finish. I don't want to limit myself by setting an arbitrary goal that is too low and i also don't want to presure myself by aiming too high. Instead my goal is simply to study 30 minutes a day 5 days a week. I think this goal is pretty reachable since I can take some time off for vacations and not be concerned with missing a little time, but normally should be able to find 30 minutes throughout the day to study.
Yesterday while waiting to get my haircut at a chinese hair salon a woman walked past carrying a cup of tea. Yes, I was trying to eavesdrop on the mandarin conversation. She announced to her friend in mandarin that she had a cup of black taiwnese tea. I said. Ohhh. She thought I saw the tea, and offered me a cup in English. I thanked her in Chinese and we had a little conversation. Turns out she's Taianese and the women she was talking to went to the same university in Taiwan as my wife. The woman with the tea also works part time at a chinese school that meets on saturdays not far from where i just moved to. I'm going to go check out the school in 2 weeks and sit in on a class. I think I'll go to the pre-kindergarten class with my son and see how it is. Edited by owshawng on 29 April 2007 at 9:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lcsr Diglot Newbie Portugal Joined 6360 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 10 of 19 01 May 2007 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know if there's an English version of Assimil's "L'écriture chinoise" (Chinese Writing), but I definitely recommend it. It basically teaches you how to write all the 800 characters that are introduced in Assimil's Chinese With Ease volumes 1 and 2.
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| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6829 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 19 02 May 2007 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think Assimil does have an English translation for learning how to read and write. Need to put that on the back burner for now. I want to focus on listening/speaking first. My wife is hinting that I should start learning hokkien/taiwanese before i learn how to read.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6852 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 19 03 May 2007 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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"Writing Chinese with Ease: The Characters Stroke-By-Stroke" (Phillipe Kantor) ISBN 2700502957
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| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6829 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 19 13 November 2007 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I had a chinese immersion day. I based it on alljapaneseallthetime.com. I studied Assimil Chinese with Ease and Chinese pod. I did 3 new lessons for Assimil and 19 in Chinesepod. When I wasn't actively studying, I set my cd player to loop the same assimil lesson over and over for 30 minutes or more at a time. This way I was listening when I was doing everyday things like shaving, cooking, eating, etc. I also signed up for a trial membership at chinesepod and did 19 of the newbie lessons. I scored as low elementary when I took the listening test so I thought I should go over the newbie lessons. I knew probably 97%+ of the newbie material I covered, but it's a great way to refresh and chorus.
A few months ago I realized I was mispronouncing the third tone and set about trying to unlearn my bad habit and relearn the third tone correctly. I stopped all new lessons and went back to lesson 1 of assimil in my attempt to retrain my brain and mouth to speak the tone correctly. Yesterday I finally reached the assimil lesson I had stopped at, #56 and started new lessons. Today I finished lesson 60 and felt so upbeat I decided to give chinesepod a try. I was enjoying the newbie lessons so much I kept doing them (like eating popcorn while at the movies) without paying attention to the number of lessons I had covered. I even spent time learning how to read from the transcripts I downloaded until I suddenly felt tired a few minutes ago and called it a day after about 9 hours of active and passive chinese. I really think this immersion day helped a lot with not only improving my pronunciation and rhythm, but also with my sentence structure and thought process. I felt like I was really thinking in chinese, not just listening to chinese and trying to translate into english. I will definitely try an immersion day next week too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6852 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 19 14 November 2007 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow! Impressive! I'm going to follow your example with Assimil Chinese (just a few lessons left before it's time for the "second" second wave, i.e. reviewing lessons 50-105), but it won't happen this week. Thanks for your inspiration.
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 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6837 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 19 14 November 2007 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I got that book too and it's just sitting there unused in the bookshelf. With excellent on-line resources such as this one in existance with animated stroke orders, it seems stroke orders published in book form is a dated concept. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6829 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 19 21 November 2007 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hencke,
I think you're right. I'm going to switch to an all digital format. I've downloaded some of the FSI modules and I've subscribed to Chinespod. In the near future i want to get a Palm TX and install Pleco in it. Plus there are other online sources too, but I think my big 3 sources will be Chinesepod, FSI downloads, and Pleco. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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