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Muddling through in TAC ’10 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dragonfly Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6290 days ago 204 posts - 233 votes  Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, Mandarin | Message 41 of 95 18 March 2010 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, Annette! Cheer up! Your Chinese is quite decent, as I can see, so you've already put a great deal of effort into it, and I'm sure, you'll be able to conquer all your deseases and bad moods! Haven't you found a way of learning that brings you pleasure and satisfaction yet? For me it's good to establish some everyday learning routine that helps me to get distracted from problems and chores.
By the way, how long habe you been learning Chinese? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 42 of 95 18 March 2010 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that the everyday routine thing is probably the key - just to do something
every day at the same time, so that you don't forget about it :). In general I like studying, I just don't like doing repetitious flashcard/memorization type stuff. Maybe I should make it into a kind of a game? I do most of my studying by just reading. This works pretty well, but it means that there are a lot of characters and words that I can recognize in context but not by themselves, and I can't reproduce them either. I've been studying Mandarin for four or five years now, on and off, but I had exposure to the language as a young child - my mother is a native speaker and used to speak Mandarin to me when I was a little kid, but when I got older my family decided to go monolingual and we stopped using Chinese. So in a way I have both sides of the coin - I had to learn most things from scratch and from a foreign standpoint, but I also had the advantage of never having to worry about tones and I have a native speaker on hand whenever I want to call home. Although to be honest, I don't practice Mandarin with my mother that often because she's used to speaking English to me, so after a while we end up slipping into Chinglish, and that really messes with my Chinese grammar, haha. Thank you for your encouragement. :) I think I was a little exhausted yesterday and all my frustration came out. I feel much better now though! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 43 of 95 20 March 2010 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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This is day one of my new plan to read more news in Chinese and Arabic, and holy crap!
Part of my plan to keep myself motivated is to read about the same issue in English, Chinese, and Arabic and see how the various major news networks differ in their portrayal of the issue. So the first step in this process is to locate articles about the same specific topic. Now, I am reaaaaaaally lazy, not to mention that it takes me a while to warm up before I start reading at a non-glacial pace in my L2, so I decided to do myself a favor and Google Translate all the headlines, then switch back to the L2 once I get to the actual text of the article. Well, I just did that, and wow, MIND BLOWN. I have to admit that I wasn't very impressed with Google Translate before. I usually only use online translation engine for single words, and my experience with Google Translate there is that it never gives me the right word. So this is the first time in literally years that I've used Google Translate on a larger chunk of text. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was really surprised at how accurate Google Translate was:
Now, obviously the translation is not perfect. But you can easily understand the general idea of the text. And this took Google about half a second, whereas it would take me, I don't know, definitely at least a minute or two. And just think, in another couple of years the translations will be even better! Of course, part of this is because Arabic is pretty close to English in some key ways. Translating from Chinese to English with this engine yields much spottier results. So keep on studying Chinese, guys! The machines haven't won yet. As an aside, it's a platitude, but things are what we make them. Sometimes I wonder if Arabic is only this difficult for the Westerner because of all the cultural debris we've built up around that language. Edited by annette on 25 March 2010 at 12:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 44 of 95 20 March 2010 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Just some scattered thoughts.
1. On the last page I posted a link to what Pyx described as a Japanese site with videos for Beijinghua as well as Putonghua and commented on my confusion as to what, exactly, the differences are. Snowflake was very helpful but I was still a little confused, so I ended up asking a Chinese teacher today. She made a very interesting point, which essentially that we need to make a distinction between the Beijing accent and the Beijing dialect, both of which are often (erroneously) referred to simply as Beijinghua." Beijing-accented Putonghua is what most of us are accustomed to hearing; it's easily comprehensible, once you get used to the tone shifts and the 儿s and maybe a little dialect-slang, and because many of the people living in Beijing aren't native to that city or otherwise haven't grown up in that local culture, it's what you hear most frequently as you walk around Beijing. The Beijing dialect meanwhile is apparently much harder to understand; my teacher cited a Beijing friend saying, "We're both Chinese, but if I were with my old friends and we were speaking in Beijinghua, you wouldn't understand a word." So basically, Beijinghua - the dialect, with all its unique vocabulary - is super local and comparable to something like Shanghainese, whereas Beijing Putonghua is what you're probably exposed to. I didn't get a chance to show my teacher the videos and ask if there was any Beijing slang in them, but if we accept the distinction she made, then maybe (probably not, but MAYBE) these videos are in fact in Putonghua, considering that I can actually understand 99% of what's going on. This agrees with something else my teacher mentioned, which was that in certain other Asian countries, namely Japan, Mandarin is often marketed as "Beijinghua" because of how most learning materials teach a watered down version of the Beijing accent. Maybe even your learning materials? I certainly remember having a bit of a shock when I first switched from Taiwan-published materials and Taiwanese teachers to self-studying with "standard"/common textbooks... I wasn't used to all the 儿s! 2. Completely unrelated, but here are two terms I came across today that gave me some trouble. First off, we have 宿命/宿命的, which apparently is not often used and generally refers to the attitude of things being destined or inevitable (sorry, I know what this means in the context of a sentence, but I don't know how to define it clearly and because I've just learned it, I only have passive understanding of the word, so I'm scared to try and define it because I might lead you astray). The 宿 bit actually comes from the word for 'constellation' or something like that, so we could even parallel this with the English expression, "It's in the stars," as echoed in the phrase "star-crossed lovers"... so that makes sense, right? It's not hard to understand in context, I swear. The main trouble I had here was with pronunciation, and honestly I probably would have never noticed if I hadn't mentioned it to my Chinese teacher: Me: "Hey, I just came across this really cool word, xiu3ming4. Isn't that cute?" Her: "You mean su4ming4, right?" Me: "No, I looked it up and it's xiu3ming4. I mean, that's the right character - it's the su4 of su4she4, but apparently you can read it as xiu3 too. Which makes sense, because that's, like, constellation, or whatever." Her: "No, you mean su4ming4, nobody says xiu3ming4." Me: "But... I looked it up..." Her: "Whoever wrote that dictionary was too erudite. If you look at the history of the word, you could read it as xiu3, but somewhere along the way people started to misread it as su4ming4, and now that's all you hear. If you say xiu3ming4, you will sound ridiculous." So there you go. This conversation was in Mandarin, so my apologies if I managed to completely misunderstand her point. In any event, su4ming4 it is! The second term I wanted to immortalize here in this lovely forum is X 被 Y 当猴耍, or alternately X 被当猴耍, or even 把 X 当猴耍... basically I just really like the 猴耍 hou2shua3 thing! Anyway, the hou2shua3 bit refers to the monkey circuses that are/were apparently pretty common in China (no clue here, any input?). So to 把 X 当猴耍 is literally to treat X as a performing monkey. It kind of means to treat someone like they're so stupid that you can trick them easily, and it kind of means to treat someone like they'd blindly obey you and do whatever you say and believe whatever you tell them - basically treat this as a metaphor, not a word with a static definition... I just thought it was a nice turn of phrase. I love little sayings like this :). I think they're my favorite part of learning a new language. 3. I've finally started using a spreadsheet to track my time. This has been suggested to me numerous times before, but I simply never got around to it. Then, earlier today, I was browsing through some old threads when I found a 2009 post by doviende in which he links to his spreadsheets for German, which are organized by month, day, week, trimonthly period... Now, I am a complete sucker for any sort of activity that will allow my inner organizational freak to show through, especially if it will waste time AND make me feel like I'm being productive, so one look at his color-coded stats and I was off to Google Docs to make my own beautiful spreadsheet. I've already decided what colors I want to use and how many hair-splitting categories I will include. One for # of new flashcards, one for # of flashcards reviewed, one for # of minutes spent on flashcards, one for % of flashcards I got right... on and on... I can just see it already, my own little piece of crosshatched heaven... ;) Edited by annette on 25 March 2010 at 1:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 45 of 95 22 March 2010 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Today has mostly been an Arabic day, I read about 1000 words (intensive reading).
Usually I just skim and guesstimate, and that works pretty well except that I'm really not learning the vocab I need to know, so... yeah, intensive reading is on the menu for now. Earlier today, I posted a lengthy description of my reading process for short excerpts in Mandarin. I go through slightly different steps for most of the reading I do, but sometimes I come across short passages (a few paragraphs) or easy passages (a page or two) that I want to practice reading out loud with. Anyway, I typed that up on Sprachprofi's thread, and then I got to thinking, "Why don't I do that with Arabic?" For some reason, I have lots of tricks that I do to streamline my Mandarin study, but I really haven't applied most of them to my Arabic study. So I am copying and pasting that earlier post into this thread of mine now for future reference.
On another note, I think all this language study is destroying my English, haha. I just make less and less sense every time I try to type. It doesn't help that I take notes in a sort of an ungrammatical multilingual shorthand. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 46 of 95 25 March 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||
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So... vocabulary. I need to find a way to learn it that works for me. That's all.
I'm afraid that I'm a lazy learner in that I am more interested in using a language than I am in learning it. In practice, this means that I will decide to read, say, a newspaper article in Arabic, but I won't necessarily learn the vocabulary contained in it. If I read a sentence and understand the meaning but not the grammar or even the individual words, something that happens to me quite often, I simply don't always look up the unknown or contemplate the sentence structures, because hey, I understand the thing, right? This is especially obvious with Chinese, where I can read a news article about Tibet without blinking an eye but would struggle to summarize the issue in appropriately advanced terms. But it is most problematic in Arabic because I am actually on something of a schedule there. With Chinese, I've had literally years to play around and do whatever I want and slowslowly (manmande) absorb by osmosis. Meanwhile with Arabic I don't have time to spend years dabbling here and there and hope that eventually I develop a solid foundation, because I have to take a placement test in just a couple months. And part of that placement test will be an oral interview. And honestly, my speaking skills are lagging behind my reading skills to such a point that I actually worry that they might land me in a class that will not challenge me. And somehow this turned from a post about my desire to study vocabulary more productively - I was going to make a list of steps I could take! - into a post about my need to improve my listening/speaking skills, just like almost every other recent post of mine. Clearly this is weighing on my mind. :) Note to self: ask about the format of the placement test - it's not really useful information but it will make me feel like I have more of a handle on the situation! Note to classmate: hi there! I just want to mention that the department is supposedly making major changes to the curriculum right now. These aren't just empty words - our lang coordinator is relatively new and has really been pushing the ball on this agenda with obvious effect. The good thing is that Arabic will no longer suck at our uni (let's hope), but the bad thing is that it means that I really don't know what the various levels of classes are going to look like next year. I don't think this will mess with your plans at all - you're clearly going to be able to place in a decent class - which is why I didn't send an urgent memo on Facebook or whatever, but you know, maybe something to keep in mind. If you read this, tell me how you study vocabulary that sounds fairly similar. The roots/forms are really helpful in that you can easily keep track of related words, but I'm having a hard time memorizing words that are of the same form and share two out of three roots, for instance. Edited by annette on 25 March 2010 at 2:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 47 of 95 30 March 2010 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Least productive week EVER. Now that I'm tracking my Arabic on a spreadsheet, I can see
that I've done... nothing... since last Thursday. I think I did like 10 minutes of flashcards at one point over the weekend. Ugh. On the bright side, I am doing SO MUCH Chinese!! I haven't had time to read literature, but I've been doing lots of research on the internet. (Ironically, mostly information related to Arabic and Islam) March 31 - pattern is emerging in my study habits: binge and purge. Edited by annette on 01 April 2010 at 5:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 48 of 95 03 April 2010 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
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April 2 - off the purge, on the binge, striving for consistency. Oh, and I finally
succumbed and bought an iPod Touch, which I am MADLY in love with. The only problem is that I have something like seven keyboard lay-outs activated (English, Arabic, Simplified Chinese pinyin input, Simplified hand-written input, Traditional hand- written input, Traditional pinyin input, Traditional zhuyin input). I kind of feel like this is slowing the machine down a little. Good thing I didn't add Japanese support, right? For those of you who are like me technologically challenged but have access to a iPhone/Touch and want to type in your L2: go to settings>general>keyboards. If you want to change the default language of the entire gadget, do settings>general>international. I haven't purchased any apps yet, but I'm trying out lots and lots of free ones. I haven't used any long enough yet to know whether they will truly be useful for me in my studies, though. Flashcard Touch (which I got for free back when they were doing that promotion) looks like it'll be most useful for me. I don't study enough flashcards usually, and that's mostly because I keep my flashcards on the internet but I don't actually spend that much time online. I'm hoping that this flashcard app will help alleviate that issue. The best thing is that it's integrated with Quizlet, which is one of the sites I use and probably the only one I use with any sort of consistency (ugly design but the program is just simple enough for simple me, although I do wish it could do SRS stuff). So I'll try that and see how it goes. Of course the best thing about the iPod Touch is that it can take advantage of free wireless! If any of you guys know of great apps for the iPod Touch, please let me know! In particular, I'm looking for good Chinese and Arabic dictionaries. Edited by annette on 03 April 2010 at 5:08am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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