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Mandarin: Year 3.7 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4232 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 97 of 111 09 April 2014 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
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A lot of people listen to the radio especially when they are driving in the car. People tend to put on
music (Classical or Popular). I tend to listen to discussions & commentaries. You can start with Pop songs in a specific language because the lyrics are repetitive. During a discussion the subject matter is repetitive so you pick up the same words & phrases. Yesterday there was a discussion on how to lose weight on the local Chinese radio station. There are half-dozen guidelines including eating a big breakfast and small dinner, vegetables & fruits, alcohol, salt consumption, etc. And there was a discussion on Microsoft discontinuing support for the popular Windows XP. This morning read a similar article in the English edition of the newspaper. Before that a story about a kid who cracked a password to get into his father's Xbox (game console). The father reported the leak to Microsoft. The boy is just 5 years old. News tend to be easier to listen to on TV since you have visual aids (photos & video footages). On the radio you rely on key words & phrases you know already to pick up a story to fill in words in between you don't know. News broadcasts in Chinese tend to use more compact vocabulary (words that mean the same things but with fewer characters) and a broadcaster can speak very fast to condense a 20m news content into 10m. The hardest to pick up are foreign names and places that gets translated into Chinese phonetically. A common English name like John Smith would sound very odd in Chinese. At the end of a news broadcast they would say something like "刚才的新闻简报完毕" (the news broadcast just now have ended). The character 简 means simple. When used with 新闻简报 you think of "news brief" but the news can be very detailed with someone talking quickly. The first and last thing about learning a language quickly is that you build your usage into a regular routine. In the beginning you tend to think in terms of going to class, reading phrase books, listening to audio guides. After a while you rearrange your schedule as if you are living in another country. You'd go shopping in stores where a language is spoken. You would be reading newspapers, listen to radio & TV broadcasts in a specific language. Since there are only 24h in a day, you'd even cut certain number of TV programs in English out of your schedule. You may feel comfortable watching children's programs on TV such as the Chinese version of "Sesame Street" but even programs with topics that interest you can be easy to get into. Even if you don't have a lot of opportunities for speaking a language, listening every day is just as important. Edited by shk00design on 09 April 2014 at 4:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 98 of 111 11 April 2014 at 1:57am | IP Logged |
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Yep, I'm lucky enough to live in an area where we have a Chinese radio station, so I'm usually listening to that in the car. I usually can't decipher much but last night I figured out they were taking callers about home loan options, that was exciting. :)
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| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 99 of 111 12 August 2014 at 8:42pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I sort of drifted away from updates. Was on vacation for the first half of May which then resulted in a bunch of work backed up that I had to catch up on, etc, etc.
Not a ton to report; I'm still dutifully caught up on Anki reviews and still not adding words every day like I should. Or reading or listening enough. I did finish Pimsleur I and II, and am on III now. I've been just as bad about reliably doing my daily Pimsleur walks as about adding words, but I've gotten back on that wagon the last few days. It's kinda sad how fast my ankles/knees get (back) out of shape. I had been walking 2-4 miles every day to get ready for that May vacation (it was gonna have a lot of hiking) and then as soon as we got back I totally slacked off and now, just a couple of months later, they're back to making their ominous creaking noises and being sore the next day. I think there's some kind of language-practice-related lesson here too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 100 of 111 30 August 2014 at 1:41am | IP Logged |
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I'm up to Pimsleur III-12, and have been good about adding & listening to Chinesepod Intermediate lessons.
Finished IF I DIDN'T HAVE YOU, one of the Chinese Breeze 2nd level readers, not a super exiting one. Then I made another cursory check of Game of Thrones (looks a little more promising then last time but no, not quite easy enough yet), and started up the Graded Chinese Reader 500. And now, a few days later, I'm halfway through it. This is (finally) the first book where I feel like I'm actually reading the stories instead of laboriously translating. And I also feel like I know what is going on, which is a nice change. I'll have to go back to where I left off in Reader 3 when I finish and see if it is the same now that I know more. I hope so! We also started watching season 3 of the Xiao Yanzi remake, which is getting increasingly irritating with the trumped-up drama but my wife likes it so we will probably finish it. Meanwhile I've been watching something called Xi Li Nv Ren on the local Chinese station when I do my Anki hanzi reviews, which is some talk show I call in my head RHINO WOMEN, since the first character is Rhino. But it's basically the View, as far as I can tell, with not nearly as much action as RHINO WOMEN would imply. Edited by proudft on 30 August 2014 at 1:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 101 of 111 25 September 2014 at 2:41am | IP Logged |
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Checking in after another month. Up to Pimsleur III-19. I kinda flake on them during the weekends and then get a bunch done on Tuesdays due to my schedule so it continues to proceed, though slowly.
Looking ahead for post-Pimsleur, and after thoroughly scouring the internets for opinions, I got the Glossika fluency thing. I've been listening to the GSR recordings for several days, up to #7 now, and they are hilarious. I don't even know how to describe them. It's a constant wall of sound. Also, the sentences on #6 took a decidedly creepy turn with HOW OLD ARE YOU... ARE YOUR PARENTS HOME... MY HANDS ARE COLD. But, that said, I like them. The constant hammering and repetition is going to eventually work. I know this because of an entirely different thing I have been up to, which is taking a class at the local community college in jazz improvisation, where we got immediately tasked with memorizing an entire Miles Davis solo. Ffffffffffffff...... After the last couple years of Chinese, I've been more and more convinced that I am much more of a visual learner, so I looked on this assignment with a fair degree of dread. So I made an audio file of just the solo, put on endless repeat, and listened to it ALL THE TIME. 300+ plays later, I can basically sing the stupid thing. So I'm pretty sure if it worked for that damn thing it will work for these sentences. Just sheer repetition. Side note for others considering Glossika: As I found on my internet research, and agree with once I heard 'em myself, the recordings are decidedly Taiwanish. This is perfectly fine with me - one of our two Chinese TV stations is from Taiwan anyway, and my relatives have a wide array of accents so I figure any different accent is good for me. And I can tell what she's trying to say. :P Anyway, when I run out of Pimsleurs I will give the other Glossika method a whirl, with the sentence memorization and recording and such. Hopefully by then a good number of the sentences will already be stuck in my brain from the GSR. The OTHER main project is going through all my Chinesepod intermediate lessons in preparation for perhaps moving up to upper intermediate recordings. Though my spreadsheet claims I have learned the vocab and sentences for 157 of the intermediate recordings, there are bunches of those that I never actually listened to the podcast, just the dialog. So I've been going through and listening to them during car trips and chores and whatnot and marking down each one I listen to, and have gone through 87 so far, so more than halfway there. I'll probably stick with intermediate for a while anyway, but I wanted to be thorough. We are nearly done with Huan Zhu Ge Ge, so need to line up a show for after that. My RHINO WOMEN got replaced in its timeslot by some other panel talk show called Shu Nv Bu Man Zu (Accomplished Women, Not Manchurian [are they using the Zu for Manchurian instead of Satisfied for artsy reasons? that would make more sense? but not that important...) which is equally inane but has a variety of accents to watch while I do Anki reviews. For reading, which frankly I am going to de-emphasize a bit since the speaking/listening is lagging comparatively, I finished another story in Chinese Reader 3, and started hand-assembling a dual translation of Tom Sawyer ( chinese version ). Up to chapter 5 so far on that. Now off to do yard work / Pimsleur 20! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 102 of 111 01 October 2014 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
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Currently on:
Pimsleur III-28. 107/159 intermediate Chinesepods Glossika GSR 15 Glossika GMS 1-25 I did the GMS two days ago. Looks like there isn't really time in the day now for both that and Pimsleur AND the Chinesepod catchup project but I'll squeeze a few in here and there I suppose. Once I finish the other stuff (which looks to be fairly soon, thankfully - though I don't think I'll be breaking my 11 chinesepods in one day record for a while [that was a lot of driving that day]) I'll make the big decision of GMS or back to FSI, which I kinda forgot exists. My GSR routine has settled in to about two a day. The first time I listen to a track I just sit and listen to it once with no distractions. After that I put it on auto-repeat and play it for an hour or so while doing work or whatnot. Not sure how much of these goofy recordings are making it out the windows to annoy the neighbors. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 103 of 111 15 October 2014 at 9:37am | IP Logged |
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Finally finished Pimsleur III on Sunday, woot woot.
132/160 Intermediate Chinesepods listened to. Did I really only add 1 lesson in the last two weeks? Ew. I have had an incredibly insanely busy two weeks though with other stuff, which as of today is mostly over, so I can blame it a little on that. Glossika GSR 26. With Pimsleur out of the way I got back to the Glossika GMS yesterday, and did batch 2 of #26-50. Then today I did the review recordings (1-50) and prepared to do 51-75 but my wife came home unexpectedly early and is sleeping at a reasonable time so no dictation for today, nobody can sleep through that. Maybe I will get sassy and do 50 tomorrow instead of 25. There are 8000 of these sentences after all. Our post-Huan Zhu Ge Ge show is Lala's Big Promotion. We had previously watched up to episode 18 or so of Lala before ditching it a while back and we are back up to episode 13, usually one episode a day. Lots more understandable this go round, but this time I also really notice that main guy has a pretty vicious mumbly Beijing accent. I don't mind the erhua - in fact my wife's grandma talks like that - but the mumbling and slurring, ugh. So difficult to figure out. I took a long walk through Chinatown today at lunch since my normal walk time was being eaten up by a concert this evening and looked in a bookstore for anything interesting - particularly any Chinese translations of English books like the Hobbit or Hunger Games or whatever - but it was very disappointing. Mainly cookbooks, feng shui, and romance serials, nothing I really wanted. I momentarily perked up when I saw DVDs but they were all movies and porn instead of TV series. Oh well. I don't really have any shortage of stuff to read or watch anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4941 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 104 of 111 19 October 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged |
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Up to Glossika GMS 250, so already 1/4 through the first book (sort of, since each day kinda lingers for 4 days). There's 3000 sentences, not 8000, not sure how I got confused about that. Anyway, I've done 50 a day for a couple days in a row now, and though it takes a lot of time (1-2 hours I think? I've gotta pay more attention tomorrow to see how much time it takes so I can plan better), I can already see it is pretty much exactly what I need.
Up to GSR 30, I'm going to catch up to that pretty soon with the GMSes and then I have to decide if I'm going to keep the GSRs ahead as a preview or start using them as reviews. Depends how well I can remember some of the most recent more complicated ones I suppose. 142/160 Chinesepods. Closing in on making sure I actually listened to all those intermediates I've been Anki-ing. Listened to where I left off on FSI during a short walk yesterday, Module 2 (Money). It was pretty easy. Either FSI or GSRs will be my new walking soundtracks I guess - the GMS requires too much access to the computer. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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