Whitefish Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5063 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French
| Message 9 of 16 28 January 2011 at 5:24pm | IP Logged |
Newty wrote:
As for immersion material.
There's not a lot of mainland China dramas or shows out there, but there's a lot of
Taiwanese ones. I understand that those use Mandarin, but will the Tawainese accent
create any issues? |
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http://www.baidu.com/
http://www.pptv.com/
http://www.bbtv.cn/
http://book.sina.com.cn/
http://www.readnovel.com/
http://data.yule.baidu.com/index_radio.html
;)
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Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 4934 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 10 of 16 28 January 2011 at 6:09pm | IP Logged |
Hey Newty, welcome! I'm glad you started a blog; it'll be nice to watch the progress of another Mandarin learner. I
salute you on doing Pimsleur and will be interested to follow your progress on FSI. I haven't found much Mandarin
TV to watch either, but am going to try out a snarky cartoon Whitefish mentions on his blog. I think I can watch it
with my daughter.
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Newty Newbie United States Joined 4862 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 11 of 16 31 January 2011 at 5:06pm | IP Logged |
Week 1
Pimsleur 7
Chinesepod Newbie Greeting Lessons
It was a busy weekend for me so I could not get as much Mandarin studying done as I
would have liked. I need to step it up some more (didn't even do FSI).
As of now, I can say things like...
"Hello, may I ask you a question?" ..."Where is College Road / Long Peace Street?"...or
"What would you like to eat/drink?"..."Do you want to come eat at my place?"..."I
would like a beer" etc.
I am getting a sense of sentence structure though.
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Newty Newbie United States Joined 4862 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 12 of 16 01 February 2011 at 7:26pm | IP Logged |
I forgot to mention, thanks to all who pointed out immersion material. I can't wait to
get started on it in a few months.
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Newty Newbie United States Joined 4862 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 13 of 16 02 February 2011 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
I went over Pimsleur 8 today and realized that the vocabulary has been building up a
little bit too quickly for me to handle. I can no longer answer the prompted questions
on the fly and sometimes forget the meaning of each phrase they give.
This is after having to review Pimsleur 6 and 7 twice. Maybe I am not as fast as some
others on this forum when it comes to languages...
However, I remembered that I had been meaning to do some flash cards and figured it
would help. I spent an hour making the flashcards using Audacity and ANKI (per
Irrational's recommendation) and WOW did it help me!
For those of you that do not know...ANKI is a flashcard program and the great thing
about it is that you can add sound clips. What I did was use Audacity (a free sound
editing program) to cut up the Pimsleur lessons into little sound clips. So on my
flash card I would have "hello" and then when I told it to flip, it would give me the
corresponding sound bite. I was a bit skeptical at first because it sounded like a lot
of work, but it was worth it for me. Just making the flash cards was a good exercise
in itself.
I also printed out the materials for FSI today. After the first lesson I have been a
bit slow with FSI...it is a bit more dry and I find myself getting pulled more towards
Pimsleur for some reason. I do think I should use it though, since it breaks down
grammar and is more in depth.
Summary: Pimsleur 8, made falsh cards for all Pimsleur vocab up to this point, printed
FSI materials.
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Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5105 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin
| Message 14 of 16 02 February 2011 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
Newty wrote:
I went over Pimsleur 8 today and realized that the vocabulary has been building up a
little bit too quickly for me to handle. I can no longer answer the prompted questions
on the fly and sometimes forget the meaning of each phrase they give.
This is after having to review Pimsleur 6 and 7 twice. Maybe I am not as fast as some
others on this forum when it comes to languages... |
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Are you doing more than one lesson per day? If so, it is probably usual to repeat a number of lessons. Even if not, Mandarin is a difficult language.
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Newty Newbie United States Joined 4862 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 15 of 16 08 February 2011 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
Matty wrote:
Newty wrote:
I went over Pimsleur 8 today and realized that the
vocabulary has been building up a
little bit too quickly for me to handle. I can no longer answer the prompted questions
on the fly and sometimes forget the meaning of each phrase they give.
This is after having to review Pimsleur 6 and 7 twice. Maybe I am not as fast as some
others on this forum when it comes to languages... |
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Are you doing more than one lesson per day? If so, it is probably usual to repeat a
number of lessons. Even if not, Mandarin is a difficult language. |
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It depends, but mostly one lesson per day so far. I think it was just 6-8 though.
Those introduced a lot of new words, but as I hit 9-10 it is starting to get more
comfortable again.
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Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 4934 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 16 of 16 09 February 2011 at 3:21am | IP Logged |
Hi Newty,
I do most Pimsleur lessons twice, and I try to put unknown vocabulary for the next few lessons into my SRS
program. Some people on this forum repeat lessons even more times, but I get too bored . . . some of those
hard lessons about giving directions ("go straight ahead fifty meters more or less, turn to the right, the post
office is on your left next to the bank") . . . who could possibly learn that sentence, and yet, who could bear to
listen to it over and over???? If you can, you are a better Mandarin learner than I.
However, I think our idol Irrationale only had to do each Pimsleur lesson once . . .
Your work on Anki sounds awesome! I admire your ability to work the technology. I use an iPad app called
TrainChinese; it's not perfect, but it has audio and a decent dictionary and collection of phrases, and it does the
work for me.
Good luck!
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