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Silver’s Log: 2012 TAC Team 德 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| silverpolyglot Diglot Groupie Canada silverchallanges.wor Joined 4911 days ago 42 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: English*, Somali Studies: French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 23 30 December 2011 at 6:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello! This is my TAC 2012 Log! I hope i can discipline myself to both study and post
here often, that is a major goal for me! I will be studying Mandarin and Swedish this year. Maybe: (due to a severe case of wanderlust Mongolian and/or Manchu. And maybe due to guilt, French) Let me give some background about my language skills (or lack thereof) 中文/普通话/汉语 Level: A2 (starting from scratch) Goal Level: B2 Background: I started Mandarin last year, in my first year of university. Our school made us use the New Practical Chinese Reader and we would progress at a rate of 1 unit every 2-3 weeks. I felt dissatisfied with what I was learning in the course, but I continued on, finishing the first year and book or "beginner" level. When I finished the course i realized that I did not have a solid knowledge of pinyin as i had thought, and i could only read the 200 or so characters we learned, being unable to write them (as we were not required to in class.)I have also done self study prior to starting university and promptly quit, but was able to retain a bit of what I learned. I am currently doing self-study at my own pace and with my own method. Goals: Reading/Writing: Practice reading and the writing of 10 characters each and every day. Practice with 300 word readers and progressively increase to readers with more words. Writing:Daily compositions utilizing the 10 new words I've learned, and words i know. Practice the proper stroke order of characters. Listening:Practice listening by listening to Mandarin programs, (eavesdropping at the bus stop, hehe) Watch more Mandarin language programming (i.e news, movies, variety shows, televisions shows, commercials, etc) SpeakingPractice speaking on Skype, Mandarin speaking friends, OTHER:Learn Pinyin properly: i.e proper pronunciation of each initial and final and their compound forms. -associating the correct tones to words I learn eg: Wo3, -Learn 214 radicals. Svenska: Level: Non-Existent Goal Level: A2-B1 Background: I've always wanted to learn Swedish, but never had the drive to. Hopefully this year I can put the necessary effort to advance in my studies :) Goals: -Learn proper pronunciation, -Boost my vocabulary -Listen to native Swedish speech and get used to hearing the language -Practice on Skype or with friends. Hopefully I can achieve my goals, and I hope to update often! Good Luck to everyone!! Edited by silverpolyglot on 31 December 2011 at 8:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| silverpolyglot Diglot Groupie Canada silverchallanges.wor Joined 4911 days ago 42 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Somali Studies: French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 23 30 December 2011 at 6:39am | IP Logged | ||
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As I am so bogged down with carrying around textbooks and my uniform and other medical
tools for school, I barely have space in my bag for any books, so most of my resources are accessible online or an app that I use on my iPhone. This is not a set list, I might add or remove some tools that I feel are hindering my progress, and some of these tools may not be used until the later half of the year. This is just a list of tentative tools I will be using in the challange! Mandarin: Goal: 10-12 hours a week. Tools: -DLI basic course for Standard Chinese (1 lesson per week) -Pimsleur (for listening) -nciku website: dictionary (awesome resource! Some characters even have a replaying store order video) -Memrise (for radicals and general character recognition practise) -Mindsnacks Mandarin (I can use my dawdling time (aka the daily commute to school) to play some games that can help me with my mandarin! -Pleco/Dianhua (another dictionary. App) -iMiao (practise writing of characters. App) -Sticky Study (SRS for characters. App) -Read Chinasmack.com and Chinahush.com (for fun and learning about random current events relating to China, and chinese internet slang cracks me up! :) ) -Mainland Period/Wuxia dramas and plain ol' dramas. With English and Simplified Subs (perhaps the real reason i'm studying Chinese is to watch dramas haha, but the "official" reason for using this resource is to build recognition of characters.) -Graded readers to practice reading Swedish: Goal: 4 Hours a week Tools: -Babbel Swedish App (to build both vocabulary and perfect pronouncaition) -Pimsleur Swedish Comprehensive -FSI Swedish -Colloquial Swedish -(insert more tools here) Cool Resources for my super awesome teammates/Mandarin learners Radical ScrollThis is a free radical poster you can print and take around or post in your room/study area as both a study list and a reference guide to the radicals. Zhongwen Red More vocab focused. Free downloadable mp3 and pdf material! Who doesn't love/need that? Zhongwen Green: I think this is a textbook series that is not as vocab based as Zhongwen Red. More to come soon! Edited by silverpolyglot on 08 January 2012 at 10:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| silverpolyglot Diglot Groupie Canada silverchallanges.wor Joined 4911 days ago 42 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Somali Studies: French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 23 30 December 2011 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Quick Progress:
Rationale: I've divided the year into 3 parts. The first part corresponds with my second semester of my school year. As I will have a lot of commitments, I hope i can maintain a fair balance between school work and studying Mandarin and Swedish. Part Two corresponds with my Summer Vacation which might result in my going away for the summer or not. I hope to be able to double my effort in this time as I will not have any school or a job, and can strictly be focused with learning. The third part is the part I fear most as it corresponds to the start of the hardest and most important year of my program, but I hope to persevere and be able to balance both of them! This portion of my log will also serve to clock how many hours I complete in each part, and how much I get done (i.e finish a textbook etc). I also hope to record how many characters I learn (i.e ability to write from memory, recognize and understand) in each part. I'll probably add some more things since i'm so darn long winded haha! Part One: January to April: Part Two: May-August: Part Three: September to December: Edited by silverpolyglot on 31 December 2011 at 8:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4956 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 4 of 23 01 January 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just dropping to give you the list of team mate logs so that you can find it easily:
Team Logs Here 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| silverpolyglot Diglot Groupie Canada silverchallanges.wor Joined 4911 days ago 42 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Somali Studies: French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 23 08 January 2012 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Alas my vacation is almost over, and it's time for me to start yet another tedious
semester. I'm excited to keep studying Swedish and Mandarin. I've started Colloquial Swedish and I am doing a unit a week type of approach. I hope to finish this series by April. For Mandarin however, I have yet to start any formal course work, but I have been learning the 214 Kangxi radicals, which I hope to finish by the end of this month. I've been also practising tone discrimination so I can identify the tones being used in a dialogue with ease as well as being able to read pinyin with the proper tone. I also hope to start Pimsleur for both languages on Monday. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5045 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 6 of 23 10 January 2012 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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How could you learn the tones? Or are you still learning them?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| silverpolyglot Diglot Groupie Canada silverchallanges.wor Joined 4911 days ago 42 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Somali Studies: French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 7 of 23 11 January 2012 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||
I am still learning the tones as of right now. I want to master the ability to recognize and be able to differentiate between combinations of tones. I am using 3 apps at the moment on my iPhone, and they are developed by an American who has lived in China for 25 years named Paul Condrell, whose Chinese name is Kang Baole 康保乐. Essentially, you hear a the speaker (Laokang) say the word "ma" twice using s combination of any of the 4 tones and the neutral tone. You are timed and penalized for taking too long,and have to answer quickly or you will lose marks. One of the apps is called Laokang pinyin trainer, and it tests your ability to recognize and spell the pinyin. The second app is called Laokang tone test, which you do first to see how well you can recognize tones. You are given a score that represents your skill. 98+ Native 90-98 Fluent 80-90 Good 70-80 Need practice 60-70 Need coaching 60- Need training The final app is called Laokang tone trainer, and it is used to improve your score, and thus your understanding of pinyin. This one is pricey, about $3.99 CDN on the app store I think. The other two are free. Personally this is my favourite tool for practicing my tones. There are only a set number of tonal combinations and you are able to practice them and learn them well. Unfortunatly this is only good for HEARING the tones, not practice saying them, but I think I read somewhere that there will be an update for laokang tone trainer with an option to practice your pronunciation which will be totally awesome! Thats all I am using at the moment for tones. This is just wjat works for me, but hopefully it will work for you too!!! http://news.laokang.net/: laokang's website http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2011/10/laokang-t one-test-review-great- simple.html : where i got the scoring from. Good Luck!! ~silver 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5045 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 8 of 23 12 January 2012 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, but I don't have an iPhone so I won't be able to use them. :S
Good luck to you as well anyway! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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