js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4520 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 81 of 89 07 December 2013 at 3:58pm | IP Logged |
7/12/13 - Couple of Chinese DVDs arrived the other day, watched an episode of 'Dora the Explorer' today which
was really good, understood quite a good amount, and picked up some new vocab - castle, submarine, dolphin etc!
Probably not stuff I will use in the near future, but good to know. It's great as it is a show for kids and so nice and
straightforward, good for my level. Continuing on with Anki as usual when I have the time. Not all that much to
report really.
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4520 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 82 of 89 16 December 2013 at 3:18pm | IP Logged |
16/12/13 - Not had the opportunity to do much lately, barely keeping on top of Anki. However, was invited for
dinner with someone Chinese the other evening and so I had the chance to practice a bit. Understood bits and
pieces, managed to get my point across sometimes, although with great difficulty and terrible grammar! I am
excited for TAC 2014 and I hope to have more breakthrough in Chinese next year. This year has been great and I
feel that I have done ok, mostly in the area of reading/writing, but I am not all that pleased with my
speaking/listening progress. I will set some goals for next year, but vocabulary and time spent listening will be
much higher up on the list than characters for this next year.
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4520 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 83 of 89 16 December 2013 at 3:20pm | IP Logged |
Also I am getting an Android phone for Christmas so I will finally have easy access to anki again, which I am hoping
will help me spread out my studying during the day and really utilise more time when out and about. At present I
only have my computer, and often lack motivation if I don't pound through my anki decks first thing.
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4868 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 84 of 89 16 December 2013 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
js6426 wrote:
16/12/13This year has been great and I
feel that I have done ok, mostly in the area of reading/writing, but I am not all that pleased with my
speaking/listening progress. I will set some goals for next year, but vocabulary and time spent listening will be
much higher up on the list than characters for this next year. |
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If you're already good at reading/writing, listening & speaking skills will not be too difficult to attain, I think. You just need some regular exposure to spoken Chinese. Are there any Chinese movies/series that interest you? I haven't studied Chinese yet, but I understand some easy phrases because of my TV habits (I used to watch some Chinese series) - it's a pretty painless strategy to get good listening skills. Are you going to teach your kid either Chinese or English? Or both?
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4520 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 85 of 89 17 December 2013 at 12:30am | IP Logged |
druckfehler wrote:
js6426 wrote:
16/12/13This year has been great and I
feel that I have done ok, mostly in the area of reading/writing, but I am not all that pleased with my
speaking/listening progress. I will set some goals for next year, but vocabulary and time spent listening will be
much higher up on the list than characters for this next year. |
|
|
If you're already good at reading/writing, listening & speaking skills will not be too difficult to attain, I think. You
just need some regular exposure to spoken Chinese. Are there any Chinese movies/series that interest you? I
haven't studied Chinese yet, but I understand some easy phrases because of my TV habits (I used to watch some
Chinese series) - it's a pretty painless strategy to get good listening skills. Are you going to teach your kid either
Chinese or English? Or both? |
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I have a collection of around 20 Chinese Disney DVDs which I will be watching and re-watching, there are also some
series on Youtube I can dive into. I have lots of podcasts and also a ton of Chineseclass101 lessons. There is
certainly no shortage of things I can listen to, for me it just tends to be a motivation issue, I find myself watching an
episode of something in English when I want to relax rather than something in Chinese that I won't understand! But
hopefully this year I can really change that and force myself to try and do more of a AJATT style of learning!
We will teach him both, my wife has been speaking Chinese to him, I have been speaking English, and then hopefully
he will pick up Khmer just through being with friends (also my wife and I only speak to one another in Khmer so
we're not sure what effect that'll end up having)! It'd be great if he was trilingual, but we'll just have to see what
happens I guess!
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4520 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 86 of 89 27 December 2013 at 8:51am | IP Logged |
27/12/13 - I have done virtually nothing since my last update, the Christmas season has been hectic (in a good
way) and I have spent lots of time with family, and so really have done very little in the way of language. I will do an
end of year update to summarise how I feel the year has gone in a few days, and then start a new log for the TAC
2014.
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4520 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 87 of 89 28 December 2013 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
END OF YEAR SUMMARY
As I look back over this year of learning Mandarin, I have to confess that I am both a little disappointed, but also
incredibly pleased. I think my expectations were probably a little unrealistic, mainly due to how quickly I picked up
Khmer. My listening is still not all that good, neither is my speaking. However, my reading and writing have
improved greatly. I wanted to be able to write 1000 hanzi by the end of the year, and I can now write over 1500. I
still have a long way to go, but I feel like a great milestone has been reached here. I got through many of the
learning materials that I planned to (Assimil, Pimsleur, parts of Chinese With Ease and Colloquial Chinese), as well as
using various native materials. I didn't read any full books, but made use of many kids Chinese books (and have
many more for this year), and I watched some Chinese movies that I was able to get delivered by visiting friends. I
feel that I have quite a good foundational vocabulary, but my grammar isn't much good, which is one reason I feel
my speaking could be a lot better. With all that said, I think I have given myself a nice foundation in Mandarin
Chinese this year, and I feel fully prepared to continue on this next year. My focus will be listening and going
through some strictly grammar books in order to improve my speaking. All in all I have had a great year and got to
be a part of a great team, and the team challenges really helped me to keep motivated. Roll on TAC 2014!!
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4868 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 88 of 89 28 December 2013 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
You went from 150 to 1500 characters? That's a huge accomplishment, I think! Good luck with TAC 2014!
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