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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 89 of 128 18 September 2013 at 2:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I've just received the volume 5 of "Cracking the Chinese Puzzles"! I'm very happy in spite of some very annoying problems, still unsolved, that I've had with the bookseller. I'll possibly write about it later on.
I had bought the abridged edition before, but I believe that this index book (vol. 5) is essential, even if you want to follow the book page by page, because there is no way to easily find a character you are looking for. There are many positive comments about this book here on HTLAL, but also on Chinese-foruns. It seems to be a great tool for the study of Chinese characters. However, this index requires something about which I've seldom find here or in Chinese-foruns, namely the so called "Four Corner Method". Indeed, I'm thinking to include the 4+1 number code that identify each character in my mnemonics pictures, which may be another good clue to memorize them. Yes, my Mandarin adventure is also becoming a mnemonics trip. PS: By the way, the MDBG Chinese-English On Line Dictionary gives you the 4+1 digit that identifies each Chinese character. Edited by Flarioca on 18 September 2013 at 2:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 90 of 128 20 September 2013 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Lesson 24 is over, CD2 is over, five more CDs to go! Moreover, I'm beyond half of the characters from Matthews and Matthews.
However, the number o characters that I could claim to know is still very small. Today, there are 369 mature cards on my Anki deck, among which maybe more than 50 that are only building blocks. At this point, my rate of correct answers when studying a mature card is 92%, which may mean that I probably know well about 290 characters. That's probably the reason why I still need too often to search new characters in the glossary/dictionary when reading "Susan you mafan". On the other hand, on 5th June 2013 I've learned my first 17 Chinese Characters, 一二三十口日几也不木机杯人他力女她, which means that I've learned for good on average about 2.7 characters each day. Although this is a very small number, it means that I'll need "only" three years at this same pace to learn 3000 characters, more than enough to pass HSK6 (B1) test, assuming that the other skills grow to the same level. Yes, I know, language learning is a very non-linear activity, in both ways, but it's nice to have some forecast. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 91 of 128 21 September 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm starting to learn how to guess the correct digits for each character in the four-corner method. However, it's weird how different rules (or interpretations of these rules) give rise to different digits for the same character. Sometimes, even for some basic ones.
For instance, according to MDBG the number for 本 (ben3, source) is 4040, but for T. K. Ann it's 5023. I've guessed 4021 ... Anyway, in most cases I'm starting to get it almost right, which allows me an easy navigation through "Cracking the Chinese Puzzle". It must be said that volume 5 of this work is much more than just an index. It has some very valuable stuff, like a list of frequency for the characters (according to the author's own research), a very nice table with one "Fundamental" character for every possible sound (minus tones) in Mandarin and some other stuff. Edited by Flarioca on 21 September 2013 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 92 of 128 24 September 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not using Heisig anymore, but "Cracking the Chinese Puzzle" (CCP) instead. Indeed, the only reason I continue to use Matthews is because I have an Anki deck with all characters in this book (without the "stories", unfortunately).
Just to make it clear, in my opinion some ideas in Matthews are great and I don't regreat having this book, quite to the opposite! However, after creating our own mnemonic method out of those ideas, the best book I've found so far to understand the Chinese characters is CCP. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 93 of 128 27 September 2013 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lesson 27 presents 17 new characters, and 5 of them aren't in Matthews' book.
I'll continue to use the same single Anki deck for characters until the complete set from Matthews' book appear. After that, hoping that the long waited Pleco upgrade be released and its new flashcard system has the features I need, I'll migrate all my SRS study to Pleco. I'm already using Pleco to study Mandarin words, which continue to be much easier than characters, the main reason being that the words are those who appear on the lessons, and at this point it's much easier to forget the meaning of indivudual characters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4960 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 94 of 128 27 September 2013 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I should have been following this log from start! How is it going with Méthode 90? I went
through it twice and only by the end of the second "wave" it started to make more sense. It is much more extensive than Assimil, so there is indeed a lot of vocabulary to learn. I wish I could find anything similar but slightly more advanced. I've been through so many books since I started in June 2011, but I'm always a bit reluctant about picking up an intermediate book, so maybe I should learn from your log and cease to repeat my previous mistakes! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 95 of 128 28 September 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd rather write in Portuguese, but other people may be interested on this method as well. Your positive opinion about "Méthode 90" has been important to help me decide to buy it and choose among the various options, and this is a good moment to say thank you! Another book would be my main leading course, namely "Beginner's Chinese" by Yong Ho, but it suffers from the same problem I see in Assimil, putting pinyin right below the characters. Assimil is even worse, with the "frenchified" Mandarin and emphasis on pinyin instead of the characters. Now, having done so far thoroughly all the exercises from Méthode 90 until lesson 26 I can also say that their exercises are much better and more interesting than those in Assimil. Moreover, from the very beginning there are exercises to help you learn the characters. The last thing that is easy to compare, just flicking through Assimil, is that the grammatical explanations in Méthode 90 seem more detailed. As I said, I haven't done Assimil and won't do it in the future, so I cannot say much about the pace and other stuff, but Méthode 90 has another very interesting feature, the way they build your knowledge about characters and sounds. They purposely use characters that share patterns and similar sounds, to let you compare and learn them more easily. Anyway, I'm not doing one lesson each day and sincerely believe that one could handle it only if learning Chinese is the sole thing you do in life. At this point I need three days for each lesson. Furthermore, without mnemonics and SRS I wouldn't be able to memorize the characters and sounds well enough to keep going "with ease". It must also be said that I wasn't a complete beginner, having completed the Michel Thomas course, studied some Mandarin phonology and SRSing the first six chapters from Matthews' book. Although Méthode 90 grammatical explanations are good, I'm often reading my grammar books as well, in order to have it clearer. As a final note, my main goal, in every language that I learn, is to be able to read in that language. That said, other people certainly have other priorities and other courses may be better suited for them, in addition of course to the very healthy differences among different people. Edited by Flarioca on 28 September 2013 at 4:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4960 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 96 of 128 30 September 2013 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cara, onde que você me viu falar do Méthode 90? Aqui mesmo ou em outra comunidade?
Fiquei curioso. Like I said, I really used a lot of books which I mentioned on a thread. Only now I start to see some results, as I am combining them with native materials. I still have the feeling I'm losing time instead of moving on to more advanced resources, though. I think it's appropriate to stick to one lesson as long as you retain it. It just doesn't fit my style but I acknowledge it will serve Méthode 90 well and you won't have to do a 'second wave' the way I did. Only the grammar explanations I found rather confusing, but maybe it was because I didn't pay attention to them since the beginning. I didn't pay attention to characters either (apart from what I was already reading and writing from the dialogues and exercises). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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